Beneath Deep Space

After several days of flight, Deep Space gradually moved away from the planet Nix...

"Reporting to Captain, the spacecraft is currently 3.7 million kilometers away from the star Nix, and the space curvature is level 2.7, which complies with the conditions for the use of the curvature engine! Please give instructions!"

"Start the curvature engine!" Yu Yifeng said solemnly.

"Captain orders, start the warp engine!"

With a command, the ion engine gradually extinguished, and the attached curvature engine began to work.

A thin layer of curvature bubbles appeared around Deep Space, like a soap bubble, enveloping the entire spacecraft.

From the outside world, Deep Space began to accelerate at a higher "acceleration"...

However, this higher "acceleration" will not produce a force on the spacecraft, nor will it increase the kinetic energy of the spacecraft, but will proceed in the physical way of the entire space movement.

As the curvature engine was officially started, the surrounding starlight began to distort and deform, but the detection instruments inside the spacecraft showed that everything was normal.

A scientist behind him smiled and wiped the sweat from his head: "It seems that there is basically no problem with the curvature navigation this time. All the data is normal and there are no accidents."

Yu Yifeng also looked at the parameters on the screen carefully and breathed a sigh of relief.

Of course, it is impossible for human beings to joke with their own lives. Such experiments have been done many times, and the success is very natural... Human beings' first voyage cannot just take advantage of the fact that they have worked hard for more than a hundred years. The spaceship blew up.

Speaking of the "warp engine" technology, it is the standard L2 level among interstellar civilizations. In other words, the new human civilization has just debuted and has already reached the L2 level of interstellar civilization!

The reason can be traced back to the heyday of physics thirty years ago, a... huge theoretical breakthrough!

More than thirty years ago, humankind's understanding of the nature of space was still very low. To be precise, it was still in the era of general relativity.

However, one day thirty years ago, an unexpected thing happened: the Super Hadron Collider finally captured a new type of "heavy particle"!

That day, the "classic model" was finally broken, and "dark matter" was discovered by humans!

A series of new theories came into being, ushering in the golden age of physics in the following decades.

In fact, the construction of "nuclear fusion" and "Deep Space" were completed more than thirty years ago. In the following period, people mainly studied the theory of dark matter and the corresponding "curvature engine technology."

The curvature engine is a new propulsion technology developed based on the "dark matter" theory and is an important milestone in interstellar civilization.

It marks that civilization bids farewell to the method of kinetic energy propulsion and can quickly carry out light-year voyages!

Dark matter does not absorb, reflect or radiate electromagnetic waves, that is, it does not interact electromagnetically with ordinary matter. In fact, "transparent matter" is more appropriate to describe dark matter, because you can't see or touch it, but it is distributed around and everywhere.

Dark energy, in the latest theory, refers to an energy that fills space and has strong negative pressure. The negative pressure brought by this dark energy is similar to an antigravity force over long distances. The expansion of the universe is caused by Caused by dark energy. It may be essentially a dynamic field, and of course it may be part of the vacuum energy...

This is also the focus of the current debate among scientists. People still don’t understand the nature of these things, but it does not affect their use.

And dark matter is even more diverse, with various types.

Scientists were surprised to find that some [strange substances] have extremely negative gravitational pressure, and the mass of this substance is actually "negative"!

The emergence of "strange matter" with negative mass makes curvature drive possible.

Because what curvature drive requires is "negative matter"!

“If a spacecraft in space can use negative matter to flatten part of the space behind it and reduce its curvature, then the spacecraft will be pulled by the space with greater curvature in front of it. This is the basic principle of curvature drive. "

"Curvature drive cannot reach the destination instantly like space folding and wormholes, but it may bring the spacecraft close to the speed of light, or even exceed the speed of light!"

"More importantly, the energy consumption related to the curvature engine has nothing to do with the mass of the spacecraft. It is only related to the volume of the "curvature bubble" and the speed of navigation. This technology avoids the relativistic effect at near light speed, greatly reducing the energy consumption of the spacecraft. reduce."

With this series of core theories, coupled with the curvature space data obtained when attacking the green light spacecraft, the development of the "curvature engine" only took thirty years...

Then humans became a serious L2 civilization... which could probably reach about 3 times the speed of light.

Of course, this L2 is very imaginary, human beings have too little time to develop, and the dark matter theory is far from being fully understood.

"So, basic science can't be useless..." Yu Yifeng was in a good mood when he saw the spacecraft sailing smoothly.

"It's just that the cost of building the Super Hadron Collider is too high. It's ten thousand times more powerful than the ones on Earth before... No wonder lower-level civilizations can't discover it."

"The curvature engine at the back is even more expensive...it consumes a lot of energy!"

Thinking of this series of scientific developments, Yu Yifeng couldn't help but shook his head, "Even if a low-level civilization happened to discover dark matter, it would not have enough energy, so it would not be able to use the curvature engine..."

"Only with a strong enough system can we continue to advance in technology. This is inevitable!"

However, curvature navigation also has some natural disadvantages.

With mankind's current technology, it is difficult to operate in places with high space curvature, that is, high gravity, so it is still necessary to build old-fashioned ion engines.

Moreover, because of the spatial distortion of the curvature bubble, it becomes very difficult for the spacecraft to observe the outside world, requiring a computer to restore the image.

The faster you fly, the more difficult it is to observe the outside world.

This kind of observation takes the speed of light as the critical point. When the speed exceeds the speed of light, it is completely impossible to observe the outside world!

"As everyone knows, the target of this voyage is: the Earth-like planet numbered GB131. It is about 0.62 light-years away from the star Nix and is expected to arrive within half a year."

"Each department will strengthen its responsibilities during this six months. I don't want an accident to happen on the first voyage. Do you understand?"

Yu Yifeng kept giving instructions in the earphones.

"Okay, Minister Xu Yunjin... and the heads of various departments will come to my office. We will have a brief meeting."

After saying these words, Yu Yifeng's mood became active.

People always have to look forward. Seeing the eager expressions of some scientists in the captain's room, he knew that everyone had basically gotten rid of the mood of parting with the Knicks.

People chose the planet GB131, which is still in the binary star system. There are certainly reasons for this choice.

The distance of 0.62 light-years is neither short nor long, just enough to check the comprehensive performance of the "Deep Space". During this period, there was even a brief period of time that exceeded the speed of light, and people could obtain a large amount of detailed experimental data to improve the curvature engine.

Although it is already at the L2 level among interstellar civilizations, this is the first time that humans have embarked on an interstellar voyage at the light-year level, and it is impossible to fly dozens or hundreds of light-years from the beginning.

Taking a step back, if something goes wrong with the Deep Space, emergency repairs can be carried out on this planet.

On the other hand, planet GB131 has a large amount of helium-3 resources!

This planet is only slightly larger than the moon, has no magnetic field on its surface, and the large amount of material ejected by the binary star system can completely reach it.

So over billions of years, it is estimated that there will be billions of tons of helium-3 available for mining!

Helium-3 is a rare good thing in the entire galaxy.

At least for humans who have just entered the interstellar world, it is a treasure truly worth looking for and more important than gold!

While thinking like this, many scientists and department heads walked into the captain's room with excited faces.