Capítulo 252: Chapter 243 Interstellar Space Exploration

Oort Cloud, "Adjacent Peace" squadron.

The "Adjacent Peace" squadron includes the Adjacent Peace, Blue Space, Universal Gravity...

Since the fleet left the Kuiper Belt in Crisis Era Year 203, it soon arrived at the heliospheric boundary.

The heliosphere might misleadingly imply some level of structure near the sun, but in fact, it can simply be understood as the boundary of the solar wind's influence, which is also visible. Located about 120 astronomical units from the sun and with a thickness of 0.5 astronomical units, this boundary is also known as the heliospheric boundary.

The interstellar space surrounding the Solar System is far from empty. On the contrary, this region is filled with interstellar plasma such as protons and electrons, which are also referred to as the interstellar medium.

The solar wind and the plasma flows of interstellar space reach a pressure equilibrium at a certain point, which is the flow-pressure balance area we refer to, also the visible boundary of the solar wind. The space inside this boundary is called the heliosphere, while the outside is known as the interstellar medium region.

The velocity of the solar wind does not drop to zero here; instead, it changes direction, almost circulating around the top layer of the sunlight. This is because the solar wind consists of charged particle streams and does not radiate outward in a straight line. It curves away under the influence of the solar magnetic field, and when it reaches the heliospheric boundary and interacts with the interstellar medium, it flows along the parallel direction of this interface.

There is a rather interesting phenomenon: the temperature of the heliosphere can reach about 40,000 degrees Celsius.

Although this temperature sounds quite astonishing, it merely indicates the velocity of particle movement. Due to the extreme sparsity of the plasma at the heliospheric boundary, with an average of only one particle per 25 cubic centimeters, it doesn't possess any real lethality.

The fleet did not stop here but continued to travel deeper into space.

Looking at the sun at this moment, it appears in the field of view as nothing more than a bright star, and the most evident feeling for humanity here is the "dematerialization effect."

The "dematerialization effect" is a concept in astronautical psychology. On Earth, people are surrounded by physical matter, subconsciously constructing a materialized world image.

But in outer space, due to the vast environment, the world loses its mass and solidity to the senses, and people's psychological model shifts from material to void.

The spaceship becomes the only entity, the universe like an empty exhibition hall, with the spaceship being the sole "exhibit." This shift can trigger a strong sense of loneliness and fear of potential observers, leading to anxiety and passivity.

The hyper-openness of the outer space environment forms the basis of negative psychological conditions in astronautics, and treating this psychology is also a primary duty of the fleet surgeons.

In addition, interstellar space is far more complex than we can imagine. On this journey, the scientific team hardly entered cryosleep, always actively researching the interstellar medium.

Whereas the ordinary crew members would generally enter cryosleep for four parts of the time, working in rotation for one part.

Beyond that, the battleship's early warning system always reports minuscule celestial bodies within 1 astronomical unit, such as asteroids, comets, etc. These are generally far from the battleship and do not pose any damage.

Even if a collision with the battleship were to happen, it is not a concern, as a single directed microwave beam can clear them away, and even in the face of a heavy ice shower, the battleship's final ion protective layer would activate to prevent any damage to the main body of the battleship.

...

In Crisis Era Year 214, the "Adjacent Peace" squadron had already leapt out of the Oort Cloud.

Apart from the Escape Fleet and Shui Wa, this is the farthest that humanity has ever ventured from home in history.

When the battleship's early warning system used to report that a micro-celestial body might strike the battleship, the crew would get a bit tense, but now, they're all hoping for suspicious small celestial objects to approach the battleship.

Even a meteor an astronomical unit away could add some color to this lonely life.

After truly entering the deep and boundless interstellar space, loneliness becomes an eternal theme.

Lin Sen also recently awoke from cryosleep and the "Adjacent Peace" squadron is now preparing to turn, gradually performing a tangential acceleration to reach the vicinity of the lost battleship via a curved trajectory.

Following the trajectory, the furthest point will be 1.6 light-years from the Solar System, hoping to encounter Thought Space Fragments during this journey.

In the next five years, Lin Sen doesn't plan to enter cryosleep. According to the original work, four-dimensional space should gradually fall into three-dimensional space.

That region which had already fallen into four-dimensional space should be different from other regions in space.

