Will the out-of-control servitor meet the cosmic cat?

Especially the most critical core, she has no clue at all. She just proved that her idea is feasible by removing the captured warp engine core and installing it in her own theory verification machine for testing.

God knows how long it will take to achieve a truly fully self-produced warp drive-but it doesn't matter.

Because for science, often the most critical and important step is to know which path is feasible.

Once they have determined the correct path, they no longer have to hit the wall aimlessly, and can only conduct research by casting a wide net in the vast sea, but can conduct targeted research.

Just like when they were conducting research on controllable nuclear fusion, if someone in the future could tell them that "the fusion stellarator at the initial stage is more feasible than a tokamak", even if it is just such a simple sentence, it will save them immediately. Most of the research energy.

What scientists are most afraid of is never how difficult this problem is, but that it is only discovered after spending a lot of time and energy, or even exhausting a lifetime of research.

This way is wrong.

Today, they have just completed the most difficult first step.

The research results on the flagship of the extinct unit are far more than that - for example, after detailed research on its particle main cannon, Hong can say with certainty that there must be magnetic monopoles in this world.

The so-called magnetic monopole, as the name suggests, is a particle with only one magnetic pole.

In the currently known world, all magnetic substances have two magnetic poles. Even if you cut a magnet along the dividing line between the north and south magnetic poles, the two separated magnets will automatically appear a new north/south pole .

You'll never find a particle with a magnetic pole at one end, at least not in the current system of theory.

It is precisely because there is no magnetic monopole that Maxwell's equations appear asymmetrical today - because there is only electric charge in the equations, but no magnetic charge.

But the particle cannon of the flagship of the Extinction Unit reveals a fact—there is a magnetic monopole in this world, and it has a certain abundance and can be used by engineering.

Although the battleship was severely damaged, and the main gun was destroyed in the war not knowing how many years ago, the part that may have magnetic monopole material on it has long been missing, and the extermination unit is equivalent to holding a super advanced half The gun barrel, equipped with all the equipment such as the second half of the barrel, the barrel, etc., made its performance plummet to the point where it can be back and forth with her before.

However, through the research on the remaining structure of that ancient civilization, Hong can confirm that this particle cannon must have used magnetic monopole materials when it was complete—otherwise, this structure and design will not work at all.

Although we don't know anything about the specific properties of magnetic monopoles, science is never an isolated result, but a set of theoretical systems that influence each other and are harmonious with each other.

Even if there is no sign of a magnetic monopole, just knowing the existence of a magnetic monopole is enough to significantly affect Hong's theoretical system.

For example, the discovery of magnetic monopoles means that Maxwell's equations will need to be rewritten.

In fact, rather than rewriting it, it is better to say that it has restored its original appearance-at the beginning of the establishment of electrodynamics, the equations that people first imagined existed at the same time. There are both electric current and magnetic current. , both ends of the equation present a natural and symmetrical beauty.

It's just that in the later research, because the magnetic charge could not be found, and no trace of any magnetic monopole could be found, people were forced to give up this concept, and then created the classic Maxwell's equations.

To use a method spread by scientists, they don't need to tear down the building of electromagnetism, because the senior physicists of the building of electromagnetics containing magnetic monopoles have basically repaired it, and they can move in directly when the time comes. Can.

This is a rare scene in the history of physics - it is really surprising that an abandoned building suddenly becomes useful.

The last time a similar thing happened was the cosmological constant Λ—this is also a concept that the founder himself gave up, but was picked up by cosmologists decades later.

After rewriting the equations, the product of the magnetic charge and the electric charge will be fixed, and the quantization of the electric charge and the magnetic charge will naturally occur, the current density corresponds to the magnetic current density, and the magnetic field and the electric field can be exchanged with each other. The whole equation Groups become concise and symmetrical.

Not only that, the introduction of magnetic monopoles has solved many difficult problems in physics at once, such as the stability of the same-sex charges, the quantization of charges, the structure of leptons, the symmetry of leptons and quarks, etc., it can Give a good explanation.

