Chapter 354: The Secret of Particle Beam Attacks

Immediately following, the second human Neutron Star Warship was about to face the threat of attack. At this critical juncture, the warship activated its low-power curvature drive, twisting the surrounding space into a Low Lightspeed Region.

Human Sophons and monitors nearby also aimed at this area. When two beams of unknown High-Energy Particle Beams arrived, a noticeable deflection of the beams occurred, similar to the refraction of light when it travels through different media.

In the Low Lightspeed Region, the speed of the High-Energy Particle Beams significantly changed, showing a great reduction. However, despite their slowed velocity, the energy carried by the beams did not diminish.

This also indicated that even in the Low Lightspeed Region, the law of conservation of energy was not broken. We know that the square of a particle's energy is equal to the sum of the squares of its rest energy and kinetic energy. When the constant of lightspeed decreased, the corresponding wave number k and mass could change to maintain energy conservation.

But the situation in the battle did not change. The High-Energy Particle Beams, which had changed direction, miraculously adjusted their course once again, striking the Neutron Star Warship with precision.

Like the first, this warship was also destroyed under the powerful energy attack, but this strike revealed a hint of weakness in the unknown Energy Beams to humanity.

Despite two particle beams attacking simultaneously, only one successfully hit the warship, while the other barely missed, shooting off into the distant void.

This observation led humanity to realize that although these High-Energy Particle Beams had the ability to change direction, this ability did not seem to be limitless. They had certain limitations, and with a few more observations, humans could even speculate the minimum radius within which the High-Energy Particles could turn.

This discovery somewhat reduced humanity's initial fear and concern regarding the unknown High-Energy Particle Beams. They believed that even though these beams were enormously powerful, they were not completely invincible. As long as their weakness could be found and a corresponding defense strategy devised, it might be possible for humanity to withstand similar attacks in the future.

At this moment, another piece of intelligence was urgently gathered at the Fleet Commander's command center. Unmanned Sophon Trackers scattered across the battlefield transmitted observational data, showing that a large number of Trisolaran Sophons were rapidly moving toward each Neutron Star Warship.

According to the Science Advisory Board, these Trisolaran Sophons were risking being annihilated by humans, possibly with the aim of navigating for the unknown High-Energy Particle Beams.

However, this intelligence was not of much use to humanity at present. They could only send some drones to attack and monitor the Sophons.

The situation on the battlefield became increasingly tense, and soon, the third Neutron Star Warship was about to face the attack of the unknown High-Energy Particle Beams. This warship charged directly into the Three-Body Foggy Region, hoping that the dense fog would dissipate the energy of the unknown High-Energy Particle Beams.

However, the reality was brutally harsh. While the interaction of the High-Energy Particle Beams with the fog molecules indeed produced vast Energy Beams, this seemed to have limited impact on the particle beams. This brave Neutron Star Warship ultimately could not escape the fate of destruction.

Subsequently, the fourth, the fifth... all the way to the ninth warship, each employed distinctly different strategies to deal with the threat of High-Energy Particle Beams, such as Phase-Plane Defense, Membrane Cutting... and other technologies mastered by humanity were all put to use.

Regrettably, without exception, all these strategies ended in failure. Each warship suffered catastrophic strikes, turning to ashes in space and becoming a solemn footnote in this war.

When it came to the tenth warship, it tried a simpler, yet more daring strategy.

The warship's command decided to use drones to deploy a full-coverage Sophon Blind Zone around the ship, in hopes of blocking the navigation and interference of the Trisolaran Sophons.

However, the implementation of this strategy greatly reduced the speed of the warship, maintaining only about 5% of the speed of light.

Facing such a bold and uncertain strategy, even the captain of the warship was doubtful and had no confidence in the effectiveness of this plan, because the Sophons obviously would not enter the Sophon Blind Zone near the warship.

But the credence of a soldier is not to base current actions on the most likely outcomes.

No matter what the result, one must be willing to try, as it is the creed of interstellar soldiers.

When the moment of truth arrived, to everyone's astonishment, the unknown High-Energy Particle Beam unexpectedly changed direction, locking onto other Neutron Star Warships instead.

And the warship, once considered certain to perish, miraculously escaped its doomed fate and survived.

This sudden emergency plunged the military intelligence staff into a state of tension and bustle as they quickly undertook an emergency analysis of the incident.

