Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones-Chapter 399: Various Breakthrough

This collision lasted for a full 15 years. Amidst the light of approximately 330 million black holes annihilating, Tom gradually glimpsed the truth of the universe, extremely subtle yet significant, hidden behind the macroscopic background.

He gradually realized that what caused the gravitons to turn from virtual to real was not the environment created by the annihilation of black holes, but rather the extremely high energy level of this environment, which created conditions similar to those that existed a few hundred billionths of a second after the Big Bang.

At that time, symmetry breaking had not yet occurred. All four fundamental forces, including gravity, were still unified.

Afterward, symmetry breaking occurred, and gravity separated first, becoming an independent force.

And, it was only during that extremely short process of just separating that gravitons possessed the characteristics of real particles and could be observed.

After this, gravitons completely disappeared, transforming into special particles existing between existence and non-existence, and could no longer be observed, only indirectly detected through their effects.

Frequent micro black hole generation experiments were still underway. With the birth and instantaneous annihilation of one black hole after another, with the continuous generation of massive amounts of data, and with Tom's continuous observation of the unification of the four fundamental forces, one day, Tom finally let out a long sigh of relief.

"So that's how it is..."

At this moment, the last piece of the puzzle in Tom's framework of the unification of the four fundamental forces was finally put into place.

At this moment, Tom finally completely understood the essence of gravity and, through existing physical language, was able to fully and thoroughly describe gravity and unify it with the original three fundamental interactions.

At this moment, Tom knew that his technological level had finally broken through the Strong Nuclear limitation and entered a completely new stage, a completely new field.

Although he had not made any breakthroughs in applied physics and could not yet create any constructs exceeding the Strong Nuclear stage, Tom also knew clearly and certainly that he had truly entered the Gravity Civilization stage!

Gravity Civilization...

At this moment, Tom's gaze, looking up at the vast space, became a little hazy.

He seemed to see that invisible chain that had always bound him slightly loosening at this moment.

What is the biggest limitation in this universe?

For every electromagnetic, Electroweak, and Strong Nuclear Civilization, the answer will likely be the same.

The speed of light!

The speed of light, approximately 300,000 kilometers per second, is the biggest limitation in this universe.

If the speed of light cannot be broken through, then the maximum navigation speed of any civilization will inevitably be below the speed of light. The distances in the universe are often thousands or tens of thousands of light-years, and considering the necessary stopover phases in between, each long-distance interstellar voyage requires thousands or tens of thousands of years.

This is unacceptable for any civilization.

Precisely because of the existence of the speed of light limitation, civilizations can only confine their development area to a smaller range, such as a solar system.

Even two adjacent solar systems cannot develop collaboratively.

The reason is simple: the communication distance of Stellar Communication Technology cannot span light-year levels. Even if they are only four light-years apart, accounting for acceleration and deceleration time, a round trip for a spaceship would take at least ten years.

How can two solar systems with a ten-year communication delay develop collaboratively?

Not to mention that due to the existence of the speed of light limitation, information from the depths of distant space often takes many years to be detected by one's own side, leading to severe communication delays, and so on.

The speed of light limitation is like a cage, firmly restricting all civilizations below the gravitational level.

It is probably for this reason that both the former Red Star Alliance and the uncontacted Perseus Alliance considered breaking through the Strong Nuclear and advancing to gravitational as the threshold for joining their respective alliances.

Without breaking through to the gravitational stage, how can a civilization prove its excellence?

Even at the peak of Strong Nuclear, it is just a low-level civilization in the Milky Way!

Only by breaking through to the gravitational stage can a civilization be considered to have a certain value and a certain right to speak in the Milky Way, and only then can it be called a true mid-to-high-level civilization!

And now, Tom knew that he had truly entered this stage!

When the final research results were announced, the entire Human Civilization, totaling twenty-one races, was filled with jubilation.

Even the Electromagnetic Life forms, who are not considered orthodox intelligent civilizations, were filled with excitement at this moment.

Although this would not make them stronger than before, at least, with the Human Civilization becoming stronger, the protection they received would be greater and more secure, and their living environment would even become more superior as the Human Civilization's technology improved.

Heimerlan, on the night of the key breakthrough in basic physics theory, unprecedentedly put down his work and got completely drunk with Vasilolo and others.

Drinking the Viller People's unique beverage, which has a certain anesthetic and stimulant effect, Heimerlan, with teary eyes, cried out, "The wish I failed to achieve in the Havilah Civilization back then has finally been realized at this moment!"

