Chapter 371 City Starship

Most of the members of the Blue Homeland belong to the "Homeland School" and believe that the time-traveling technology will be successfully developed. In the past, they have also provided a large amount of funds to the "101 Project" and are very enthusiastic about the progress of the project.

Seeing Wu Haibo's arrival, everyone gathered around and asked about the status of "Project 101".

"With your strong support, the 101 project has indeed achieved a breakthrough. I believe that after a while, experts from our project team will be able to come to the blue homeland to report the good news to you."

Wu Haibo smiled and said, "Since today is a film and television appreciation meeting, let's talk more about movies. The movie just now is really magnificent and soul-stirring. However, everyone thinks that filling the earth with engines will push the entire planet out of orbit." , and embark on a journey spanning tens of millions of years—is such an approach really feasible?"

Everyone looked at each other, knowing that the appearance of the time-traveling expert could not be just to talk about the plot of the movie.

Meng Chao was also thinking about the deep meaning of Wu Haibo's question.

After a while, Wu Haibo revealed the answer himself: "Movies are just fictional art, and the 'planetary engine' looks spectacular, but it is difficult to turn it into reality.

"First, the Earth and most theoretically habitable planets must be rich in liquid water and an atmosphere. The land is a suspended plate. If the crust is imagined as an egg shell, the entire planet is the egg white and the yolk.

"The planetary engine is like a needle point, poking heavily on the eggshell. The biggest possibility is not to push the whole egg forward, but to directly puncture the eggshell, that is, the plate is torn, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, all kinds of devastating Natural disasters have come one after another, and the underground shelter cannot resist them at all.

"Second, based on the analysis of the thrust of the planetary engine and the resources consumed, the idea of ​​reaching the new homeland in thousands of years is too good. In fact, this journey is very likely to extend to tens of thousands of years. Previously, all resources on Earth would have been exhausted, reduced to a cooling speck of dust in a dark universe.

"Third, even if you are lucky enough to arrive in a new galaxy, a massive celestial body like the Earth, if integrated into the movement of the celestial body in that galaxy, is very likely to change the orbit of the original planet in that galaxy, causing immeasurable consequences— —Two planetary orbits intersect, attract each other or even collide violently, which are all high probability events.

"Therefore, although the 'Wandering Earth' project is romantic, it is unlikely to become a common method of star sea navigation for a cosmic civilization.

"Please let go of your imagination and let your imagination run wild. If a certain civilization has advanced to the point where it can fly freely between this side and the other side of the universe, what kind of vehicles are they most likely to use? Is it a planet or a starship?"

After everyone discussed for a while, a young man wearing a black military uniform from the earth said: "Since it is not feasible to use a planet as a vehicle, it seems that there is only a starship?"

"That's right, the planet is too big, and it would consume too many resources to propel a planet into space travel, and the consequences would be unpredictable. If it weren't for the critical situation in the movie where the star would expand in a short period of time, it seems that there is no desperate situation." necessary."

Wu Haibo said, "Compared to using the entire planet as a vehicle, using starships for interstellar navigation is a more conventional and technically easier idea to realize.

"But Starship has its own problems.

"The size of the starship is too small.

"Humans, or carbon-based intelligent life, are creatures that originated on the planet after all, and naturally need vast and endless space and a wide variety of resources in order to expand their own civilization.

"In the vast sea of ​​stars, even the earth itself is just an insignificant speck of dust, not to mention a starship that is billions of times smaller than the earth, it is not even bacteria and viruses.

"It's really hard to imagine that a certain civilization can colonize another planet on the far side of the star sea with just a few hundred starships.

"It is even difficult to maintain the essence of civilization on a starship of such a size."

Meng Chao understood what Wu Haibo meant.

Just like the "Dragon King Town" that Ye Xiaoxing once introduced, on the scale of a town or a starship, it is extremely difficult for human civilization to maintain the laws, morals, life and reproduction methods of the Earth era.

The earthlings who left the earth took a small starship and were only separated from the dark and cold universe by a fragile shell. They were destined to be continuously eroded by the darkness and gradually alienated into another civilization, another kind of creature, which is the "universe" People" rather than "Earthlings".

Of course, as long as one can build a gigantic starship that can accommodate an entire city, it may be able to solve the problem of "alienation of civilization".

But with the current technology of Longcheng people, it seems that they want to manufacture such a super starship, which seems to be even more distant than the successful development of controllable traversal technology.

