Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 1428 Forty-eight thousand years old

All civilizations are now in motion.

Yue Yuan sat alone in the captain's cabin, the surrounding scenery switched to full exterior view mode. In this mode, he could sit there and see the cosmic environment, and of course, he could also see the images of human civilization probes coming in.

For example, right now, many images are floating in front of Yue Yuan. The images show the production and manufacturing of various civilizations, and each civilization is building experimental equipment that may explore the zero-point energy of the vacuum.

Behind these images lies the vast expanse of space.

After raising his hand to wave the 3D images floating in mid-air for a while, Yue Yuan pushed them all aside and then used both hands to zoom in on the deep background.

As can be seen from the changes in the display parameters of the full outdoor mode, the outdoor viewpoint is constantly zooming in as Yue Yuan moves, and the direction is clearly towards the Milky Way.

Yue Yuan wanted to take another look at the Milky Way through this method, but unfortunately he still couldn't see it even at the maximum magnification, which made him feel somewhat disappointed.

The Milky Way is about 7.5 million light-years away from here in a straight line, which is very far on an astronomical scale. The Great Expedition Organization went through many hardships to get here, but from the perspective of a telescope, this scale is actually visible.

Unfortunately, the Milky Way is obscured by other galaxies.

"It's been about 1.6 million years since we left the Milky Way," Yue Yuan muttered to himself as he gave up on observation. He didn't look at the timeline of human civilization's records, but he figured it was about 1.6 million years.

This is the time span of human civilization.

The time span is enormous, measured in hundreds of millions of years, but in reality, the journey from the Milky Way to the edge of the Boötes Great Void, even with its detours and circuitous routes, would only take tens of millions of years.

The most time-consuming part is actually after entering the Great Hollow, where the entire journey is by air. Basically, the distance is as far as the distance is, or how many light-years away, and it will take just as many years to fly. Oh no, if you add in the stops for construction, resupply, and other activities, it will take even longer.

When they left the Milky Way, everyone expected that a Type 6 civilization with a warp speed of 213 times would reach the edge of the Great Void in about 700 million light-years, which would take about three to four million years.

But that's the ideal scenario where a completely linear warp-speed spacecraft reaches the edge of the Great Void in a single trip; the reality is much more complex than imagined.

"It's been over a hundred million years!"

After thinking for a moment, Yue Yuan sighed again. Over a hundred million years! That's such a long time. But he always felt that the first half of the Great Voyage took much longer than the time after entering the Great Void. In fact, his senses told him the same thing.

Perhaps because he was in hibernation in the later stages, the feeling that time passed quickly despite the long duration made Yue Yuan feel somewhat unreal. How to describe this feeling? It was like waking up in the evening but having the illusion of morning.

"What exactly is time?"

The absurd feeling made Yue Yuan start to daydream. Although he was not a real great scientist and his main work was not in scientific research, he had lived for so long that the knowledge he had accumulated had actually reached the level of a great scientist.

Therefore, sometimes the knowledge in his brain will also make some wonderful connections in his mind along with his subjective thoughts.

Yue Yuan is not stagnant; he continues to learn new knowledge. Over the years, several batches of brilliant scientists have emerged in human civilization, all succumbing to the ravages of time, but Yue Yuan remains young and vigorous.

Time seemed to have left no trace on him, as did Lu Xiaofen.

The gold content of that red gas from back then seems to be increasing; it's hard to imagine that it came from a Type IV civilization's spaceship.

If it weren't for the fear of going insane from staying awake for too long, Yue Yuan would have loved to try staying awake all the time during his time in the Great Void and see how long he could live.

Even now, humanity has not yet unraveled the secret of Yue Yuan. All that is known is that it must be a kind of anti-entropy factor, but it seems to be very different from the anti-entropy factors that everyone knows. Unfortunately, the reason for the difference remains unknown.

Yue Yuan and Lu Xiaofen had actually been research subjects for the Human Life Academy. They had undergone all sorts of investigations, including genetic testing, mental detection, and various scans, but to no avail. Human scientists could only conclude that it was highly likely something created by a civilization possessing unique technologies related to anti-entropy; otherwise, it would be impossible for them not to understand it.

Ever since human civilization mastered unique technologies, Yue Yuan has thought more than once: it would be great if this thing worked on genius scientists.

Unfortunately, only he and Lu Xiaofen among all of humanity possessed this ability, and neither of them were genius scientists.

"Maybe I haven't tried hard enough?"

Yue Yuan shook his head, recalling his experiences communicating with many genius scientists, and thinking about how he differed from those genius scientists.

He felt that if he could understand human-specific technologies, with his lifespan many times longer than a tortoise's, he could definitely ensure that human-specific technologies would not be outdated.

Unfortunately, understanding and mastering specialized technologies is like mastering them—it's almost like a mystical art.

Just like Long Xinglv back then, he didn't understand at first, but one day he suddenly understood, as if his mind had suddenly opened up, and he didn't make any sense.

Thinking wildly was useless, so Yue Yuan finally shook his head to clear his mind of all this nonsense. Then he turned off the full outdoor mode, got up, left the captain's cabin, and went to his post to do what he was supposed to do.

Human civilization has begun research on vacuum zero-point energy. Although some specific experimental equipment is not yet completed, various laboratories have already started working, such as implementing experimental design projects.

At the command of the interstellar government, scientists from all relevant scientific fields threw themselves into the effort, while Yue Yuan's role was to command, coordinate, and manage the overall situation.

In fact, the existence of vacuum zero-point energy was discovered by humans during Earth's time. The Dutch scientist Casimir proposed a method to detect the existence of this energy, which is the well-known Casimir effect.

Since then, humanity has known that when two neutral metal plates are placed parallel to each other with a very small gap in a vacuum, an attraction will occur between the metal plates. This phenomenon, which does not occur in classical mechanics, is called the Casimir effect.

It is also known as the Casimir force, and is a manifestation of vacuum quantum fluctuations.

Humans have long recognized that all fields experience fluctuations, especially electromagnetic fields. At any given moment, the measured value of a quantum fluctuation has a constant, even at absolute zero.

(End of this chapter)