Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 1508 The Ultimate Application of the Weak Interaction Force

The attack came suddenly and covered a huge area. Since the Dream Lyra did not teleport away in advance when it "saw" the opponent charging up, it had no way to dodge the attack after it was launched.

The pilots on the Lyra in third-person mode could see that the fully charged vacuum zero point was swallowed up by the microscopic world and then disappeared without a trace. Immediately afterwards, the microscopic world around them changed.

Human civilization's assessment of this is the same as that of the Galactic Center civilization: it is an attack carried out by mapping the microscopic to the macroscopic, that is, by mapping the high-dimensional to the low-dimensional.

Clearly, this is yet another form of attack that cannot be affected by the collapse of the world.

No wonder the Galactic Heart civilization was so anxious, even calling out to the Lyra to urge them to act quickly. It seems they realized that the collapse of the world had not had much impact on the unknown civilization.

If the driver in third-person driving mode observes it, it is equivalent to the Lyra detecting it.

What rules were changed?
The observational data was quickly compiled into the string-based computer, and the answer immediately appeared before humanity.

The driver, who was focused on observing the microscopic environment, only sensed that a type of Calabiki space rule had been altered. He didn't know exactly how it had changed, but the change directly led to the quark flavor transformation phenomenon.

The unknown civilization does not seem to have absolute control over this technology. Of course, perhaps because it is used as a weapon, the quark flavor transformation attacks they launch have no pattern. That is, the type of quark flavor transformation is not fixed, but changes randomly. This also results in the generation of all kinds of elements by the target being hit, rather than becoming a specific element.

If these parameters could be controlled in a targeted manner, that would be the ultimate solution.

Because that is a matter structure that is truly changed by altering the number of protons in the atomic nucleus, thus transforming one substance into another.

Everyone knows that matter is made up of molecules, molecules are made up of atoms, atoms are made up of a nucleus and electrons, the nucleus is made up of protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons are made up of quarks. Quarks cannot be further divided due to the quark confinement principle.

Therefore, by altering the changes in the number of protons in atoms caused by the alteration of quark properties, the fundamental properties of matter can be completely changed. The scientific basis for altering the properties of quarks is quark flavor change.

A proton is composed of two up quarks and one down quark, while a neutron is composed of one up quark and two down quarks. To transform one element into another or its isotopes, its mass number must be increased or decreased—either by increasing or decreasing the number of protons or neutrons.

To put it simply, the attack from that unknown civilization directly changed the "flavor" of the up quark, turning it into a down quark.

Admittedly, the force binding quarks is the strong interaction, but the force that causes quarks to change flavor is the weak interaction.

Through the decay mechanism of weak interaction, an up quark in a proton changes to a down quark, thus turning the proton into a neutron and releasing a positron. This is positive beta decay, which releases a positron, or electron antimatter.

Often, the instability of atomic structure is not due to too many electrons, but rather too few. In such cases, it is necessary to increase the number of protons to stabilize the atomic structure.

Similarly, increasing the number of protons can still be achieved through quark "flavor" changes.

For example, by transforming a down quark in a neutron into an up quark through the weak interaction, the neutron becomes a proton. This process releases electrons (beta particles), as well as positrons and neutrinos. Since this unknown, long-established cosmic civilization possesses such a method of attack, it's reasonable to assume they have other related applications within their civilization, given that various technologies and derivative technologies are often interconnected.

One can imagine that their civilization could easily obtain any element they wanted. With enough energy, they could turn a stone into gold and any handful of soil into food.

If a program to alter the structure of matter is written beforehand, then magic truly becomes reality.

Perhaps the so-called quark-flavor transformation attack is not the only ultimate application of the weak interaction, but only its application in warfare. The most practical ultimate application of the weak interaction might be in production development and the construction of convenient facilities within a civilization.

One can imagine what life would be like for the people of a civilization that has mastered the ultimate application of the weak interaction force.

It's not hard to imagine that they might actually have the ability to "pluck a single hair and blow out ten thousand monkeys".

The Awakener can create things from nothing through dream creation, while the ultimate application of the weak interaction can have ever-changing methods.

Compared to the full deformation technology of silicon-based conglomerates back then, this technology was not as practical.

That said, faced with such a blow, the Lyra Dream didn't react at all and just kept maintaining its warp speed.

The stars in the surrounding sky had all transformed into planets that looked like a Frankenstein's monster, but the Dream Lyra remained completely unaffected, as if it had become an unselectable warship.

The attack has taken effect, but this attack, which works on quarks, cannot affect the Lyra Dream.

The rhythmic movement of the Lyra didn't even pause for a moment.

In fact, after detecting the external features of the Dream Lyra, the unknown civilization deduced that the warship might be built with the Calabiki manifold as its hull design. Initially, they thought it was somewhat exaggerated, but after an ineffective attack, no matter how far-fetched the conclusion seemed, they had no choice but to believe it.

Perhaps because they were mentally prepared, the unknown civilization did not panic after discovering that the Lyra seemed immune to their attacks, but immediately changed its attack method.

As a result, the Lyra, which was still in warp speed mode, immediately sensed the change in the environment. The first thing to be changed was the spatial parameters, which made warp speed even more difficult. It seemed that the unknown civilization wanted to slow down the Lyra's speed in this way.

At the same time, after modifying its spatial parameters, the equilateral triangle warship immediately adopted a frog-leap motion to jump backward, attempting to maintain distance from the Dream Lyra. Its warp speed also instantly increased to three thousand times the speed of light.

Ignoring this reaction, the Lyra immediately resumed its continuous microscopic high-dimensional jumps once the engine recovered.

More than twenty consecutive jumps propelled the Lyra forward another 20,000 light-years in one go. However, since the enemy wasn't foolishly waiting in place, the distance between them remained outside the attack range.

(End of this chapter)