Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 195 New Territory
Alchemy has been a dream of human civilization since ancient times. Throughout history, countless sorcerers have dedicated their entire lives to the field of alchemy, but never succeeded.

Unexpectedly, during the space escape voyage, Li Qingsong inadvertently achieved this.

It may seem strange to "refine" gold from hydrocarbons, but the principle is actually very simple.

Nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, etc. involve material changes at the atomic nucleus level. In fact, they are not that sophisticated and must be achieved in sophisticated equipment.

The universe is full of interstellar high-energy radiation and particles with extremely high speeds and kinetic energy.

At this moment, Li Qingsong's fleet was traveling at a speed of 8% of the speed of light, so the particles that originally did not have such high kinetic energy also passively possessed extremely high kinetic energy during the collision, and as a result, high-energy interstellar particle collisions became more and more frequent.

The carbon and hydrogen nuclei that make up this special plastic sheet may be hit by these particles, resulting in either an extra or a missing proton, which manifests externally as nuclear fission or nuclear fusion.

That’s right, in fact, during this voyage, changes that can release huge amounts of energy are occurring every minute and every second in the material that makes up the plastic sheet.

As a result, their elemental composition was also changed. In the material that originally contained only carbon and hydrogen atoms, atoms of dozens of other elements appeared out of thin air.

After refining and purification, they became gold bars, iron blocks, tin blocks, etc. placed in front of Li Qingsong.

Of course, the higher the atomic number of an element, the smaller its formation amount, because the higher the atomic number, the more difficult it is to form.

According to Li Qingsong's estimate, under the current situation, on average, about 30 grams of gold will be produced out of thin air every year.

Of course, if the speed continues to increase, causing high-energy interstellar particle collisions to become more frequent and intense, the efficiency of this "alchemy" will increase again.

“Let’s use it for industrial purposes.”

After sighing, Li Qingsong threw these materials into various factories. The plastic sheets that had been "eroded" by these impurities and were riddled with holes were reshaped and made as smooth as new again after production, and were thrown into the warehouse waiting to be used.

In addition to the "alchemy" that surprised Li Qingsong, there were many more strange phenomena that caught his attention at a speed of 8% of the speed of light.

He saw that the colors of the thousands of shining stars in front of the fleet seemed to have changed slightly.

They seemed to be getting a little bluer.

This amplitude was extremely small. Even the clone where Li Qingsong's consciousness resided, which had undergone thousands of genetic optimizations and possessed super vision, could only barely perceive this.

Behind the fleet, the color of the stars turned slightly redder, also with a very small amplitude.

Li Qingsong knew that this was due to redshift and blueshift.

Light waves have similar properties to sound waves. When moving forward, their wavelength shortens and their frequency increases. When moving backward, their wavelength lengthens and their frequency decreases.

The color of light is determined by its wavelength.

Because our fleet was traveling at a speed of about 2.4 kilometers per second, the colors of the stars changed.

Based on the Doppler formula corrected by the theory of relativity, Li Qingsong calculated that the color of the star in front became about 8.3% bluer, while the color of the star behind became about 7.7% redder.

The amplitude is so small that it's no wonder the clone can only barely perceive it.

Of course, for instruments and equipment, this change is extremely obvious.

In fact, beyond the color changes perceptible to the naked eye, the stars undergo even more changes due to their current high-speed travel. Stars typically radiate electromagnetic waves across the full spectrum, differing only in energy. However, some electromagnetic waves, due to their long wavelengths and low frequencies, or short wavelengths and high frequencies, are beyond the limits of observation by scientific equipment.

But this specific wavelength of electromagnetic waves may carry many mysteries about the internal operating mechanisms of stars.

It was not observable in the past, but it is different now.

Because in front of the fleet, those electromagnetic waves that were originally unobservable, with wavelengths too long and frequencies too low, now have their wavelengths shortened and their frequencies increased through the blueshift effect, thus entering the observable area from the unobservable area and can be captured by radio telescopes.

Later, through the redshift effect, electromagnetic waves with wavelengths that are too short and frequencies that are too high can be brought into the observation range.

As a result, signals that Li Qingsong had been unable to observe or capture in the past entered the equipment in large quantities, revealing to Li Qingsong the mysteries hidden behind the curtains.

Li Qingsong vaguely felt that he seemed to have created an unprecedented field of astronomy.

"Besides visible light astronomy, infrared astronomy, X-ray astronomy, neutrino astronomy, gravitational wave astronomy, and so on, can this field now be considered high-speed astronomy?"

Li Qingsong knew that he had another way to explore the mysteries of the universe.

In addition to these strange phenomena, there is another phenomenon that bothers Li Qingsong.

That is the clock slowdown and ruler contraction effect.

Simply put, when an object is in motion, the speed of time will change.

At low speeds, the change in the velocity of time is so small that it can be ignored. Therefore, Newton's equations of motion can be used to calculate the motion of an object.

But at this moment the speed has reached 8% of the speed of light, and the change in the speed of time cannot be ignored. If Newton's motion formula is used again, there will be many errors.

For example, Li Qingsong has always used neutron star positioning technology to locate the fleet.

By observing the relative positions and angles between several neutron stars whose coordinates have been determined in advance and one's own fleet, one can indirectly locate the precise coordinates of one's own fleet in the universe at this moment.

But at this moment, due to the high speed, the speed of time has changed.

According to Li Qingsong's calculations, at this moment, the speed of time flow in his own fleet is about 0.32% slower than the speed of time flow in the outside world.

That is to say, 365 days passed in the outside world, but only about 364 days passed in his own fleet, which was one day slower than the outside world.

This will lead to huge errors in the positioning system. Not only that, the change in the speed of time will cause a series of problems and even affect the accuracy of scientific observation data.

Fortunately, this situation is not unsolvable.

After introducing the formula of relativity as a correction, the "interfered" data were converted into original data, and the fleet's work was free of interference.

Even surrounded by all these strange phenomena, the huge fleet continued to advance at high speed.

After a period of preparatory work, various large scientific facilities can finally be put into operation.

(End of this chapter)