Road to science and technology

The universe is so dark, so vast, and so silent. Only those huge stars turn into dust-like light spots and work hard to illuminate it.

At this time, these dust-like star points were suddenly blocked by a thin black screen, and then three spheres quickly flashed on the screen. The largest one is 1.6 times the radius of the Earth, and its surface is a dark silver hexagonal network structure. The medium one is only as big as the moon and is entirely silver. The smallest radius is only five hundred meters. One side of its sphere reflects the medium-sized silver sphere, and the other side reflects the stars. If it weren't for its special surface, no one would have noticed it.

These three balls are naturally the Shenzhou civilization that is sailing toward Orion in a cantilevered manner. So far, they have sailed more than a thousand light years.

Because he has to sail across the cantilever, and Yue Yuanzhou doesn't want to take a detour toward the center of the galaxy, on this route, he will enter the thin zone of stars in about four to five hundred light years. At that time, each jump can only span a maximum of two hundred light years. Stellar Leapfrog is no longer available.

Although the space storage device, including the strong interaction battleship, has a yellow dwarf star inside as an energy source, the energy consumed by star leapfrog is very large. If the same star is used to provide energy, it may accelerate the aging of the star. Therefore, At that time, the only way to cross the star desert area directly between these two cantilevers is to sail at warp speed.

After continuing to broadcast and mocking the civilization hiding in the dark, the Shenzhou civilization came to the edge of the Heroic Arm. Although they were on their way, the people within Shenzhou Civilization were still doing what they were supposed to do. There were not a bunch of people gathering in the hall to watch this situation, because they were used to it.

So now there is only Yue Yuanzhou in the hall doing nothing and driving the Civilized Main Planet. Of course, there are also people driving the Yuanxing and the unnamed strong interaction battleship. The artificial intelligence is only an auxiliary after all.

Yue Yuanzhou is now leaning on the throne. In front of him is a picture of the entire outside world. When the full outside scene mode is turned on, it is like the seat is hovering in the starry sky. At this time, what is displayed in front of him is a map with a width of more than 3,000 light years. The star-thinned region, across this region, reaches directly to the Orion cantilever.

If warp speed sailing is driven by warp crystals, it will undoubtedly take more than three thousand years. Therefore, Yue Yuanzhou planned to cross this distance by using space elasticity to accelerate into warp speed. This method actually took more than three thousand years, but that was outside time, and people who were sailing only felt the past few years or even days.

"The light of Taihu Lake anchors the space and time of the Shenzhou star. 10% to 60% anchoring is completed. The space elasticity parameters are imported, energy support is loaded, and the space elasticity parameters reach the rated value. Ejection countdown 3, 2, 1"

Since the last stellar leap occurred near the star, when the Shenzhou star was ejected, the track that was about one kilometer wide and about ten kilometers long was formed, like a giant black pillar that separated the star. Split into two halves, and the Shenzhou star disappeared at the end of the black pillar. After the Shenzhou star disappeared, two more smaller tracks appeared next to its channel.

From relative stillness to almost the speed of light, it only took a short acceleration distance of more than ten kilometers. If it were a regular acceleration, then even the lowest-generation divine body of all members of the Shenzhou civilization would be crushed into meat paste, but this kind of based on The ejection of space elasticity theory perfectly circumvents this problem.

This is a brand new way of sailing, and it is also a way of sailing that can theoretically sail to the end of the universe, so Yue Yuanzhou and even the entire civilization are very curious, because this is the first time for them.

So when it first entered the navigation state, almost the entire Academy of Sciences turned its attention to various detection instruments, trying to find something strange in order to explore the meaning of time, a defined physical quantity.

But they didn't notice even the slightest abnormality. If they hadn't seen an occasional star turn into a long strip of light and recede from the full exterior view, they would have thought that they were motionless.

Yue Yuanzhou was not idle either, but the main thing he did was watch scientists from the Academy of Sciences perform experiments. Although the correctness of the principle of the constant speed of light is theoretically clear, the experiments that led to this theory were all done when it was in a relatively stationary state, so scientists still don't want to miss this rare opportunity.

