Voyage of the Stars.

Chapter 710 A Black Hole

Sailing time is always boring, but humans would rather continue sailing in this boring way, because it means that no civilization has discovered their route, which means they are safe.

When we reach the Perseus spiral arm, the density between stars gradually increases, but because it is still at the edge of the arm, it is not too dense. The average distance between stars is about seventy light years, which is close enough for the route across the spiral arm, which also means that humans do not need to worry about resources.

With technology at the fourth level of civilization, as long as there is a star system, energy can be obtained. Even if there is no rocky planet, enough light elements such as hydrogen, helium and hydrogen can be obtained from gas planets, and then used for light nuclear fusion to obtain energy. The light nuclear fusion energy is then used as a reactor to separate and obtain the antimatter of hydrogen molecules.

Of course, without rocky planets, there would be no way to obtain heavy metal elements. However, the universe is so big and there are so many stars in the Perseus Arm that humans don’t have to worry about this. If there is no rocky planet, we can just continue to move on to the next star system. After all, we won’t use up all the fuel on each voyage.

With an average stop distance of 70 light years, humans do not plan to travel star by star, but instead travel at least 300 light years each time. A human fleet can travel 500 light years at a time with a full tank of fuel, and traveling only 300 light years is mainly to save fuel to deal with possible emergencies, and not traveling 70 light years at a time is for concealment and time saving.

In this way, the human fleet sailed along the edge of the Perseus Arm, year after year.

Suddenly, at a certain point in time, Tianqin received a message from the exploration team, saying that a medium-mass black hole was found near the route, less than 5 light years away from the route, and asked Tianqin whether to change the route.

It’s less than 5 light years, which is very close. Getting too close will affect the warp navigation, so of course we have to change the route.

Upon receiving the news, the Tianqin immediately ordered the "Light of the Milky Way" to change its route based on the detection information. It did not directly change the entire route, but turned a corner in the void, bypassed the black hole and continued to move towards the destination. The human fleet has surplus fuel for each voyage, so turning a few corners in outer space is not a problem.

After conveying the order to the entire fleet, human scientists were not idle either. After their application was approved, they sent more detectors to the area where the black hole was located.

Black holes are the most mysterious celestial bodies in the universe. Humans have previously observed them from afar. After setting foot in the starry sky, humans have been busy running around and have neither the time nor the experience to get close to a black hole for observation. This time is an opportunity.

The fleet passed near a black hole, and scientists certainly did not want to miss the opportunity to observe the black hole up close, so this black hole detection mission was launched.

Unmanned probes are one thing, and after obtaining approval from the new government departments, the scientists also dispatched three research vessels, and the researchers and scientists themselves were also on the research vessels.

Of course, since the black hole needs to be observed at close range, the new government naturally cannot send only three scientific research ships and unmanned exploration spacecraft. Some escort warships are still needed. A battleship squadron led by a planetary battleship and carrying thousands of sea-class battleships carried out the escort mission.

However, although it is a close-up observation, in fact, with the current human technology, it is impossible to get very close. Close distance is only relative to previous human observations of black holes. This is an intermediate-mass black hole. After preliminary observations, human scientists preliminarily estimated its mass to be about 130 times the mass of the sun. Intermediate-mass black holes belong to a type of black hole predicted by astronomical theory in the Earth era, and have also been confirmed by observations in the Earth era. However, this is the first time that humans have observed it at such a close distance.

According to the mass classification, the next level is the stellar mass black hole, and the next level is the supermassive black hole. In theory, there are also primordial black holes that were born the earliest and have extremely small scale and mass. Yes, that's right, primordial black holes are not the extremely huge black holes in the common impression. On the contrary, their scale and mass are extremely small.

According to the current definition of human physics, the mass of an intermediate-mass black hole ranges from one hundred to one hundred thousand times the mass of the sun.

A black hole with a mass of 130 times the mass of the sun obviously falls into this category. It is not a stellar black hole, which means that it is not formed by a supernova explosion of a star. Humans have long speculated and obtained relevant data from cosmic observations, believing that the formation of such black holes is the result of black hole mergers.

The purpose of the scientists' trip is to collect more data on the formation and evolution of medium-mass black holes, so as to improve human theory of cosmic evolution and add more scientific observation data to the human scientific treasure house. Such scientific investigation activities are crucial for a scientific and technological civilization, and they are the accumulation of quantitative changes in scientific development.

Generally speaking, when a very massive star runs out of fuel, its core collapses under the influence of gravity, and then a supernova explosion occurs to form a black hole. However, traditional human astronomical theory believes that black holes with masses between 65 and 135 solar masses will not be produced when a star collapses.

The reason is that when the core mass of a star is greater than 65 times the mass of the sun, the high-energy gamma rays inside it are effectively converted into electron-positron pairs, a phenomenon known as pair instability. The pressure generated by these particle pairs is much weaker than the light pressure of photons, allowing gravity to prevail.

The star's outer layers would collapse inward, and the star's nuclear fuel would accelerate in an uncontrollable manner, with the result that the star would leave no trace of a black hole after the explosion, but would be completely blown to pieces in an explosion of light.

Humans have naturally never seen such a process, but scientists can confirm the correctness of this theory from another aspect by observing various types of black holes. The black hole in front of us is a good object of observation.

For example, collecting complete optical images of the black hole's accretion disk.

For safety reasons, human scientific expedition teams watched the black hole from a light-year away, while allowing unmanned probes to continue approaching to explore the various phenomena manifested by the black hole.

This area of ​​space is very empty. Judging from the age and distribution of stars in the nearby star field, it is indeed possible that two black holes merged. However, based on the current preliminary observation data, the time when this black hole merged should have been a long time ago, at least hundreds of millions of years ago.

After humans began to observe this black hole seriously, they soon discovered some strange phenomena.

(End of this chapter)