Chapter 171 Time Dilation Effect

The current situation is more complicated. The temperature inside the spacecraft is slowly decreasing, but it will stop decreasing after reaching a certain level, because there is a lot of magma at the bottom, which is heating up all the time!

Moreover, after people blocked some of the entrances and exits, the temperature has a tendency to rise again.

Fortunately, the purple metal of Noah has good heat resistance and heat insulation, so that the heat is not transferred to the radiation wall, and humans are not cooked.

The internal environment is very bad and needs to be repaired urgently. This problem should not be a big problem.

The external environment can only be said to be very strange... From time to time, high-energy gamma rays pass by outside the spacecraft, and sometimes they will hit the spacecraft again, increasing the kinetic energy of the spacecraft.

Scientists estimate that Noah is flying in space at a very high speed.

Yes, very high!

This is not a joke, it can even be said... close to the speed of light!

"According to calculations, it should be more than 0.98 times the speed of light! We are traveling at 0.98 times the speed of light!"

When talking about this, a group of scientists even forgot their many worries, and their faces were full of enthusiasm, and they all exclaimed that they had opened their eyes.

Thanks to the supernova explosion, mankind is advancing into the unknown outer space at an unprecedented high speed!

The stellar explosion is really a super strong driving force, much stronger than the nuclear bomb explosion...

0.98 times the speed of light, the relativistic effect is already very serious. In this case, the kinetic mass of the spacecraft has changed from the original 1.0386 million tons to 5.2191 million tons, which is about five times the original.

In other words, Noah received more than 4 million tons of mass from the supernova explosion, and all of this mass was converted into the kinetic energy of the spacecraft.

It sounds exaggerated, but it is actually normal if you think about it carefully. Noah is so large in size and its density is almost zero (about 0.000073 kg/cubic meter), it is easy to be pushed by infinite light pressure.

4 million tons is not a lot of mass. When the sun burns normally, this is the mass consumed in 1 second. Now the sun's energy of 10 billion years is released instantly, and what Noah receives is just a drop in the bucket, equivalent to only one in 30 trillion.

But this kinetic energy is ridiculously large for humans. It is impossible to stop the spacecraft by ordinary deceleration methods alone!

Rocket reverse propulsion? Don't even think about it!

Fortunately, due to the peculiar nature of Noah, there is a "beyond deceleration plan". As long as the material is thrown out, the spacecraft can be decelerated quickly.

So humans don't worry about the deceleration problem at all. For humans, the most important thing is to find a rich earth-like planet on the way forward, and then stop and keep mining...

Speaking of this, several scientists discussed it casually.

"Meet a planet? Easier said than done... The universe is empty after all. The probability is very low!"

"Yes, but the speed of our spacecraft will only be faster than 0.98 times the speed of light, not slower. Because large-scale reconnaissance equipment cannot detect Noah, we cannot make an accurate estimate. This is just the most conservative estimate."

"...Maybe it's faster!"

"The time dilation effect caused by high-speed navigation can expand our search range..."

Yu Yifeng sighed and nodded again.

The mysteries of the universe are endless, one of which is the "relativistic effect" under high-speed motion.

The speed of light is a very magical speed. Even in a sub-light-speed spacecraft, observing a beam of light inside or outside the spacecraft, you will find that its speed is still the speed of light relative to the observer. Whether the direction of movement of this beam of light is relative to the observer or the same direction, it is still the speed of light... This is the principle of the constancy of the speed of light in relativity.

"Relativistic effect" is divided into "time dilation", "length contraction" and "dynamic mass". For a high-speed moving object, if we observe it from a stationary side, we will find that its time will expand, its size will shrink, and its mass will increase!

But the high-speed moving object itself has no feeling.

"The time dilation effect is very beneficial for interstellar navigation. At 0.98 times the speed of light, the time we feel becomes one-fifth of the original time, which is very helpful to cross the long navigation time."

"The 3 months we feel is 15 months in the outside world. So, according to the timeline outside, we have been away from the sun for 15 months! It is 1.3 light years away from the original Mars!"

At this point, many scientists feel very magical. This is a very obvious relativistic effect that humans really experience. And such a relativistic effect is a good thing for humans, which means that they can fly farther in their lifetime!

Flying farther means that humans have a greater probability of encountering planets or stars!

"Forget it if you encounter an ordinary meteorite group... We must encounter a rich enough planet to stop."

"Yes." Yu Yifeng also agreed. If they don't run out of options, they will never be satisfied with some ordinary meteorite groups.

Such a high-speed operation opportunity is rare. Once humans slow down the spacecraft, they will no longer be able to accelerate it to such a high speed.

Humans do not have the ability to detonate another star to propel the spacecraft.

So people must find a good place to settle down and cannot be satisfied with a small meteorite group.

Yu Yifeng has made up his mind that people must develop into a true interstellar civilization at the new place of settlement!

For ordinary people, the psychological experience now is very strange. Although the ultra-high-speed movement of the spacecraft has not changed people's daily life, in everyone's mind, there is a feeling that one day in heaven is one year on earth. (In a spacecraft close to the speed of light, all physical phenomena are the same and do not change people's daily life.)

There is a very famous conjecture called the twin paradox, which goes like this: there is a pair of young twin brothers, one of whom boarded a spacecraft and traveled in space at a speed close to the speed of light, while the other stayed on Earth.

As a result, when the traveler returned to Earth, he found that his brother who stayed on Earth was already sixty years old, while his age had only increased by one year.

This twin paradox is caused by the "time dilation" in the relativistic effect.

Because of this psychological experience, a wave of learning craze about relativity has been triggered...

However, what the new government is most concerned about is to know what the starry sky outside is like and where humans have come to. But it is impossible to do it now, even scientists cannot do it.

In this extremely high speed situation, in addition to the high-energy radiation from the sun, even other particles in the universe are very dangerous.

The universe is close to a vacuum, but there are also a small number of particles. There is about 1 particle per cubic centimeter in interstellar space. In the vast void between the Milky Way and other galaxies, the number of particles per cubic centimeter is 10-6, that is, there is only 1 particle in 1 cubic meter.

For sub-light-speed spacecraft, these almost stationary particles are simply a nightmare. When the two collide, there will be a certain degree of explosion!

Although the explosion power of each particle is not high, the accumulation is like the continuous bombing of TNT explosives

Therefore, the surface of Noah is exploding all the time, and the speed is gradually decreasing, but the process of this decrease is extremely slow. Moreover, after the high-energy rays from the sun hit Noah, it will still provide it with some kinetic energy.

For this reason, no detection instrument can directly detect Noah, otherwise it will be directly smashed into pieces by interstellar particles or high-energy rays!

Even a gravitational wave telescope cannot feel the gravitational waves outside in the spacecraft, and it must be detected.

Scientists are trying to solve this problem.

The simplest way is to put the large-scale detection equipment on the side facing away from the direction of Noah's movement, so that at least interstellar particles can't hit it...

Friends, I saw someone helping me to send out recommendation tickets today. Thank you for your kindness.

But you really don't have to spend money. That place is full of robots and plug-ins. It's hard for ordinary people to grab it, so you can just vote for the free ones.

Next month, if you see a monthly ticket red envelope, you can also grab it, and you don't have to leave it for me.