Beneath Deep Space

Just when the great era of technological explosion had just begun, an unexpected thing happened...

This is the Oort Nebula, the outermost part of the solar system.

Astronomers generally believe that the Oort cloud is the remnant material that formed the sun and its planets 5 billion years ago and surrounds the solar system. The Oort Cloud is the birthplace of comets. It is about 50,000 to 100,000 astronomical units from the sun, which is almost equal to one light-year, or one-quarter of the distance between the sun and Proxima Centauri.

The sun's light is already very weak at this distance, not as bright as Sirius, and it has truly become an ordinary member among countless stars.

The fastest light takes more than a year to reach here from the sun. Therefore, the comets here take millions of years to orbit the sun, and they can only be seen when they run hundreds of millions of kilometers away from the sun.

At this moment, a huge spacecraft with a diameter of about 150 kilometers is passing here. If a human scientist stands inside the spacecraft, he will be surprised to find that its speed exceeds the speed of light!

Its surface seems to be wrapped in a bubble-like film, and when light shines on the spacecraft, a strange bending phenomenon occurs. It is flying towards the solar system at a speed far exceeding the speed of light!

This kind of super-light motion does not violate any known physical laws. Its best explanation is "curvature navigation."

Curvature navigation allows objects to move forward by changing the curvature of space. Its essence is the movement of space. Just like a person standing on a carpet, when the carpet is twitched, the person will also "move". However, the movement of space is more abstract and complex. A spacecraft wrapped in a moving space is almost stationary and does not violate the effects of relativity. Therefore, curvature navigation can theoretically reach any speed, even - beyond the speed of light!

This aerospace technology that has always been imagined by humans has been completely realized in this spacecraft. If human scientists see it, it will inevitably trigger a wave of crazy research!

Going beyond the speed of light is the best way to avoid danger for interstellar civilizations, because it will bring a lot of confusion in information.

Observing the super-light spacecraft from various angles will lead to different conclusions:

If one observes from directly behind the direction of the super-light spacecraft, people will be surprised to find that the speed it moves away from is still the speed of light. However, a serious Doppler effect will occur at this time, and the wavelength of all signals will become larger and the frequency will become lower. In other words, the observed spacecraft will be very dim.

If you observe it from the side in the direction of movement, depending on the angle, the situation will be even more bizarre: the spacecraft is stretched into a strange long strip, and it gets longer and longer, like a long noodle.

If the speed of the spacecraft is much greater than the speed of light, people will see discontinuous points, and then these points are slowly connected together to form long noodles.

Based on the first and last points, this is also the only situation where it is possible to "see" superluminal motion. However, this phenomenon has very high requirements on the observer's perspective.

If the observer stands directly in front of the direction of the spacecraft, people...can't see any image of the spacecraft! Because its speed is too fast, it leaves all the light behind!

Only after a period of time, when the spacecraft passes by here, people will see a spacecraft passing in front of them and moving away at the speed of light. At the same time, another backwards image is also produced, which looks like a video played backwards. People will see that the spacecraft flies back to the origin at the speed of light!

This situation seems incredible, but it is not going back in time. In essence, it is a parallax illusion caused by super-light speed. In all observations, what people see is not the spacecraft itself, but images formed by light.

Because the speed of the spacecraft exceeds the speed of light, when the spacecraft passes by the observer for a period of time, the recently emitted photons will be transmitted to the human eyes, then the light a little behind, and then the light a little behind, the whole continuous The image looks like the spacecraft is moving backwards.

Various strange observation results have turned super-light objects into a ghost phenomenon. All light-based observations are lagging and inaccurate.

Therefore, this kind of information error is the best protection for interstellar civilization! Because you have no idea where the super-light spacecraft has flown, unless... there is an observation method faster than light!

This huge spacecraft continued to sail for a long distance in the Oort Nebula before emerging from the state of super-light flight and flying at a sub-light speed.

At this time, one can vaguely see its true appearance. It is a huge black elliptical sphere with pits and bumps on the surface. It generates a large number of electric sparks from time to time... and even produces a violent explosion at the moment of leaving the super-light speed!

Or because of this, it flew firmly into the solar system...

This is the solar system, Mars.

Professor Thomson, who was in charge of astronomical observations, suddenly detected an unusual fluctuation.

It was a burst of radio waves with a certain pattern, very weak. He frowned and checked, somewhat doubting whether this burst of radio waves was sent by human civilization. Because it's so regular, it doesn't seem like it comes from the universe...

"Astronomy", as a key support project of Noah, has also received a lot of resources. Humanity even plans to build a one-kilometer-diameter radio telescope on Noah! However, due to lack of manpower, it is only a plan for the time being and has not been implemented yet.

Of course, small radio telescopes have long been available, brought from the lunar base, and Professor Thomson is the general manager of this astronomy laboratory.

He carefully considered this burst of radio waves. It was not very long, but it had obvious traces of intelligent civilization. Six of the fluctuations were consistent, and there were two repeating bands. They looked like a string of information codes?

Thomson and his student Thomas kept experimenting. They tried various human decoding methods, but found that there was no way they could not solve it.

"There is no such encoding, is it strange? Is it a string of garbled codes, encrypted?" Professor Thomson muttered to himself. This string of garbled codes seems to come from space?

Suddenly, his student Thomas shouted: "Teacher, it appears again, it appears again!" At the end of the sentence, Thomas's eyes widened and seemed glazed over.

Thomson quickly looked at the screen and saw that the radio telescope had detected a large number of information codes! This time it's not just a few paragraphs like last time, but densely packed... seventy-three pages!

Seventy-three pages!

The two of them were simply stunned. What is this? !

Thomson's fingers were tapping the keyboard rapidly, although he could not locate the source of this radio wave. But based on the current information, he can be sure that it comes from beyond Pluto!

Radio waves from beyond Pluto, and there's logic to that? what does that mean?

Their hearts were beating wildly for a moment, and Thomas said with a pale face: "Are aliens coming for revenge?"

"Stop talking nonsense!" Thomson cursed and typed a brief report with trembling hands, with an "extreme emergency" sign attached!

…

The moment Yu Yifeng received the report, his heart suddenly thumped and his head felt dizzy. At this moment, he thought of countless bad possibilities, and sweat dripped from his forehead in large drops...

What does this signal mean? Is it an alien civilization or an alien civilization’s spaceship?

Yu Yifeng bit his lip tightly before barely regaining his composure. Although today's human beings have developed technology peacefully for more than half a year, they have not digested even one percent of alien technology. When humans encounter a real interstellar civilization, they will definitely be defeated!

In other words... with the dismantled alien weapons, you can barely fight back once or twice, and then become a lamb to be slaughtered without the ability to resist.

"Convene an emergency meeting!" He quickly pressed the button in the captain's room. At the same time, he immediately issued several orders.

"Turn on the astronomical observation equipment to the maximum limit!"

"Turn off all radio and visible light signals, recall all robots! And... please all cryptographers to come to the scene and be sure to decode this code!"

"...Call Calvin too!"