Chapter 279 Population Cap

The exercise fleet has set off. Han Yang has really handed over all the relevant matters to the human military leaders, and he has devoted himself to scientific and technological research and development.

In addition to building a large number of large scientific facilities and trying his best to simulate some extreme environments in the universe to study the strange phenomena that occur under such environments, Han Yang also attaches great importance to the observation of the actual cosmic environment.

Some star systems have environments that are very different from the solar system and difficult to reproduce with simulation devices. They are of great scientific research value and have great significance for both basic scientific research and applied scientific research.

At this moment, under Han Yang's semi-participation, a scientific research fleet consisting of a scientific research ship, two transport ships and 20 warships came to the Ves 0855-0714 galaxy.

This star is the fourth closest star group to the sun. If calculated as a single star, it is the seventh closest to the sun.

This is a very special star.

The reason why it is called a "star" instead of a star is because this star is too special.

It is too small, with a mass of only about 6 times that of Jupiter. Even the smallest type of star, the mass of a brown dwarf far exceeds it.

From this perspective, it seems to be a planet, a wandering planet.

But it is also an independent individual, with no stars around it. And if it is a planet, its mass seems a little too large.

After comprehensive considerations, human scientists finally classified it as a "sub-brown dwarf", that is, a star smaller than a brown dwarf.

In Han Yang's view, this should actually be considered an incomplete star.

Han Yang speculated that it might be that in the early stages of the evolution of this star, the amount of nebula matter was insufficient, causing it to be unable to accumulate more mass and eventually ignite nuclear fusion to become a star, or in the early stages of its formation, it was affected by some external factors, such as supernova explosions and neutron star collisions, and the nebula matter was blown away.

Or in the early stages of its formation, there was another protostar competing with it for nebula matter, and then the two stars were separated by gravitational disturbances, and finally such a freak was created.

The specific reason requires further field observations by the scientific expedition fleet.

But no matter what the reason is, studying such stars is of great benefit to Han Yang's stellar evolution theory, cosmology theory, stellar physics, planetary physics, and even basic science.

This expedition fleet slowly slowed down and finally docked in an orbit about three million kilometers away from the sub-brown dwarf.

What appeared before the scientific researchers was an extremely magical scene.

This sub-brown dwarf cannot emit light and heat like an ordinary star because it has not ignited nuclear fusion. But it is not without any light on it.

In front of the scientific researchers was a vast and deep universe, dotted with stars. And among these thousands of stars, there was a dark area about the size of four or five moons, in which light blue light strips frequently appeared, flashing away.

Whenever a light strip appeared, a slightly dark spherical figure would vaguely appear around it. When the light strip disappeared, the spherical figure also disappeared.

It was like a ghost, looming in space.

Han Yang knew that those streaks of light were actually lightning that erupted in the atmosphere of this sub-brown dwarf. It was a thunderstorm that was millions of times stronger than the strongest thunderstorm on Earth, and it was incredibly powerful.

Even the most powerful warships of human civilization, the asteroid-class warships, could not withstand a single blow from such a thunderstorm.

Lightning that was enough to illuminate a range of tens of thousands of kilometers, you can imagine how powerful it was.

The scientific research fleet anchored, and then a small spaceship set off, slowly approaching the planet under the escort of several warships.

Entering the outer edge of its atmosphere, that is, where the atmospheric density was equivalent to about one thousandth of the surface of the earth, the small scientific research ship stopped.

What appeared in front of Han Yang at this moment was an even more amazing scene.

He saw countless dazzling tree-branch-like lightning, which was born about thousands of kilometers below his feet, and then violently passed downwards, hitting deeper and invisible places.

The number of lightning was extremely large, and it never stopped, almost turning this dark planet into a lightning jungle.

In addition to the thunderstorm, there was a strong wind.

The planet with the strongest wind in the solar system is Uranus, which has super strong winds with wind speeds of more than five times the speed of sound all year round. The wind on Uranus is nothing compared to this sub-brown dwarf.

Han Yang saw that the atmospheric speed on this planet was even more than 20 times the speed of sound, that is, more than 8,000 meters per second.

Even if an asteroid-class warship was hit by such wind, it would be torn apart instantly. The most advanced wind tunnel on Earth cannot blow such a strong wind.

Perhaps because of geothermal heat, Han Yang also saw that there would be rain and snow inside this planet.

