The stars, but they become the gray wind

"If there are abundant ultra-low-mass primordial black holes near their star systems, then the picture might be completely different when we arrive at the VI Imperator star system."

"What kind of scene is it? I'm really curious."

"A large number of super-fusion torch spacecraft, driven by gamma-ray jets and Hawking radiation produced by proton-sized primordial black holes, with a maximum speed of 14% of the speed of light, and super-solid materials such as piles of electron degenerate states produced by black hole Hawking radiation engines."

"Ah...this..."

"If it weren't for the lack of low-mass primordial black holes around their galaxy, what we and the Earth civilization of this world would see today would definitely not just be a bunch of low-sublight-speed torch spacecraft propelled by deuterium-helium-III and pure helium-III fusion pulses."

"It's not about the thousands of ships with a combined output power comparable to a red dwarf star. To some extent, they can truly be called stellar-class battleships or aircraft."

"Isn't this too... abstract?"

"I think this is quite normal compared to the Sky Star sisters who like to use all their strength to achieve miracles in certain things."

"After all, our sisters on Sky Star have used black hole engines before, and their use was even more extreme than theirs."

"If it weren't for the gravitational well of the gas giant planet's satellite system and the interference of the gas giant planet's magnetic field, the time it took for the Teia civilization to build its Dyson Cloud could even be shortened to only about 100 to 150 years, which would be enough to cover the entire ecliptic plane of the star."

"It can be said that in this regard, the Earth civilization of this world is still far behind."

On the moon, an unprecedented giant container equipped with disposable rocket thrusters was directly dropped from the orbiting Theia interplanetary transport ship, which was nearly 2000 meters long. After being decelerated by the rocket reverse thrust engine and cushioning airbags, this huge freight container opened its external container protective panel, revealing the components carried inside - an unassembled giant railgun.

The transport and automatic assembly robots that had been waiting for a long time began to move the components of this giant railgun from the freight container to the designated construction site, and installed this giant railgun used as a mass accelerator.

A fleet of giant automatic transport vehicles, comparable in size to mining trucks, carried the electromagnetic acceleration rail coil assembly module of the railgun and drove across the rugged lunar surface. They eventually arrived at a small crater about two kilometers away from the Theia lunar research station. At the bottom of the crater, dozens of engineering machines were working to further reinforce the foundation and structure of the lunar soil and rocks at the bottom of the crater to withstand the recoil caused by the railgun firing load.

Thanks to the excellent modular design of this type of mass accelerator, which was modified from an old-fashioned anti-asteroid railgun, the entire railgun can be assembled and debugged within 72 hours. The most time-consuming part is not the assembly and debugging of the railgun itself, but the time required to reinforce the foundation of the soft lunar soil and rocks.

Just as the human astronauts on the moon were marveling at the astonishing speed of engineering construction of the Theia civilization, the transport ship that had been scanning the geological structure of the moon's interior in orbit finally made a new discovery. About 5600 meters below the southern area of ​​the bottom of the Shackleton crater, there was a small area whose rock composition was obviously different from the surrounding area.

.........

"There is no doubt that we need some faster methods to dig out this area." Moia Rock faced the geological composition anomaly area on the personal terminal display, which was located 5600 meters underground on the south side of the Shackleton crater on the moon.

"The shipboard AI offered two options. Launch a massive kinetic impactor directly toward the area above to destroy the rock formation above. If necessary, the kinetic impactor could be equipped with a nuclear warhead."

"What about the second option?"

"We use high-power shipborne laser equipment to burn through the upper rock layer bit by bit. Our shipborne free electron lasers are generally in the terawatt level, and the vacuum environment of the moon without an atmosphere also helps us directly use laser weapons to burn through the upper rock layer."

"But if the precision control is not good, there is a possibility that the geological anomaly area will be penetrated as well?"

"That's indeed a possibility. That's why the shipboard AI believes we can stop laser drilling about 200 meters from the geological anomaly to leave ample redundancy. Using a nuclear warhead kinetic impactor would work similarly, leaving behind a few hundred meters of rock to prevent the geological anomaly from being destroyed along with it."

