Rebirth of the Super Battleship
Chapter 230: Four Types of Matter

During the Level-4 Civilization stage, Xiao Yu had already detected traces of tachyons in his experiments, he simply hadn’t realized it at the time.

According to the normal trajectory of technological development, he should have gradually observed patterns in these phenomena as technology advanced, proposed his own hypotheses, then verified them one by one through countless studies over a long period of time. Only after that would he eventually reach the conclusion that these anomalies were caused by tachyons.

Alongside this process would be the parallel advancement of other technologies, such as energy technology and research into antimatter and dark matter. This was the natural progression of overall scientific development.

But now, before Xiao Yu’s other related technologies had even reached the necessary level, he had already learned in advance that these strange increases in mass were caused by tachyons. This was a fortunate turn of events, it meant that Xiao Yu could avoid many detours and dramatically accelerate his technological progress.

From this, Xiao Yu once again grasped a fundamental truth: the development of a civilization’s technology must follow a gradual, step-by-step process. If Xiao Yu were still stuck in the Level-3 Civilization stage, then the data he had acquired now would be of little use to him. A civilization that had not even mastered the curvature drive or the Grand Unified Theory, what could it possibly do with knowledge of tachyons?

In the current universe, naturally occurring negative matter does not exist. All negative matter is artificially created. This point was clearly recorded in the technological literature of the Molian Civilization.

The process by which tachyons cause increases in matter is quite fascinating. It involves a paradox. That is: if the total amount of matter in the universe is eternally conserved, if the law of mass-energy conservation holds, then how can the mutual annihilation of negative matter composed of tachyons with positive matter, which causes positive matter to vanish from the universe, be explained?

One must understand that the total amount of matter in the universe is constant. So, if you create one kilogram of negative matter, then use it to react with one kilogram of positive matter, causing that kilogram of matter to disappear from the universe, can such a phenomenon occur?

The Molian Civilization’s answer is: this phenomenon cannot occur. During the annihilation of positive and negative matter, the total amount of matter remains conserved on the cosmic scale and across macro-level timeframes.

The answer is quite simple. Creating one kilogram of negative matter will simultaneously yield one kilogram of positive matter. One kilogram of negative matter combined with one kilogram of positive matter has a net mass of zero. Therefore, the process of creating negative matter does not violate the law of mass-energy conservation.

Moreover, negative matter cannot be stored for long. In a very short period of time, it will react with the omnipresent positive matter, whether that positive matter is the kind that is generated alongside it, or positive matter found elsewhere in the universe. In any case, once negative matter is created, it will inevitably interact with positive matter.

This property makes negative matter ideal for weaponization. For example, the giant cannons installed on those planets, those are negative matter cannons. Xiao Yu had already witnessed their power firsthand: they could instantly annihilate a Province-Class spaceship equipped with Four-Dimensional Shields.

Xiao Yu now understood how those giant cannons operated. First, ground-based equipment produces a large quantity of negative-mass tachyons. Once enough is accumulated, they are fired at a target in one burst. Because the particles move faster than light, the attack is completely unstoppable and offers no warning. If the negative matter cannon’s output is powerful enough, it could even annihilate a star in an instant.

To make a star vanish without any sign or sound, in the blink of an eye, what an awe-inspiring divine power that would be!

Moreover, from this unique trait of negative-mass tachyons, Xiao Yu realized an astonishing possibility: the limitless extraction of matter from the void.

The principle was simple. Since every time you create one kilogram of negative matter, one kilogram of positive matter is also generated, could you not simply launch the negative matter immediately upon creation, while feeding the accompanying positive matter into a elemental decay engine? Wouldn’t this result in an infinite energy source?

This line of reasoning excited Xiao Yu. If the idea truly proved feasible, then he would never again have to worry about energy sources. However, Xiao Yu’s excitement lasted only a moment before fading. He immediately recalled something mentioned in the Galactic Encyclopedia, a basic piece of common knowledge: civilizations below Level 6 are confined within their own galaxies, unable to engage in intergalactic travel. The fundamental reason remained energy limitations.

Even the mighty Taihao Civilization, when traveling from the Large Magellanic Cloud to the Milky Way, had to follow the Magellanic Stream and rely on the material replenishment provided by it just to survive the journey across more than a hundred thousand light-years. And the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, was over two million light-years away.

