Chapter 435 Dark Force

For a long time, the existence of dark matter and dark energy has always troubled people.

As early as the 20th century, people noticed that the rotation speed of some stars outside the galaxy was too fast. And obviously, under the premise that the stars outside the galaxy rotate so fast, they are still bound to the galaxy and not separated, which requires the galaxy itself to have a higher mass.

But subsequent observations showed that the galaxy did not have the mass to bind the outer high-speed stars.

The outer stars run at such a high speed, which has undoubtedly proved that the mass of the galaxy is so high. But such a high mass cannot be seen in the observation, which can only prove one thing, that there must be a part of the mass that cannot be observed.

Thus, the prototype of the dark matter theory was born.

Later, in the observation of extragalactic galaxies and extragalactic galaxy clusters and the cosmic microwave background radiation, people found more evidence that dark matter does exist. As a result, people have a strong interest in this invisible and almost undetectable thing, and have conducted persistent research.

It's just a pity that until now, the technological strength of human civilization has almost reached the peak of the fourth-level civilization, but we have not been able to really figure out what they are.

Of course, there are gains in this process.

People have determined that dark matter does not interact with electromagnetic force, and have basically determined the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way. In the subsequent research on the expansion of the universe, the existence of dark energy has been further discovered.

Dark energy has a very magical characteristic, that is, it is not conserved.

People believe that dark energy is evenly distributed in the universe and its density remains unchanged. This will face a problem: since the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate and the volume of the entire universe is constantly increasing, then since dark energy is evenly distributed, its density should decrease with the expansion of the universe.

But the fact is that the density of dark energy does not decrease with the expansion of the universe. No matter how the universe expands, its density remains the same.

This leads to an amazing conclusion: with the expansion of the universe, new dark energy is constantly born out of thin air, filling the space created by the expansion of the universe.

This seems absurd, but after detailed research, people think this is correct.

Not only that, people also believe that dark energy is the real reason for the accelerated expansion of the universe.

Because dark energy has a kind of "negative pressure". It is like the air in a balloon, repelling each other, becoming more and more, and finally pushing the balloon of the universe to grow bigger and bigger.

According to calculations, among all the matter and energy in the observable universe, dark matter accounts for 26.8%, and dark energy accounts for 68.3%. All the visible matter that constitutes the billions of stars and vast galaxies in our visible universe only accounts for 4.9%.

This is the understanding of dark matter and dark energy when human civilization is in its early stages.

At this moment, human civilization, which has reached the peak stage of level 4 civilization and has sufficient scientific and technological strength to charge towards the theory of dark force, undoubtedly has more understanding and conjectures about dark matter and dark energy.

In the theoretical system established in the early stage, scientists put forward an amazing conjecture. They believe that dark energy may not be a simple energy, but a certain inherent attribute of space itself.

Combined with people's understanding of level 6 civilization, the fact that level 6 civilization is very likely to master space-related technologies, people believe that this conjecture is likely to be correct.

The development of science and technology always follows certain rules. It is impossible to master nuclear energy without mastering chemical energy. It is also impossible to master quark energy without mastering nuclear energy.

So, what kind of theoretical system exists between the space-related technology mastered by the sixth-level civilization and the universal force mastered by the fourth-level civilization to carry forward the past and usher in the future?

If dark energy is really a kind of inherent attribute of space itself as people speculate, then everything fits perfectly - it carries forward the universal force and then usher in space-related technology, and everything makes sense.

Based on this direction, human scientists have conducted a lot of theoretical research and finally put forward another conjecture: perhaps the so-called dark matter is not a kind of matter in the conventional sense, but a kind of boson with non-zero mass in a broad sense.

Particles are divided into fermions and bosons. It can be simply understood that fermions constitute matter, and bosons transmit forces between objects.

For example, neutrons, protons, etc. are fermions, and they constitute the earth. Gravitons are bosons, which are used to transmit gravity, so that the matter on the earth is bound by gravity.

So, what forces between matter or energy does the dark matter boson transmit?

Human scientists believe that the force it transmits is the dark force in the dark force theory.

Existing theories speculate that this is a force that dominates the interaction between space and matter.

Dark energy is an inherent property of space, and dark matter is a dark force particle. The combination of the two shapes various magical phenomena between space and matter.

It should be noted that scientists do not believe that the space distortion in the conventional sense, the curvature of space around massive stars, etc., are caused by dark force particles. They still believe that it is caused by gravitons.

The force between space and matter dominated by dark force particles is of a higher dimension and is "detached" from the current universe.

Then, the question facing human scientists becomes, how to confirm that this force really exists?

As long as this force is accurately measured and the existence of dark force particles is confirmed, it can be basically confirmed that the previous theoretical system's speculations about dark matter and dark energy are correct, and their properties can be studied and finally unified.

In theoretical derivation, people believe that the essence of super-distance communication is actually a kind of use of dark force particles. However, before the fifth-level civilization, people only knew it but did not know why.

And dark force particles have a very peculiar property. They always run at superluminal speed, and their speed can never be reduced below the speed of light. Therefore, it is not theoretically feasible to truly detect dark force particles.

However, it is still feasible to detect dark force particles through some indirect means.

In the scientists' conjecture, the longer the transmission distance of dark force particles, the faster their speed, and the closer the transmission distance, the slower their speed, and the slowest can even reach the speed of light.

When the transmission distance is 0, the speed of dark force particles is equal to the speed of light. When the transmission distance is negative, the speed of dark force particles is less than the speed of light.

