Darkness Before Dawn
Humanity has clearly identified its direction: Warp Speed Travel technology. However, it has only identified the direction; scientists currently have no clue how to achieve Warp.
Yes, that's right. In the original theories of Human Civilization, Warp Speed Travel requires a powerful Negative Energy to distort spacetime, causing a large difference in the Warp of space in front of and behind the spaceship/warship. It's like smearing soap on the stern of a paper boat to break the surface tension of the water behind it, and then the water itself propels the spaceship forward.
In terms of spatial manifestation, that is Gravity -related technology. After all, in the existing scientific theories of mankind, only Gravity can distort spacetime. However, the problem is that human scientists have not yet seen any possibility of mastering Gravity -related technologies on the visible path.
The Grand Unified Theory that humanity is currently exploring using Astronomical-Level Particle Collider is actually the unification of the Strong Interaction Force and Electroweak Forces—a true unification of the three fundamental forces of the universe. It doesn't include Gravity, which would be called Theory of Everything of Gravity, a Theory of Everything of Level 5 Civilization. This has been confirmed by the 'Drift Bottle' — Rhomboid Crystal —left by the Precursor. It can be said that humanity has already grasped the hallmark theories of Type 4 and higher civilizations.
But precisely because of this, human development is now in a state of confusion, because people simply cannot understand how Warp is achieved after unifying the Strong Force to form Grand Unified Theory.
In fact, it's not just humanity's own Technology Tree; a thorough search of the scientific history of the Crimson Flame Civilization yielded no relevant records. The Crimson Flame Civilization was even far behind humanity in terms of fundamental theories; they hadn't even discovered the Casimir Effect.
Given the past scientific development of humankind, by now that we have built Astronomical-Level Particle Collider and begun testing it, there should already be many related Grand Unified Theory about how to achieve Warp Speed Travel. But there are not a single conjectures at present.
Human scientists seem to have suddenly lost their imagination about achieving Warp; they seem unable to think of any way to achieve Warp other than Gravity.
This is a terrifying thing, because having a direction but being unable to conceive of it seems to indicate the limitations of human imagination. To this end, human research institutions specifically disseminated this information to research institutions within the Crimson Flame Civilization, the Kuntai People and Nair Peoples, and the Dog-Headed People, encouraging them to participate in the imagination regarding Warp.
Unfortunately, like humans, they are also at a loss about this, and even less so than humans. Many ideas that humans can come up with, they have never even considered.
At this moment, humanity recalled the words the Awakeners about the limits of intelligence when they first encountered it. If the Awakeners hadn't also mentioned things like talent, scientists would now doubt whether they could comprehend the Grand Unified Theory.
Because the collision experiments continued day after day, but no new discoveries were made.
Over time, human experiments in particle collisions have gradually expanded from neutron collisions to collisions of other leptons and Baryon. Theoretically, each experiment has reached the energy level of 10 to the power of 15 GeV electron volts required by the Grand Unified Theory, but no new phenomena have been discovered.
One scientific team after another has been conducting experiments with Astronomical-Level Particle Collider for years, one year, two years, three years, ten years, twenty years, thirty years—half a century has passed, yet the new discoveries that scientists have been eagerly anticipating have never materialized, as if they never existed at all.
This result was undoubtedly disheartening for humanity, but no one gave up easily. Although the scientists on all the teams were anxious, each of them held onto the same belief: to continue until they succeeded.
Perhaps the only thing humanity can be proud of is successfully building Astronomical-Level Particle Collider. Because energy levels are something that humans can easily measure, and this Astronomical-Level Particle Collider has indeed met the requirements. In fact, in some experiments accelerating leptons, there are even collision experiments within the theoretical scope of energy level overflow.
This was, of course, an experiment conducted by scientists who doubted the energy level. After thirty years of failed experiments, they applied to conduct hundreds of overload collision experiments, which involved applying a magnetic field strength exceeding the rated operating strength to the accelerating magnetic field of Astronomical-Level Particle Collider, thereby allowing the accelerated particles to achieve higher collision speeds.
However, such collision experiments have no surprises; no hidden secrets have ever been discovered.
Half a century of experiments has led scientists to suspect that the detection module of the Astronomical-Level Particle Collider is not advanced enough, or that its detection module itself is unable to detect new phenomena in the experiment, which is why no abnormal experimental findings have been discovered for so many years.
To this end, the Human Development Committee has held numerous scientific seminars and made the need for the detection module a regular part of its research. Experts in Material Science, computer science, and engineering have been working tirelessly for years to improve the detection module of the Astronomical-Level Particle Collider, thereby making it possible to capture new particle trajectories.
However, the results of subsequent experiments after the improvements clearly told humanity: you haven't done enough.
Yes, still nothing was found. The improved detection module captured particle trajectories more clearly, and the data obtained by humans was more accurate, but it still couldn't change the fact that no new phenomena were discovered.
Therefore, a scientific team proposed another possibility: that existing human detection methods simply cannot detect the new phenomenon, or that the theoretical energy level calculation is wrong.
If humans conduct experiments at an incorrectly predicted energy level, it is naturally impossible to discover new phenomena in collision experiments.
So what should be done next? The scientific team that proposed these two possibilities believes that one is to continue to lengthen the Particle Collider so that humans can obtain experimental conditions at higher energy levels; the other is to re-examine the theoretical ideas of the so-called 10 to the power of 15 GeV electron volt energy level in the Grand Unified Theory.
The second point is fine; they had barely raised this suspicion when other scientific teams began working on it. As for the first point, it was directly rejected by the New Government.
It's not that the New Government doesn't support continuing the experiment, but rather that the time cost of continuing to extend the Particle Collider is too great, and they would have to keep mining from those eight Star System that have been almost completely depleted.
After so many years, humanity has made some small progress in magnetic field technology. So after rejecting the first point, human engineers directly proposed to upgrade the Particle Collider's acceleration system with the most advanced magnetic field technology currently available to mankind. This proposal was immediately implemented.
After half a century of upgrades, human scientists once again devoted their efforts to the experiment, but the result was still the same: what was detected were experimental phenomena that humans had already known.
This is undoubtedly disheartening, but many scientists still firmly believe that this is the Darkness Before Dawn. The experiment's failure simply means that the current experimental methods are incorrect. As long as we continue to select and experiment, one day humanity will be able to discover the true clues to the Grand Unified Theory in experiments.