Chapter 333: The Four Fundamental Technology Paths

Lin Sen smiled and said, "Hello, Big Tooth, I am Lin Sen.

"I'm not used to talking with my head tilted back, so I enlarged the holographic projection a bit. You don't mind, do you?"

At these words, Big Tooth chuckled a few times, clearly somewhat displeased with Lin Sen's approach. A slightly smarter bug wants to converse with me on equal footing, is there any point in vying for such an empty title? Indeed, you are an arrogant bug who likes to play strategic games, but all your shrewdness is futile in the face of absolute power.

Despite this, Big Tooth politely responded, "Hello, I've heard some of your achievements, and I must say, you truly are a great leader within your civilization."

At this point, Big Tooth changed the subject and went straight to the point, "Then, let's get directly to the topic we are most concerned about.

"We need Earth, it was once our home too, and it was only after we left that you came into being.

"Logically speaking, we have more right to it than you do.

"But we also recognize that you won't agree to hand it over just like that. So, we're willing to hear your thoughts, what do you need?"

Lin Sen nodded, "Alright then, let's get right to the point.

"During this period, we've used three super-large array telescopes beyond the Kuiper Belt, all aimed towards Proxima Centauri.

"After careful resolution and search, we have finally spotted your era's spaceship. It is now less than 3 light years from the Solar System.

"Its immense scale indeed astonished us and made us marvel at your technology.

"I am very curious to know, how do you propel such a huge ship? There must be some highly advanced science and engineering technology involved, right?"

Big Tooth did not know the true technological level of human civilization, as humanity had hidden it too well, even the Space City was concealed behind covers. Based on the exposed creations, human civilization seemed to be only at the early stage Level 1.1.

Big Tooth also did not suspect that humans could hide much more technology. Perhaps what was visible was indeed the pinnacle of human technological achievement, similar to how some animals puff themselves up to ward off predators looking for food.

In 400 years, with frontier physics blocked, it would truly be a fantastical story to elevate civilization levels by 0.3, not even novels from the world of the dinosaurs dared to write such things.

If Big Tooth knew that human civilization levels had actually increased by 0.5, it would probably be so shocked that its iconic big tooth would fall out. Hmm, that characteristic big tooth might even have some collectible value.

After thinking for a while, Big Tooth replied, "Due to our massive size, the ecosystem we need must also be large enough to sustain our existence. Therefore, the only way for us was to join all of our ships together, forming one huge ecosystem.

"After tens of millions of years of continuous expansion and improvement, we've finally achieved the vast scale you see today.

"In fact, its technological content is not that high; it's just really large in size. Moreover, the ring-shaped structure also makes it convenient for us to mine and excavate planets and alleviates the Roche limit problems caused by gravitational tides when approaching planets.

"The larger the object, the more fragile it appears to be, as if a single strong interaction material weapon could easily destroy it. But that's not the case. Our era's spaceship is equipped with a multitude of advanced weapons with destructive power and precision striking capability beyond your imagination.

"Moreover, our ship also houses a million of the most advanced warships, and we fear no wars. We made it so large because we are confident that no one can approach it.

"The propulsion system of the ship uses re-aggregation technology, which can fuse the rocky materials from planets into iron, releasing a massive amount of energy for the propulsion of the ship, as well as powering our ecological system's needs.

"With your civilization's technological level, re-aggregation technology would be a good choice, are you thinking of trading Earth for our re-aggregation technology?"

Big Tooth seemed to have said a lot, but the useful information was actually not much. Some of the situations it mentioned could in fact be inferred by humans themselves.

For instance, re-aggregation technology was not anything novel. At the beginning stage when human civilization reached Level 1.2, this technology had already been mastered. It was also considered the last generation of controlled nuclear fusion technology.

Simply put, humanity at that time had already mastered the manipulation of the strong interaction force, and even invented glue bullets.

This technology could compress some larger atomic nuclei like silicon and oxygen under specific conditions to further undergo fusion reactions, eventually producing iron nuclei. This is the principle of re-aggregation, a deeper application of the strong interaction force technology.

Now, human civilization has reached Level 1.3, and it has managed to "compress" atomic nuclei together, even "compressing" electrons into protons, ultimately forming neutron star material. This is the limit of the application of strong interaction force technology.

Lin Sen deliberately steered the conversation in this direction to mislead Big Tooth regarding human technology.

The next theoretical research direction for humanity will involve micro-dimensions and dark matter, areas that even the Dinosaur Civilization has been unable to break through in 60 million years.

Lin Sen: "However, re-aggregation technology is far from being enough to exchange for Earth, and we are also on the verge of a breakthrough with this technology. We would not make such a trade."

"Moreover, you should understand that re-aggregation technology does not play a significant role in the development of human society, given our current resources, it isn't necessary."

"With the gaseous planetary resources of the Solar System and Sixth Generation Controlled Nuclear Fusion Technology, we can go for tens of millions of years without worrying about energy problems."

"Furthermore, the energy efficiency of re-aggregation technology is not high, so we would not consider adopting it."

