Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 701 A Pleasant Discovery

The universe is indeed vast, and humans who have reached level four civilization have a deeper sense of this.

Because even with such a high level of interstellar navigation capability, and having traveled hundreds of light years, we still have not discovered any planets with life along the way, let alone encountered other alien civilizations.

Sometimes humans are a little suspicious that the many alien civilizations they encountered before were specially arranged by the Awakener 'Phantom'. But now, humans think that the Awakener 'Phantom' is still busy with the war with the Reapers and has no time to watch human civilization. Therefore, humans do not encounter alien civilizations as frequently as before as if it was arranged.

Humans were right in guessing that the Awakener 'Phantom' was no longer staring at them, but they were wrong about the war between the Awakeners and the Reapers.

After all, there is no relevant information, so it is normal to guess wrong. Of course, humans don’t know it now, and they still think that the war will last for tens of thousands of years.

Humans are still on the star path, heading towards the end of the Orion spiral arm, but there is no exact destination. During this period, humans have not given up observing the vast Milky Way, and they have not given up that glimmer of hope.

During warp speed travel, it is indeed difficult to observe the stars in the Milky Way through the light in outer space due to the superluminal speed. Therefore, every time they stop to resupply, astronomers are eager to deploy the array of survey telescopes and observe the stars.

There are two purposes. One is to locate one's position in the Milky Way, which is very important. If you are not careful when sailing in the starry sky, you will get lost in the vast sea of ​​stars, so every time you stop, you are positioning and correcting the route. The second is to observe and find the position of the star map given by the pioneer diamond crystal drift bottle. This is what humans have always insisted on and have never given up for many years.

After years of persisting in astronomical observations, a delightful discovery was finally made one day.

Well, one day. Although human individuals can now stay awake for a month without sleeping, the unit of time is still the time concept of the Earth era. First, human society is used to such a unit of measurement. Second, no matter how the unit of time is changed, it will not affect scientific research itself, but will only cause unnecessary confusion to human society itself.

Today is the last day for humans to complete resource replenishment and prepare to set foot on the star map again. Relevant departments have been urging astronomical departments to quickly put away the sky survey telescope array. Unfortunately, astronomers seem to have procrastination and have delayed for half a day.

So, when the survey telescope array rotated to a certain direction of the starry sky, they discovered several stars that seemed a bit like those shown on the star map.

The reason why we say it is somewhat similar but not certain is because of the observation angle. The positioning method used by humans in interstellar navigation today is still the same as before, using familiar celestial bodies and familiar constellations to locate their position.

After setting foot in the starry sky, pulsar positioning is no longer practical because humans no longer stay in a fixed place like the Earth. So although pulsars are very stable, their two-axis pulses, like a starry sky flashlight, cannot always be able to scan the area where humans are located.

So in fact, after humans changed their position, some pulsars that were originally visible through the sky survey telescope array will no longer be visible, and of course some other pulsars that were originally invisible will also be visible.

In this case, humans first determine the direction of the galactic center to determine their approximate location, and then find familiar constellations by observing the stars, and then compare the observation results of their previous location to determine their current location.

So when astronomers discovered that the star combination in a certain starry sky was a bit like the star map provided by the Pioneer diamond crystal drift bottle, they immediately compared the observed starry sky with the previous starry sky with great joy and expectation, and then converted the starry sky observed at the current location of humans into a 3D star map with the help of strong artificial intelligence.

Then, they retrieved the star map given by the pioneers for comparison.

The star map provided by the pioneers was certainly not a piece of parchment, nor a flat drawing, but an advanced 3D image map that could be rotated and viewed from all angles. The reason why astronomers wanted to convert the starry sky they observed into a 3D map was to be able to match it with the pioneers' star map. However, this comparison made them burst with excitement.

"Found it, found it! It's definitely the location in the star map, it must be, it must be here!" an astronomer shouted excitedly.

Just now, it thought that only the number and position of stars matched, but the types of stars did not match. However, after his colleagues added the factor of "time" to the cosmic evolution model, the two star maps matched. Although it was not a perfect match, the slight difference was within the allowable range of observational error. Moreover, human theories of cosmic evolution and stellar evolution are not necessarily correct in every aspect, so it is normal to have some deviations.

The news soon spread to the entire human upper echelons.

Finding the location shown in the star map would definitely be a big deal, because everyone knows that it is a small universe left by the pioneers in the Milky Way. The diamond crystal drift bottle has already shown that it is what the pioneers left for the new generation of civilization in the Milky Way.

The things left behind by a civilization capable of embarking on a long voyage must be good things, and humans cannot miss them. Especially after receiving the things given by the Awakener, humans are even more looking forward to the things left behind by the pioneers.

Maybe they also left their special technology products in the Milky Way like the Awakener did. And what is the special technology of the Pioneer? It is quantum macro-tunneling! If humans really get that thing, combined with the consciousness link system given by the Awakener, I dare not say that they can fight across civilization levels, but they are definitely invincible in the same level of civilization.

Of course, this is just human imagination. We can only know what is in the pioneer microcosm after we arrive there. And it has been three billion years, maybe the things inside have already decayed under the erosion of time.

But as long as there is still hope, humans don't want to give up.

However, after seeing the exact location of the star map, everyone was dumbfounded.

There is no other reason. The location of the star map is the Perseus Arm, and the spiral arm where humans are now is called the Orion Arm, which is a branch arm of the Centaurus Arm.

In other words, humans must sail across the spiral arm to reach their destination.

Cross-spiral arm sailing was something that humans could not even think of before. Even if they have mastered warp sailing and reached a warp speed of 10.079 times the speed of light, it is impossible to cross the spiral arm directly in one go, because the void between the two spiral arms is too vast, and it is impossible to cross it in one go without resupply.

Now, if humans want to go to the location indicated by the star map, there are two ways. One is to move towards the center of the Milky Way, go around the Perseus spiral arm when you reach the center of the Milky Way, and then turn back from the Perseus spiral arm. The other is to find an area where the two spiral arms are closest, and then follow the star road there to cross the stars one by one.

The space between the spiral arms is not entirely empty. There are stars between them, but the distances between them are very far.

The good news is that humans have calculated that the destination of the star map is just opposite the spiral arm where we are now, and is also on the edge.

If you can cross the spiral arm, you can reach it directly.

(End of this chapter)