Even, in addition to this, the appearance of magnetic monopoles also implies the existence of grand unified theory-because in many grand unified theoretical models, magnetic monopoles are a necessary, or it can be said that they should not exist s things.

For example, superstring theory, which has been popular among humans for a long time, has predicted the existence of such particles.

Although this cannot be regarded as an argument to prove the grand unified theory at all, it can only be regarded as "implying the existence of a grand unified theory" at best, but this is also a very exciting progress.

After all, that is a Grand Unified Theory.

It unifies the four fundamental forces and incorporates everything in the world into the ultimate theory described in one equation.

This is the beauty of science. Any seemingly isolated event can actually become an important part of a whole system.

It is only the fact that the discovery of the existence of the magnetic monopole has promoted the red theoretical science to complete such a great progress, and when it is really found, these current theories can be formally rewritten.

If the moment she really finds it, how many fields will it drive to take off?

Hong doesn't know.

But she looks forward to it.

--------

Note: The figure below shows Maxwell's equations written in SI units after rewriting, which are Gauss' law, Gauss' law of magnetism, Faraday's law of induction and Ampere's law.

Image: "New Maxwell's equations 1", location: "Images/1648244159-100214443-108543152.jpg"

Volume 180 The Road to the Cat Alliance: Chapter [-] The purpose of the black hand behind the scenes?

"So, did they just hack one of our bonus balls?"

After waiting for more than 20 years to no avail, Hong finally confirmed the fact that the man behind the scenes secretly hacked half of their rewards.

According to the information she has known a long time ago, after other civilizations are wiped out, after a period of time ranging from a few years to more than ten years, a gateway to a race suitable for her will be opened in the parent galaxy of the wiped out civilization. Wormholes for living habitable planets.

Although it is not completely livable, there will be some fluctuations such as gravity, atmospheric composition ratio, and usually requires certain genetic adjustments/implants to be able to survive without external equipment.

Things like biological prevention and control have to be done by yourself—of course, for interstellar civilizations, ordinary alien biological prevention and control can be said to be a piece of cake, and most of the time, microorganisms on different planets have huge differences in their underlying structures. Because of this, it is difficult to have a problem like the biological invasion envisioned in the science fiction of the old days.

In short, this so-called habitable planet is not really absolutely livable, and it is impossible for people to live normally without any adjustments like the parent planet.

This shows that the way the black hand behind the scenes gave the reward balls was most likely just to choose a similar planet nearby, and then send them there with a wormhole.

In addition, according to their observations, the distance between these habitable planets is generally about 200 to 400 light-years. Considering such a large space, the number of planets can reach at least one million, and one in a million will appear The probability of a planet with a relatively similar ecological environment cannot be said to be very low, but it is also within the normal range.

This ruled out to a certain extent the possibility of the mastermind behind the scenes being so capable and directly handing out rewards to the planets—this is a little good news for them.

About 12 years ago, one of the bonus balls was given out.

It is located in a star system about 300 light-years away from Catus, orbiting a K5 star - the smallest star in the Catus star field, and the poorest galaxy.

She is so poor that even as an omnic, she has no interest in development, let alone the idea of ​​migrating up the population, so she took a few factories on the three non-habitable stars of the star system and let them slow down by themselves. After slow expansion, I didn't care much about them.

After the development of other galaxies is similar in the future, Hong may go back to develop this galaxy, but for now, Hong still chooses to focus on those galaxies that are richer and more profitable.

However, this also caused the planet to retain a completely natural scenery, coupled with the rather unique ecological circle on this planet, which attracted many alien biologists and explorers to explore here. Then it gradually attracted a small number of tourists to come and play, and became a candidate tourism/holiday planet.

However, after that, Hong waited for a long time, but couldn't wait for the second wormhole.

At first, she just thought it was just a matter of waiting for a while, so she didn't care.

