Voyage of the Stars

The universe is indeed empty, and humans who have reached the fourth level of civilization feel this more deeply.

Because even with such a high level of interstellar navigation capabilities, they have traveled hundreds of light years and have not found any planets with life along the way, let alone encountering other alien civilizations.

Sometimes humans have a little doubt that the awakener "Phantom" has specially arranged so many alien civilizations before. Now, humans think that the awakener "Phantom" should still be busy with the war with the Reapers, so he has no time to look at human civilization, so humans do not encounter alien civilizations as frequently as before as if they were arranged.

The awakener "Phantom" no longer stares at himself, which humans guessed correctly, but about the war between the awakener and the Reaper, humans did guess wrong.

After all, there is no relevant information, and it is normal to guess wrong. Of course, humans don't know it now, and they still think that the war will last for tens of thousands of years.

Humans are still on the star path, and the general direction is to go to the end of the Orion spiral arm, and there is no exact destination. During this period, humans have not given up observing the vast galaxy, and humans have not given up that glimmer of hope.

During the warp speed navigation, it is really difficult to observe the stars of the Milky Way through the light in the universe because of the superluminal speed. Therefore, every time they stop to resupply, astronomers can't wait to unfold the array of sky survey telescopes and observe the stars.

There are two purposes. One is to locate one's position in the Milky Way. This is very important. If you are not careful when sailing in the starry sky, you will get lost in the vast sea of ​​stars. Therefore, every time you stop, you are positioning and correcting the route. The second is to observe and find the position of the star map given by the pioneer diamond crystal drift bottle. This is what humans have always insisted on and have never given up for many years.

And so year after year, astronomical observations have finally made a delightful discovery one day.

Well, one day. Although human individuals can now stay awake for a month without sleeping, the unit of time is still used to the time concept of the Earth era. First, human society is used to such a unit of measurement. Second, no matter how the unit of time is changed, it has no effect on scientific research itself, but will only cause unnecessary confusion to human society itself.

Today is the last day for humans to complete resource replenishment and prepare to set foot on the star map again. Relevant departments have urged astronomy-related departments to quickly put away the survey telescope array. However, astronomers seem to have procrastination and delayed for half a day.

So, when the survey telescope array rotated to a certain direction of the starry sky, they found several stars that seemed to be a bit similar to those shown on the star map.

The reason why it is said to be a bit similar rather than certain is because of the observation angle. The positioning method used by humans in interstellar navigation today is still the same as before, using familiar celestial bodies and familiar constellations to locate their positions.

After setting foot on the starry sky, pulsar positioning is no longer practical because humans no longer stay in a fixed place like the earth. Therefore, although pulsars are very stable, their two-axis pulses like starry sky flashlights cannot always have the conditions to sweep across the area where humans are located.

So in fact, after humans change their positions, some pulsars that could originally be seen through the survey telescope array can no longer be seen, and of course, some other pulsars that were originally invisible will also be seen.

In this case, humans first determine the direction of the galactic center to determine their approximate position, and then find familiar constellations through observation of the stars, and then compare the observation results of their previous position to determine their current position.

So when astronomers found that the star combination in a certain starry sky was a bit like the star map provided by the Pioneer diamond crystal drift bottle, they immediately compared the observed starry sky with the previous starry sky with great joy and expectation, and then converted the starry sky observed at the current human position into a 3D star map with the help of strong artificial intelligence.

Then, they called out the star map given by the Pioneer for comparison.

The star map given by the Pioneer is certainly not a piece of parchment or a flat drawing, but an advanced 3D image map that can be rotated and viewed from all angles. The reason why astronomers want to convert the starry sky they observe into a 3D map is to match it with the Pioneer's star map.

And this comparison made them excited.

"Found it, found it! The position in the star map must be, must be, yes, it must be here!" An astronomer shouted excitedly.

Just now, it thought that only the number and position of stars matched, but the types of stars did not match. However, after his colleagues added the factor of "time" to the cosmic evolution model, the two star maps matched. Although it was not a perfect match, the slight difference was within the allowable range of observation error. Moreover, human cosmic evolution theory and stellar evolution theory may not be correct everywhere, so it is normal to have some deviations.

The news was soon known to the entire human high-level.

Finding the location shown in the star map must be a big deal, because everyone knows that it is a small universe left by the pioneers in the Milky Way. The diamond crystal drift bottle has already shown that it is what the pioneers left for the new generation of civilization in the Milky Way.

The things left by a civilization capable of embarking on a long voyage must be good things, and humans cannot miss them, especially after getting the things given by the awakener, humans are more looking forward to the things left by the pioneers.

Maybe, like the Awakener, they left their special technological products in the Milky Way. And what is the special technology of the Pioneer? It is quantum macro-tunneling! If humans really get that thing, combined with the consciousness link system given by the Awakener, we dare not say that we can fight across civilization levels, but we are absolutely invincible in the same level of civilization.

Of course, this is just human imagination. What is in the Pioneer's microcosm can only be known after arriving in it. And it has been three billion years, maybe the things inside have already decayed under the erosion of time.

But as long as there is hope, humans don't want to give up.

However, after seeing the exact location of the star map, everyone was dumbfounded.

There is no other reason. The location of the star map is the Perseus Arm, and the arm where humans are now is called the Orion Arm, which is a branch arm of the Centaurus Arm.

In other words, humans must sail across the spiral arm to reach their destination.

Cross-spiral arm navigation, humans would not even dare to think about it before. Even if we have mastered warp speed navigation and reached a warp speed of 10.079 times the speed of light, it is impossible to cross the spiral arm directly at one time, because the void between the two spiral arms is too vast, and it is impossible to cross it at one time without replenishment.

Now, if humans want to go to the location indicated by the star map, there are two ways. One is to move towards the center of the Milky Way, go around the Perseus spiral arm after reaching the center of the galactic disk, and then return from the Perseus spiral arm. The second is to find an area where the two spiral arms are closest, and then cross the stars one by one along the star road there.

The space between the spiral arms is not entirely empty, there are stars between them, but the distance between the stars is very far.

The good news is that humans have calculated that the destination of the star map is opposite the spiral arm where they are at the moment, and it is also on the edge.

If you can cross the spiral arm, you can reach it directly.