"The reason I am curious about your propulsion system is because we noticed that your spacecraft was adjusting its course several times during flight, but afterward, we hardly observed any propulsion trailblazer, which intrigued us immensely."

"According to our re-aggregation model, it would eject a large amount of plasma stream into the outer space, which should be easily observable, and it is very dangerous to travel through the dark universe like this."

Re-aggregation technology is a Level 1.2 civilization technology, but eliminating the trailblazer is a Level 1.3 civilization technology, which is one of the few Level 1.3 technologies the Dinosaurs possessed, and it is a technology that humanity has not yet mastered.

It is important to note that in a vacuum, plasma itself does not emit light. However, there is a lot of interstellar medium and interstellar dust in interstellar space. The plasma stream ejected will interact with the interstellar medium and cause particle transitions, thus producing light emission, which is how the "trailblazer" effect is created. Although this light emission is relatively weak.

If a warship's propulsion system emitted such a weak trailblazer, it could be ignored, but the propulsion of the Swallower is almost the weight of a planet. The assembled trailblazer of thousands of planetary engines is not to be overlooked, as a quantitative change could bring about a quality change that cannot be ignored.

Calculations from the Science Advisory Board estimated that such a massive trailblazer could be observed from 30 light years away; a high-level civilization might notice it from even greater distances. Most importantly, it could be observed from any direction, which is undoubtedly like putting a target on oneself.

With the technology level of humanity now, it was clear that the Dinosaur Civilization's "trailblazer" elimination technology was extraordinary.

This could involve electromagnetic force technology—a field that humanity had not truly advanced in for centuries—but the Dinosaur Civilization may have developed this technological line. The Human Science Council, when they first observed the era spaceships of Dinosaur Civilization and their lack of trailblazer, deduced this was likely an electromagnetic technology line that humanity had yet to develop.

It is generally believed that there are four fundamental forces in the material world: strong force, weak force, gravity, and electromagnetic force. These forces are all transmitted by exchanging particles, known as mediator particles.

And these fundamental forces are divided into four technological routes. To date, the foundation for the technology lines of these four fundamental forces has already been laid, and even the strong and weak forces buildings have been completed.

The strong force and weak force technology line includes ordinary nuclear bombs, nuclear pump lasers, controlled nuclear fusion, re-aggregation, strong interaction material, glue bullets and the glueball oscillation beam, ... with neutron star material as the ultimate technological product.

Weak force and strong force are in many respects co-dominant, although they differ in specific manifestations, they both govern the laws of operation in the microscopic world. Weak force is responsible for guiding some nucleons within the nucleus to undergo decay, releasing tremendous energy, which is the main reason for the release of great power in nuclear bombs. The strong force tightly binds nucleons together, forming stable nuclear structures.

The ultimate technology of neutron star material is also a technological line involving both strong and weak forces.

Humanity has almost reached the limit in the research on strong and weak forces, with little hope for further breakthroughs.

If humanity wants to break through, it will need to turn its attention to the other two forces.

As for the gravity technology line, the current largest application is curvature propulsion and the Trisolarans' space-time binding well technology.

Human scientists are very optimistic about the development of this technology line. In the future, it may involve artificial gravity, gravity bombs, gravity wells... and other exploits involving the properties of spacetime, and if used well, it will be a leap forward in human technology.

Yet when it comes to the most basic and familiar electromagnetic force line, humanity has not yet reached the threshold of its essence.

However, our most familiar research on the nature of electromagnetic force has not been as profound as we imagined. The mediator particles that transmit electromagnetic force are photons, which are also a type of boson.

Undoubtedly, the most effective means of observing the universe and the microscopic world is utilizing electromagnetic interaction force, i.e., light. This includes radio waves, gamma rays...

The generation of photons and their energy transitions are related. For example, electrons drop from a high energy level back to a low energy level and release energy in the form of photons, or antimatter annihilation releases energy in the form of gamma rays.

Humanity hypothesizes that the ultimate extent of electromagnetic force could be more powerful than the strong force technology line, such as lasers, antimatter applications, virtual light field effects, controllable mass decay, energy shields, zero-point energy weapons...

Virtual light field effect is the method the human race conjectures the Dinosaur Civilization used to eliminate the trailblazer, using a special field to construct a reverse dynamical Casimir effect, causing photons or energy to transform into virtual photons hidden within the vacuum space, making them difficult to observe without close monitoring.

Controllable mass decay directly converts mass into corresponding energy, possibly the inverse application of Higgs particles. In front of a controllable mass decay engine, re-aggregation and even antimatter engines pale in comparison; this is at least technology of Level 1.4 or 1.5 civilizations.

Energy shields might also be the Dinosaur Civilization's defensive method against virtual photons combined with space, but they are probably effective only against energy attacks and not kinetic or gravitational ones.

Zero-point energy weapons use a special field to disrupt vacuum quantum fluctuations, causing an energy rage in a specified space and, as a result, dealing devastating damage to the target, attacking from the foundation of matter.

The fifth fundamental force involves higher dimensional dominant force in the microscopic realm and involves dark matter; humanity is just taking its first steps and has not yet established a true technological line system.