Chapter 206: Sophon Blocking Plan_1

The federal fleet of more than 3000 space battleships majestically marched towards the interception zone, forming columns of 50 warships each, advancing in closely coordinated battle line formations.

According to predictions, in seven days, the federal fleet would engage in a fierce battle with The Waterdrop, which was moving at full speed inside Neptune's orbit. This was to be an unprecedented confrontation, and the human warships were fully prepared and ready to face the challenge.

Beforehand, the Stellar Defense System had urgently deployed all nearby automated satellite weapon platforms and starport defense platforms to launch a ferocious attack and attempt to intercept The Waterdrop.

The majority of the human Stellar Defense System was concentrated near Jupiter's orbit, with not many defense systems present in the 25 astronomical units between Neptune and Jupiter. The humans had planned to conduct their warship maneuvers in this area.

Before the arrival of the Human Combined Fleet, these few weapon platforms and starport defense platforms needed to discern the true nature and attack patterns of The Waterdrop.

As the Trisolarans were closely monitoring every human move through sophons, these attempts at attack and interception by the weapon platforms were almost futile.

The distance of the attacks was too far, usually about 0.5 astronomical units, and it took about four minutes for the attacks to reach the target after being launched, giving The Waterdrop ample time to evade and making the human attacks ineffective.

At the same time, although the automated satellite weapon platforms could match The Waterdrop's speed, catching up to and intercepting it proved extremely difficult.

If there was an attempt to intercept in the path of The Waterdrop's advance, it would simply avoid these areas well in advance.

...

Time reverted to three hours earlier, at Wallfacer Headquarters.

Lin Sen had long stationed all the starports in the outskirts, forming them into a ring like a Starport Ring. The starports harbored a large number of decommissioned warships and space particle collider ships.

The reason was that the center of the Starport Ring was researching macro-antimatter. Should the macro-antimatter lose control and annihilate, it would release an astonishing amount of energy, powerful enough to destroy all nearby objects.

Following the war announcement, Lin Sen also immediately set his plan into motion.

While Logic was deploying the Snowfield Project at the headquarters, there remained several hundred stellar-class hydrogen bombs enveloped in Neptune's filmy oil material.

Lin Sen now planned to detonate these hydrogen bombs at the center of the Starport Ring. The dust cloud formed by Neptune's filmy oil material after one hydrogen bomb detonated would be similar in diameter to that of the sun.

The most critical aspect was that this dust cloud would not be easily dispersed by the solar wind. In space, the nuclear explosion lacked a shock wave; its energy release was fundamentally similar to that of the solar wind.

This meant that many hydrogen bombs enveloped in Neptune's filmy oil material could be detonated in the same region, and each detonation would not disperse the dust cloud formed by the previous ones, resulting in an increasingly dense cloud.

By calculations, a hundred such hydrogen bombs would create an extremely dense dust cloud in the area, so thick that it would be impossible to see inside using visible light from the outside.

Moreover, the dense dust cloud would be impenetrable to radio waves for years.

The Trisolarans had considered that Lin Sen might take this approach, but it was deemed pointless.

It didn't affect the Surveillance by sophons at all, merely preventing outside observation through visible light. Once a sophon entered the cloud, short-distance observation was still possible, as well as observation from higher dimensions.

At the moment, Lin Sen was preparing to set off the stellar-class hydrogen bombs in succession at the center of the Starport Ring.

"The hydrogen bomb detonation program is ready," reported the staff.

"Begin the detonation!"

As Lin Sen's voice ended, in the cosmos, a spectacular, silent, white-hot light flashed, creating a small sun that furiously poured light and heat into the cold abyss of space,

The filmy oil vapors then cooled, condensing into countless tiny particles, forming a dust cloud. The cloud's diameter reached two million kilometers, larger than the sun's.

Sometime after the formation of the nanoparticle dust cloud, another white-hot light flashed, making the dust cloud even denser, though the cloud's diameter didn't increase much.

This display of white-hot bursts occurred one hundred sixty times, vaporizing and spreading the filmy oil material in space, creating a dense filmy haze, and enveloping the entire Starport Ring.

Next,

Lin Sen's most crucial plan was about to commence, the Sophon Blocking Strategy.

This was also the plan Lin Sen believed could enhance the odds of victory by thirty percent.