But obviously, the transmission distance cannot be 0, and it cannot be a negative number, so the speed of dark force particles can never be as slow as the speed of light, or slower than the speed of light, just like the movement speed of ordinary matter particles cannot reach the speed of light or superluminal speed.

Under this mode, the time required for long-distance communication at the two ends of the universe - without considering the influence of dark matter distribution - is the same as the time required for long-distance communication between two adjacent long-distance communication instruments, both of which are less than the Planck time.

And time shorter than the Planck time has no physical meaning.

This brings up another question: How to detect time without physical meaning? If it cannot be detected, how to confirm whether dark force particles exist?

Countless excellent and outstanding human scientists, with the help of Han Yang, finally found a possibility.

In an environment where space is distorted by gravity, there should be a phenomenon that the time required for long-distance communication is greater than the Planck time.

Simply put, it is like a trampoline with a heavy object in the middle. The straight-line distance between the two sides of the heavy object is one meter, but if calculated along the curved surface of the trampoline tarpaulin, the distance between the two sides can reach 1.5 meters.

The transmission speed of dark force particles is determined by the distance. Because the straight-line distance is one meter, the transmission speed of dark force particles is the speed of one meter.

But because the space is distorted, the distance that dark force particles actually need to transmit is 1.5 meters.

In this way, the speed is slowed down, but the distance is extended, and the transmission time of long-distance communication can be extended to more than Planck time, making it possible to be observed.

At this moment, the experiment designed by human scientists is based on this principle.

The space around the neutron star is similar to the tarpaulin. The neutron star itself is the heavy object.

People plan to conduct a real long-distance communication experiment on both sides of the neutron star, and use the clock with unprecedented accuracy to confirm whether there is a physically meaningful delay in long-distance communication.

If the experiment is not conducted near a neutron star and the distance is too large, the speed of transmission of dark force particles will increase the difficulty of observation, directly exceeding the observation limit of humans.

Although the principle of the experiment is simple, it is not easy to carry out.

Apart from the strong radiation of neutron stars, the key is to ensure that the accuracy is high enough under such a harsh environment. It is also necessary to keep track of the data of space distorted by gravity and perform weighted calculations to ensure that the data is not contaminated.

The preliminary preparations took several years. Finally, when all conditions were ripe, under the personal attention of Han Yang, the long-distance communication device on one side of the neutron star solemnly sent a short message to another device.

While sending the message, the ultra-high precision clock recorded the precise time at the moment.

The next moment, the information came to another long-distance communication device. At the same time as the information was received, another ultra-high precision clock also recorded the time at the moment.

The relevant data was immediately transmitted to the base camp hundreds of millions of kilometers away. At this moment, through the data provided by tens of thousands of detection devices placed around the neutron star, the supercomputer corrected the space distortion of the two times and presented the final results to people.

The final result disappointed people.

Even with such a high precision clock, it was unable to observe the delay between information sending and information receiving.

You know, at this moment, the detection accuracy of these two clocks has reached the attosecond level.

One attosecond is about one billionth of a second.

This has really reached the technological limit of human civilization.

But... such a high precision clock still can't detect the existence of delay?

Under Han Yang's instructions, the second experiment began.

People must eliminate the influence of errors as much as possible. Maybe the first experiment could not detect the delay just because of some unknown errors?

Maybe after multiple experiments, valuable data can be obtained.

However, after hundreds of experiments, which took more than three years, the final result still disappointed people.

Hundreds of tests failed to detect the existence of delay. The only delay detected was about 2 attoseconds. After further inspection, it was finally confirmed that it was due to poor contact of a device interface, not real delay.

At this point in the experiment, scientists were helpless.

It is not feasible to further improve the accuracy of the clock.

Perhaps through some engineering optimization, it will cost huge resources and manpower to improve the accuracy of the clock again, but an increase of 1% is almost the limit. And a 1% increase in accuracy is meaningless.

Try to increase the time required for the transmission of dark force particles in theory?

It is impossible to do it. If the straight-line distance between the two experimental bases is expanded, based on existing theories, the transmission speed of dark force particles will be faster if the distance is farther. If the distance is shortened, stability and accuracy cannot be guaranteed under the violent radiation of the neutron star.

Comprehensive calculations show that the best distance between each of them is 10 million kilometers from the neutron star.

The frontline scientists around the neutron star were helpless, and the huge team of scientists in the main fleet of mankind more than a thousand light years away began to further revise the theoretical system under the existing experimental data and look for other possibilities to verify the dark force particle.

In the process, Han Yang did a lot of work. It can even be said that in the process of charging towards the dark force theory, up to three-quarters of the work was completed independently by Han Yang.

But at the same time, Han Yang also clearly saw that in addition to routine, manpower work, that is, no technical content, and can be completed by a group of doctoral students at will, the work that mainly tests the organizational ability and scientific foundation of a civilization is mostly completed by himself, and the most critical creative work is completed by himself. Only about 10%.

Up to 90% of the creative work is completed by human scientists. Even at this moment, the speculation about the dark force particle, the relevant mathematical arguments and model building, etc., were originally proposed by human scientists.

This made Han Yang have to sigh again that relying solely on himself, it is probably really impossible to upgrade human civilization to the fifth level of civilization.

Under such circumstances, a human scientist once again proposed a somewhat surprising guess.

The transmission speed of dark force particles may not only be affected by the curvature of space, but also by the density of matter! (End of this chapter)