Strange Signal

Yi Kai even dared to guarantee to Yue Yuan that as long as Yue Yuan could bring him a biosphere of a planet, he could create Life Elixir with a lifespan of 500 years within 50 years.

Based on his understanding of Yi Kai's personality, Yue Yuan felt that this kind of talk was mostly boasting, but it was probably a well-rehearsed boast.

Yue Yuan still remembers the old man's arrogant expression at the time, as if he was certain that he couldn't bring him a planetary biosphere.

Just as Yue Yuan was about to explain the specific details of this Life Elixir Xu Zhenyi, the internal communicator embedded in the chest of his military uniform suddenly sounded a call.

Yue Yuan raised his right hand and tapped the button on his chest. He then heard a woman's voice coming from the communicator.

"Commander Yue, come to the Command Center immediately. The Hope has received a strange signal."

"Man Yuemei?" Upon hearing such a familiar mature woman's voice, Yue Yuan immediately knew who was calling.

But what about these strange signals? Could it be Alien Civilization? Yue Yuan's heart skipped a beat. Couldn't they just give humanity some time to develop peacefully? The threat of the 'Silver Mist' was still there, and now another strange signal appeared. Were they trying to kill us?

"What do you mean by a strange signal? Is it that the content cannot be deciphered or the source cannot be located?" Yue Yuan asked hastily without any politeness.

"Yes, but the communications expert said the reason we can't pinpoint the source is because we've only received the information once so far."

"Besides Hope, have any of our other probes deployed in this galaxy received the signal?" Yue Yuan asked again.

"Yes, Doctor Zhao Youqin judged based on this point that the signal should be a kind of broadcast signal."

"Okay, I'll be right there."

After Yue Yuan finished speaking, he tapped the button to close the communication, and then looked at Xu Zhenyi: "Professor Xu, would you like to go and take a look together?"

"No, I wouldn't be of much help with communications anyway. Besides, although we've achieved superconducting materials, we still need to continue with various optimization experiments." Xu Zhenyi put the superconducting materials back in the drawer and shook his head, declining Yue Yuan's suggestion.

Yue Yuan knew that Xu Zhenyi's words about not being able to help were just a humble way of saying so, but he didn't insist. So he nodded and said, "Well, then I won't bother Professor Xu any longer."

After leaving Xu Zhenyi's office, Yue Yuan instructed Long Xiaolin: "Xiaolin, go to the Academy of Sciences and inform Doctor Talia Sinskaia and Dr. Lu Xiaofen to come to the bridge. By the way, if you can't find Dr. Lu Xiaofen at Academy of Sciences of Sciences, go to Dr. Doctor Yi Kai's Life Science Research Institute."

Taliya Sinskaia was one of the few foreigners on the Hope. She came to the Callisto Base under the guise of scientific research cooperation before the solar catastrophe.

Yue Yuan remembered that the collaborative research project was in the field of quantum information. However, after the disaster, Yue Yuan discovered that she was actually a cryptographer. To be precise, it wasn't exactly a discovery, but rather that Taliya Sinskaia herself reported it to the New Government after the Hope was completed.

The apparent reason is simple: she wanted to stay in a private cabin reserved for specialists.

Actually, when Taliya Sinskaia reported it, Yue Yuan had already made some connections to her identity as a cryptographer, but since the sun and the earth were gone, he gave up on further investigation, since the investigation was no longer meaningful.

Taliya Sinskaia is a cryptographer, while Lu Xiaofen is a linguist. If the strange signal is an alien broadcast, they might come in handy.

Yue Yuan didn't really want it to be a signal from an Alien Civilization, but no matter how much he didn't want it, he still had to make the necessary preparations.

Some things don't happen just because you want them to.

After Long Xiaolin left, Yue Yuan and two accompanying soldiers headed straight for the Hope's control center. After changing elevators several times and passing through dozens of cabin doors, he arrived at the control center.

"What's going on with this strange signal?" Yue Yuan asked the communications experts who were busy at their respective control consoles as soon as he stepped into the Hope control center.

"Commander, eighteen minutes ago, the Hope suddenly received a signal with obvious signs of civilization. The signal lasted for 6 minutes and 18 seconds. We are trying to locate its source, but because the signal was a single signal, we are unable to determine its direction at this time." Zhao Youqin, who was pointing at the work screen operated by a staff member, turned around and answered.

Yue Yuan quickly walked over to Zhao Youqin and looked at the work screen. He wasn't a communications expert and couldn't understand the complex technical details, but he could roughly understand what the staff were doing.

After observing for a while, Yue Yuan roughly understood what Zhao Youqin meant by "attempting to locate".

Because humanity has only received information once so far, Zhao Youqin wants to compare the information received by Hope and other probes deployed by humans in orbit around other planets in this system, and thus determine the direction of the information by using the time difference.

What the staff are doing now is writing algorithms on computers, treating the human detectors distributed throughout the planetary system as a receiver array, and then using the time difference of signal reception at each point in the array to deduce the source of the signal.

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, Yue Yuan suddenly saw a wave representing signal reception on a monitor next to him suddenly surge up.

At the same time, the staff member sitting in front of the monitor suddenly shouted, "Director Zhao, look! It's coming again! The signal is back!"

Zhao Youqin swiftly moved behind the staff member and stared intently at the display screen.

Yue Yuan also turned over and saw that the wave was increasing and decreasing in a very regular manner, which was very different from the signal of Pulsar. Anyone with eyes could tell that the source was not a natural Pulsar.

Suddenly, everyone fell silent. Only the buzzing of the signal receiver and the occasional sound of current rectification could be heard in the Command Center.

As before, the staff used the equipment on the Hope to record the various characteristics of the signal.

The signal disappeared as soon as recording began. It only lasted for a few seconds.

"Last time it was 6 minutes and 18 seconds, how come it's only 3 seconds this time?!" Seeing the signal stop, Zhao Youqin looked at the staff on his left. "What was the time interval between the two signals?"

"23 minutes," the staff member replied immediately.

"At a 23-minute interval, the first signal lasted 6 minutes and 18 seconds, but the second signal only lasted 3 seconds. We immediately checked the records and compared the two signals to see if there was any overlap."

"Yes!"

The interval between the end of the last signal and the appearance of this signal is about thirty minutes. If there is a third one, it is most likely some kind of repeated broadcast.

But after waiting for a long time, no third signal came.

"The comparison is complete. A section of the latter half of the second signal is exactly the same as the first signal," a staff member shouted.

If there's a repetition, then they must be from the same source, although I don't know why the second one is so short.

"Immediately compile the satellite data and adjust the analog signal array. Two adjustments should be enough for us to find the signal direction," Zhao Youqin said to the staff who were working on the signal array integration. However, as soon as he finished speaking, he patted the staff member on the shoulder and then changed his mind, saying, "Never mind, I'll do it."

After the staff made way for him, Zhao Youqin plopped down in front of the control panel and immediately started typing furiously on the keyboard.

As he moved, various data on the display screen immediately flipped up and down, and he skillfully typed strings of code into the array program.

It is clear that Zhao Youqin is very familiar with these operations.