Chapter 241 The Vast Galaxy

From the interrogation of the Itar scientists, Han Yang learned that this so-called electromagnetic life has another more appropriate name.

Stellar virus.

They are a form of life without a traditional entity. The essence of their life is a special electromagnetic wave with a special frequency and energy level encoded in a special form.

Like light, they have no static mass, and their remains will always move at the speed of light throughout their lives, even after death.

The Itar people don't know whether electromagnetic life has wisdom or not. But this doesn't matter.

Because the public information of the Silver Alliance shows that carbon-based social intelligent life based on cell structure like humans or Itar people does not have the possibility of communicating with electromagnetic life.

One can never reach the speed of light, and the other is always at the speed of light. This alone means that there is a huge difference between the two in their understanding of the universe, and their perception of time, space, energy, etc. are completely different.

Even if electromagnetic life has wisdom, they cannot communicate with each other. Electromagnetic life cannot understand the worldview and logic of social intelligent life, and social intelligent life cannot understand the worldview and logic of electromagnetic life. In this case, it does not matter whether electromagnetic life has wisdom or not to social intelligent life.

Most of the electromagnetic life that has been discovered by the Silver Alliance does not pose a threat to social intelligent life.

The two sides cannot even perceive each other.

Perhaps during space travel, a piece of electromagnetic background noise observed by the spacecraft is a brush with a group of electromagnetic life.

Perhaps a cloud of interstellar dust with a strange magnetic field structure is the nest of a group of electromagnetic life.

As long as they do not actively die or are too unlucky, in most cases, the two sides are at peace.

However, a special type of electromagnetic life poses a great threat to social intelligent life. It is this type of electromagnetic life that is named "stellar virus" by the Silver Alliance.

It has been studied that this type of electromagnetic life prefers to gather on a star that is suitable for their survival, and through some mechanism, use the energy of the star to reproduce offspring - I don't know how the electromagnetic life thinks about this, but at least, in the understanding of the social intelligent life, the electromagnetic life is reproducing.

Electromagnetic life will achieve a large-scale increase in the population through the energy of the star. In a short period of time, their number and group strength may be as high as tens of trillions of times before reproduction.

In this way, the existence of electromagnetic life itself will seriously affect the magnetic field of the star itself through electromagnetic interaction.

And the stellar magnetic field plays an extremely important role in the evolution of stars and the maintenance of daily states.

Therefore, the reproduction activities of electromagnetic life indirectly affect the stars, and indirectly affect the social intelligent life that relies on stellar energy to survive and develop.

The public information of the Silver Alliance calls this kind of electromagnetic life with the help of stellar energy parasitism on the star, just like viruses or bacteria parasitizing life.

This is the origin of the name of the stellar virus.

The large-scale explosion of electromagnetic life groups alone will cause the electromagnetic environment of the star system of the "parasitized" star to deteriorate, affecting all equipment that needs electricity.

From space battleships to chips, all will be affected by the deterioration of the electromagnetic environment.

Even worse, after being severely affected by the large-scale explosion of electromagnetic life groups, the stars themselves will have a series of problems such as convection disorder and magnetic field disorder, which will lead to a series of violent star explosion activities.

Coronal mass ejections, flare explosions, ultra-high intensity stellar winds, more violent X-ray and gamma-ray bursts, etc., will turn the entire star system into a purgatory.

This is the electric disaster.

Han Yang silently made some calculations and simulated what would happen if the electric disaster broke out in the solar system.

It is not uncommon for solar activity to affect the earth. The aurora is the most common example.

The high-energy charged particles released by solar activity diverge to the entire solar system at a very high speed. When they come to Earth, they can create colorful auroras in the sky through interaction with the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere.

If the solar activity is more intense, it will not be as simple as auroras.

Large-scale signal interruption, power grid paralysis and power outage, electronic equipment burning, and even affecting the work of satellites, etc.

But this is just routine stellar activity.

The sun can only be regarded as an extremely stable and stable existence among stars.

Once electromagnetic life parasitizes the sun on a large scale, causing the sun to go wild, first of all, the electromagnetic environment of the entire solar system will be extremely deteriorated, deteriorating to the point that all satellites, probes, warships, spacecraft and other space vehicles that Han Yang has at the moment that require electricity will have serious malfunctions or even be unusable.

All communication methods that use electromagnetic waves will be interrupted due to excessive interference.

The temperature of the sun will rise a lot, causing the temperature of the earth to rise higher, and the entire biosphere will be completely destroyed.

