When Zhao Changxing and others returned to the Yuanhang spacecraft, the space carrier that sent people here was of no use. Its fate will be the same as those of the spacecraft that were disposed of before, staying in the solar system forever in another way.
At this moment, it already has an extremely high speed, which gives it extremely high kinetic energy. After a slight orbital correction, it will hit Vesta at a smaller angle, transferring all of its energy to the dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, changing its forward trajectory.
This is the last ship left to be disposed of.
Under people's gaze, it gradually moved away from the Yuanhang spacecraft, flew into the vast space, and disappeared.
At this moment, the speed of the Yuanhang spacecraft has increased to about 800 kilometers per second, and is still rising.
As emergent faults are dealt with one by one, and various emergencies and unexpected situations are continuously resolved, the antimatter annihilation reactor and ion thruster can finally reach the design efficiency.
For every second that passes, its speed increases by 0.02 meters.
At this moment, a total of about 400,000 people on the entire Yuan Voyage spacecraft were awake. All the remaining people, whether they are deep space people or Moyun Litar people, are in hibernation.
Life is still going on, just like people are still living in the space city in low-Earth orbit of the Sedna star.
After leaving Sedna, in the fourth year of the voyage, when the speed of the Yuanhang spacecraft increased to about 2,500 kilometers per second, through the telescope, Zhao Changxing finally saw that the previously arranged methods were working.
The spaceships left behind by humans, with a total mass of tens of billions of tons, hit the intended asteroid at the highest speed that their engines could support, changing its orbit and changing it from its original state of being harmless to humans and animals. , transformed into a world-destroying killer capable of changing the orbit of a dwarf planet like Vesta.
It begins hurtling towards the inner solar system. Moreover, under the acceleration of the sun's gravity, its speed will become faster and faster.
In the 17th year of the voyage, when the speed of the Yuanhang spacecraft increased to about 10,000 kilometers per second and the distance from the sun was as high as two trillion kilometers, the ultra-high-precision optical telescope array observed that the asteroid hit Vesta accurately. .
But whether its impact caused the expected orbital changes to Vesta is uncertain. Because it is so small, people can observe the impact, but at this moment it is not even possible to see what it actually looks like.
But it doesn’t matter. If its orbit really changes as expected, then in about five years, people will observe another impact near the sun in the accretion disk of the black hole. trace.
By then, by observing the gravitational disturbance of the black hole on the sun, we will be able to confirm whether it has produced the changes that people expect.
Now, keep sailing, keep accelerating.
The distance at this moment is about 70 times farther than the original distance between Sedna and the sun. But even at such a long distance, the sun's brightness is as high as -8.9 magnitude.
——It should have been only -7.6 magnitude, but compared to the past, the sun has become brighter due to the influence of black holes, so it has reached its current brightness.
For comparison, the brightness of Venus when viewed from the Earth is only magnitude -4.7, only a few tenths of the brightness of the Sun at this moment.
This brightness is even enough to cast shadows visible to the naked eye on objects.
This is the sun. Such a powerful sun.
This is a vast space more than one trillion kilometers away from the sun. This is a place that humans have never reached before. There is almost nothing here except interstellar dust. This place probably belongs to the category of the inner Oort cloud, but during these years of voyages, people have not observed any macroscopic stars.
not a single one. Even if it is as small as a pebble or a stone, it has not passed.
In front of human beings, the universe uses this extreme emptiness and vastness to unscrupulously demonstrate its power.
But it's not really empty here. Even here, there are on average one to ten molecules per cubic meter, as well as certain atoms and subatomic particles.
By comparison, there were approximately 400 billion molecules per cubic meter on the moon's surface.
The difference is huge and can be seen clearly.
But now, even such a thin material density has caused considerable trouble for the Yuanhang spacecraft.
The extremely high speed of the Yuanhang spacecraft makes the collision of these interstellar particles also have a very high energy. When they hit the outer shell of the Yuanhang spacecraft, they will excite various secondary radiations and seriously affect the facilities and equipment inside the spacecraft.
This is radiation that even the most advanced materials humans can create can only rely on sufficient thickness to withstand. At this moment, the speed of the Yuanhang spacecraft has only reached 0.33% of the speed of light.
In this almost empty space, the Yuanhang spacecraft was advancing rapidly.
