Chapter 158: Three Hundred and Sixty Years

The space is so empty that after losing the contrast of the Wolf 1061 star system, compared to the brilliance of the galaxy, the fleet's tail flame that seems extremely bright is not even as bright as a match in the vast universe, and the human fleet itself is not even as bright as dust.

Because humans often compare the earth to the dust of the universe and the sand of the Ganges, but in fact, the so-called Ganges sand cannot be used as a comparison between the earth and the universe.

The size comparison needs to be magnified by several orders of magnitude.

Humans sailing in the vast galaxy feel this deeply. The fleet built by humans with their proud technology is silently accelerating in the void like a firefly.

Its light that looks like the sun cannot even shine through the interstellar dust to any of the nearest star systems.

After more than ten hours, the fusion thruster was partially shut down, leaving only the reactor that maintains the maximum speed of the spacecraft and the internal energy supply.

After accelerating to 10% of the speed of light, the human fleet entered the uniform speed stage. Uniform speed sailing means that humans do not need to be pressed on the cushioning chair all the time.

The automatic program unfastened the seat belts for people and released the human body safety stabilizer.

People who resumed their normal lives began to work, hibernating, doing research, raising children, and making people.

Humans did not have a clear destination for this voyage, but just followed the Milky Way map and headed towards the Sagittarius Arm.

Although humans had no way to judge whether the Orion Arm was really an extremely dangerous star field through their own observations, in the past period of time, humans received broadcast information with the same content as before from detectors distributed outside the Wolf star system several times.

It was still the Galactic Heart Alliance, but not the same squadron.

That kind of broadcast signal seemed to be really intelligent and could identify whether a receiver had reached the first level of civilization or above.

After receiving the signal several times, humans had to start believing in the authenticity of the broadcast.

Humans did not know where the broadcast signal came from, and when the civilizations mentioned in the broadcast came to the Orion Arm, but it did not affect humans' determination to leave this star field.

After all, even without the broadcast, there was still the threat of the "Silver Mist".

As for why we should go in the direction of the Sagittarius Arm, the reason is also very simple. With the current navigation capabilities of human beings, we can only follow the route where stars are distributed.

The Orion Arm is a protruding branch of the Sagittarius Arm. The universe is three-dimensional, and the Milky Way is also a flat galaxy. Most of the stars in the Milky Way are distributed on the surface of the Milky Way.

If the magnitude of the Milky Way is defined as up and down, there are up and down directions, but humans cannot fly up from the Milky Way and then return like a parabola.

Sailing across the arm is even more of a dream.

Of course, humans also feel that this route is very unsafe, so they try to travel to the stars above the Milky Way. Within the scope allowed by navigation technology, try to stay away from the star-dense star field to reduce the possibility of encountering alien civilizations.

By the way, humans always just want to stay as far away as possible, and don’t think that they can really fly to the Sagittarius Arm with their own 15% navigation speed.

This is not a sudden awakening of self-knowledge, but technology makes human consciousness extremely difficult.

The solar system is located in the middle of the Orion Arm, about 26,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way, and the range of the Orion Arm is also about 26,000 light years.

According to human observations, the distance from the current human position to the intersection of the Orion Arm and the Sagittarius Arm is at least 13,000 light years.

With the current human navigation technology, it will take at least 86,666 years to fly non-stop, not counting the time for replenishment, maintenance, and development in various star systems.

Moreover, even if the equipment is not broken, people will die of old age. The hibernation chamber and life potion cannot withstand the erosion of such a long time.

On the scale of the universe, humans are extremely small.

The life span of humans who have used up the two life potions is only 600 years, which will pass in the blink of an eye. Even if Yue Yuan has 500 years more life than others, it is only 1,100 years.

If he does not hibernate properly, he will die of old age on the way.

So after the fleet entered a uniform speed state, Yue Yuan continued to work for another three years before he went into hibernation.

The first supply destination for the human fleet was a yellow dwarf star 12.8 light years away. Astronomers used transit method, gravitational perturbation method, gravitational microlensing method, relativity method and other methods to detect and determine that there is a massive gas planet there.

Although no signs of rocky planets have been found, according to general rules, large gas planets should have many rocky satellites.

With planets as a support, humans can repair and reorganize spacecraft and replenish various materials consumed during the voyage, of course, as well as protium, deuterium, tritium and helium-3 and helium-4 as fuel for nuclear fusion.

The human fleet sailed among the stars like this. When Yue Yuan woke up from hibernation for the second time, the fleet had been sailing for eighty-five years.

And he himself was fifteen years older.

Eighty-five years passed, and all human warships were full of people, and the human population increased from the original 970,000 to 1.4 million.

During the voyage, the population growth was much smaller than that in the original forty years in the Wolfe star system, but this was normal because many people spent their time in hibernation. Although there were some who had been on duty for forty or fifty years, not all of them, and in this case, people's desire to have children was not very great.

So it was reasonable that the population growth slowed down, and many newborns were born by accident.

As usual, humans first sent probes to explore the target star system. Of course, this process was completed by unmanned scout spacecraft before the fleet arrived at the target star system.

The universe is very empty. Even though civilizations may exist everywhere, this time humans were not unlucky enough to encounter another alien civilization again, nor were they lucky enough to encounter primitive life planets again.

For such a result, human scientists think it is very reasonable. It would be strange if they encountered a civilization or a life planet every time they arrived at a star system.

After arriving at the target star system, humans did not stay for decades like they did in the Wolfe star system, but replenished their energy and supplies a little, and then continued their journey to the next star system.

This journey lasted another seventy-one years.

Then they continued to rely on the star system to replenish supplies and energy, and then continued their journey.

Fifty-three years, sixty-eight years, forty-seven years, one hundred and one years.

Humans have been stopping and starting, relying on the star system again and again, and have walked out of the starry sky route that has never been walked in history.

Including the time for replenishment, humans have been away from the Wolf star system for 360 years.

In six sixty years, the total distance of humans has reached 52.7 light years, but the straight-line distance to the Wolf star system is only 36.6 light years, which is the effective distance that humans have spent six sixty years to produce.

Humans have once again experienced the vastness of the universe and the ruthlessness of time.