For instance, elements like the interstellar medium, this newly formed three-dimensional space might contain different matter from the original space.

In the original work, it was mentioned that the fall from four dimensions to three would produce a bright long line, which appeared at the edges of the four-dimensional fragments. In that region, abundant hydrogen and nitrogen elements were detected, along with many heavy element dust, primarily iron and silicon.

However, it was a disappointing discovery that although there is indeed very sparse heavy element dust in the interstellar medium, its density and other properties such as distribution showed no difference, and Lin Sen had even once given up on this method.

Lin Sen also often communicated with Ding Yi in the Sophon Shielding Room on how to find a way to four-dimensional space.

Of course, Lin Sen would not directly say that there was four-dimensional space nearby, but rather discussed with Ding Yi the methods of locating four-dimensional fragments. Ultimately, if four-dimensional space was truly discovered, Ding Yi wouldn't question it and would treat it as coincidence.

Falling from four dimensions to three, the spatial curvature should also have slight differences, according to the theory that high dimensions collapse to microscopic scales when falling to a lower dimension, the mass of the high dimension should also collapse to the microscopic scale, which is what we refer to as dark matter.

This should cause gravitational tremors, which could be detected using gravitational waves.

However, with humanity's current technology, there is still no way to monitor such faint gravitational tremors unless it is within a few tens of astronomical units from us.

Humanity has not yet conducted research on four-dimensional space and can only infer the properties of four-dimensional space based on some theories.

Lin Sen ordered the fleet of 20 warships to extend its formation over a few astronomical units, relying on 20 points to form an array for collective gravitational wave detection. This could increase the distance of gravitational wave detection and monitor minor changes in the gravitational waves of nearby space.

When four-dimensional space falls to three dimensions, its mass collapses to a higher dimension but does not vanish. Gravitation can traverse dimensions. Overall, their gravitational force has not changed, so their gravitational tremors are also very faint.

Detecting such faint gravitational tremors is extremely difficult. Sometimes, the subtle differences in detection results are hard to distinguish as measurement errors or caused by gravitational tremors.

This also brings difficulty in finding four-dimensional space, and the possibility of locating four-dimensional space using gravitational wave detection is also very slim.

Moreover, Lin Sen could only scatter a thousand warships into 50 fleets, on the one hand, naturally to increase the probability of discovering four-dimensional space, and on the other hand, to cause the Trisolarans to lose a few more Sophons.

After the Doomsday Battle, Lin Sen's only tasks were threefold: dig holes, dig holes, and dig more holes.

Lin Sen knew that in this vast starry sky, Sophons actually face greater danger; this place is full of Sophon Blind Zones.

If the Trisolarans wanted to monitor everything, they would need 50 Sophons, and of course, it was not very likely that the Trisolarans would monitor everything.

Each warship is equipped with a Sophon Shielding Room, and now full monitoring is not very useful.

As long as the warship enters a Sophon Blind Zone, the following Sophon will lose contact with the Trisolarans.

If he could make the Trisolarans lose a few more Sophons, Lin Sen would be very happy, even though the Trisolarans no longer had resource limitations and could now build as many Sophons as they wanted.

PS: In the original work, it was mentioned that the Trisolarans had dispatched 6 Sophons to explore other star systems, but all entered Sophon Blind Zones and lost contact, with the farthest one only traveling 7 light-years. Later dispatched Sophons also encountered the same situation.

The principle behind the Sophon Blind Zone is not clear to humanity, and even the Trisolarans are in the dark. As for what kind of interference the Sophons encountered, the Trisolaran world has no idea. This interference could be natural or "man-made," with the tendency being towards the latter.

The Sophons headed towards the Milky Way Galaxy just managed to detect two nearby star systems with planets before entering the Blind Zone, and both areas had no signs of life or civilization.

Perhaps the desolation of those star systems is precisely why the Sophons were able to approach them.

The presence of Sophon Blind Zones could very well be an indirect proof of the Dark Forest state, a state that does not allow the universe to become transparent.

The Singer civilization mentioned this as a seed route, but does this seed imply that civilizations are more likely to emerge here, that there are more Sophon Blind Zones, or that there are many four-dimensional fragments here?

This is perhaps something that humanity will only know once it becomes an advanced civilization.

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