They concluded that the unknown civilization most likely ceased their attack on the warship because the Sophon Blind Zone could have some effect on the High-Energy Particle Beams.

At the very least, it should cause the High-Energy Particle Beams to lose their navigation capabilities, thus greatly reducing their accuracy in attacking the Neutron Star Warship.

However, this alone would not be enough reason for the unknown civilization to completely abandon the attack, because even if the attack might fail, it was only a matter of probability. The High-Energy Particle Beams could still potentially turn to attack other Human Warships. The question remained, why would they give up the attack?

The most likely reason the unknown civilization would make such a decision was that they might lose control of the High-Energy Particle Beams once they entered the Sophon Blind Zone, meaning, once the beams entered the blind zone, they could become completely useless.

The known greatest effect of the Sophon Blind Zone was that it could cause Sophons to lose their ability to entangle and connect, thus rendering the Sophons unable to communicate.

Based on this characteristic, an astonishing and unimaginable conclusion was derived: those unknown High-Energy Particle Beams might altogether be "Sophons," meaning, the unknown High-Energy Particle Beams were actually High-Energy Sophon Beams.

This speculation was too terrifying and unbelievable. How could any civilization build such a tremendous quantity of Sophons for the sole purpose of using them as guided High-Energy Particle Beams? It was too extravagant; there must be other, more profound factors at play.

To verify this conjecture, they immediately called up all data regarding the paths and forward directions of the High-Energy Particle Beams.

Upon careful analysis and comparison, they discovered that all paths of the High-Energy Particle Beams cleverly traversed the gaps in the Sophon Blind Zones, as if consciously avoiding those areas.

If those High-Energy Particle Beams were truly composed of Sophons, then their behavior of dodging the Sophon Blind Zones would seem quite plausible.

Moreover, combining previous intelligence gathered, the space traversed by the unknown Energy Beams experienced severe micro-space storms. These micro-space storms had an effect even on the macroscopic level, and Sophons, by borrowing Vacuum Zero-Point Energy, could cause such micro-space storms as well.

If indeed quintillions of Sophons were borrowing energy from the vacuum, then the resulting impact would naturally be immense, and this effect would clearly manifest in the macroscopic world.

This conjecture was supported by the Science Advisory Board, who even provided a new conjecture based on the intensity of the space storms. When the High-Energy Sophon Beams were emitted, the energy they carried might not have been strong, but they were able to continuously borrow Vacuum Zero-Point Energy in the vacuum, using this energy for self-acceleration.

After an acceleration process spanning tens of astronomical units in length, these Sophon Beams attained an astonishing level of energy, enough to deliver a devastating blow to any target.

This conclusion caused great shock to everyone but also provided relief to many. Because it meant that Humanity had finally figured out the essence of the unknown civilization's attack, which also implied that Humanity could potentially find ways to counter this kind of attack.

To counter High-Energy Sophon Beams, Humanity presently has two methods at their disposal:

One is the Sophon Blind Zone; as long as the High-Energy Sophon Beams enter the Sophon Blind Zone, they lose the ability to threaten Human Warships.

Two is the technology obtained from the Dinosaur Civilization, the Vacuum Zero-Point Energy attack.

This form of attack can induce severe fluctuations in Vacuum Zero-Point Energy at the microscopic level, thereby interfering with the Sophons' process of borrowing Vacuum Zero-Point Energy. This makes it difficult for the Sophons to accelerate and enhance their energy autonomously and has a certain probability of causing the Sophons to undergo entanglement disruption.

Other methods like curvature attacks can also be used in conjunction, as they can affect the High-Energy Sophon Beams.

PS: Let me explain the issue of Sophons borrowing Vacuum Zero-Point Energy to accelerate. The essence of energy is the potential to do work (junior high school physics). For example, in a gravitational potential field, the potential formed by an object's altitude is its potential energy. The process of falling under the acceleration of the gravitational field is the conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy.

In the vacuum, pairs of real and virtual energy may appear at any moment. The potential field formed by real energy may interact with Sophons under certain conditions and do work on Sophons, that is, the real energy is converted into the kinetic energy of Sophons. (This explanation leans towards middle school physics; in reality, it is not so simple, involving the principle of least action, four-dimensional momentum... and so on. We need not delve too deeply, as long as we understand the relationship between energy and action.)