Chapter 578: A Hundred Years of Haste
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Time flew.
Year 2153!
It had been over a century ever since humans returned to Earth, and the human population had already exceeded six hundred million. Following the production of the wisdom elixir that was eventually provided to every person, there was an explosive advancement in the technological field for the past hundred years.
The humans went from only being able to terraform the Earth, to be able to perform a large-scale transformation of the entire solar system.
A gigantic smart Dyson Sphere had already covered the entire sun and the limitless energy that it gave off was converted into a large amount of anti-matter by the nearby anti-matter factories.
At the same time, Mars and Venus were orbiting on Earth's orbit as well. In order to safely migrate these two planets to Earth's orbit, humans had begun researching the Planetary Curvature Engines in the Year 2070, and after spending about ten or so years they had successfully manufactured two enormous Planetary Curvature Engines. Then used almost several hundred trillion tons of anti-matter, which was comparable to two years of energy produced by a tenth of the completed Dyson Sphere, they completed the task.
However, everything was worth it. Earth's current orbit was most suitable for sustaining human life. The upcoming planetary terraforming was the easiest task and had only taken about ten years time before the two dead planets were now overflowing with signs of life. However, the only exception was that the creatures here had small bodies that were similar to some of Earth's creatures.
To top it off, the various technical difficulty they faced during the construction had, in turn, provided them with a vast amount of priceless experience and knowledge regarding the construction of an extremely large structure.
Before the construction of the Dyson Sphere, the humans had an optimistic estimation — at least the next thousand years, they would not be worried about energy issues. However, their energy expenditure had increased to the point that it had become much larger than what the humans had initially estimated.
There was a saying that the poor had the living standard of the poor, and the rich had the living standard of the rich. A poor man would not be able to imagine the monthly expenditure of a rich man that could very well be equivalent to all the earnings in a poor man's life. The same could also be said about humans today. When the energy supply was more than what they needed, various crazy inventions were built en mass.
For example, a multi-functional mining platform for gaseous planets called the "Planetary Vacuum Cleaner" was currently being used to filter Jupiter's gaseous materials.
Another example would be a multi functional mining platform for rocky planets called the "Planetary Peeler" that was being used to peel off the rocky layers on the Barnard Star System's fourth planet and the Sirius Star System's fifth planet.
The last example would be a planetary fortress that was also known as the third "Humanity's Ultimate Defender" that could travel at fifty times the speed of light and was parked nearby planet Earth.
All these gigantic structures had a radius upward of a hundred kilometers. During their runtime, the energy these machines could utilize was astronomical. This was especially so for the planetary fortress. It was a humongous structure that had a diameter of up to five hundred kilometers. Although it was much smaller than the moon, its mass was one and a half times larger than that of the moon.
With a hundred kilometers of a highly condensed alloy, even if the humans used all their strength, they would not be able to break through the defensive layer within a short period of time except by using a large amount of anti-matter to land a direct hit. Once the structure was completed, it was tested at the nearby star for a few times before it was deemed to be wasting too much energy. Afterward, it had remained stationary close to Earth.
It was not that the speed of production of the anti-matter could not match the energy expenditure of the fortress, it was only that the humans were starting to have the awareness to stock up on this kind of strategic resources after all these years.
Even if it was the humans of today, they would not really just sit back and relax facing the boundless galaxy.
Forty years ago, following the newly created, fourth generation space exploration equipment — God's Eye — the humans began to explore their surroundings and went as far as 1,500 light years from their original system.
The extraterrestrial civilizations they discovered went from only three to twelve new civilizations. However, civilizations that could be discovered by the space exploration equipment were the weakest of them all. There was also a civilization that could explore their nearby star system, and among them was another interstellar civilization.
Humans had classified the danger level of each and every other extraterrestrial civilization with a strict classification level.
The lowest grade was harmless civilizations that could not even scratch the humans even if they used all of their efforts. They could only hide within their star system and were completely harmless to Earth.