Because they themselves have followed the Shenzhou star into a state of motion close to the speed of light, what they are still testing now is the speed of light in this state. After obtaining unchanged results, they tested the light emitted from a test point that had been placed on the road ahead, and the light emitted from the departure point to the destination before departure.

If they followed normal thinking, they measured that the relative speed of the light coming from the front to the Shenzhou star should be twice the speed of light, while the light that had already been emitted from the rear should be stationary relative to the Shenzhou star. But the result was not like this. They once again proved that the principle of constant speed of light is still valid in its own high-speed state.

Because although they observed that the light in the front was blue-shifted and the light in the rear was red-shifted, the speed of these two lights was the speed of light relative to the Shenzhou star.

Yue Yuanzhou also watched the entire experimental process. The results were as expected, but he was still secretly surprised. The speed of light seemed to have been set. This feeling was very strange.

Yue Yuanzhou even thought that if he had the opportunity to experience the world at low light speed in the future, he would do this experiment again, which reminded him of the Black Domain. Nowadays, civilization has mastered the black domain technology, which means that reducing the speed of light can be achieved, but he will never take the risk until he is sure that it can come out.

As for increasing the speed of light, he would like to study the speed of light again in that environment, but the technology of increasing the speed of light cannot even be accomplished by a great god, let alone him.

Thinking of this, Yue Yuanzhou couldn't help but think of the Returners, and he didn't know whether they were a civilization or an organization.

But no matter which one it is, Yue Yuanzhou doesn't quite agree with their ideas. Compared with returning the universe to zero dimensions and then returning to the original eleven dimensions, he feels that the subsequent return movement that called on all civilizations to return the matter of the universe is more reliable. some.

The method of the Zero Returner should be to use two-dimensional foils to transform the universe from three dimensions to two dimensions and then continue to reduce it to zero dimensions. The return movement is to directly shrink the universe from three dimensions into a singularity and explode again.

Maybe the Return Movement was the work of another great god, Ming Ming? Maybe Zero Zero has changed his ways? But no matter what, the method of calling on all civilizations to return materials is still a bit low. As Yue Yuanzhou thought about it, he suddenly felt that he had grasped something important, but it seemed that there was nothing.

It was a weird feeling to have that lightbulb moment.

Yue Yuanzhou stepped down from his seat, thinking as he walked.

"The purpose of the Zero Returner is to restart the universe. The return movement is the same."

He was bored during the voyage, so for a while, Yue Yuanzhou began to think wildly. He thought of the feeble call that sounded when he returned to sports, thought of the five kilograms of ecological balls, and thought of many civilizations that may still have more left in them. substance.

"Huh?!!!"

"What the hell!" Yue Yuanzhou knew what he had just had a flash of inspiration. He couldn't help but gasped after grasping the content of this inspiration.

"Isn't this the truth about the dark forest?" Yue Yuanzhou walked in the hall and looked at the dark starry sky in the full exterior scene. He now felt that the darkness was really like a devouring giant beast, swallowing up all civilizations!

After a while, he murmured to himself: "What survival is the first need of civilization, what civilization continues to grow and expand, but the total matter of the universe remains unchanged."

Yue Yuanzhou now feels that these are secondary. No wonder he felt strange before, why even though the Trisolaran civilization can achieve real-time communication, the civilization of the entire universe cannot break the chain of suspicion. Of course, there must be reasons for the differences in civilization. . But now he feels that the main reason is that the great god wants to restart the universe.

"The more civilizations that reach the top level, the more civilizations that have the ability to create small universes, so the more matter will be taken away from the large universe. In this way, in order for the universe to have enough matter to restart smoothly," Yue Yuanzhou said. The pupils that were dilated due to thinking refocused on the black starry sky, and he said with a serious face: "In order for the universe to have enough species to restart smoothly, we can only kill all possible intelligent civilizations in the entire universe, cosmic sociology? Haha , it should be more accurate to say that this kind of cosmic picture was deliberately created by the civilization of the great gods! It’s so damn dark! The abyss is hugely black!”