Vasilolo felt a sense of empathy.

Why did Heimerlan take the risk and brazenly attack the Human Civilization back then?

Wasn't it in the hope of using it as a bargaining chip to exchange for technological data from the Recorder Civilization, thereby allowing the Havilah Civilization to advance to a Gravity Civilization?

Now, although the Havilah Civilization no longer exists and has transformed into the Viller Race integrated into the Human Civilization, firstly, the Human Civilization is benevolent. Secondly, as the Deputy Prime Minister, he is not only the supreme leader of the Viller Race but also the supreme leader of all other races.

From an essential point of view, is there a significant difference between this matter and the Havilah Civilization advancing to a Gravity Civilization?

Furthermore, this was not achieved by obtaining technological data from external sources, but by relying on self-effort for at least 98\\% of the process.

It can even be said that the current situation is better than the best-case scenario he had hoped for back then.

Since that is the case... there are no regrets in this life.

The wish has been fulfilled. If further progress can be made in the future to reach a higher stage, then it's all profit. Since that is the case, let's continue to follow the Head of State's footsteps and see how far and where we can go in the future...

...

Time quietly passed.

The basic physics theory unifying electroweak and Strong Nuclear forces is called the Grand Unified Theory. Now that gravity has also been unified, the theory that unifies all four fundamental forces within the same framework, described by the same physical language and mutually consistent, is called the "Theory of Everything."

Tom's research progress did not stop with the mastery of the Theory of Everything.

What he has mastered at this moment is merely a skeleton; it has not yet been filled with flesh and blood, filled with more theoretical details, and only a few secondary theories based on the Theory of Everything have emerged.

Secondary theories, and even tertiary and quaternary theories, are closer to the application level and are the fundamental elements that are truly transformed into combat power and productivity.

Tom's massive fleet still remained in this solar system. His billions of clones and the total number of intelligent life scientists, which had already surpassed one billion, worked tirelessly day and night, conducting more in-depth and detailed research in every field, striving to pave the way for the practical application of physics theory.

In the blink of an eye, over 50 years passed. On this day, the first major applied research based on the Theory of Everything achieved a breakthrough.

About 1 light-year away from the star, in the vast void where there were no macroscopic celestial bodies nearby, under the gaze of over a hundred large industrial spacecraft, scientific research spacecraft, residential spacecraft, aerospace carriers, and tens of millions of clones and scientists, a peculiar-looking object, overall spindle-shaped, covered with messy cables and bumps, with a total length of about 100 meters, quietly hovered in space.

"The first warp drive test is now beginning. Countdown, three, two, one, launch!"

Under the ample power supply from the nuclear fusion reactor equipped inside, one piece of equipment after another began to operate. The gravity manipulation equipment, personally developed by Tom and the scientists, and not the one originating from the Purple Moon Civilization, precisely adjusted the gravitational environment around this equipment, point by point, using gravity as a tool to adjust the curvature of the surrounding space according to the previous precise calculations.

When the surrounding space curvature reading finally met the requirements, a strange phenomenon occurred.

Like water ripples, this area of space seemed to be instantly enveloped in a layer of mist.

The water ripples subsided, the mist dissipated, and in the next moment, the spindle-shaped equipment quietly disappeared.

One millisecond later, its trace appeared 400 kilometers away.

It was as if it had teleported instantly.

It reappeared 400 kilometers away and seemed to have been attacked, showing countless damages.

Various pipes and cables on it seemed to be broken due to high temperatures, many areas were directly burned to the point of softening, and electrical sparks continued to emerge.

Black smoke constantly billowed out from the damaged parts of the outer shell, and gas leakage caused a raging fire to ignite inside.

In the next moment, it exploded with a bang, completely disappearing with a flash of strong light.

Facing this tragic scene, the scientists on the scientific research ships, residential ships, and other places showed no signs of dejection; instead, they were filled with excitement.

Some even couldn't contain themselves and started cheering.

Even Tom's face showed a slight smile.

The warp drive prototype was completely destroyed, completely blown up?

It doesn't matter.

At least this proved that their approach was correct.

Because it had truly performed a superluminal voyage.

Even if the travel time was extremely short, the distance was extremely short, and it was completely destroyed after the voyage, it cannot deny one fact.

It took 1 millisecond and traveled a distance of 400 kilometers without any conventional propulsion! Its speed reached approximately 1.3 times the speed of light!

Superluminal warp drive finally truly appeared before Tom at this moment.