Over the years, the Yuanhang spacecraft has passed through some small interstellar molecular clouds or atomic clouds, and every time it passed through, the sober spacecraft operation and maintenance personnel felt like they were facing a formidable enemy.
Compared with ordinary interstellar space, the average material density of interstellar molecular clouds may be tens of thousands of times higher than that of ordinary interstellar space. Correspondingly, the intensity of particle impact will increase tens of thousands of times. This makes people have to deal with it carefully.
People at this moment are just like people in the feudal era who explored the oceans above the earth and faced storms, rocks and other things. They try to avoid what they can, and they will force their way through what is really unavoidable.
From this point of view, it is very unwise to start a war using space vehicles that can reach extremely high speeds close to the stars. The reason is very simple. The density of matter near the star is too high. If the spacecraft does not have high enough protection, I am afraid that the spacecraft will be damaged by radiation before the war begins.
At the same time, if these interstellar materials are viewed from the perspective of war, they also have considerable strategic significance.
The defender can use these interstellar materials to arrange his own defense plan to prevent the enemy from quickly breaking through. If the attacker also has enough information, he can even find a safe navigation route and launch a surprise attack.
The information obtained during this voyage allowed Zhao Changxing to start thinking more deeply about everything about interstellar wars from a more fundamental perspective, from an overall perspective.
Anyway, most people are in hibernation at the moment, and there are not so many things for him to deal with. He spent all his free time studying and thinking.
This is a journey to comprehensively improve yourself and make yourself more adaptable to the development of civilization.
Time was still passing slowly. After another five years, the telescope, which had been paying attention to the direction of the sun, finally reported good news to Zhao Changxing.
People observed the black hole's unusual movements. This abnormal movement can only be caused by the impact of Vesta.
This means that the layout people left in the solar system before they left really has an effect.
From now on, the black hole will be much closer to the sun. The speed of swallowing solar matter will be faster, and the radiation released will be more intense. The environment in the solar system will be even worse.
"Leave this mess to the Moyunli Tal civilization to deal with."
The voyage continues. After the acceleration phase finally ended, and the Yuanhang spacecraft's speed had reached the predetermined speed of 24,000 kilometers per second, the distance between it and the sun expanded to about 14.5 trillion kilometers. Or...about 1.5 light years.
At this moment, even though the brightness of the sun has increased again compared to before, from this distance, its brightness has still dropped to magnitude -2.37.
This brightness is probably slightly dimmer than when Mars was seen from the Earth. But it's still a solid star.
It is still the brightest star in the sky.
After sailing again for more than 6 years, the distance between the Yuanhang spacecraft and the sun expanded to 2 light years.
This is a landmark distance. Because this means that from now on, the Yuanhang spacecraft has truly left the solar system and escaped the gravitational control of the sun.
This is the edge of the Solar System's Oort Cloud.
After this distance, the gravitational pull of the remaining stars will be greater than the gravitational pull of the Sun. The sun's gravity can no longer control the movement of any matter.
It's time to say goodbye for real.
But there was no ceremony at the moment. People are still busy maintaining the normal operation of the Yuan Voyage spacecraft. Zhao Changxing just came to the porthole of the spacecraft, looked at the brightest star in the universe through the special glass, and waved.
In the future, Zhao Changxing will still maintain his previous life trajectory. If there is a major emergency in the spacecraft, deal with it - these years have not been smooth sailing. In fact, on average there will be a major crisis every 1.2 years, which may even endanger the entire spacecraft if not handled properly. But luckily, every time it was handled smoothly.
In the most dangerous time, Zhao Changxing even had to urgently wake up more than 3,000 engineers, scientists and technicians to successfully deal with it.
In the rest of his free time, Zhao Changxing was constantly studying and thinking.
So far, he has even passed the doctoral final exams in more than twenty majors anonymously.
But this is still not enough. Far from enough.
Time is still passing slowly. When the distance from the sun expanded to about 6.6 light-years, Zhao Changxing, who was still studying, was awakened by a harsh alarm bell.
He glanced at the center console, but didn't find anything wrong with the spacecraft.
Xiao Xi's voice came over at this time.
"Captain, 5 seconds ago, there was a suspected violent explosion about 16,000 kilometers away from our spacecraft. Moreover, the source of the explosion seemed to maintain the same speed and course as us. Because I did not observe anything opposite to it. Changes in distance.”
Zhao Changxing's brows wrinkled slightly.
