Bright Sword starts with the grenade flat.

Chapter 422 The bottleneck of civilization development

However, Liu Xiu thought that it might be because it was easier to obtain energy using a hydrogen fusion reactor! After all, every star system has a large amount of hydrogen.

Especially those gas planets like Jupiter and Saturn that have not successfully transformed into stars are full of hydrogen!
If antimatter energy is used, it means an extra step, which is to first obtain hydrogen elements, then use a collider to produce antihydrogen elements, and then use the annihilation effect of positive and antihydrogen atoms to obtain energy.

Although it is a bit more troublesome, it also means that the spacecraft can produce more than 140 times more energy than the original hydrogen fusion while carrying the same mass.

Of course, this also means being trapped in the Milky Way and there will be no possibility of exploring outside the Milky Way.

This is because neither the fusion reaction nor the annihilation reaction source of antimatter energy can support the spacecraft's cross-galaxy-level navigation, because the distance between galaxies starts in tens of thousands of light years.

If a spacecraft wants to fly at superluminal speed, it naturally has to keep the curvature engine operating. However, the operation of the curvature engine consumes energy all the time. Therefore, if the spacecraft wants to reach a certain place across the galaxy in a short time, the energy on the spacecraft cannot sustain the energy consumption for such a long distance across the galaxy.

To give a simple example, in the fuel era, the maximum cruising range of a fuel aircraft carrier was only 6,000 to 10,000 kilometers.

But if it is replaced with a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, it will be able to sail around the blue planet dozens of times without any problem.

However, the nuclear power that can be regarded as unlimited endurance on the Blue Planet seems a little insufficient when placed in the starry universe. After all, the units for sailing on the Blue Planet are kilometers or hundreds of kilometers, and the unit of ten thousand kilometers seems very large.

But in the starry universe, ten thousand kilometers are just decimal places. In the universe, billions of kilometers are the basis. Light years are the normal unit for calculating distance, and one light year is equal to 9.46 trillion kilometers.

Therefore, if nuclear energy or antimatter energy is used in the universe, then unless conventional inertial navigation is used and the navigation time is endured for tens of thousands of years, otherwise, if a curvature engine is used, it will not be able to support a navigation of tens of thousands of light years.

After all, there is a blank space between galaxies. This is not like sailing within a galaxy, where there is a star system every few or ten light years that can be used to supply energy. After all, as long as it is a star, there must be gas planets around it that can be used for supplies.

Therefore, there is no need to worry about supplies when sailing within the galaxy, but sailing outside the galaxy, especially the blank areas of tens of thousands of light years, cannot provide any energy at all.

Of course, perhaps such a blank area is not unable to provide energy, but human science and technology are not yet advanced, so it is impossible to utilize or discover such energy.

That’s right, this kind of energy is actually dark energy, and it is also the energy that can be mastered by the fourth-level civilization. When it comes to dark energy, many people confuse it with dark matter. After all, both names have the word "dark" in them.

In fact, the two have little in common except that neither participates in the electromagnetic force. Instead, dark matter has a gravitational effect, while dark energy has a repulsive effect.

The cosmological model in the late 1990s predicted that dark energy would account for 68.3% of the total energy of the universe, dark matter would account for 26.4%, and normal matter that we can see and touch would only account for 4.9%, and this 4.9 also includes antimatter.

Therefore, the study of dark energy will be the core link in uncovering the mystery of the universe. It is a pity that the research on dark matter or dark energy is too difficult. Even though the Dark Energy and Dark Matter Research Institute ordered by Liu Xiu has been established for nearly a hundred years, there is still no clue about research in this area.

Because whether it is dark matter or dark energy, the reason why they are "dark" is entirely because we cannot see them. This is not only invisible to the naked eye, but also to electromagnetic detectors.

Therefore, we can be sure that dark matter and dark energy do not participate in electromagnetic interaction. The absence of electromagnetic interaction means that these substances are independent of human senses.

The way humans perceive the world comes from the five senses: vision through the eyes, smell through the nose, taste through the tongue, hearing through the ears, and touch through the skin. Essentially, all of these are transmitted to human consciousness through electromagnetic force.

Dark matter and dark energy that do not have electromagnetic effects must be undetectable by human senses.

Unlike dark energy, dark matter does not participate in electromagnetic interactions, but it does participate in gravity.

Dark matter was first proposed by the Dutch physicist Jan Oort, who was later named the Oort Cloud.

In 1932, while studying the spin of the Milky Way, Oort discovered that according to the existing gravitational theory, it was impossible to explain why the rotation speed of the outer part of the Milky Way was far beyond the theoretical prediction. If there was no extra mass in the Milky Way, then the Milky Way's own gravity would not be enough to restrain the super-strong centrifugal force outside the galaxy, which would cause the entire galaxy to fall apart.

Therefore, it was predicted that there must be an invisible extra matter in the Milky Way, which later became dark matter.

Today, the strongest evidence for dark matter comes from the effect of gravitational lensing on large scales.

The most typical example is the gravitational lens of the Bullet Cluster, which is composed of two colliding galaxies in the constellation Carina. If dark matter is not introduced, according to the mass calculation of these two galaxies, such a significant gravitational lens effect is impossible, so astronomers can infer the distribution of dark matter based on the gravitational lens effect.

The Bullet Cluster is also the best evidence currently for the existence of dark matter. Through a large number of gravitational lensing effects, it is found that the distribution of dark matter is basically clumpy and extremely uneven.

This is completely different from dark energy, which is evenly distributed in the universe. Moreover, dark energy does not participate in gravity, but instead manifests as universal repulsion.

Therefore, the dark energy that is evenly distributed in the universe will naturally exist in galaxies and the blank areas of galaxies. So as long as you master the dark energy, you can directly obtain unlimited energy anytime and anywhere.

It is just like humans can breathe freely anytime and anywhere in the atmosphere of the blue planet.

But it is not so easy to use dark energy. It is even more difficult than using dark matter. After all, dark matter has its own gravitational effect! We can capture it from the gravitational aspect.

However, dark energy does not even participate in gravity, so it naturally means that it is a type of energy that is difficult to capture.

The Dark Energy Research Institute founded by Liu Xiu has been conducting research for a hundred years but has yet to gain anything. However, compared to dark matter, Liu Xiu naturally hopes to study how to utilize dark energy. After all, when traveling within the galaxy, conventional material energy can still be used to supplement energy.

Dark matter is mixed with galaxies, acting as glue between galaxies, sticking together large and small star systems between galaxies to prevent them from falling apart.

Therefore, if you want to travel across galaxies over long distances, it is naturally essential to understand how to utilize dark energy.

(End of this chapter)