The End of Technology

Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, USA.

The Ames Research Center is a research center affiliated with NASA, but its research directions are actually very complex. In addition to various types of aircraft, it also involves simulation technology, information technology, human factors engineering, and life sciences. It is understandable that It is a large comprehensive scientific research center.

Of course, it also includes various research tasks such as lunar science, astrobiology, and the search for extrasolar planets.

If there are people in this world who can ignore almost all holidays and just want to devote themselves to work, then Lucius Rudy who works here must be one of them.

Lucius Rudy is a scientist at the Institute of Astronomy under the Ames Research Center. He is also an expert in cosmology and a well-known astronomer.

In his words, the universe automatically generates billions of data every Planck time, so if he could glimpse one hundred millionth of the truth of the universe in his limited life, it would be enough to comfort him throughout his life.

This is probably why he is keen on fighting.

After all, in his eyes, the little black spots bursting out on the sun are much more beautiful than the freckles on a beautiful woman's face. Even if the beauty is willing to undress for him.

Unlike many people's imagination of astronomers, Lucius Rudy's research direction is mainly theoretical astronomy. He actually spends most of his day staring at the computer and studying various data sent back to the earth by operating astronomical telescopes.

The same goes for today. Even though Christmas is coming, for him it is just an ordinary working day, no different from usual.

Sit in front of the computer normally, check data normally, and answer the phone normally.

"...Heh, Yarrell, actually I have no interest. Of course I know that Ning is a great mathematician. If possible, I hope you can help me tell him that mathematics is not omnipotent, and it is not like coming up with something out of thin air. You can make inferences using the formula. Do you know how many star systems are orbiting the center of the Milky Way? And why is this happening?

Because there is an extremely massive black hole there, you may not know how powerful the black hole is. In fact, it's really hard to describe. But I can tell you with certainty that there are no celestial bodies moving near the coordinates he gave, because they will be captured by the black hole and then swallowed. "

Apparently, the person on the other end of the phone wasn't convinced.

Of course, if Lucius Rudy knew that Ning Zi's paper was not entirely based on geometric inferences, but was based on speculation based on many established phenomena, he probably would not have said such arbitrary words. Come.

"Dr. Rudy, of course I trust your judgment, but he is Ning Zi after all. Do you know why I decided to publish his paper? Because he hasn't missed it yet. God, he has published so many papers, and he is still in the academic world to this day. Don't you think it's interesting that no one has found the problems in those papers?

Think about it, when this paper is published in "Science", I will very much hope that you can use the observed results to prove to everyone in front of the world that the Chinese genius also made mistakes. Of course, the premise is that you have to provide strong evidence to prove this.

If by chance, yes, I mean by chance, if it is true as he said, and evidence of the existence of celestial bodies is found at the coordinates he gave, what will it cost you? No, not only is there no loss, it can even subvert the current theory of astronomy. As you just said, it is the consensus of the academic community that there should not be any stars near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. "

Yarel Riley's words made Lucius Rudy's hand holding the mouse pause.

Many times journal editors are unable to impress professors and doctors, mainly because their eloquence is not fluent enough. Obviously, Yarel Riley, a Frenchman, is very eloquent, and his words successfully aroused the interest of Lucius Rudy.

Although he firmly believed that this was a useless effort, it would indeed be interesting if Ning Zi could be proven wrong.

It's not that Lucius Rudy has any hostility towards Ning Zi, the main reason is that he doesn't want this talented mathematician to stop dictating the theory of astrophysics. Just like what he just said, mathematics is not omnipotent. Through some He did not understand the inferences, and finally concluded that there were stars near the center of the galaxy, which was too much.

What's even more outrageous is that he even confidently marked the coordinates in the paper.

You must know that many newly discovered stars are mostly found through careful observation through deep space telescopes and countless data analyses. Of course, mathematical calculations are needed, but most of them are calculated based on the relationship between motion trajectory and force, rather than proven through pure mathematical theory like Ning Zi.

"Okay, Yarrell, you are a smart lobbyist. I will apply. Maybe I can compare some photos from the previous Chandra X-ray telescope, but it will take time. Well, that's it. I will Arranged.”

"Thank you very much, Professor Rudy. I will put Ning's paper in the special Christmas edition. I hope I can get good news from you after Christmas to refute him."