But it has been a full 25 years, which has far exceeded the time limit left by the ancient prophets of Jeffrey - there is only one possible explanation for this phenomenon, and that is the second reward ball, which was really swallowed

In fact, if you think about it carefully, it is not very difficult to understand what happened.

After all, the Iron Heart Exterminator was eliminated by the Extinction Unit, so even if there were reward balls, they should be issued to Unit 01.

As a result, before the rewards were issued, the extermination unit was eliminated by Li and his wife. As a result, Tie Xin's reward balls lost the target of distribution.

And the reward ball they got was the reward for destroying the extinct units—it has to be said that this explanation seems to be nothing wrong.

"But why do I always feel that something is wrong..."

Although everything was explained logically, Hong could vaguely feel that there seemed to be something wrong in the middle.

She decided to use a little computing power to calculate it.

In the previous rounds of normal calculations, there was no problem in the whole process, it was logical, there were no contradictions, and no strange data appeared.

But when Hong started to perform divergent random calculations, one of the processes really made Hong discover something wrong.

"Why, after Ironheart and Extinction units are destroying their own creator civilization..."

Hong muttered to himself.

"But no bonus ball?"

To be honest, it's not that Hong didn't think about this problem before, but at that time she was still in the war period, and she had very little information about the two extinct civilizations.

Given the serious shortage of information, thinking about this question is obviously fruitless—maybe there are still a small number of organisms surviving in their territory, or even an established ground resistance army?

Therefore, at that time, she did not continue to pursue it.

But looking back on it now, the problem has become even more conspicuous.

Since she was now certain that there were no signs of active sapient organisms in either of the former extinct omnic domains - why, then, were there no bonus balls?

why?

Red can only think of three possibilities. The first one is that the extinction omnic destroys its creator, or to be bold, after destroying any organic civilization, it will not get a bonus ball.

The second possibility is that reward balls do exist, but unlike organic civilizations, their so-called "reward balls" have an interstellar civilization of the same level, rather than an ownerless planet without civilization.

The third possibility is that the act of extinction of omnics and creators is not regarded as "elimination of other civilizations" by the behind-the-scenes hands, but as a normal internal dispute between civilizations - just like the replacement of countries within an organic civilization. A common regime change.

Emotionally, she least wants the third possibility. After all, no matter which one of the first two possibilities is, it represents the man behind the scenes who provides wormholes for low-level civilizations. She doesn't like this kind of civilization that unconditionally exterminates all organic intelligent creatures .

As for why it’s not that she doesn’t like omnics, it’s because as an omnic civilization, her reward balls arrive normally—unless Xier is the main body of the Catus civilization in the algorithm behind the scenes , she is nothing more than an auxiliary AI created by the Catus.

But even if this is the case, it also means that the other party has a high probability of not liking the Extinction Omnic, otherwise they would not do this kind of algorithm.

However, although the first two are emotionally hoped, the cold model tells her that the third is the most likely.

The reason is very simple, because there is only the third possibility, which does not need to distinguish the type of target civilization-it only needs to regard the organic race and the omnic they created as one.

If she was asked to write this algorithm, she believed that she would write it in this way, without considering personal emotional tendencies, and only from the perspective of the mastermind behind the scenes—this is the simplest, most direct, and fairest way to write.

You don't need to work hard to distinguish what kind of civilization the other party is, and you can directly treat them as one, which can avoid many problems.

Otherwise, for example, if you encounter a civilization like her, it is a structure of omnic leader + organic people, how to judge?

She also serves as the leader of the Jeffrey Federation at the same time, how can this be judged?

At the same time, she is the leader of an alliance composed of several different forms of civilization, how to judge this?

Obviously, whether it is based on the race of the ruler, the proportion of the population, or any other means, it is very difficult to distinguish, and it is prone to repeated jumps—assuming that she now cuts off all ties with other civilizations and tries her best to make Katu After the Sri Lankan people develop enough population, abdicate and let them be the leaders, how to count?

Omnic civilization one moment and organic civilization the next?