From this, it could be inferred that if Level-5 Civilizations already possessed tachyon-based negative matter technology, then Level-6 Civilizations would certainly have even deeper research in the field. Yet they were still trapped within their galactic boundaries. This, from another angle, proved that Xiao Yu’s proposed energy-extraction concept was likely unworkable.

Xiao Yu continued browsing the technological documents from the Molian Civilization, and soon found the answer.

“In the process of creating negative matter, the energy required to produce one kilogram of material is necessarily greater than the energy that would be released by converting one kilogram of matter entirely into energy.”

“So that’s how it is,” Xiao Yu muttered in disappointment. It was just like how one cannot extract all the heat from a cup of 15-degree water and transfer it to another cup to raise it to 30 degrees without additional energy input. It was simply impossible to obtain infinite energy through this technology because the energy input would always exceed the output.

That was negative matter tachyons.

As for dark matter, the scientific documents from the Molian Civilization also contained detailed explanations.

Only now did Xiao Yu truly understand what dark matter actually was.

Dark matter was still matter, just not ordinary matter. Back in the Earth era, humanity had long been troubled by this question. At that time, humans observed the motion of galaxies within large galaxy clusters and noticed that these galaxies were moving far too quickly. Based on observational data, the mass of those galaxy clusters wasn’t nearly enough to gravitationally bind those fast-moving galaxies unless their mass was one hundred times greater than calculated.

So a glaring problem emerged: what were these unobservable materials that contributed gravity yet emitted no electromagnetic radiation and did not interact with it in any form? It seemed that aside from gravity, they contributed nothing else.

In the end, it was the discrepancy between observational and calculated results that led humanity to deduce the existence of dark matter.

Now, the Molian Civilization had answered that question for Xiao Yu.

Their conclusion: dark matter was a special form of positive matter. The fundamental particles that made up dark matter lacked strong nuclear interaction, weak nuclear interaction, and electromagnetic interaction, they possessed only gravity.

Without strong nuclear force, quarks could not bind together to form basic particles like protons and neutrons, and matter could not form. Dark matter was composed entirely of quarks, “clouds” of quarks. Without electromagnetic force, photons could pass through them unhindered. In other words, dark matter was invisible and could not be detected by any frequency of radiation. But because it still had gravity, it could bend light and create gravitational lensing effects, which was how humanity had originally detected its presence.

Dark matter was everywhere in the universe. But its lack of strong nuclear and electromagnetic interaction meant it could not participate in elemental decay, and thus could not be converted into usable energy. This was because the basic principle of elemental decay involved manipulating strong and electromagnetic interactions to induce collisions between quarks to generate energy.

Dark matter seemed to be an “incomplete” form of evolved matter. In their evolutionary process, they appeared to have developed only gravity, without the other three fundamental forces.

This conclusion left Xiao Yu feeling a tinge of regret. If this omnipresent dark matter in the universe could be harnessed, then the energy problem that restricted intergalactic journeys across millions of light-years could be easily solved.

The Molian technological documents also indicated that there was a mysterious connection between dark matter and antimatter, with negative matter acting as the bridge between the two. When negative matter encountered ordinary matter, both would annihilate. But when negative matter met antimatter, part of the antimatter would be annihilated, while the other part would be transformed into dark matter, a “flawed” form of matter.

“The four types of matter in the universe… so this is how they truly are…”

Without these technological documents from the Molian Civilization, and relying on his own research alone, Xiao Yu estimated it would have taken him at least a thousand years to obtain such knowledge.

It seemed that war and conquest were, indeed, the most effective means of propelling civilization forward.

In truth, the Molian Civilization’s mechanical storage devices didn’t contain that much scientific data, and much of what remained was incomplete. As a result, although Xiao Yu could understand the conclusions, he couldn’t grasp the derivations, equations, or detailed theoretical models. These materials merely pointed him toward a path forward, one that would save him a millennium of development time. But the actual research work would still have to be carried out by Xiao Yu himself.

It was just like giving the equation E = mc² to scientists before Einstein’s time and explaining its meaning, the impact on science would still be limited, because they lacked the derivation process behind the formula. Understanding why the result is what it is is far more important than simply knowing what the result is.

Still, at the very least, this could guide scientists in the right direction and save them vast amounts of time and effort, just as it had for Xiao Yu now.