Gases such as methane and carbon dioxide are heated and gushed out from the inside, rising to high altitudes, and after cooling down, they condensed into ice particles or snowflakes and fell down.

Originally, this was a very beautiful scene. But at this moment, with these strong winds and thunderstorms, it is not so beautiful.

The snowflakes here can really make a hole in the human body when they hit people.

Although the environment here is harsh, the scientists are all excited.

There are so many things to study about a planet that is completely different from any other celestial body in the solar system.

It can be said that if more than 100,000 high-quality papers are not produced, this trip will be in vain.

Thousands of experts from various disciplines in the scientific expedition team were excited and settled down next to such a devil-like planet to start long-term work.

On the other hand, what Han Yang paid more attention to was a star system that was very famous in human history.

Sirius.

The sentence "Look northwest and shoot Sirius" tells so much heroic spirit.

At this moment, the scientific expedition fleet belonging to human civilization arrived at Sirius.

The most important reason why Sirius was valued by Han Yang was that there was a special star in this star system.

White dwarf.

White dwarf is a product of the late stage of stellar evolution. Like a medium-sized star like the sun, when its life reaches the end, after a large amount of hydrogen is consumed, it will become a red giant and gradually expand, but the core will be compressed, the material density will increase, and finally become a white dwarf.

The material density of a white dwarf is extremely high. One cubic centimeter of white dwarf material can be as high as one ton, which is about a million times the density of water.

The volume of the sun is hundreds of thousands of times that of the earth. If the sun is compressed to the size of the earth, a white dwarf will be formed.

Such an extreme star must have many extraordinary physical phenomena. Close research on it will also help Han Yang increase his research and understanding of basic physical theories.

In the vast universe, a huge blue-white star that is dozens of times brighter than the sun and a very small but equally bright and dazzling white dwarf emitting white light revolve around each other.

In this process, powerful radiation and charged particle flows swept across the entire galaxy, making it like purgatory and completely unsuitable for life.

Even with adequate protection, the human scientific expedition fleet still cannot stay inside the galaxy for a long time. They can only dock at a place tens of billions of kilometers away, and then launch a large number of detectors for close reconnaissance, or send manned spacecraft to enter for a short time for observation.

But even so, there are still countless incredible and strange phenomena that have never been discovered before.

It's like the magnetic fields of two stars influence each other, creating a layer of extremely high temperature plasma at a distance of tens of billions of kilometers;

Or the short-term intense X-ray and gamma-ray radiation released by the impact of comets, asteroids, interstellar dust, etc. - scientific research experts believe that this is similar to gamma-ray bursts;

Or the stellar convection of the blue star Sirius A shows some anomalies that are inconsistent with the theory. Experts believe that it may be related to the companion star of the white dwarf, and there is suspected to be some unknown mechanism of mutual influence between the two stars...

Thousands of scientists also settled here and started to study.

In addition to these two stars, the rest, such as Barnard's Star, Luyten's Star, Tianyuan IV, Nanhe III, Persia VII, Tiancang V, Van Manen Star, GL674, GJ1002, Tianchu II, Wang Liang III, Peacock VI, etc., have all been reached by scientific expedition fleets.

Star systems that have not been reached by scientific expedition fleets have also been reached by large-scale unmanned exploration fleets.

Under Han Yang's leadership, human civilization today has truly made scientific research its top priority.

Another event worth mentioning is that after more than two hundred years of peaceful development, the population of human civilization has shown a trend of explosive growth. Compared with the time when it just gained independence, the population has more than five times increased to over 100 billion.

Regarding the population size, Han Yang's original idea was that the more the better. After all, the larger the population base, the more talented people who can be born to become scientific workers, and the greater the scientific research force.

But after the population increased to over 100 billion at this moment, the growth rate actually began to slow down, and even showed a trend of decreasing to a certain extent.

This phenomenon attracted Han Yang's attention. After a little research, Han Yang confirmed that the population of human civilization might not be able to grow again.

"Sociology is also a science with its own internal laws. A level 2 civilization can only support this many people at most."

Han Yang secretly sighed: "No wonder the total population of both the Ita civilization and the Yuanshan civilization was below 100 billion.

The population of human civilization can exceed 100 billion because of my existence. If it weren't for me, the maximum would be 70 to 80 billion." (End of this chapter)