Chapter 441: Comprehensive Dress Up
Vacuum, especially the vacuum inside galaxies, is not as "empty" as people understand it.
For example, the Earth at 600 kilometers from the surface is already in the vacuum range that people understand. A large number of near-Earth satellites operate at this altitude.
But the average particle density in this place can also be as high as about tens of billions of particles per cubic centimeter.
Moving further away, reaching interplanetary space, the particle density will drop to only a dozen per cubic centimeter.
Going to interstellar space, the particle density is even lower. In intergalactic space, the particle density can be reduced to less than one per cubic meter.
But even such an empty space still cannot meet the vacuum required for this experiment.
Because this is an attempt to influence space through dark force particles. Any excess particles in space may have a slight effect on the curvature of space, causing the experiment to fail.
For this reason, scientists had to develop a new vacuum pump to directly reduce the number of particles in this huge test equipment to an average of only 2 particles per 100 cubic meters.
In addition, in order to prevent the particles in the test pipeline from spreading into the test space, people have also specially developed a strong magnetic field confinement device, adding a layer of "protective film" to the test pipeline, strictly prohibiting any particle diffusion phenomenon.
At this moment, in this pipeline, in addition to extremely rare material particles, there are only neutrinos, vacuum fluctuation particles, gravitons, dark matter particles, etc.
Han Yang currently has no way to clear these particles. Fortunately, these particles will not have much impact on the experiment, within an acceptable range.
At this moment, a specially developed device came to one end of this huge pipeline. With the effect of its own equipment and the influence of external equipment, the next moment, the space around it was extremely finely bent according to the program requirements, and the device was instantly invisible and disappeared from people's sight.
The next moment, only 0.033 microseconds later, it appeared again.
It was like teleportation. The last moment it was still 100 kilometers away. At this moment, it appeared here.
After calculation, people immediately confirmed that in this experiment, its speed reached 2997954559 meters per second, which is equivalent to the speed of flat space!
This speed is 10 times the speed of light, and 29979 meters more, about 30 kilometers per second!
The speed of 30 kilometers per second is really insignificant for a level 4 civilization, not to mention that it is compared with a speed of ten times the speed of light.
But everyone knows clearly that although this breakthrough is small, it is a qualitative breakthrough.
The theoretical speed limit of a level 4 civilization is ten times the speed of light. And at this moment, we have exceeded this limit!
It's like a long time ago, when human civilization first transmitted a signal through radio.
This is a small step in speed improvement. But in the context of the entire theoretical system and background, this is undoubtedly a big step, a huge step.
In terms of speed, a breakthrough has been truly achieved.
Later, a breakthrough was also made in the dark force shield.
After research, human scientists have discovered that the so-called dark force shield is not like the excited state shield or gravity shield, which uses energy or some kind of force to defend against external attacks.
To be more precise, the dark force shield can barely be called a "space" shield.
Through the deep application of dark force particles, people will be able to use dark force particles to create a layer of distorted space-time around the spacecraft. Through this distorted space-time, any mass energy that attempts to pass through this layer of shield - whether it is a kinetic projectile, a guided weapon, or a radiation energy weapon, such as a laser beam, a radiation beam, etc., will be distorted and neutralized.
However, the dark force shield cannot resist gravity. Because in terms of nature, gravitons are fundamentally different from other particles.
But even if it cannot resist, it doesn't matter much. At most, some gravity generation and shielding equipment can be deployed inside. The technology of gravity shield has been deeply understood as early as the fourth-level civilization, and it is just a matter of strengthening it again at this moment.
In addition to the shield technology, the weapon system has also undergone a comprehensive innovation at the fifth-level civilization level.
In addition to the competition for long-distance communication technology, which is similar to "electronic warfare", the fifth-level civilization will have a brand-new dark force weapon system in terms of weapons that mainly act on man-made objects such as spacecraft, warships, bases, and ground facilities.
Its basic principle is still based on the application and manipulation of dark force particles.
Through the influence of dark force particles on space, the fifth-level civilization can even create such a weapon: this weapon can give a specified space a certain curvature, and then instantly restore it to flatness. Therefore, the matter that is twisted along with the distortion of space will lose its own structure instantly along with the change of space curvature. From the outside, it seems like it has been twisted by an invisible big hand.
The influence of space curvature can even affect the particle composition of macroscopic matter, causing it to lose its stable structure instantly, spontaneous nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, and then trigger violent radiation from the microscopic level, causing huge damage to life in an instant, or even directly killing it.
There is also a more complex weapon that currently only exists in the theory of human civilization. People believe that when the understanding of dark force particles is deep enough and the control is deep enough, people can even make a designated space have several different distortion modes.
Just like a pencil, one end rotates clockwise and the other end rotates counterclockwise.
What will happen? Obviously, this pencil will break instantly, and from the outside it looks like it was cut off by an invisible knife in an instant.
With the breakthrough of dark force theory, one after another theoretically feasible and imaginative weapon systems were imagined by military experts, and then entered the actual verification stage.
At this stage, weapon systems that are proven to be unfeasible will be abandoned. Those that are feasible will be retained. Then, on this basis, military theorists began to think and study the combat mode of the fifth-level civilization.
The short hundred years passed quickly. After that, it was time for the human fleet to set sail again.
People reluctantly left this galaxy and continued to rush to the next stop.
In this process, people once again began theoretical research and accumulated experimental needs for the next stop.
More than a hundred years later, the fleet stopped again.
Unlike the last stop, this time, various technologies developed based on the dark force theory began to be put into limited practical application.