Without this plan, Lin Sen wouldn't have dared to rashly implement the Lagrange Project, a strategy that, while advancing humanity, also improved the Trisolarans' scheming.

Who would advance to a greater degree was unpredictable, and Lin Sen considered post-war scenarios. If the Trisolarans' level of cunning was significantly inferior to humanity's, they would not dare cooperate with humans.

The key to Lin Sen daring to improve the Trisolaran scheming was a phrase Tyler passed on from Quantum Space: "One cannot paint within a painting any longer; this piece of art is already too damaged."

This statement could enhance the odds of victory by thirty percent because it concealed a method to shield against Sophons.

Lin Sen always understood that in the final battle, the Waterdrop was not the key; it could be destroyed.

The key was the Sophon, whose presence nearly rendered the Waterdrop invincible.

In terms of understanding the Waterdrop, there were only three aspects: one, its strong interaction material surface; two, its propulsion system; and three, its capability to emit extremely strong radio waves.

The propulsion system of the Waterdrop was beyond human comprehension, exceeding the limits of human imagination, and was also what Lin Sen most desired.

But it also had weaknesses. In the original story, the kinetic weapons of the human warships firing steel balls could slow the Waterdrop down. This shows that the Waterdrop's propulsion system is greatly restricted when curvature isn't considered.

Now, regarding the Sophon, the original work mentioned that Sophons required preservation in six dimensions to sense the outside world. If Sophons ascended above six dimensions, the Trisolarans' commands could not be transmitted to them via electromagnetic waves.

The reason Sophons could rise to eleven dimensions and still affect particle collision experiments, while also receiving commands from the Trisolarans, was because four Sophons formed a Quantum Induction Array, which allowed for instant communication among these four Sophons.

That is to say, if one of the four Sophons existed in a state below six dimensions, the other three could receive Trisolaran commands through the induction array.

Sophons needed to be in at least six dimensions to observe the outside world and receive commands, and their instant communication relied on the Quantum Induction Array as well.

In fact, it's easy to understand that Sophons need electromagnetic waves, or light, to observe the outside. The higher the dimension a Sophon occupies, the smaller its scale, resulting in a diminished capacity to receive electromagnetic waves.

A Sophon unfolded in six dimensions is at a micrometer scale, invisible to the naked eye, but a colossal entity in the microcosm.

Light and gravity can traverse dimensions, which is how Sophons in higher dimensions can observe the external environment.

Tyler's remarks hinted at the principle behind shielding Sophons:

There's a principle that the lower the dimension, the more unstable the Sophon, and even at risk of being destroyed.

In the original work, it's written that Sophons are at their most vulnerable when unfolded in lower dimensions. The higher the dimension, even up to eleven, the particles in particle colliders can reach energy levels of a trillion electron volts. Nevertheless, as target particles in experiments, Sophons show their strength.

The original work also mentioned that Sophons unfolded in lower dimensions are easily destroyed.

So why does this happen? This is what Tyler was researching.

Ultimately, it was discovered in Quantum Space that the primary reason Sophons become unstable at lower dimensions was due to spatial factors.

Both energy and mass affect space; when the Trisolarans used nuclear bombs to shatter the three-dimensional "protons" of the Magic Eye civilization, it was essentially the energy of the bombs causing violent vibrations in space that tore apart the Magic Eye's three-dimensional "protons".

Sophons unfolded in two dimensions, without planetary gravity as a scaffold, couldn't maintain their two-dimensional form, which was why the Trisolarans couldn't use two-dimensionally unfolded Sophons to thwart Logic's Solar Wind Plan.

If space became unstable, then Sophons would not dare to descend to lower dimensions.

The only possible location for achieving this goal, that humans could currently investigate, was within Ball Lightning.

So Lin Sen sent Tyler to verify this hypothesis, and Tyler didn't disappoint Lin Sen's expectations. Upon entering Quantum Space, he finally confirmed that Lin Sen's conjecture was correct.

"One cannot paint within a painting any longer; the painting is already too damaged" means there are already areas unfolded in two dimensions that cannot undergo further two-dimensional unfolding.

Areas that have already unfolded in lower dimensions cannot have other entities unfolding in lower dimensions because the space there is already very unstable.