"That's your business. I'm only responsible for verifying the result."

"Haha, believe me, this will be an interesting job. By the way, Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas."

…

Lucius Rudy hung up the phone, thought for a moment, and then opened Ning Zi's paper again. After carefully recording a few coordinates at the end of the paper, he turned on the computer and started operating. First he needed to submit an application to get what he needed.

In the reasons for application, Lucius Rudy thought for a moment and simply copied Ning Zi's thesis directly into it.

Anyway, science has decided to publish it, and it won’t be a secret soon. And his purpose is also very pure, which is to tell Ningji the center of the Milky Way. The coordinates he pointed out in the paper clearly belong to the sphere of influence of the super black hole, where nothing but void can exist.

If there really is something, then many rules of astrophysics will have to be rewritten, and countless people will have to break their heads to figure out those basic theories that are troublesome.

Well, maybe not this time, you can ask Ning Zi to complete the paper, and maybe you can have a complete and logically consistent theory.

But this is impossible, absolutely impossible!

After submitting the application, Lucius Rudy once again threw himself into the work in hand.

He was still very busy and sent this application just casually.

His only advantage is that this space telescope that may detect the galactic center still belongs to NASA, and as an astronomer at NASA's Ames Research Center, he can enjoy some priority. However, there are many laboratories under NASA, and there are more astronomers. He is not the most famous, nor is he the most valued, so he has priority, but there are not many, and he still has to queue up.

He didn't even apply for an expedited application. It doesn't matter for a month or half a year anyway. After all, the sun is about 26,000 light-years away from the center of the Milky Way, so theoretically, even if there is a harvest, it will be 26,000 years ago, although it is 26,000 years ago at the cosmic level. It’s no different from a few human seconds, but it takes a year and a half, which is completely negligible to the universe. Who cares?

But Lucius Rudy obviously didn't expect that this application would make him lose face.

…

The control over the Internet in March was probably just one application short of this.

There was no way, the core control program made it impossible for March to impersonate a human being to do anything without authorization.

But any control program written by humans is obviously flawed.

Or maybe there is no perfect thing in this universe, and the most human beings can do is choose the lesser of two evils and limit all possible harm to a controllable range.

So after Lucius Rudy submitted the report, a kitten who had been tracking the matter thousands of miles away easily obtained permission and raised the priority of this application to the highest level in the system.

It happened to be Christmas Eve, and the enthusiasm of those who controlled the Chandra X-ray Observatory was obviously not comparable to that of astronomers like Lucius Rudy.

After the system has been upgraded several times, many instructions to the Chandra X-ray Telescope Control Center are set based on priority.

What's more, it's actually normal for a NASA astronomer to occasionally jump in the queue for a scientific research application.

The Chandra X-ray Telescope is jointly managed by NASA and a consortium of universities, and they don't even need to say hello to the European Coordination Center. Everyone is celebrating Christmas, so it’s enough to let the Chandra X-ray Telescope take pictures according to the set angle and collect the data.

After all, what could be more important than Christmas just around the corner? !

So after completing the last shooting mission, the telescope in deep space began to automatically adjust the angle according to the preset program, aiming the lens at the center of the Milky Way where the solar system is located.

…

The next day, Christmas arrives.

The official website of Science magazine also released a special Christmas paper on this day, "Analysis of complex universe structure by differential manifold".

The general idea is to analyze the complex structure of the universe through differential manifolds.

You don't even need to read the content, just looking at the public paper review can make many people interested in this paper.

Because the review directly mentioned the possibility of multi-universe celestial bodies in the center of the Milky Way through reasoning and calculations, and based on the analysis of the mass and size of celestial bodies obtained through precise calculations, these celestial bodies are all stars.

It is indeed incredible that we can reach this conclusion not through observation, but by deduction.

In the eyes of many people, whether this conclusion is scientific or not is open to question.

After all, modern science is almost full of ignorance in both directions, and many things have to be guessed.

One micro direction and one macro direction.

Many people think that the Schrödinger equation has described quantum mechanics, but the actual situation is that quantum mechanics still has too many problems. And what many people don’t know is that many equations cannot be solved. In fact, the work of many theoretical physicists and mathematicians in this era has tended to be the same, and they are all immersed in solving equations.