The sun will also become a powerful source of X-ray and gamma-ray radiation. Any space station with insufficient protection will greatly increase the cancer rate of life living in it, and even no healthy offspring will be born.

Because of the strong erosion of stellar winds, the entire Earth's atmosphere will be stripped away, and eventually, the Earth will become like Mercury.

The oceans will dry up, all life will die, and the entire Earth will fall into a dead silence.

Even at this stage, human civilization has mastered interstellar navigation technology, and in the end only a small number of people who escape to the outer solar system can survive, and all the rest will die.

But... one of the most important factors in maintaining the existence of a collective intelligent civilization is population.

Without enough population, even knowledge cannot be passed on, so how can civilization be maintained?

At that point, it basically means the demise of civilization.

At least at this stage, human civilization cannot bear the consequences of the electric disaster.

No, not only human civilization, even the more advanced Itar civilization cannot bear it.

At the same time, this electromagnetic life that causes the electric disaster has a more severe nature.

That is, after completing the parasitism of a star, using the energy of the star to achieve a huge explosion of its own population, and because of the huge explosion of its own population, causing the star to fall into an unstable state and destroying the ecology of the star system, a huge number of electromagnetic life will take the star as the starting point, scatter and spread to the surroundings, each looking for the next star to be parasitized.

Because the unstable star is no longer suitable for the survival and reproduction of electromagnetic life.

Just like a locust that has eaten the plants in an area and expanded its own population, it will go to find the next plant.

This is what the Silver Alliance claims in its public information as "electrical disaster spillover".

Because of this, after a star is confirmed to be parasitized by electromagnetic life, all the intelligent life in the surrounding star systems will become nervous.

Because once the electric disaster spills over, no one can escape.

The only way is to destroy it in the early stage of the star being parasitized by electromagnetic life and kill it in its infancy.

The method of killing the budding electric disaster is also clearly stated in the public information of the Silver Alliance, and it is relatively easy to implement, so easy that even a low-level civilization like the Itar civilization - in the entire Silver Alliance system, the Itar civilization is undoubtedly a low-level civilization, of course, human civilization is even lower - can achieve it after paying a certain price.

Electromagnetic life affects stars through stellar magnetic fields, and then affects intelligent life. Then, social intelligent life can also affect electromagnetic life in reverse by affecting stars.

For a civilization of the level of the Itar civilization, this is an extremely huge project, which requires the mobilization of the entire civilization to be possible.

And the minerals produced on the cold dwarf planets far away from the stars, that is, the minerals that the Itar people focus on mining in the so-called "Pluto Development Strategy", black jade ore, because it has the characteristics of maintaining good shielding in extremely complex and harsh electromagnetic environments, has become the most important material for eliminating electric disasters.

Han Yang realized in his heart that this is the truth of the Itar civilization's exhaustion of human civilization.

At the same time, Han Yang also had a better understanding of the system structure of the Silver Alliance and the classification of civilization levels in the Milky Way.

For group-living intelligent civilizations, the common scheme in the Silver Alliance is the six-level classification method.

The lowest primitive civilization is classified as a first-level civilization. The highest level of civilization is level six.

The Itar people currently only have the classification method of level one to three civilizations. As for what kind of technology and capabilities the fourth-level or higher civilizations have, the Itar people don’t know.

Because the Itar civilization is only a second-level civilization. At the same time, human civilization is also a second-level civilization according to this classification method.

It’s just that there are also high and low distinctions within the same level of civilization. A civilization that has just been promoted to the second level is obviously not comparable to a civilization that has already launched an impact on the third-level civilization.

In this classification method, from the birth of wisdom to the mastery of large-scale controlled nuclear fusion technology, all are classified as first-level civilizations.

It is worth mentioning that in order to ensure the diversity of civilizations in the Milky Way - or to explore every possibility of the development of the scientific and technological system, the Silver Alliance has special policy regulations for the first-level civilization, strictly prohibiting any interference from advanced civilizations, and ensuring the independent development path of the first-level civilization.

This is the truth that before mastering the controlled nuclear fusion technology, human civilization basically had no external influence, and once mastering this technology, the Ita civilization immediately descended.

Because the Ita galaxy is relatively close to the solar system, only a dozen light years away, the solar system can probably be regarded as the sphere of influence of the Ita civilization.

Of course, before mastering the controlled nuclear fusion technology, whether the Ita civilization secretly violated the ban of the Silver Alliance and secretly exerted influence on human civilization, Han Yang maintained considerable doubts.