People tried to use quark fission-fusion dual reactors to replace the previous single fission reactors to achieve 100% conversion of matter into energy;
People tried to install new superluminal engines on spacecraft and try to make them reach higher speeds;
People tried to build a new shield system and apply it to experimental spacecraft, and tried to build a new, anti-interference long-distance communication system, and developed equipment that can interfere with the other party's communication system...
Time passed quickly, and this hundred years passed quickly.
During this hundred years, for ordinary people living in the spacecraft, except for the news media reporting all day about what great breakthroughs have been achieved and what new technologies have been mastered, there is actually no change in daily life.
Everything is still familiar.
But for people in the scientific community, this century has brought profound changes to human civilization as a whole.
Because, after hundreds of years of continuous struggle by scientists, at this moment, they finally had practical results.
It was a huge spaceship.
The longest part reached 3,000 meters, the widest part was 800 meters, and the total mass exceeded 3 million tons.
The appearance of this spaceship was extremely ugly, with potholes and ups and downs everywhere. The armor on it was like a randomly laid board, a piece here and a piece there. Even its overall shape was like an irregular stone, without any beauty.
But such a spaceship, in the eyes of tens of millions of scientific researchers who participated in this project, was like a peerless beauty, full of inexplicable attraction. Some elderly scientists even burst into tears after seeing it.
Because this spaceship was not manufactured in an industrialized, assembly-line way. In a sense, it was completely customized and handmade, and was assembled bit by bit in the laboratory.
That's why it was so ugly. Because people at this moment are not at the stage of considering beauty at all, as long as they can achieve the function.
This ugly spaceship inherited all the most advanced technologies of human civilization so far.
Fission-fusion dual reactor, high-reliability long-distance communication system, dark force-gravity multi-layer shield, dark force superluminal engine, dark force distortion weapon, dark force radiation weapon, space tearing weapon...
And so on.
Its speed even reached an unprecedented maximum of fifteen times the speed of light.
Based on this, when it sets sail this time, it will also undertake an extremely important task.
It will set sail with the human fleet and arrive at the next galaxy scheduled for human civilization about 26 years in advance, and start construction there in advance, prepare the bases, equipment, energy plants, etc. required for subsequent experiments, and wait for people to arrive.
At that time, people will no longer need preliminary preparations and can directly start subsequent research.
At the same time, this voyage is also a comprehensive test of this new spacecraft. People will comprehensively study its operation, find modules that need to be improved or completely redesigned, and optimize it as much as possible to improve its performance again.
As usual, after cleaning up all traces left in this star system, the human fleet set sail again.
Contrary to expectations, in the end, this new spaceship arrived at the next target galaxy only ten years ahead of schedule.
The delay was caused by too many unexpected faults inside the spaceship. Several times, people had no choice but to temporarily stop it from superluminal navigation and repair it in the normal navigation state so that it could continue this journey.
However, even if it was only ten years ahead of schedule, it was still enough for Han Yang to carry out too many preliminary preparations through the facilities on it and save time for subsequent research.
And, even if there were many twists and turns, one thing that cannot be denied is that it finally reached its destination. And as long as it can reach it, it means that this experiment has been a huge success.
A new round of research and improvement began again.
This time, after a hundred years, a new warship with a speed of 50 times the speed of light brought a perfect end to people's hard work.
With the deepening of dark energy theory research and the maturity of various applications, Han Yang and the ruling committee finally made up their minds after careful discussion.
It's time to upgrade the human fleet as a whole.
This time, the human fleet stayed in the galaxy for a full 260 years.
During this process, all human beings once again burst out with a vigorous enthusiasm for construction. In addition to conventional material collection and scientific experiments, people also built countless factories and produced one after another truly fifth-level civilization spacecraft.
Among them, there are 500,000 new residential spaceships, up to 1 million fifth-level civilization warships, 10,000 large aerospace motherships, and countless scientific research ships, transport ships, industrial ships, passenger ships...
Each of these newly built residential spaceships is 30 kilometers long, 10 kilometers wide, and 8 kilometers high. Every 200 meters inside is divided into one layer, totaling 40 layers.
Except for the spacecraft equipment, a residential spaceship can provide up to 6,000 kilometers of residential land inside, and in extreme cases, it can accommodate 100 million people.
Of course, the population density under normal circumstances is far less than this. Under normal circumstances, there will be about 1.5 to 3 million people living in a residential spaceship. A total of 500,000 ships can easily accommodate a total population of about 900 billion at this moment.
In addition, each of these residential spaceships is equipped with a corresponding weapon system, with dark force-gravity multiple shields, equipped with dark force superluminal engines, and can travel at a speed of 50 times the speed of light.
What is particularly worth mentioning is that the garbage disposal center, which used to be required in every spaceship and took up a large space, has been completely eliminated in the new residential spaceship.
Because people no longer need to deal with garbage.
This certainly does not mean that people no longer produce garbage - a spaceship with a population of 2 million produces a huge amount of garbage every day.
Instead, all this garbage is transported to the fission-fusion dual reactor and "burned" as energy.
Feces, waste paper, kitchen waste, dead branches and leaves, rags, and even highly dangerous biological waste produced in hospitals, radioactive waste produced in laboratories, and highly toxic waste produced by chemical research institutes...
It doesn't matter.
In the eyes of the fission-fusion dual reactor, no matter what it is, it is mass when it comes here, and it will be converted into energy, and then extend to every corner of the spaceship, becoming lighting, warm air, electricity required for calculation, wind, rain, thunder and lightning in the atmospheric circulation system, energy to propel the spaceship forward, and a shield to resist external invasion...
After the replacement is completed, a new round of sailing is about to begin. (End of this chapter)