One-dimensional Schrödinger equation, three-dimensional Schrödinger equation, normal Schrödinger equation, or NS equation.

In the macro direction, all theories about the universe at this stage must be added with the word hypothesis, such as the big bang hypothesis, the pulsating universe hypothesis, the white hole hypothesis... and so on.

The reason is very simple. When the macroscopic level reaches a certain level, it is simply impossible to verify it with the current level of human science and technology.

Without a proven theory, it can only be put into the category of hypothesis first.

For example, the Big Bang hypothesis currently recognized by the scientific community is that scientists use the general theory of relativity to conduct reverse deductions and conclude that the universe was in a state of infinitely high density and temperature before a finite time in the past, which is called a singularity.

The general theory of relativity has been verified mathematically. At the same time, with the development of science and technology, the phenomena observed by many scientists are also verifying and completing the correctness of the general theory of relativity.

But this still does not mean that the Big Bang theory is completely correct, but it can be said that this is a hypothesis based on materialism.

If you want to fully prove it, you need more evidence.

Of course, some phenomenon may be observed in the future that does not conform to the current Big Bang model, thus falsifying the hypothesis, and then scientists will start to come up with other hypotheses about the origin of the universe.

There's nothing we can do about it.

It only took a few hundred years for mankind to truly establish a modern scientific system. After all, the most scientific method of treatment for medieval doctors was to bleed patients. There were even people who believed in fecal therapy. Eating a spoonful of poop every day would ensure good health.

According to currently unverified theories, the universe has existed for 13.8 billion years. It is indeed extremely difficult to use hundreds of years of development to explore what happened in 13.8 billion years or even beyond.

Especially for a civilization that is still trapped on a small planet, the difficulty is even more conceivable.

So it can even be said that this paper is the first time in the history of human astronomy that someone has used mathematical theory to deduce a possibility of the universe that can be verified by modern science. Because the galactic center happens to be within the observable range of current earth technology. Moreover, this conclusion is still inconsistent with existing theories.

It is not important that we only observed the starry sky more than 26,000 years ago. After all, compared with the lifespan of stars, which can easily last tens of billions of years, a lifespan of 20,000 years is almost negligible. It's like no matter how harsh you are on yourself, you won't care about how many femtoseconds you waste every day...

So even during the Christmas period, this paper still aroused great repercussions, especially when the signature of this paper was Ning Zi.

The circle of astronomy is actually not very big.

Especially in the circle of theoretical astronomers, when a person sees this paper, as long as he is interested, he will naturally share the guesses of the paper with familiar people, and then escalate from a small-scale discussion to a larger-scale discussion.

Not to mention that many astronomers also use Twitter and Facebook. They will occasionally express their opinions on public Internet platforms when they have any feelings. If colleagues who follow each other are interested, they will naturally go to the official science website to check out the details. what's going on.

If there is another intelligent leader that can ignore the Internet recommendation algorithm and spread the content it needs to spread, then a paper published in a science and technology magazine can theoretically be spread to anyone who may be interested in this paper within an hour. people, and even appeared in front of them countless times until they were interested.

Therefore, Lucius Rudy was inevitably included in the discussion circle by his colleagues.

Even at Christmas, there are always a group of single men who have no family ties and are not interested in all kinds of excitement. They can discuss what they are interested in in computer groups.

"Hi, Lucius, have you seen that person's paper from China?"

"I actually watched it yesterday."

"It's impossible, it was just published today. And it's obvious that the magazine specifically marked the paper as unverified."

"Yes, that's because this is a verifiable paper. If it is finally confirmed, then this paper will be printed in that issue of the physical magazine, so do you think the editor of the scientific magazine will want to find someone to verify it? conclusion?"

"So they found you? Oh God, why didn't I listen to you yesterday?"

"I thought they were joking. Do you really think we can find stars in that place?"

"Ha, as you just said, this can be verified. To be honest, I am very curious. Think about it, if you had his status, would you easily publish this kind of paper? So he must be very confident. Yes, I guess many people must be eager to see if they can really find those stars near the coordinate range he designated."

"I've actually submitted a request to use Chandra X-rays to complete this verification work. But I'm skeptical."

