Voyage of the Stars

The space is so empty. After losing the background of the Wolf 1061 star system, compared to the brilliance of the galaxy, the seemingly extremely bright fleet tail flames are not even as bright as a match in the vast world. The human fleet itself is even more It's not even comparable to dust.

Because humans often compare the earth to the dust of the universe and the gravel of the Ganges River, but in fact the so-called gravel of the Ganges cannot be used as a comparison metaphor between the earth and the universe.

That size comparison needs to be magnified by several orders of magnitude.

Human beings sailing in the vast galaxy feel this deeply. The fleet built by human beings with their own proud technology is silently accelerating in the void like a firefly.

Its nearly sun-like light cannot even shine through interstellar dust to any of the nearest star systems.

After more than ten hours, the fusion thruster was partially shut down, leaving only the reactor that maintained the spacecraft's top speed and internal energy supply.

After accelerating to 10% of the speed of light, the human fleet entered the stage of constant speed navigation. Sailing at a constant speed means that humans do not need to be pressed on the cushion chair all the time.

Automatic programs unbuckle people's seat belts and release body safety stabilizers.

People who returned to normal life began to work on their own, hibernating when it was time to hibernate, doing research when it was time to do research, raising babies when it was time to raise them, and creating humans when it was time to create humans.

Human beings did not have a very clear idea of ​​which star system they were going to on this voyage. They just followed the map of the Milky Way and headed towards the Sagittarius Arm.

Although humans have no way to judge whether the Orion Cantilever is really an extremely dangerous star field through their own observations, in the past period of time, humans have received several signals from detectors distributed in the outer reaches of the Wolf star system. Broadcast message with the same content as before.

Still the Galactic Alliance, but not the same squadron.

That broadcast signal seems to be really intelligent and can identify whether a certain receiver has reached level one civilization or above.

After receiving the signal several times, humans had to start believing in the authenticity of the broadcast.

Human beings don’t know where the broadcast signal came from or when the civilizations mentioned in the broadcast arrived at the Orion Cantilever, but this does not affect human beings’ determination to leave this star field.

After all, even if there is no broadcast, the threat of 'Silver Mist' is still there.

As for why we want to cantilever towards the Sagittarius, the reason is very simple. With the current navigation capabilities of mankind, we can only follow the route with the distribution of stars.

The Orion Cantilever is a protruding branch of the Sagittarius Cantilever. The universe is three-dimensional, and the Milky Way is also a flat club galaxy. Most of the stars in the Milky Way are distributed on the galactic disk.

If the magnitude of the silver disk is defined as up and down, there are also up and down directions, but humans cannot fly upward from the surface of the silver disk and then return like a parabola.

Sailing across the cantilever is even more of a dream.

Of course, humans also feel that this route is very unsafe, so they try to travel to the stars above the galactic disk. Within the scope of navigation technology, try to stay away from the dense star field of stars to reduce the possibility of encountering alien civilizations. sex.

By the way, humans always just want to stay as far away as possible, and don't think they can really fly to the Sagittarius Cantilever with their 15% sailing speed.

This is not a sudden awakening of self-knowledge, but technology has made it extremely difficult for human consciousness.

The solar system is located approximately in the middle of the Orion Cantilever, about 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way, and the Orion Cantilever range is also about 26,000 light-years away.

Judging from human observation results, it is at least 13,000 light-years from the current position of humans to the intersection of the Orion cantilever and the Sagittarius cantilever.

With the current human navigation technology, it would take at least 86,666 years to fly non-stop. This does not include the time for supplies, maintenance, and development in various star systems.

Moreover, even if the equipment is not bad, people will all die of old age, and the hibernation cabin and life potion cannot withstand the erosion of such a long period of time.

On a cosmic scale, humans appear extremely small.

The lifespan of a human being who has used up two life potions is only six hundred years, which passes in the blink of an eye. Even if Yue Yuan has five hundred years more lifespan than others, it is only a mere eleven hundred years.

If he does not hibernate properly, he will die of old age on the voyage.

So after the fleet entered a state of constant speed and Yue Yuan continued on duty for another three years, he went to hibernate.

The first supply destination of the human fleet is a yellow dwarf star 12.8 light-years away. Astronomers use transit method, gravitational perturbation method, gravitational microlensing method, relativistic method and other detection methods to determine that there is a massive gas planet there.

Although no signs of rocky planets have been found, according to general rules, large gaseous planets should have many rocky satellites.

With the planet as a support, humans can repair and reorganize the spacecraft and replenish various materials consumed during the voyage. Of course, there are also protium, deuterium, tritium and helium three and helium four as fuel for nuclear fusion.

The human fleet was sailing among the stars. When Yue Yuan woke up from hibernation for the second time, the fleet had been sailing for eighty-five years.

And he himself has aged fifteen years.

Eighty-five years have passed, and all human warships have been filled with people, and the human population has increased from the original 970,000 to 1.4 million.

The increase in population during the voyage was much smaller than the original forty years in the Wolf star system, but this is normal because many people spent their time in hibernation. It is true that there are those who have been on duty for forty or fifty years, but After all, not everyone, in this case, people's desire to have children is not great.

Therefore, it is reasonable for population growth to slow down, and many newborns are born by accident.

As usual, humans first dispatched probes to detect the target star system. Of course, this process was already completed by the unmanned scout spacecraft before the fleet arrived at the target star system.

The universe is very empty, and even though there may be widespread civilization, this time humans are not unlucky enough to encounter another alien civilization, nor are they lucky enough to encounter a planet with primitive life again.

Human scientists think this result is very reasonable. Every time we arrive in a star system, we encounter a civilization or a life planet.

After arriving in the target star system, humans did not stay for decades like they did in the Wolf star system. Instead, they replenished their energy and supplies before continuing their journey to the next star system.

This time, it’s another seventy-one years.

Then continue to rely on the star system to replenish materials and energy, and then continue to set off.

Fifty-three years, sixty-eight years, forty-seven years, one hundred and one years.

Human beings stop and go, relying on the star system again and again to embark on a starry sky route that has never been traveled in history.

Including replenishment time, it has been 360 years since humans left the Wolf Star System.

In six decades, humanity's total voyage has reached 52.7 light-years. However, the straight-line distance from the Wolf star system is only 36.6 light-years. This is the effective range that humans have spent six decades on.

Human beings have once again realized the vastness of the universe and the ruthlessness of time.