"Forget the first option. Using a high-yield nuclear warhead would easily create a large amount of high-speed escaping debris. While it wouldn't pose a threat to us, the defenses of the human base near the crater are far too weak. Using a kinetic impactor equipped with a nuclear warhead directly on it would easily cause some collateral damage. Without the influence of the atmosphere, it's safer to use a laser."

"That would require dispatching a high-powered free electron laser ship from the fleet at the Lagrange point. This would take about an hour. The cargo ship in orbit isn't equipped with a high-powered laser."

"Then let's wait. We don't lack that little time anyway."

.........

"Using a TW-class free electron laser to drill a big hole on the surface of the moon? This method is quite creative." Yuki observed with great interest.

"If it were us, we would probably use Gaussian disintegration weapons to completely disintegrate the rock layer above us at the atomic level, right?"

"I don't think they need our help. After all, this is a scientific expedition into the origins of their own lives. Furthermore, with their own abilities, they can easily dig through or penetrate the 5000-meter-thick rock layer above them in a short period of time."

"But...if we could unleash a terawatt-class free electron laser beam, exceeding the total power output of human civilization at this stage, onto the lunar surface all at once, wouldn't that be quite an interesting sight?"

"The laser ship they're heading to the moon has a hard X-ray free electron laser onboard, the main lens alone is nearly 60 meters in diameter. The entire free electron laser has an output power of 40 terawatts, and its effective range is over one light second. Using this to burn the moon... regardless of how we might react, the human astronauts living near the crater will undoubtedly remember it for the rest of their lives."

"This should be considered... the first time in the history of the Moon's formation that it has been subjected to orbital bombardment by laser weapons, right?"

"Now that you put it that way, it seems to be true?"

"Humanity is about to witness the effects of the first orbital bombardment of the Moon in history."

…………

The giant laser ship Diorite, which is more than 900 meters long, moved to above the lunar pole. Due to the special location of the drilling, the position of the entire spacecraft must remain relatively stationary with the lunar pole during the entire drilling process. This requires extremely fine control, and only artificial intelligence can achieve such highly precise operations.

Before the Diorite was in place, Moia specifically notified the humans who were still conducting ice mining operations in Shackleton Crater and the James Red Star Moon Base, asking them to temporarily evacuate the workers in Shackleton Crater, as he would carry out a large-scale blasting and drilling operation in Shackleton Crater.

…………

"Ask us to evacuate the personnel in Shackleton Crater? What does this mean?" At the James Red Star Lunar Base near Shackleton Crater, the two base managers and several astronauts under their command were looking at the notice sent by the Theia civilization in confusion.

"I think the key lies in the large-scale blasting and drilling operation at the end. Think about it... what kind of blasting engineering operation would a quasi-Type II civilization perform?"

"I think it's highly unlikely they'll use conventional explosives like we did."

"Uh...but, they can't possibly be planning to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon, right?"

"Why not? They are not human, and they are not subject to the convention prohibiting nuclear testing in outer space signed by humans."

"Besides, they are much more advanced than us. Who knows if they think nuclear bombs are the same as conventional explosives?"

Finally realizing the seriousness of the situation, the two leaders of James Red Star Base and several astronauts began to organize the evacuation of personnel in the Ackleton Crater area, and informed the Earth that aliens were likely to detonate a high-powered explosive device in the Walton Crater. The communication specifically stated that this was most likely a blasting operation to meet some engineering needs rather than a hostile military attack.

The leaders of the space departments of the United States and the Soviet Union on Earth were almost shocked by this news. Engineers and technicians on both sides knew very well that the scale and power of the so-called engineering blasting operations of a quasi-Type II civilization might be far beyond human imagination, and even means such as directed nuclear blasting were entirely possible.

"So... I think our most sensible option right now is to hurry. Follow the other side's instructions and evacuate personnel from Shackleton Crater as quickly as possible."

"At least it's better to have the ice harvesting operation slowed down a bit than to have casualties."

"Is there no other option?" Eli, who was sitting in the conference room, held his forehead helplessly.

"At the moment... no."

"We have no way of judging the scale of a quasi-Type II civilization's engineering blasting operations. At least they took our personnel's safety into consideration and sent us a notice in advance. This notice clearly didn't contain any coercive language or meaning."

"I think the wisest choice at the moment is to follow the other party's advice."

