Legend of the Cyber Heroes
Chapter 890 - 135: Crazy Civilization?

Chapter 890: Chapter 135: Crazy Civilization?

"Everything they do is designed to withstand the passage of time," Xiang Shan said.

"Why do you say that?" Ingrid glanced at her notebook, then carefully examined the alien tablets.

"Choosing this method to record information means they were originally prepared for voyages lasting hundreds of thousands or even millions of years—prepared with enough noise resistance to combat any possible data loss in those hundreds of thousands of years."

What exactly is the concept of "a hundred thousand years"?

A physicist once quoted an ancient prophet, claiming "mountains flow before God." The properties of fluids and solids are related to the duration of physical processes. On such a long time scale, even hard rock can display the characteristics of fluids, with the land undulating like waves. One hundred thousand years are enough in tectonically active areas to grow mountains kilometers high.

On such a long time scale, material metamorphosis becomes an inevitable challenge to confront. Even the best materials would change after being stored in such environments for a hundred thousand years.

At this point, the most important thing is scale.

If the storage device is made large enough, then the noise points caused by material metamorphosis become negligible.

That’s probably how it is.

"Actually, the way those guys store uranium-235 is like this too," Xiang Shan sighed. "Those aliens even considered ’what if Argon’s shell gets pierced by a meteorite, hitting the fuel storage device, how to prevent uranium blocks from scattering.’ Many things inside Argon don’t resist ionizing radiation. The uranium blocks will affect the work efficiency of the drones."

"A material with natural magnetism fills the gap between uranium blocks. Even if a cosmic meteorite punches through Argon and hits the nuclear fuel, the fuel won’t be knocked over completely; instead, the less rigid magnetic material around it would shatter first, yet due to its magnetism, it will cling together as much as possible or automatically concentrate on the steel column. David believes, considering the overall weight, this is a feasible method."

"Also, this idea of ’using structural strength for cushioning during hard landings’ is..."

"But this increase in size leads to other problems."

"NASA surveyed this thing’s structure. They concluded that there was originally another rocket segment at Argon’s tail, which should have been discarded when it left its own Solar System. Argon is so large that the material can offer limited tensile shear resistance. When viewed as a whole, this enormous spacecraft is very flexible—from before it left its Mother Planet, Argon could only maintain a low acceleration, or it might deform itself!"

"And what does this mean? It means it must maintain low acceleration for a long period—which is akin to slowly leaving the atmosphere at a very gradual pace. It will undergo a lengthy acceleration phase. During this process, the consumption of propellant will be astronomical!"

"The rocket discarded by Argon couldn’t have been bigger. Otherwise, the material wouldn’t hold up. But if the discarded rocket had a limited size, it means Argon’s launcher must have prearranged for multiple refuelings of that single rocket within their own Mother Star System..."

"Yet this method of ramming up against it really managed to drive this enormous thing out of its own Mother Star System!"

"And then the machines... I’m certain those machines had to have come from some sort of self-replicating origin. Their technology would not support machines operating for so long. But I still haven’t figured out how they managed to do it—those aliens!"

Xiang Shan scratched his head, messing up his hair: "All of their technology is only a little bit better than human technology, and all of it falls within the current human theoretical framework, entirely comprehensible. But their behavior is so baffling! Why would a civilization only slightly more advanced than humanity spend such a tremendous expense? Why build such a rocket? How could they combine this engineering marvel?"

This truly is an unsolved mystery.

All the way to the 21st century, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, as a project, cost only a billion US Dollars. And in 1977, the year Voyager 1 was launched, the Federation’s GDP exceeded two trillion US Dollars.

Compared to human total wealth, the part spent on Voyager 1 and 2 is but a drop in the bucket.

But Argon?

Even excluding the research and careful design phases. Every step from construction to launch would consume human resources and materials beyond what humanity can imagine today.

Could humans achieve something similar?

Probably yes.

But all of humanity would have to unite, completely disregarding the usual rules of production and economic activity, investing without regard to cost, possibly building an "Argon" belonging to Earth within a single generation.

As for why "a single generation"?

If this time frame extends across "several generations," then technical upgrades would inevitably occur.

By the time the project is finally completed, what humans launch would surely be much more advanced than "Argon."

To the builder of "Argon," what kind of allure does the starry sky hold that makes it worth doing this?

Unless...

The technical level presented by "Argon," which humans are about to reach, is the highest technical level that the paradigm of "science" can produce.

The Universe can only support such a technical level.

This truly is a dark and grim possibility.

After listening to Xiang Shan’s musings, Ingrid said, "I don’t think you need to be so pessimistic about this issue. Perhaps Argon’s builder’s societal structure is distinctly different from us humans? For us humans, this kind of behavior seems crazy, but in their culture, it might be a normal phenomenon?"

"Huh?"

"From an economic perspective, slaughter and blood sacrifice are certainly quite uneconomical. Why not keep those people as slaves instead of killing them? Especially the Third Reich, which even streamlined slaughtering—if a slave owner from the slave era came, they’d probably express confusion, right? But humans sometimes need such uneconomical behavior to maintain self-identity."

Ingrid was quite satisfied with her hypothesis: "Hmm, sounds like a crazy civilization indeed. Let’s jot that down..."

Xiang Shan looked at Ingrid writing and drawing in her notebook from the corner of his eye: "What are you looking at? Do you have any leads on deciphering this language?"