"Having mastered the basic engineering paradigm, the next thing to do is simply continuous optimization and improvement. In the near future, I will also have a fleet that can perform superluminal travel...

It's just a pity that the space curvature near massive celestial bodies is too high and the pattern is too complex to conduct superluminal travel experiments, so we have to come all the way to this place a full light-year away to do it.

Even if I truly have a faster-than-light fleet in the future, I will still need to move away from massive celestial bodies like stars before entering warp travel.

However, judging from the process of the Cloud fleet's faster-than-light travel back then, this seems to be an issue that every civilization capable of faster-than-light travel must face, not just me, so it's not unacceptable."

After the breakthrough in warp travel technology, what surprised Tom was that the second major breakthrough occurred in biotechnology.

With the breakthrough in fundamental physics theory, Tom gained more advanced tools in various research fields, as well as more fundamental and in-depth guiding theories. This allowed Tom to understand how organisms function even more thoroughly from the basic particle level, and on this basis, he achieved a breakthrough in biotechnology in one fell swoop.

Even Tom felt somewhat shocked by the magnitude of this breakthrough.

Originally, he thought that at most it would only be an increase of a few billion on top of the existing 10 billion clones—after all, the larger the base number, the more difficult it is to increase.

At most, he could double it, allowing himself to control 20 billion clones simultaneously. This was already the best-case scenario Tom could imagine.

But what he didn't expect was that the maximum number of consciousness connections for this latest batch of produced clones actually surged tenfold!

It directly surged from 10 billion clones to 100 billion clones!

This caught Tom somewhat off guard. After all, he hadn't anticipated this situation at all and hadn't prepared enough clones in advance.

After several thousand years, Tom experienced this kind of happy problem again: there were available consciousness link quotas, but not enough clones to accommodate them.

There was no other way, so Tom had to specifically allocate a portion of engineering resources to the construction of clone factories, spending several years to fill these available connection quotas.

Looking at the clones with healthy bronze skin and strong, powerful bodies, Tom knew that although their physical strength was no different from that of normal people during the Electroweak period, they had improved too much in more profound aspects.

These clones basically wouldn't get sick. Even if injured, their self-healing ability would allow them to fully recover in a short time.

Even if a hand or foot was severed, it could regrow with powerful self-healing ability.

More optimized genetic design also gave them the ability to repair their bodies from the most minute details. As long as they didn't encounter accidents, their average lifespan was over a hundred thousand years.

Various brain functions also improved significantly compared to the past. During the Electroweak period, problems that only top scientific research talents could understand after hard work were considered elementary school level for any clone at this moment, and they could easily provide answers.

If those IQ test questions from back then were used to test these clones, it's likely that every clone would score above 170!

And at this moment, there were a full 100 billion such brains, completely under Tom's control, with no internal friction and no communication or exchange costs whatsoever.

The breakthrough in biotechnology instantly increased Tom's scientific research capabilities by more than tenfold, and the progress in the practical application research of the unified theory also instantly accelerated by dozens of times.

Soon, the third major breakthrough occurred.

Energy technology!

During the previous Strong Nuclear stage, Tom was already able to achieve a matter conversion efficiency of around 1\\% by adopting a multi-fusion mode.

That is, out of one kilogram of fusion fuel, approximately 10 grams of matter could be completely converted into energy.

This energy conversion efficiency was already astonishing, enough to support a vast fleet undertaking voyages spanning hundreds or even thousands of light-years. But at this moment, based on the breakthrough in gravitational theory, Tom found another path with higher mass-energy conversion efficiency.

Heavy nucleus fusion!

Generally speaking, the heavier the element, the higher the temperature and pressure required to cause it to undergo nuclear fusion.

For example, among the five lightest elements, hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, and boron, the temperature and pressure required for boron fusion are higher than for beryllium.

In the previous stage, Tom could at most meet the conditions required for protium fusion. But now, as technology progressed, the intervention of gravitational technology allowed Tom to create even higher temperature and pressure environments, making the fusion of elements after hydrogen and helium possible.

Especially, the fusion of hydrogen and helium produces subsequent heavier elements. So Tom had this idea: I will first perform the fusion of hydrogen and helium, and after generating the remaining heavier elements, I will repeatedly utilize them, allowing them to also begin fusion. By repeating this, wouldn't I be able to obtain higher mass-energy conversion efficiency?

Based on this idea, Tom conducted large-scale experiments. Ultimately, Tom determined the limit of his current technology.

He could at most create an environment sufficient for the fusion of the 12th element, magnesium. After magnesium, the fusion of elements like aluminum, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, and chlorine was temporarily not feasible.