Then she got stuck with a BUG, ​​and gave the leader to Xier when the reward ball was settled, and then restarted after the settlement, what should I do?

Even, this hasn’t discussed how to determine a race—by genetics or by inner identity?No matter which one, Hong can think of many ways to bug the card.

Obviously, this system is really difficult to use.

But if you simply think of it as a change of regime within civilization, everything is much simpler-whether it is omnic, organic, genetically modified organisms, mechanically ascended organisms, or even all other weird forms. .

As long as it originates from that civilization from a causal point of view, no matter what it looks like, it will not affect its "member of that civilization" attribute.

In addition, although Hong still doesn't know what the man behind the scenes is, what is the purpose of doing this, and even whether the other party is an intelligent existence, but she is very clear that the man behind the scene must be of the same level. high existence.

Would such a high-level existence really care about the disputes between extinct omnics and organisms, so that they should specifically target them in the rules?

Her answer is that there is a high probability of no. Obviously, only the third possibility can meet the requirements.

"Is this supposed to be the truth?"

Although Hong felt that there should be no problems with this theory as a whole, just like any theory has its scope of application, this theory also has a problem that it cannot explain.

That is the civilization born from the fusion of the day after tomorrow, how should it be counted?

This cannot be explained simply by “a single country composed of different civilizations cannot be counted as a separate civilization”, otherwise it will encounter the problem of how to count a unified civilization composed of multiple races born on the same planet-the wise bird is a vivid example.

If it is calculated according to the origin of the planet, there will be bugs to exploit. For example, what if a certain civilization sows life in the interstellar?

Although this problem can be solved if a large number of restrictions are added, this will make the whole system extremely complicated like the epicycle of the geocentric theory, and every time a new problem is encountered, new problems can only be added to it. There is no universality to speak of in the "epochal balance".

Throughout the history of science, there is a high probability that a theory with this characteristic is not a theory of real essence.

Some people may think, why pay so much attention to the separation between civilizations?After all, civilization itself is just a human-made boundary, just like the different types of creatures in biology are also artificially defined, and roughly divided into one point is about the same. If you really want to distinguish so carefully, you will find the fundamental difference. not open.

But in fact, the reason why Hong pays so much attention to this judgment is not because she is digging into a dead end, but because it involves an important issue related to the safety of the cat alliance-the judgment mechanism of the wormhole.

Looking at several other civilizations, the Jeffrey Federation has only opened five wormholes in its nearly 400-year history of interstellar civilization. Excluding the two bonus balls that wiped out the original cleanliness civilization, it took an average of more than 100 years. will meet once.

The opening frequency of the two extinct omnics is also similar. The two wormholes are distributed in the history of about 400 years, with an average of about once every 100 to 200 years.

Since human beings encountered the iron heart in the 22nd century, it took more than 400 catus years to open a new wormhole—that is, the one leading to the former extinct unit.

Obviously, this should be the frequency of normal civilizations encountering wormholes, and it is also in line with Hong's speculation that "the mastermind behind the scenes does not distinguish between omnics and organisms".

But here comes the question-why did the same species encounter two wormholes in just 60 years, and the interval was only 7 years?

"I guess there should be some deeper reasons, but we don't know the inner mechanism yet."

In this regard, most of the scholars of the Maomeng League hold this view.

"maybe."

In the end, Hong could only choose to put this question on hold for the time being—if he wanted to explain it, he would most likely have to wait until he exchanged information with other so-called "enlightenment" civilizations.

But at least, now they have clarified two things, first, if they are destroyed before the bonus ball is released, the bonus ball will be swallowed; second, the extinct omnic destroys its creator and will not get a bonus ball.

Hong solemnly recorded it in his intelligence log, and placed it in the "behind the scene" incident group.

In this set of data is stored all the information that Hong has collected so far about the man behind the scenes—although every piece of information seems insignificant, but Hong believes that as long as she collects enough, one day, she will be able to recover from the crime. Find out the real purpose of the opponent from these vast intelligence.