At this time, humans did not know that the little surprise prepared for them by the Theia civilization on the moon had an equivalent much greater than that of a nuclear bomb, enough to make the Tsar Bomb, the largest bomb in human history, as gentle as a small firecracker.

Chapter 206 Laser drill starts!

The twelfth batch of solar sails from the Theia civilization's Dyson Cloud is about to be launched in the Tiandajiangjun Six Star System. Assisted by the von Neumann self-replicating industrial system, the Theia civilization has built on this massive satellite of the First Planet. Today, on this satellite's surface, the von Neumann self-replicating industrial cluster and computing center has grown to the size of dozens of mega-cities. The equatorial space elevator continues to transport solar sails and various equipment used to build the Dyson Cloud daily. Furthermore, the space elevator also carries more von Neumann self-replicating industrial systems to all nearby asteroids within reach. Every day, a portion of the von Neumann self-replicating equipment used for vacuum mining, smelting, and processing is launched from the elevator's base into a geostationary orbit thousands of kilometers above Earth. From there, it is transported to the nearest asteroid by unmanned spacecraft using electromagnetic catapults or laser propulsion.

The excavation and disintegration of massive asteroids is also progressing steadily, especially those rich in heavy elements, which will further fuel the construction progress of the entire Dyson Cloud project.

The equator of this massive satellite is bustling with activity. The payloads I'm referring to are being launched into geostationary orbit via space elevators and several large mass accelerators. All Theians have high expectations for the Dyson Cloud Project, a long-term, stellar-scale celestial project. Even though it might take a whole bag or even longer to complete, this doesn't diminish the Theians' daily presence in orbit to witness the countless Dyson Cloud solar sail launches.

After several months of continuous launches, the electricity transmitted back by these solar sails launched into orbit around the star finally increased the total energy of Theia civilization by approximately 0.5%. Although this 0.5% increase is beyond the reach of humanity given the vast total energy of Theia civilization, this 0.5% increase alone is almost equivalent to the total energy of thousands of human civilizations.

Despite its relatively slow growth rate and progress, Theia's Dyson Cloud Project continues to grow steadily, bit by bit. This is clearly good news for all of Theia. Even though the current Regeneration Cloud Project hasn't yet generated the massive returns and energy generated by exponential self-replication and growth, the system has shown initial success. All it needs to do is maintain its operation for the next few decades.

.........

On the moon in the solar system, a huge laser ship hovers above the lunar pole, constantly adjusting its own RCS thrusters to maintain relative stillness with the lunar polar region. The work to be carried out later is a very delicate excavation work.

Amidst a tense atmosphere of intense anticipation, the free electron laser ship, hovering 200 kilometers above the lunar pole, opened fire. Its free electron laser accelerator, which stretched almost the entire length of the ship and was powered by a reactor, generated a powerful, hard X-ray free electron laser at the main lens's light outlet.

With a total power of up to 40 terawatts, the hard X-ray band beam, which is invisible to the naked eye, crossed a distance of 200 kilometers in the blink of an eye and hit the ground on the south side of the Shackleton crater in the polar area. The ultra-high-power beam with a diameter of 60 meters instantly evaporated half a meter of soil on the surface of the moon, and turned everything it touched under the soil into steam.

Because there was no atmosphere, the Teian people didn't have to worry about the laser beam's excessive power and energy level causing the entire atmosphere to ignite, turning it into plasma and triggering a terrifying atmospheric explosion stretching hundreds or thousands of kilometers. In a vacuum, the destructive range of the ultra-high-power free-electron laser beam was strictly limited to a 60-meter diameter area. Within this area, where the high-energy laser continuously vaporized soil and rock, the 40-terawatt free-electron laser output was equivalent to the power of more than a dozen atomic bombs per second. Even under the ship's AI calculations, this laser ship, equipped with a 40-watt X-ray free-electron laser, was capable of burning through the 5600-meter-thick rock layer above the geological anomaly within five hours. The energy released to the surface during this process was equivalent to over a billion tons of TNT. With this level of energy, even the largest Tsar hydrogen bomb ever developed by humanity would be as gentle as a small firecracker.

