Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 1619 Geological History of Two-Dimensional Planets

Subsequent observations by various civilizations within the Great Voyage Organization confirmed this, demonstrating that this short-range quantum macro-tunneling is indeed an instinct possessed by all life forms on this "star ring."

To two-dimensional beings, this ability is nothing special; everyone has it, and those who don't can't live on a planet.

Oh, no, that's not right either. Actually, there are some that don't know how, but they are not animals, they are plants.

After careful exploration, scientists discovered that the plants growing on the horizon of the two-dimensional planet did not intersect. Although their linear trunks and branches appeared to be "lush and leafy," they could not penetrate through each other's tree bodies to reach the other side.

The trees on the two-dimensional planet are quite interesting. Most trees, which are supposed to be "lush and leafy", are just a tangled mess when viewed from a three-dimensional perspective. However, the gourd people, who are two-dimensional beings, can move through this mess by instinct.

In the captured clips of the two-dimensional gourd people's lives, Yue Yuan had seen a scene where a group of two-dimensional gourd children were playing and frolicking in a forest. Just like in a two-dimensional animation, they could easily pass through the trees blocking their way, through the branches and leaves that looked like lines, and move around in the tangled forest.

It looked like a group of ghosts playing.

Another intriguing phenomenon is that, in observing the daily lives of two-dimensional people, Yue Yuan discovered that they are actually completely bilaterally symmetrical animals. They also have a power organ similar to a heart, but the heart is located in the very center of the body and is bilaterally symmetrical.

Because we initially observed them from a holistic perspective, we didn't notice their unique body structure, but once we did, we found it even more fascinating.

Although the heart of the two-dimensional gourd-shaped human is in the middle, their ingestion and excretion tracts are at the upper and lower ends of their body, and on different surfaces.

Logically, in a two-dimensional world, such a body structure would require them to perform a somersault on the spot, rotating their head 180 degrees while their mouth is facing left to right, in order to determine whether they should move left or right.

However, if you do that, then after turning around, although you can change direction left and right, its mouth will be on the ground and its rear end will be on top.

Surprisingly, these two-dimensional gourd-shaped figures are not like that; they can actually turn left and right in place, just like in the "Super Mario" game from the 80s and 90s.

Logically, such left and right turns should be achieved through a third dimension, but they can achieve smooth left and right turns in a two-dimensional plane.

This phenomenon is very common.

Point the detector at any two-dimensional gourd-shaped figure on the street, or any wild animal, and you'll see that their left and right turns are incredibly smooth.

Further observation revealed that during this left-right structural transformation, they were also undergoing quantum macro-tunneling changes of their bodies along the intermediate axis.

It can be said that quantum macrotunneling within this two-dimensional biosphere is a fundamental element of the birth of life and an instinct of almost all animals in the biosphere.

See the essence from the phenomenon.

Although scientists from various civilizations within the Great Voyage Organization haven't yet studied the evolutionary history of this planet, they can roughly deduce it from the phenomena observed so far. When primitive life first appeared on this planet, there certainly weren't any creatures with this ability, but since they couldn't turn left or right, they could only turn by rotating 180 degrees up and down—perhaps that's actually possible.

In order to uncover the truth, the Great Voyage Organization first deciphered the language and script of the two-dimensional gourd people, and then browsed their recorded geological history.

It didn't matter if I didn't look, but once I did, I found that the information recorded was almost exactly what I had guessed.

Their geological history is indeed documented in relevant literature.

Scientists have found relevant records in the accounts of the two-dimensional gourd people. In that era when they could not turn smoothly left or right, they called them up-and-down tumbling creatures, and they called that geological era the Tumbling Period.

During the Tumbleweed period, animals lacked the ability to turn left or right through quantum macrotunneling; they could only turn by flipping 180 degrees up or down. This mechanism was not significantly affected in the primitive two-dimensional ocean environment, since animals could avoid each other by moving upstream and downstream.

It was precisely because of these advantages that the creatures of the Tectonic Period flourished, to the point that some remnants of Tectonic Period organisms still exist in the oceans today. During their heyday, they even ventured onto land.

To adapt to life on land, the creatures of the Tumbleweed period either evolved round bodies for tumbling and turning, or evolved the flagella originally used for swimming into "feet" on both the head and the bottom.

Of course, this is the name that the modern people of the two-dimensional gourds use to refer to the creatures of that time. The accurate term is actually "vertically symmetrical animals." Most animals in the Rolling Period evolved a vertically symmetrical body structure to adapt to the environment so that they could still see the world from the same perspective after being flipped over.

Unfortunately, due to extreme climate change, a mass extinction event occurred on the two-dimensional planet, and almost all the life forms of the Rolling Age survived.

Before the Tumble Period, there was an even older geological period known as the Congestion Period.

During the Congestion Period, there was also a group of organisms that flourished. However, unlike the Rolling Period, the organisms of the Congestion Period did not go extinct due to natural disasters. Instead, their sheer number caused a massive biological congestion event on the entire two-dimensional planet, which led to their mass extinction.

It must be said that the name "Congestion Chronicle" is very fitting.

Specifically, at the beginning of that era, the two-dimensional planet was in a period of extreme cold, during which most of the water turned into ice, leaving only a few small and shallow areas of ocean.

But that environment was just right for the life of the Congested Era creatures, so they multiplied and grew in large numbers. Their footprints also crossed from the ocean to the land, where they flourished. This was because the creatures of that era basically did not need to cannibalize each other; they only needed to bask in the sunlight to survive, and the energy they obtained from basking in the sunlight could support their activities.

From a human perspective, the creatures of the Congestion Era were basically all in a vegetative state.

After those walking and active plant people from the Congested Age, who could grow and live simply by absorbing two-dimensional sunlight, came ashore, their development became unstoppable due to the increased access to sunlight.

Thus they entered an era of prosperity and flourishing.

(End of this chapter)