Deep Space Wandering Fleet
Chapter 417 - 415

Chapter 417: Chapter 415

Now what humanity needed were geniuses who could create something out of nothing and leap out of their era!

But where could one easily find a genius? Just the other day, they had been discussing how the Taipu people had failed to discover the general theory of relativity, leading to inaccurate satellite navigation. Yet, humans themselves were baffled by many phenomena, especially concerning quark confinement on the subatomic theory level—as the saying goes, fortunes can turn.

Theoretical breakthroughs were as uncertain as waiting for a blue moon, which left Zhang Yuan sighing and in a constant state of gloom.

"You’re learning a bunch of crap! An old geezer still hitting the books, pah! Wait until biogenetics technology develops and IQs soar—everyone will be a genius, and progress will naturally happen." Li Zhendong always joked about this matter day in and day out.

"It’s a habit. I feel really uneasy without new inventions!" Zhang Yuan closed his book in annoyance. "You’re not letting me be unhappy?"

In fact, he knew that he was no longer the man he used to be; it was unlikely that his current energy and creative abilities would produce any earth-shattering achievements. It was simply a habit to seek out new knowledge.

This was a pleasure!

Li Zhendong, a scholastic slacker, couldn’t understand.

After looking down on this slacker, Zhang Yuan said, "The creative abilities of beings like humans are mostly manifested in their youth when their brains are active and energy is abundant. Now I find myself daydreaming unintentionally, and my speed of learning new knowledge has slowed down considerably."

"Yeah." Li Zhendong lamented, "Hey, I’ve suddenly got a question. Do humans in virtual space have creative abilities? How do you reflect the level of their creativity?"

"They definitely have creative abilities..."

Zhang Yuan took a sip of water and explained, "As to the specifics, that’s a mystery. We can’t even figure out how life forms in virtual spaces give birth to new life... It’s as if they pop up out of nowhere."

"There’s this theory of the information universe to explain this phenomenon. That is, our universe is part of an information universe. Information is a very abstract concept, which essentially exists to reduce entropy increase and the randomness of the universe itself. Our universe can be understood as a special system, currently summarized by gauge field theory. The so-called atomic electrons are inaccurate... But the verifiability of this speculation is very low, and it’s also not flawless."

Li Zhendong then asked, "So, if I entered this world, would I be creative? How much creativity would I have?"

Zhang Yuan nodded, "Of course you would. As for your own creativity, for the time being, we can assume that ’self-awareness’ plays a part, and the brain’s own firmware plays another part. The neural networks of our consciousness upload are replicated from reality, so don’t expect to become super smart all of a sudden in a virtual world. That’s impossible. At most, you’d return to your peak condition."

"That’s a pity!"

It’s like, a computer created in virtual space could not possibly exceed the computing power of the Pangu Brain itself.

Similarly, the comprehensive technological level of various virtual worlds could not exceed that of real humans.

However, in the field of mathematics, there is a certain probability that it could surpass real humans. Yet, no such civilization had appeared.

"If a super genius really did appear, we wouldn’t mind having a chat with them, to see if they would be willing to work in the real world. Virtual worlds are really hard to sum up—most worlds are more like the lifestyle of Earth civilization. Many geniuses get buried."

"Sometimes, I think the lifestyle of Earth civilization isn’t too bad." Li Zhendong said, "According to the definition of New Civilization History, whether a civilization is ’ordinary’ is determined by an entropy function. A civilization with an entropy value higher than 1.0 is defined as ordinary. But from an individual’s perspective, the mediocrity of a civilization doesn’t really affect the sense of happiness, right?"

"Yeah..." Zhang Yuan nodded. "Whether a civilization is mediocre doesn’t indeed affect an individual’s happiness. Even though most ordinary civilizations are not happy, there are a few worlds where individuals are very happy. We have already observed such cases in virtual worlds..."

"It’s a groundbreaking matter."

Indeed, observing such cases went beyond people’s original perceptions. The virtual world was entirely a generator of human civilization.

"Mr. Zhang Yuan, you have visitors." Just then, the robot butler suddenly sent a reminder.

"Alright, let them in."

Upon opening the door, he saw some young colleagues from his old office, including the new Captain.

When they saw Li Zhendong in the living room as well, they hurriedly greeted, "Old Captain! Professor Li!"

It was nothing particularly important. As the journey had got on the right track, the Kunlun Mountain Fleet had left Taipu Star two years ago. So the work of personnel rotation and hibernation started anew.

Those young people wanted to say goodbye to Zhang Yuan before officially going into hibernation. The elderly were not hibernating and might not be there the next time they awoke.

After chatting idly for half an hour and seeing off this group, Zhang Yuan sat on the sofa and reflected, "Youth is really nice... The world always belongs to the young."

"Natural death is the true essence of life."

The biggest difference between young and old people is that young people always look forward and indulge in dreams of the future, while older people prefer to reminisce about the past. The glory of the future is vastly different from the glory of the past.

Li Zhendong asked, "It should take more than sixty years to reach the next planet, right? It’s a pity; we probably won’t live that long."

"Ha-ha, that’s not a problem." Zhang Yuan laughed. "You’re not expecting to borrow another five hundred years from the Almighty, are you? At the next destination, there are two targets: one is a binary star system, and the other is a Three-body system. After discussion, the scientists think we’ve already visited binary stars, so they plan to take a close look at the Three-body system.

"In such a planet system, it’s generally conceivable that life doesn’t exist, and it’s even uncertain whether any planets exist. So, we’ve taken enough resource reserves. Even if there isn’t resource replenishment on Three Body Star, there won’t be a problem."

The Three-body system is a chaotic system in mathematics, and it’s impossible to predict the orbits of stars accurately. However, computer simulations can make short-term estimates without issue.

As long as Kunlun Mountain doesn’t foolishly get too close to the stars, there won’t be a safety issue. After all, the evolution of celestial bodies takes hundreds or thousands of years.

A star wouldn’t just change its course out of the blue and swallow the entire fleet. Such an event was absolutely impossible.

Li Zhendong suddenly said, "Have you heard of a famous science fiction novel about a story involving Three Body Star and Earth? Under the rule of three erratically moving suns, the Three-body civilization wants to abandon their Mother Star and occupy Earth."

"Although it was written by the ancients over three thousand years ago, it’s quite interesting!"

Zhang Yuan laughed heartily, "Is that so? Then I’ll have to check it out, along with these other neglected topics from the past! If life could even emerge on planets near the Three-body system, the density of cosmic civilizations in that novel might be much higher than in our universe!"

Yes, now there was plenty of time to get to know and remember the fleeting moments of life—not overly long, yet rich and colorful...