In orbit, several RCS thrusters on the surface of the Diorite hull continuously ejected trace amounts of gas to ensure that the free electron laser light outlet at the bow and the main lens were aligned with the surface of the earth, maintaining the orientation and position of the ship itself, ensuring that the laser beam below was always accurately aimed at the target. At the same time, the four huge heat sinks at the tail of the spacecraft began to gradually turn red, symbolizing high temperature. This was a manifestation of the radiator entering a high-power, high-load operating state. The free electron laser inevitably generates a large amount of waste heat during operation, and a large amount of heat dissipation fluid stored in the spacecraft is also used to help the spacecraft reduce the heat dissipation load. Although the Diorite is not the highest-power free electron laser ship that the Theia civilization can build in terms of output power and the scale of the free electron laser carried by the hull, it can be regarded as one of the best among all free electron laser ships.

The surface, constantly irradiated by the Diorite's free electron laser, was rapidly evaporating and vaporizing the surface soil exposed to the laser beam. The subsurface rock, melted by the intense heat, had even begun to transform into a lava-like substance. In just a few minutes, the 40-terawatt free electron laser had carved a massive crater on the south side of Shackleton Crater, 60 meters in diameter and hundreds of meters deep. The hard X-ray free electron laser, like an indestructible drill, vaporized and vaporized the rock layers unimpeded. The high-temperature steam emanating from the vaporized rock formed a fountain visible even from far outside Shackleton Crater.

"Command! Detecting a massive amount of high-energy X-rays within Shackleton Crater. Switching to invisible light."

Inside James Red Star Base, a technician in the control center switched the external monitoring view of Shackleton Crater on the big screen to the observation band of X-rays and gamma rays, which are invisible to the naked eye. After he switched the view captured by the sensor and camera to the X-ray band, everyone gasped. A high-energy laser beam with an absurdly high power and total amount of thermal radiation fell from an orbit 200 kilometers high, continuously bombarding an area on the south side of Shackleton Crater, and digging a huge bottomless hole there.

"Oh my God, what the hell is this?"

"Although from what I understand, it should be a laser beam, but the energy is ridiculously high."

"This laser beam alone has a power of 40 terawatts? This is too terrifying, right?" One of the technicians present calculated it and couldn't help shuddering.

"I think this may be the gap between us and them in terms of technology that is incomparable."

"And this is a laser beam shot down from an orbit at an altitude of 200 kilometers. I've barely detected any diffusion from this laser beam. I doubt the laser beam would spread much even at a distance of 500,000 or 600,000 kilometers."

"The power of this single laser alone is several times greater than the combined annual power output of human civilization. Even more terrifying, they can focus such massive amounts of energy onto an area just 60 meters in diameter. Crucially, this isn't some visible-light laser... this thing is a hard X-ray... There's no doubt that if this thing were fired from Earth at this altitude, it could easily vaporize an entire city in a fraction of a second, and in doing so, trigger a massive plasma explosion thousands of kilometers across the atmosphere."

"It's a pity that we didn't bring a higher-power laser ship this time. Otherwise, the speed of evaporating the rock layer and drilling could be faster." Moia Rock muttered as he looked at the drilling speed of about half a meter per second.

"Half a meter per second isn't too slow, is it? At this depth, if we use a physical drill, the drilling time and efficiency will be reduced several times."

"What's more, the rock formations in this area are quite difficult to drill. If we really use a physical drill, drilling ten centimeters per second is already very good."

"It will take about three and a half hours more to burn. By the end, there will be about 150 to 200 meters thick rock layer left as a redundancy to prevent the important scientific discoveries below from being burned." Moia looked at the countdown that was moving.

"I think this is quite efficient. It can burn through over 5000 meters of rock in just three and a half hours, and the resulting holes are perfectly regular and circular. This efficiency and precision is far superior to kinetic impactors or nuclear bombs."

"After all, a free electron laser directly vaporizes the rocks and soil it contacts, unlike a nuclear drill or kinetic impactor, which would send debris flying everywhere. This could also easily affect spacecraft in orbit, making it incredibly difficult to deal with. The fact that a free electron laser directly vaporizes the excavation target is very convenient."

"However... the Diorite's cooling fluid seems to be depleting a bit too quickly. I expected it to be about 0.6 percentage points faster."

"The heat sink should be able to hold up, but as for the cooling fluid, I'll probably have to call a tanker to refill it later."