Therefore, Tom specifically designed a fusion chain, starting from hydrogen, where hydrogen fuses into helium, then helium fuses into carbon, carbon fuses into oxygen, oxygen fuses into neon, and finally fuses into magnesium, undergoing 5 consecutive fusions. Furthermore, he employed gravitational technology to actively intervene in the fusion process, efficiency, and products to maximize energy output.

After a series of experiments, Tom joyfully saw that the final mass-energy conversion efficiency of this relatively simple multi-heavy nucleus fusion chain was increased to around 1.9%, exceeding protium fusion during the Strong Nuclear stage by over 90%!

And this was merely the initial stage of multi-heavy nucleus fusion. As his technology continued to advance and equipment continued to be optimized, theoretically, the mass-energy conversion efficiency of this setup was even expected to increase to 4%!

Out of every 1 kilogram of fuel, 40 grams of matter would be completely converted into energy, a threefold increase compared to the peak Strong Nuclear stage!

"No wonder warp travel is so energy-intensive, yet Gravity Civilizations can use it for continuous voyages spanning thousands of light-years. It turns out they have a more efficient energy supply…"

After the breakthrough in energy technology, breakthroughs in other areas also appeared like a geyser.

The next breakthrough occurred in computing technology.

With gravitational-related technology, Tom could more easily influence quantum states in superposition, significantly increasing their stability while also improving their operability and simultaneously expanding their quantum capacity.

This resulted in a tenfold or more increase in its computing performance.

Computing technology achieved a huge breakthrough, and the next breakthrough was in quantum mathematics. The development level of quantum mathematics is directly related to Stellar Communication, so Tom's Stellar Communication Technology also saw a significant improvement.

During the previous Strong Nuclear stage, Tom's Stellar Communication could only transmit up to about 300 billion kilometers away.

Beyond this distance, Stellar Communication would fail.

Tom had long anticipated that after entering the Gravity Civilization stage, his Stellar Communication range would greatly increase, but he didn't know exactly how much it would improve.

He had also made some conjectures about this, concluding that it might increase by about 10 times? 20 times?

Surely it couldn't be 30 times?

If the distance were increased by 30 times, it would reach 9 trillion kilometers, already close to 1 light-year. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

With a star as the core, the entire area within 1 light-year would be covered by Stellar Communication, allowing for communication between any two points without delay. Technological creations located anywhere could be controlled in real-time. What kind of scene would that be?

Tom thought about it and ultimately still felt it was a bit unrealistic.

"I estimate the increase will be between 10 and 20 times."

He thought to himself, "That's between 3 and 6 trillion kilometers. That's already very good."

But the final result shocked Tom once again.

It was only basic gravitational stage Stellar Communication equipment, yet the distance between the two system terminals had already extended to 15 trillion kilometers, and they were still maintaining real-time communication!

Moreover, the communication was stable, with extremely low error rates, clearly indicating huge potential for further development.

Suppressing the hint of surprise in his heart, Tom controlled the two communication spacecraft to continue moving away, and the distance expanded accordingly.

20 trillion kilometers, 21 trillion, 22 trillion…

This distance extended all the way to 28.96 trillion kilometers before the error rate suddenly broke through the limit, rendering Stellar Communication unusable.

So… the communication range limit of this simple, still experimental Stellar Communication equipment is approximately 3 light-years!

Compared to the previous Strong Nuclear stage, the increase was not 10 or 20 times, but a full 100 times!

Tom felt an unspeakable joy.

In fact, for Tom, whether the Stellar Communication range was 300 billion kilometers, 3 trillion kilometers, or even 10 trillion kilometers, the difference wasn't very significant.

The reason is simple: the distance between two stars is often several light-years, while most usable planets in a solar system are concentrated within 10 billion kilometers around the star.

Beyond this distance, whether it's 3 trillion or 10 trillion kilometers, it's all empty space with little value for utilization.

But when the Stellar Communication range broke through to approximately 30 trillion kilometers, the situation was different.

This meant that Stellar Communication could now extend directly from one solar system to another.

There aren't many stars that are only 1 light-year apart, nor many that are 2 light-years apart. But there are many, many stars within 3 light-years.

This means that from this moment on, the number of solar systems Tom could simultaneously develop was no longer just one, but he could concurrently develop two or even more solar systems!

With faster-than-light travel technology, the travel time between different solar systems was significantly reduced, making large-scale inter-solar system material flow also possible.

With these conditions, Tom's industrial strength would surge again!