Earth Era

No matter how far the technology of human civilization has developed, even if today's human civilization has the ability to barely conduct interstellar navigation, the entire universe, no, even just one solar system is vast and mysterious to human civilization.

Human civilization's understanding of the solar system is still only the tip of the iceberg.

From the inside to the outside, the solar system consists of four terrestrial planets, then the asteroid belt, four giant Jupiter-like planets, and the Kuiper belt, which is the source of short-period comets. Pluto, Haumea, Makemake all belong here. Further out is the discrete ecliptic disk, where Sedna, a celestial body larger than Pluto, is located. The aphelion of the celestial bodies here may even be as high as one thousand astronomical units, that is, more than 150 billion kilometers.

This distance is already very far away, but there is a very important point. The farthest distance between the ecliptic discrete disk and the sun is 150 billion kilometers, and the estimated distance between the Oort cloud and the sun is 7.5 trillion to 180,000. Between 100 million kilometers, then... between the ecliptic discrete disk and the Oort cloud, there is a huge void with a range of several trillion to ten trillion kilometers... What is there in this huge void?

Before Wei Feng, the longest voyage distance of human civilization was 50 billion kilometers. This still belongs to the ecliptic discrete disk category, and has not yet come to this huge void, so naturally it has not been able to carry out on-the-spot detection of this area. Scientists have searched this area for many years through various large telescopes, but have found nothing in this area.

Is there really a void here? This seems a bit unacceptable from a common sense.

In fact, Wei Feng's scientific research mission included the detection of the hollow area. Scientists hope to find something here to improve their understanding of how the solar system formed and evolved. This job has always been carried out by Ye Luo, and does not require Wei Feng's intervention. The Xinghai spacecraft is equipped with many scientific research instruments. Since the Xinghai spacecraft left the ecliptic disc, these instruments have been working non-stop. They have been analyzing the material density, composition type, radiation type and strength and other information, and then package them up and send them back to Earth.

But the most critical breakthrough has not yet been found. Scientists have long hoped that the Xinghai spacecraft could find macroscopic objects here, such as interstellar dust more than a centimeter in diameter. Then one day bring them back to Earth for study.

At this moment, it has been several years since the Xinghai spacecraft last woke up. During this period of time, it was still advancing continuously. Now the distance between it and the sun has expanded to 1.5 trillion kilometers.

Although most of its equipment has been turned off. But some important instruments and equipment are still in operation. These include four large optical telescopes mounted on the outer walls of its cabin. They are constantly collecting the light transmitted from the surrounding empty cosmic space, and then transmit this data to Yeluo for further analysis.

This work has been going on for more than ten years, and Ye Luo has found nothing until now. But today seems a little different. Reflected by faint starlight. A telescope has captured a faint bright spot in deep space. This bright spot quickly caught Ye Luo's attention, and then the four telescopes adjusted their angles at the same time. At the same time, aim at that spot of light.

Further analysis will be forthcoming soon. The data shows that the light spot came from an irregular asteroid with a diameter of about 17 meters about 200 million kilometers away. Its composition cannot be resolved for the time being, but its surface is very bright. Has a very high albedo. This suggests that its surface may be composed of water ice, dry ice. Or methane ice.

Ye Luo's program library contains programs for how to deal with this situation. This is the huge void between the discrete disk of the ecliptic and the Oort cloud region, which has been thought to be empty for hundreds of years. If you can find a star here and analyze it. Many of the difficult problems facing human civilization may be answered.

This is a pretty big scientific discovery, so after a little math. Ye Luo decided to capture the asteroid, and even if he couldn't capture the asteroid, he had to find a way to send it to get some material. But in this vast space. Especially when the Xinghai spacecraft is in a state of high-speed motion, it is not easy to capture this star.

The farther the star is from the sun, the slower its rotation speed is. Within the scope of the speed of the spacecraft, it can even be regarded as being stationary relative to the sun. It is not a simple matter to capture a stationary object for a spacecraft moving at a speed of 3,000 kilometers per second. You must know that at such a high speed, if the Xinghai spacecraft collided directly with the asteroid, the huge kinetic energy brought by the high speed might destroy the entire spacecraft.