"Unfortunately, we still haven't figured out the technology to stably manufacture and preserve supersolid materials like electron degenerate states. If we had such materials, well... our spacecraft might not need so many heat sinks."

"If one day our spacecrafts all removed the heat sink design, I think I would be a little uncomfortable. After all, for the past few hundred years, all our nuclear-powered spacecraft have had to install heat sinks to ensure the spacecraft's heat dissipation performance. This is a practical need. If we can really solve the technical problems of super-solid matter in the future and utilize the unparalleled advantages of super-solid matter in heat resistance to eliminate the need for heat sinks, I think by then, not to mention more efficient nuclear fusion torch thrusters, we might even use antimatter. Who knows?"

"It's not like we don't have antimatter, but it's just too expensive to produce. It's also difficult to store. We've even built a few experimental spacecraft and engine designs and prototypes that increase fusion efficiency by adding tiny amounts of antimatter. However, due to the pitiful total antimatter production, even if the technology is mature, it's difficult to widely use."

"So, we're still lacking a larger-scale accelerator?"

"Yes, we can stuff a hundred-meter-class tailfield accelerator for generating free electron lasers into a spacecraft, just like the one drilling a hole outside. But this doesn't mean our engineering capabilities can create a stellar-scale grand unified theory super accelerator. That kind of thing is still far from our technological level."

"Come to think of it... they and the glass eels must have super accelerators of that scale, right? I'd really like to see them if I get the chance."

"A four-force grand unified theory accelerator orbiting a star, that must be spectacular, right?"

"It is said that materials with properties indistinguishable from ideal absolutely rigid bodies are the result of the Grand Unified Theory accelerator."

"Material that doesn't rely on chemical bonds...it's really enviable."

"What's that phrase you often hear in liberal arts and engineering?"

"Any conventional substance is ultimately built up of chemical bonds. No matter how hard you try, it's nothing more than a bunch of extremely weak interactions between valence electrons. You might be able to use this material to build skyscrapers thousands of meters high, or even products like space elevators, but you will eventually hit your limits. The performance limits of chemical bond materials are there. When the materials performance is close to the upper limit, no matter how hard you try, it will be a waste of effort." Moia imitated the tone of some space architecture artists in the Teia civilization and what one of the artists he met by chance who liked to design space architecture in the microgravity environment of other celestial bodies had said to him in the past.

For the current Theia civilization, one of the problems they face is that they have begun to approach the performance limit of chemical bond materials in their use of conventional chemical bond materials, but the current technological level of Theia civilization is unable to produce and manufacture large quantities of supersolid materials.

Although they already possess the ability to mass-produce metastable metallic hydrogen and other supersolid materials to a certain extent, the properties of metastable metallic hydrogen itself make it highly unstable. Aside from its occasional use as a special superconductor material, only a very small number of special-purpose Theia spacecraft use it as a propulsion medium. The special properties of metallic hydrogen make it impossible for it to be widely used as a stable supersolid material, at least not for a civilization like Theia.

As chemical energy materials have reached their limits and materials such as supersolid materials have yet to solve technical problems, we want to solve the bottlenecks in computing power, energy, etc. faced by civilization.

The few options available to Theia civilization are: 1. Build a Dyson cloud first, efficiently using the energy and matter of stars that account for more than 99.9% of the total mass of their own galaxy, and using stellar astronomical engineering as a foundation to steadily and exponentially increase the scale of civilization and allow AGl to gradually evolve into a true ASl.

2. Exploiting the four giant Jupiter-like gas planets in their own solar system to extract deuterium and helium-3 at all costs, and producing and manufacturing massive giant fusion reactors to help civilization break through the limits of computing power and energy.

However, even with four gas giants, their equivalent mass only accounts for less than 0.1% of the total mass of matter in the entire galaxy. If the upper limit of civilization development is raised by frantically exploiting gas and giant planets at all costs, then the Theia civilization will still need to face the threshold of fully utilizing the energy of the entire star. Instead of taking this temporary solution, it is better to choose stellar astronomical engineering, which can completely avoid future troubles.

.........

Of course, these are all issues that Theia's social management general strong artificial intelligence needs to worry about. They have nothing to do with Moia and others who are happily drilling holes on the moon with free laser drills in the solar system. Moia and the Theians around him are completely focused on the big hole made by the Diorite's free electron laser.