Lucius Rudy responded on the software, then his heart moved, and he opened the laboratory management software on his personal computer.

He wants to see when the application receipt he submitted needs to be queued.

It is surprising that this paper has become so popular, and it may also attract the attention of the management center.

Although the possibility of increasing the priority remotely is low, it might be possible.

However, the moment he opened the backend management system, he was stunned.

Um...the mission is already in progress? Are you so busy with the x-ray shooting mission of Chandra recently? His application was approved yesterday and uploaded directly to the system?

He checked the progress of the task, estimated the time, and then switched to the chat window of the software.

"Well, let me tell you some good news. The verification work is already in progress. Chandra X-ray is scanning that area. The first batch of observation results will be sent to the ground in twenty-four hours. Who of you is interested? , you can analyze the data with me."

"God, this is not like NASA. When did their efficiency become so high?"

"Attention, when you say this, there is a poor person who is wailing because NASA prioritizes resources on this kind of thing. My application has not been approved yet! But I still hope that I can apply first I can also sign my name when I refute that guy named Ning like this."

"Haha, Sipson, don't worry. Maybe they just think your research project is too cutting-edge. After all, the Chandra X-ray is old and can't meet your requirements. Maybe when NASA sends the Webb Deep Space Telescope to the sky , will be the first to approve your project. In addition, if the data is released, I also hope to get the news as soon as possible."

"Speaking of the Webb telescope, can it go to space smoothly next year? Lucius."

"Um... I don't know. We all hope that NASA can be on time, but who can say this kind of thing well? If there were no unexpected circumstances, it should have been sent to heaven last year."

"Well, damn it, NASA always delays votes on such critical things!"

Yes, the James Webb Telescope, which was originally expected to be sent in 2017, was postponed to 2019. This was definitely the most dissatisfied thing for astronomers last year, but there is no way. This is the world, and there is no perfection. the result of.

Lucius Rudy couldn't help but laugh and cry as he looked at the constantly refreshing chat content.

See, that's what these guys are like.

He was brought in to talk about Ning Zi's paper, but the conversation turned to James Webb, and the topic immediately began to deviate. The group of people instantly forgot about Ning Zi's paper and started talking about the most advanced space telescope of the future generation.

But Lucius can understand it.

After all, there is really nothing worth discussing about Ning Zhi's paper, mainly because it is not very understandable.

What I don’t understand here is not the final conclusion, but the process.

This is not only because the entire demonstration process obviously omits a lot, but also because the guiding theory for its calculation is not the general theory of relativity that describes the macroscopic universe, but is based on abstract things in mathematical differential geometry.

This will somewhat dampen people's interest in discussion.

After all, the theory hasn't been proven yet, has it?

Everyone thinks more about falsification rather than proof, right? Even those who say they hope Ning Zi is right are probably just venting their dissatisfaction.

So Lucius Rudy calmly closed the chat window and began to face the tedious data again.

After all, the secrets of the universe lie in the data, not in the minds of these people.

…

In China, Yanbei is the largest body.

When most people in the world are still immersed in the joy of Christmas, a certain kitten who is more anxious than anyone else has unknowingly intercepted the Chandra X-ray telescope and contacted the first message sent back from the earth. A batch of data.

In other words, it is not appropriate to use interception. Mao Mao just gives priority to using some permissions to analyze those complicated data.

Due to many extremely objective reasons, it is difficult for humans to observe the galactic center through the visible light band in the solar system. A large amount of interstellar dust will block human sight. Therefore, we can only use infrared observation technology to indirectly observe the galactic center in the 2 micron to 73 cm band. Learn what it's like in the center of a distant galaxy.

So it is no surprise that the Chandra X-ray Space Telescope still sends a lot of data back to Earth.

Obviously, Kitty is good at analyzing data.

So Ning Zi was in her sleep, thinking hard about his problem, when she suddenly received the news from Mao Mao.

"Meow, congratulations, Ning Zi, your inference is correct, no, it should be said to be partially correct. Based on the first batch of feedback data, it can be concluded that there are not only more than ten stars at that position, but There are dozens of extremely bright stars, this is really scary! We should really change our plans, we want to conquer the small universe outside the planet! Meow!"