This type of civilization was the most common type of extraterrestrial civilization that mankind had discovered. Over two-thirds of the discovered civilizations were classified within this category.
The next level was classified as a light threat. These civilizations posed a certain level of danger. They could already begin interstellar exploration, and some of the more powerful civilizations had already discovered curvature flight. However, their technological advancements were still inferior. Even if a war were to break out, there would be no difficulty in determining the victory and losses, just like how the humans destroyed the Glassian civilization a hundred years ago.
The next level would be the medium threat civilizations that posed a huge threat over the humans because these civilizations were at the same level as them, and could at times be slightly more advanced. If war were to break out with this level of civilization, the outcome would be very difficult to foresee.
As for the high threat civilizations which were also known as the destruction level — they were far more powerful and more advanced than the humans. Against such a civilization, all they could do was run away as far as possible before showing the opponent any aggressive intentions.
Fortunately, the humans were not so unlucky. They only managed to discover medium threat civilizations that were only beginning to approach a high threat level.
The civilization was about 1,200 light years away from their solar system, with its forces at the side of all of its five neighboring star systems. It was like an overlord proudly monitoring all of its surrounding civilizations.
Ever since it was discovered, the humans had been continuously monitoring this powerful civilization for over forty years. Throughout those forty years, where the civilization's main star system was situated in, the number of technological structures had been growing at an exponential rate, Naturally, this was not only the case for this civilization. In fact, the human civilization was also experiencing the same thing.
A hundred or so years worth of time would let people forget the earlier times of war. Although the older generation of humans that had been through war had gradually passed away after all these years, the next generation of new humans that had an even longer lifespan was still young and full of vigor. Still, even though most of them held the position of a leader, there was still a sense of danger in their heart.
Ever since the discovery of that civilization, the humans had immediately entered a wartime state.
That humongous planetary fortress was the end result of the arms race, even if there were still two fortresses halfway through their construction.
Besides that, the humans had built over fifty thousand Curvature Warships these past few decades and had constructed a large-scale space defense structure for the solar system. Its density and intensity were very different from that of the Glassians.
When compared to the Glassian warfare with that kind of sad and normal atmosphere they emitted, there was nothing the humans feared.
Within a hundred years, the humans had deeply researched about the energy quantification and the gradual maturity of the quantum energy leaping technique. With that, the energy weapons possessed by the humans improved at an extremely fast speed.
Even if there was a transformation, it was definitely not an exaggeration when it came to military affairs.
In the olden days, humans made surpassing light speed as their target. Aside from relying on luck, they had no better way of doing it.
On one side, they did not have a precise detection system and the spatial wave as well as there being a significant deviation in the object's position. On the other hand, they had to solve the problem of the target's speed being too fast while being too far away.
After all, the attacks could still miss even if there was no error with the precision of the target detection system. It would still happen even if the fire control system's quantum calculator had ever so precisely calculated the position where attacks would land and it had started firing.
For a target approaching at light speed under a few hours time, even one that would reach them within one or two days time, the deviation was simply too great. A minor spatial fluctuation or a refraction of air between the target and the weapon along with the occasionally changing speed could destroy all their earlier preparation.
However, their newly developed weapons that could surpass light speed changed everything. It had overcome the problem of distance along with the multiple variable disturbances the attackers could go through and would instantly hit its targets the moment it fired.
Along with the miniaturized space exploration equipment and the far more advanced quantum calculator the humans now possessed, they had managed to improve their hit rate on light speed targets by almost a million times.
However, even if it had increased by a million times, the chances of an attack hitting its mark remained depressingly low due to the original chances being far too low.
Nevertheless, there would normally be hundreds of millions of shots going off in a war between two interstellar civilizations. Even if the hit-rate was low, the increased numbers could make up for it. Although a single cannon fort had a low hit-rate, millions of energy artillery shells would be fired around a large area. Regardless of how fast the target was, it would still be futile.