"The size of the planet is too large, while the size of conventional starships is too small. Is there a relatively compromised vehicle that can carry the spark of civilization and spread to the entire star sea?"

Wu Haibo smiled slightly and threw out the answer, "In fact, there are, and that is the city.

"Cities are the crystallization of civilization. All production, organization and wars of human civilization revolve around cities. In many language families, 'city' and 'civilization' are originally a word, but only a specific city-state is discovered by archeology. People In order to confirm the real existence of a certain civilization.

"If we say that in ancient times, many human beings lived in villages and mountains, then, with the highly organized human civilization, social production activities and human life are increasingly concentrated in highly developed cities.

"It is entirely conceivable that when a planetary civilization develops to the extreme, more than 90% of its population, technology, and social production activities will all be concentrated in a few super cities.

"In terms of the mass of the entire planet, super cities and individual civilizations may only account for less than one percent.

"The remaining 99% of the quality, except for a very few farms, breeding grounds, and mines, the mountains, rainforests, deserts, and oceans have almost zero meaning to civilization.

"If a civilization wants to spread to all directions of the star sea, there is no need to promote the quality of the entire planet like in the movie. It is only necessary to build the most elite core of civilization-the city into a super star that can travel hundreds of millions of light years. The ship will do."

This whimsical way of space navigation left everyone dumbfounded.

Meng Chao's thoughts raced, but his eyes sparkled with excitement.

"The benefits of turning cities into super starships are obvious."

Wu Haibo continued calmly, "First of all, the size of the city is large enough, with at least millions to tens of millions of civilized individuals, enough to maintain the morality, law and way of life of civilization on the home planet, and ensure that the spirit of civilization will last forever. No deterioration—at least not for hundreds of years.

"Secondly, the construction of the city is basically completed. After coming to the different world, it doesn't need to start from scratch and rebuild it again. Instead, it can easily expand to the four fields of the different world. As long as enough resources are found, it can expand geometrically. , even if other intelligent life is found, there is enough volume to communicate or suppress it, and eventually, the fire of civilization will be burned on the entire alien planet.

"Third, the 'fuel' consumed to propel an entire city is astronomical, and it is much more convenient than to propel a planet. Moreover, the mass of a mere city is unlikely to cause the orbital distortion of the entire galaxy, which is relatively controllable and safe.

"To sum up, I personally think that when a civilization masters the ability to navigate the star sea, especially the space shuttle technology beyond the speed of light, it will definitely build their cities into super starships, or deploy super starships into cities. The boundary between the former and the former will become more and more blurred, and eventually, the two will become one."

When he said this, besides Meng Chao, someone finally came to his senses.

A strategic analyst from the Foreign Land Research Institute said thoughtfully, "Researcher Wu, don't you mean that our Dragon City is a starship of the ancient civilization?"

Wu Haibo smiled slightly: "The time hasn't come yet, I didn't say anything, today is the film and television appreciation meeting, I just sent out my feelings after watching the movie, just chatting with everyone casually.

"Assuming, I mean assuming, that Dragon City is really a starship of the ancient civilization, which would reasonably explain the reason why Dragon City would travel to another world, because this was originally the mission of Dragon City. The so-called time travel is just According to the scheduled route, it is just a voyage."

"But--"

One stone stirred up a thousand waves, and many core members of the blue homeland became excited, and said in a hurry, "How is this possible? It is understandable to use a planetary engine to propel a planet, and it is understandable to transport a city unscathed." It’s unbelievable to go to a foreign land countless light years away?”

"It sounds unbelievable, but Dragon City has indeed passed through.

Wu Haibo shrugged and said, "Perhaps, in the eyes of a civilization with the ability to navigate the star sea, the boundary between mass and energy is not so clear. The entire city is purely energyized, and then transmitted to the three-dimensional space through fluctuations in high-dimensional space. Another coordinate, "materialized unfolding" again - who said that the ancient civilization could not create such a miracle?

"The fact is before our eyes, we humans on earth are not much different from monsters from other worlds at the genetic level. We can breathe the air of other worlds, be infected with viruses from other worlds, feel the warm light of stars in other worlds, and cultivate The mysterious energy of the world, which shows that crossing is not random, and this is our 'destination'."

This problem has been bothering the people on Earth since the beginning of time travel.

At this moment, it also aroused whispers among the core members of the blue homeland.

Meng Chao raised his hand and said, "Researcher Wu, every brick and tile in Dragon City was built by us earthlings. It is impossible for us to endow Dragon City with the ability to travel through high-dimensional space!"