Technological power starts with upgrading lenses

20 seconds, 60 seconds, 5 minutes, 10 minutes...

As time passed, Kang Chi, who was staring at the numbers on the screen, was hypnotized.

When he woke up, it was already an hour later, and the test program was still running. At this time, the quantum lifespan displayed on it had soared to 230 million!

Judging from the current results, as long as Kang Chi analyzes the new technology inside and successfully finds new elements, the quantum chips produced in the future can not only greatly increase their lifespan, but also greatly reduce their size. The most important thing is that the cost of use may be lower than that of electromagnetic communication!

After all, electromagnetic communication requires the construction of a large number of satellites and base stations, and the pulling of countless cables.

Quantum communication only needs to establish one or a few data transfer centers to connect to terminals anywhere. Even if the terminal is locked in a few meters thick iron box, the signal is still good.

At the same time, the data transfer center can ignore geographical restrictions and be built wherever it wants.

The current military data transfer center is set up in the underground nuclear defense fortifications of the Pingfeng Mountain Base, and the security and stability of communication are guaranteed.

…

M country, Texas, San Antonio.

In stark contrast to Kang Chi’s excitement, the staff of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) were full of sorrow at this time.

It was not because M country finally admitted defeat, but because their Lucy was missing!

‘Lucy’ is a deep space exploration project led by the Southwest Research Institute. This mission deepens human understanding of the evolution of the solar system through close research on the remains of the birth of planets - the main asteroid belt and Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids.

At the same time, this is also the first time that humans have explored Trojan asteroids, which is of great significance.

In October 2021, the ‘Atlas 5’ rocket carrying the Lucy probe was successfully launched into space, and Lucy officially entered a 12-year interstellar journey.

During this long journey, Lucy will first go to the Sun-Jupiter Lagrange L4 region, and in the process first visit an asteroid in the main asteroid belt, and then visit four Trojan asteroids in the Sun-Jupiter L4 region.

Then it will fly back to Earth, using the Earth's gravitational slingshot effect to help it fly to the Sun-Jupiter Lagrange L5 region and reach the end of its journey: a pair of binary asteroids.

In April 2025, Lucy successfully flew close to a C-type asteroid numbered 52246-Donald johanson, which is located in the main asteroid belt with a diameter of about four kilometers.

Then Lucy continued to fly to the Sun-Jupiter L4 region and is expected to reach its second target: 3548-Eurybates asteroid in August 2027.

But halfway through the journey from Donald johanson to Eurybates, Lucy suddenly lost contact!

It has been 116 hours since Lucy lost contact. During this period, the Lucy team has been making various attempts, but still failed to receive any signal from Lucy.

Project manager Jay Rosales finally had no choice but to submit a report of the loss of contact to NASA and apply for the James Webb Space Telescope, hoping to search the missing area.

But unfortunately, the James Webb Space Telescope did not find any trace of Lucy.

NASA immediately set up a technical investigation team to find out whether the cause of the project failure was human technical omissions or unexpected factors, and to evaluate whether it was necessary to announce the news of Lucy's disappearance to the outside world.

Today is the day when the investigation team arrived at the Southwest Research Institute. Project manager Jay Rosales and orbital designer Stanislav Morrow became their first inquiries.

"Have you found the reason for Lucy's disappearance?"

"It's not certain yet, but according to the flight data before Lucy lost contact, it suddenly deviated from its orbit during the flight, and then Lucy started the orbit automatic correction program, but the automatic correction program not only failed to save it, but caused the fuel to be quickly consumed and eventually lost contact." Jay explained helplessly,

"You also know that with Lucy's current distance from the earth, it takes about 55 minutes for the signal to be transmitted back, so when we received the data that Lucy deviated from its orbit, it actually happened 55 minutes ago. All we can do is watch it lose contact..."

The leader of the investigation team, Holka Van Dijk, nodded and asked, "What do you think about the reason why Lucy suddenly deviated from its orbit?"

"Weird!"

"Weird?"

"Yes, very weird! "

Orbital designer Stanislav Moro, who was being investigated in the next room, showed a drawing of Lucy's orbital design, then pointed to the place where the contact was lost and said: "We analyzed the abnormal data after Lucy deviated from the orbit and found that Lucy seemed to be pulled by the gravity of a celestial body, but in fact this place is empty and there is nothing."

"How do you know there is nothing there?"

"It's very simple. A celestial body whose gravity can capture Lucy must be of considerable size and mass. Even if Lucy and it fly face to face at a very close distance to maximize gravity, its size must be larger than a large asteroid like Vesta. But if there is such a large asteroid there, it is impossible that it has not been discovered so far. You have also used the James Webb Space Telescope to search there, but you didn't find anything, right?"

Deputy team leader Georgiou Rice frowned and pondered for a moment, not knowing what other questions to ask.

This is indeed too contradictory and weird...

"Is there a possibility... There is actually a very small black hole there, which our telescopes can't see at all?"

"Black hole?" Tanislav sneered, "Is there no one in NASA now? Let a newbie with no astronomical knowledge join the investigation team? Please check the cause of the formation of black holes first. Black holes absolutely cannot appear in the solar system. Star death, star collision, or neutron star collision? If these things happened in the solar system, all of us would have seen God long ago!"

Tanislav's merciless ridicule made Georgiou feel embarrassed, so he had to end the conversation with some dissatisfaction.

On the other side, Holka Van Dijk ended the conversation after understanding the situation almost completely, and began to communicate with Georgiou about the results of the first round of talks.

"Their words are full of contradictions. I think there must be a big problem here." Georgiou said with certainty, "If we follow their analysis, then Lucy must have encountered a ghost. I can't believe that such unscientific words were said by the two main persons in charge of the Lucy project!"

"Rather than believe their nonsense, I would rather believe that it was their mistakes that caused Lucy's program to malfunction or structural design to be flawed. They just concealed it from us because they were afraid of taking responsibility."

Holka just smiled at this: "NASA sent us here, didn't it just to find out whether it was a program malfunction or a design flaw? Or you can be responsible for these technical investigations?"

"Uh..."

Georgiou's expression froze.

He is an agent who doesn't understand technology at all. Let him check the technical problems of a space project?

Isn't this deliberately embarrassing him?