Beneath Deep Space

Next, the two civilizations fell into a strange equilibrium...

After the Green Light Civilization was stationed on Sedna, it began to collect resources on a large scale and repair the spacecraft. With the attitude that more is worse than less, they do not want to have too much communication with this seemingly more powerful "new human civilization".

They don't know whether casual communication will anger each other. In order to reduce unnecessary trouble, they even hid behind the star Sedna and let a planet block them.

Similarly, humankind's Noah has been floating in the atmosphere of Mars, drifting with the rotation of Mars. Human beings also don’t want to have too much communication with the Green Light Civilization.

But if Noah is to land on Mars, it must overcome the buoyancy of the air, which means that a large amount of heavy objects must be mounted on the outside of Noah. This landing method is really strange, maybe the Green Light Civilization will see something.

For the sake of caution, Yu Yifeng never issued a landing order. However, humans are not very eager to collect resources, because those low-end robots are more likely to expose humans.

Fortunately, after such a long period of mining, Noah's material reserves have been extremely abundant. Even without external material supplements, people can still work normally.

The most urgent thing for mankind now is more powerful observation methods! This is also a project that Yu Yifeng focuses on supervising.

The difference between the two civilizations is 85 astronomical units. This distance is not worth mentioning in the universe, but it is still too far away for humans.

With the current observation capabilities of people's astronomical telescopes, the opponent's spacecraft is only a very small point, and it is difficult to see the specific situation clearly.

When the sun's light reaches the position of Sedna's star, it is already very weak. There is almost no reflected light from the planet, making it difficult to see it with ordinary astronomical telescopes. The alien spacecraft of the green light civilization is even more difficult to detect when it hides behind the planet. Human beings can only estimate the specific location of the other party's spacecraft through the leakage of infrared light from the other party.

But since the alien spacecraft has been stationed on Sedna, perhaps because a large number of engines have been shut down, the leakage of infrared light has been so small that humans have often lost the vision of the alien spacecraft.

This made Yu Yifeng very angry. He would never allow such an unknown situation to occur. So he is urging scientists and engineers to build more powerful observation facilities.

The first method: a more powerful radio interferometer. This radio interferometer is not a traditional single-antenna radio telescope, but consists of two different telescopes.

For radio interferometers, the greater the maximum distance between the two antennas, the higher the resolution. In addition, when the diameter of the antenna or the distance between the two antennas is constant, the shorter the received radio wavelength, the higher the resolution.

A radio interferometer can undoubtedly see more clearly than a simple radio telescope and has higher sensitivity.

According to scientists' calculations, two radio telescopes with a diameter of 200 meters are distributed at both ends of Noah, and then a radio interferometer is formed through a series of scientific and technological means. The highest resolution can reach one ten thousandth of an arc second.

"Noah is still too small. It would be nice if it was hundreds of kilometers big."

Yu Yifeng couldn't help but think. Because of the folding space, the volume inside is not small, but the surface area outside is a bit smaller, making it impossible to place a larger telescope. Moreover, due to the restrictions on entrances and exits, Noah is unable to enter or exit very large machinery. This is actually a major limitation of this spacecraft.

In the future, as technology develops, mankind must use Noah as the core to build even larger spaceships, with a diameter of several hundred kilometers like the Green Light Civilization...

This idea only flashed across Yi Feng's mind, and it would definitely not be possible with current technology. He sighed, everything had to come down to earth. He believes that according to the current speed of technological explosion, that day will not be too far away.

In addition to radio interferometers, there is another solution, and that is the gravitational wave telescope!

Gravitational waves were proposed and predicted by Einstein, the greatest scientist of the 20th century. In physics, gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of space-time that propagate outward from a radiation source in the form of waves, transferring energy.

In 2015, scientists truly observed the existence of gravitational waves during the collision of a binary black hole system, ushering in the era of gravitational wave astronomy. This discovery is another proof of Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Gravitational waves have a very important and unique property: they can pass through celestial bodies in their path with almost no obstruction. For example, light from distant stars will be blocked by the interstellar medium, but gravitational waves can pass through without any hindrance. This feature allows gravitational waves to carry more information about astronomical phenomena that have never been observed before.

The gravitational wave telescope is an instrument for observing gravitational waves.

"...Gravitational waves are too weak, and the fluctuations they bring are also very small, requiring instruments with very high precision. As of now, we cannot directly "see" gravitational waves, we can only use gravitational lenses or elastic objects A slight vibration for testing.”

In this meeting, Yu Yifeng, a group of engineers, and a large number of astronomical scientists are discussing this issue. This kind of cutting-edge scientific discussion can often discover the shortcomings of human science.

What is "gravity" and why does it occur? I don’t know, but gravity, one of the four basic forces, has always been a mystery.

Einstein's general theory of relativity pointed out what gravity is, but this theory has a serious conflict with another great subject - quantum mechanics. So much so that people are still unable to unify the two opposing disciplines. The "quantum gravity theory" that people once wanted to construct has never been successful.

Without understanding the essence of gravity, it is difficult to use it, so a gravitational wave telescope cannot be built.

"Okay, okay, gentlemen and ladies." Yu Yifeng frowned and said, "I'm not here to listen to your complaints. I just want to ask, is it possible to complete the gravitational wave telescope?"

"No, gravitational waves are really too small."

The person who answered from his position was astronomer Professor Thomson: "It is impossible with human technology! But... a large device we removed from the flying saucer happens to be a gravitational wave telescope! Moreover, after partial repair, It should work fine."

"It requires an extremely high amount of calculations to operate properly. After all, there are so many celestial bodies in the universe, each producing its own gravitational waves, all mixed together, and it requires an extremely high amount of calculations to solve these characteristic equations."

Scientists are actually reluctant to use this kind of alien creation, because not understanding its structure means it is unsafe and unreliable. But now I have no choice but to bring it up.

"Does our central computer have enough computing power?" Yu Yifeng asked. The central computer of Noah is the most advanced computer on the moon base and even on the earth, with a calculation speed of about 1 billion times per second.

"No, using such a computer to solve a system of equations with billions of variables would take... 100 years!" Professor Thomson shook his head and said, "That's why this instrument has never been used."

"If we can develop a higher-speed computer, we can really take advantage of this alien creation."