But before setting off, the engineers who built the spacecraft had long considered this situation, and they had devised a comprehensive plan to capture the encountered stars or to obtain the matter on the encountered stars.

In this silence, a part of the Xinghai spacecraft cabin, which has turned into an icy stone in the universe, slowly opened. A thing similar to the barrel of a machine gun gradually stretched out. With four large optical telescopes as the eyes, the orbit and position parameters of the irregular asteroid are continuously transmitted to Yeluo's central processor, and Yeluo starts the angle of the gun barrel based on these data. Adjust until it locks the irregular asteroid firmly.

Then it fired a bullet. The speed of the bullet is 100 kilometers per second. Since the relativistic effect of moving objects is very weak at low speed, its current speed is a simple superposition of the speed of the bullet and the speed of the spacecraft, that is, every second Three thousand one hundred kilometers.

It flew towards the irregular asteroid 200 million kilometers away at a speed of 311 kilometers per second, and it is expected that it will hit the irregular asteroid in eighteen hours.

After the bullet was fired, another thing was fired from the cabin of the Xinghai spacecraft. After the thing is unfolded from the folded state, it shows its original appearance - it is a huge disc-shaped thing, it has a metal outer layer, and the inner layer is a huge Strainer. Its diameter is as high as ten meters, and its thickness is only less than five centimeters. Above its metal ring is also equipped with a dozen micro-engines. Driven by these micro-engines, the filter device also flew towards the irregular asteroid along with the bullet.

A total of five filters were launched from Yeluo. Apparently, Ye Luo intended to crush the asteroid first, and then use the filter to capture the tiny dust particles scattered in space. Although the filter screen still has a speed of more than 3,000 kilometers per second relative to asteroid debris, their filter screen structure is extremely strong, and they are fully capable of capturing tiny stellar debris. At the same time, they also have their own power, which means that after capturing the star fragments, they can return to the Xinghai spacecraft again and bring those things to the spacecraft.

The entire capture process lasted for more than 30 hours. Everything was as preset in the Yeluo program database. The bullet first shattered the asteroid, and then the filter screen captured a large number of star fragments. And then returned to the spaceship smoothly. Before entering the spacecraft, Ye Luo perfectly sealed up these precious interstellar materials and stored them in the warehouse.

It does not have the authority to detect these interstellar materials by itself, and it needs to wait until Wei Feng wakes up before it can analyze these substances under the command of Wei Feng.

This is the only thing worth describing in this ten-year hibernation. After this incident, the Xinghai spacecraft once again returned to peace. It still floats like a cold stone in this infinite universe until a certain time node arrives.

The pressurization equipment is turned on, the temperature control equipment is turned on, the gas circulation equipment is turned on, the relevant life-sustaining equipment is turned on, the lighting equipment is turned on, the thawing process begins... wake up...

"Captain~www.readwn.com~ Hello, welcome to the world ten years later." Ye Luo said to Wei Feng.

Wei Feng struggled to open his eyes and clumsily crawled out of the hibernation cabin. He still put on his clothes as if he had woken up for the first time, and added some water. It took a long time for him to slow down. Slowly adapt to the environment here.

"In the past ten years, how many parts have been damaged? How many bugs have you accumulated? Are there any instructions from the earth? Did you...have any emergencies?"

"There are seventeen parts that you need to repair and replace. I have accumulated forty-five small bugs, and seventeen announcements from the earth have reached me. Is there an emergency... There is one thing."

Wei Feng was slightly surprised: "What is the emergency?"

"I observed an asteroid four years ago, and shattered it with bullets, then captured some of the material on it and transported them back to the spacecraft for storage." Ye Luo replied, "I didn't deal with them. Expand the permission to detect, I've been waiting for you to wake up. But...During the shipping process, with the simplest optical sensor, I noticed that there seemed to be some unusual things in there. I think you'd better check as soon as possible It expands analysis." (To be continued.) Enable new URL