After all, the Silver Alliance is just a relatively loose alliance. Although the low-level civilization dare not violate it openly, it is hard to say how much execution power it can have in secret.

After mastering the controlled nuclear fusion technology, it is a second-level civilization.

At this stage, both human civilization and Ita civilization are in the second-level civilization stage.

At this stage, the large-scale use of controlled nuclear fusion technology and ion thrusters can allow civilizations to conduct large-scale interstellar navigation.

The breakthrough of long-distance communication technology, as well as the development of electromagnetic guns and laser guns, have given the second-level civilization a stronger interstellar combat capability.

It can be said that only when you reach the level of Level 2 civilization, you are truly qualified to talk about interstellar war. If you are not at Level 2, you are not even qualified to enter.

As for Level 3 civilization, it is further increased on the basis of Level 2 civilization.

They have more universal and efficient nuclear fusion technology - that is, they can carry out large-scale and efficient protium fusion technology.

The nuclear fusion technology mastered by the Level 2 civilization stage is deuterium-tritium fusion.

Deuterium-tritium fusion is the easiest type of fusion to achieve, but it is not the type of fusion that releases the most energy.

At the same time, the content of deuterium and tritium is low, and it needs to be purified and enriched on a large scale before it can be produced.

In the universe, protium, which is usually called hydrogen, is the most abundant.

At the same time, because it is the lightest element - the nucleus is only one proton, so the unit mass of protium has the highest energy after fusion, which is almost twice as high as deuterium-tritium fusion.

However, the difficulty of achieving protium fusion is too high. It is so high that Han Yang has no idea how to achieve it at this moment.

The temperature required for deuterium-tritium fusion is only about 100 million degrees, but to achieve protium fusion, 10 billion degrees may not be enough. This brings an almost discontinuous increase in difficulty.

——It should be pointed out that the temperature of the sun's core is only about 15 million degrees Celsius, but the sun can stably carry out protium fusion. This is actually not inconsistent with the extremely difficult environment required for protium fusion, because this is a completely different path to achieve it.

The sun is too big, and the internal material density is extremely high, and the pressure is also extremely high. Under this circumstance, two protons, that is, protium nuclei, have an extremely low probability of overcoming the Coulomb barrier and fusing every second based on the quantum tunneling effect, about one in 10^18.

But again, the sun is too big. There are about 10^56 free protons, that is, protium nuclei, in the core of the sun. Even if the probability of quantum tunneling is so low, there will still be about 3.7*10^38 protons reacting every second. Converted into mass, it is 620 million tons per second.

About 4 million tons of mass are converted into energy.

The ultra-low fusion efficiency of the sun makes the seemingly powerful sun have extremely low unit power.

You can feel how low the unit power of the sun is through such a comparison: the energy released by the fusion of the same volume of solar matter, and the energy released by a potato, which one has a greater external radiation power?

The answer is potato.

In other words, assuming that potatoes will not change due to mass and pressure, then, if many potatoes equivalent to the size of the sun are placed in the position of the sun, the earth will be subjected to more intense light and heat than it is now.

Life will not be born on Earth.

Therefore, the stable protium fusion of solar energy does not mean that protium fusion is easy to achieve.

However, the third-level civilization can carry out stable and efficient protium fusion, and per unit mass, it can obtain almost twice the energy of the deuterium-tritium fusion of the second-level civilization.

In addition to energy sources, the third-level civilization has several other advanced technologies that are beyond the imagination of the second-level civilization.

One is the propellantless propulsion technology.

Even ion propulsion is not needed, and there is no working fluid at all. This means that the working fluid that the spacecraft originally needed to carry can be saved to carry the rest of the materials, which greatly improves the efficiency, and can be accelerated for a longer time, even reaching a speed of more than 80% of the speed of light!

You must know that when the second-level civilization develops to the highest stage, it can only reach about 50% of the speed of light at most. Exceeding this speed will be out of the economic range and cannot be applied on a large scale.

The second is energy shield and energy weapon technology.

Han Yang does not know much about these two technologies at this stage, and cannot intuitively understand the power of these two technologies.

But the scientists of Ita have a very intuitive description.

The warships of the third-level civilization that have adopted these two technologies can even achieve a record of more than one to one thousand when facing the warships of the second-level civilization! Basically, it is a crushing victory!

The warships of the second-level civilization have no ability to resist the warships of the third-level civilization.