After more than three hours of orbital laser irradiation, a large hole with a diameter of 60 meters appeared on the southern side of Shackleton Crater, with molten magma bubbling from the bottom. The orbiting free electron laser ship stopped laser irradiation of the southern area of ​​Shackleton Crater when it drilled to a depth of about 5400 meters.

After the terawatt-class free electron laser stopped irradiating, the bottom of the hole created by the laser had turned into a pool of molten magma, and below this shallow layer of magma, there was a rock layer of about 200 meters that was deliberately retained as a redundancy just in case.

"Okay, next we have to find a way to cool down the lava pool at the bottom."

.........

An hour later, a large number of unmanned transport vehicles and engineering machinery carrying tens of thousands of tons of liquid hydrogen storage tanks arrived near the large hole burned by the laser, which was more than 5,000 meters deep. In order to quickly eliminate the impact of the lava flow at the bottom, Moia and others adopted the simplest and most brutal method - pouring liquid hydrogen coolant into the bottom of the hole.

A simple layer of low-temperature resistant flexible inflatable film seals the top of the cave entrance, and a large amount of liquid hydrogen is injected into the cave along the pipe inserted in the flexible inflatable film. By roughly pouring tens of thousands of tons of ultra-low temperature liquid hydrogen into the cave, the lava flow at the bottom of the cave will be cooled back to a solid state in a very short time.

"What a waste..." A Teian who was observing the scene through a camera on a transport vehicle sighed as he watched tens of thousands of tons of liquid hydrogen that was originally used as fuel being crudely used as a coolant to restore the lava flow to a solid state.

"It's just tens of thousands of tons of liquid hydrogen. And guess what, why do they have to add a flexible sealing film on top to act as a lid?"

"After cooling, the vaporized hydrogen will float directly upwards and then be collected again. Although there will inevitably be some loss in the process, it is still possible to efficiently recycle and reuse this small amount of liquid hydrogen."

…………

Inside the James Red Star lunar base on the other side of Shackleton Crater, the Lunar Observatory observation staff who had been staring at the laser ship in orbit breathed a sigh of relief. If the angle of the laser ship had deviated even a little during the entire process of irradiating the ground, it would have been very likely to affect the nearby James Red Star lunar base. Under a laser of that power, anyone who was hit would be lucky to have a complete corpse, let alone a little ashes left.

So after the laser ship stopped irradiating the area south of the Kelton Crater on the lunar surface, not only did the lunar observatory observer who had been staring at the free electron laser ship in orbit with the survey mirror on the lunar base breathe a sigh of relief, but the big stone hanging in the hearts of everyone in the lunar base also fell to the ground, because they knew very well that if there was even the slightest error in the whole process, they might be destroyed along with the entire base.

"Huh, it's finally over... Is this just the routine engineering work of an interstellar civilization? It's so scary!" The astronauts in James Red Star Base looked at the display screen in front of them through the sensors and radars of the relay satellite in orbit. There was a huge hole more than 5000 meters deep in the Ackleton Crater, and a drop of cold sweat ran down their foreheads.

"Humanity will face this day sooner or later." The base commander patted the astronaut's shoulder comfortingly.

Note: The scientific community has long believed that human energy consumption has reached 2*10^13 J/s, reaching a level of civilization of 0.73. This probably includes the energy consumed by humans in eating, drinking, defecating, urinating, burning firewood, coal, oil and gas.

Regardless, human civilization is still at a very low level. According to this civilization upgrade requirement, the energy demand for upgrading the civilization index increases exponentially. For every 0.1 index increase in civilization, energy must increase by an order of magnitude, or tenfold. This cumulative trend continues. To reach Level 1 civilization, the total amount of energy controlled and used by humanity would have to increase by a thousandfold compared to today. To reach Level 10 civilization, the amount of energy controlled and used would have to increase by more than ten billion times compared to Level 100 civilization.

It will take another 200 years for humans to reach level one civilization, and 5000 years to reach level two civilization.

一个1.0型文明功率大约在10PW级别，1.1型文明总功率为100PW，1.2型则是在1.1型的基础上再翻十倍，也就是一个k1.2型文明的总功率输出大约在1000PW上下。