As for the fourth-level civilization that is more powerful than the third-level civilization, or what kind of magical technology the higher-level civilization has, even the Ita people do not know.

These information made Han Yang sigh in his heart.

"I relied on numbers to defeat the fleet of the Ita civilization stationed in the solar system. I thought I was already strong.

However, the entire Ita civilization has tens of thousands of warships of the same level or even higher levels. The warships sent to the solar system are even obsolete or old models.

An Ita civilization is so powerful, not to mention the third-level civilization that can crush the second-level civilization, or even higher-level civilizations, and other types of life that are enough to pose a huge threat even to the top civilizations...

The vast Milky Way is so vast, and the small solar system is not even as big as a speck of dust...

However, although the road ahead is long, I have enough courage and confidence to climb to the top."

At this moment, most of the questions in Han Yang's mind have been answered.

Another part of the information that attracted Han Yang's attention was about the Silver Alliance and the so-called Yuanshan Alliance.

The Silver Alliance is actually a relatively loose alliance. There is not much compulsory subordination between each other, and there is no connection between superiors and subordinates. It is more like a consensus-based organization that exchanges information with each other and gathers together to fight against other types of life.

It is somewhat similar to the United Nations when the earth was not unified - no, it is even looser than the United Nations.

The key is that the Milky Way is too big and there are too many civilizations. Even the top civilizations cannot explore the entire Milky Way.

If the Silver Alliance is compared to the United Nations, the so-called Yuanshan Alliance is similar to the so-called Warsaw Pact, NATO, XX Cooperation Organization, and South Asian X Country Alliance.

Many different civilizations with different technological levels have formed small alliances based on culture, heritage, region, interests, etc.

Different alliance structures are loose or tight, large or small. The large ones contain thousands of civilizations, spanning thousands to tens of thousands of light years. There are even third-level and even fourth-level alliances under the secondary alliances. The small ones may only have two civilizations, spanning only a few light years. The situation is ever-changing and different.

However, generally speaking, compared with the large and widespread Silver Alliance, the connections between different civilizations in various smaller regional alliances are closer.

The relationship between different civilizations, between different alliances, and between different civilizations and alliances is also good or bad. Some cooperate closely, some conflicts frequently, and even full-scale wars may break out. However, as long as it does not violate the fundamental purpose of the Silver Alliance, the Silver Alliance will not interfere in regional conflicts, nor can it interfere.

Yuanshan Alliance is such a regional alliance organization.

A certain area of ​​the Orion spiral arm of the Milky Way is called Yuanshan Star Region by the Silver Alliance. The origin of the name is the name of the civilization that first became a second-level civilization in the star region.

About 10,000 years ago, the Yuanshan civilization mastered the controllable nuclear fusion technology and was promoted to a second-level civilization. The patrol fleet belonging to the Silver Alliance discovered the civilization. Because there are four other civilizations in the area, three of which have the potential to be promoted to the second level, and the other is in the early stage of civilization, showing a certain tendency of civilization gathering, the star region was named Yuanshan Star Region.

The one in the early stage of civilization is obviously the human civilization in the solar system.

In this way, the total range is about 80 light years, a total of about 10,000 stars, and a total of five civilizations, forming a small second-level interstellar civilization alliance under the Silver Alliance, the Yuanshan Alliance.

Because the Ita civilization is the closest to the solar system, only a dozen light years away, the solar system has become the sphere of influence of the Ita civilization, which is why the Ita civilization was eager to colonize it as soon as human civilization was promoted to level 2.

After all, for a level 2 civilization, if the distance is too far, it is not cost-effective to colonize it. The distance is only a dozen light years, and the single voyage time is within 50 years, so the benefits can be greater than the cost of colonization.

"Ita civilization, electric disaster, Yuanshan Alliance, Silver Alliance..."

Han Yang silently thought about the key words in these intelligence and the connection between them.

"This vast galaxy is really full of dangers... It's far from being as peaceful as it seems.

The competition between social intelligent civilizations, the competition between strange life and intelligent civilizations, the disaster of the natural environment... Any factor may lead to the extinction of today's human civilization.

The small human civilization is completely inconspicuous in this vast galaxy and has no special features. Even if it perishes, it will not cause any waves or attract any attention.

Just like the Itar civilization, it has been a second-level civilization for thousands of years, but in the face of electromagnetic life, if it does not deal well, it may still perish.

In the final analysis, it is still necessary to become stronger as soon as possible..."

Han Yang sighed silently.