"When will the Trisolaran Fleet arrive? Several centuries from now. With such a long span of time, not one of you thought to make use of that time capital and put humanity in a strategically advantageous position."
"Tell me, then. If that isn't idiocy, what is?"
The human elites present looked at one another and whispered among themselves, but none of them understood what Lin Feng meant.
Make use of several centuries?
How?
Time was not something one could simply take and use!
At last, someone could no longer contain the question in his heart and asked Lin Feng, "Mr. Taylor, what exactly do you mean by making use of it?"
"Energy storage, of course. Wars are fought over resources; that is an eternal principle. The Trisolaran Fleet is embarking on an expedition against us and will receive no resource replenishment for centuries. In other words, the energy of their fleet is finite and is constantly being depleted."
"And us? Humanity possesses the local Solar System, giving us a massive energy source by nature. If we collect and store energy, then after several centuries, the energy we obtain will be an astronomical figure. That is an immense war resource for resisting the Trisolaran Fleet."
When he finished speaking, the conference room fell silent for several seconds. Everyone had been stunned by Lin Feng's words.
However, they were not stunned by the brilliance of Lin Feng's idea, but by how absurd it was.
"Mr. Taylor, I do not mean to disparage you, but may I presumptuously ask whether you ever passed physics in school?"
"Speak properly, or I'll have you go chat with the CIA."
Lin Feng gave the speaker a smile that did not reach his eyes. The man rearranged his wording and asked again.
"Mr. Taylor, may I ask whether you believe energy is a robot? That it can be manipulated according to humanity's will? That it can be deposited in a bank like money, with no loss when unused, and then spent with a swipe of a credit card whenever needed?"
Lin Feng nodded. He was not surprised by the question; he had already guessed someone would ask it.
Energy naturally dissipated. There was simply nothing capable of absolutely containing it. Even black holes, extreme celestial bodies from which not even light could escape, possessed evaporative properties.
When it came to freedom, nothing was freer than energy.
Being able to use energy like money in a bank, suffering losses only when it was spent, was something that could happen only in fairy tales.
"What is your name?"
"Are you trying to intimidate me? Or are you planning to have me arrested too?"
The man fearlessly shot back. Scholars had the pride of scholars.
"No. I merely want to remember you. At last, someone is willing to ask a somewhat technical question. I am greatly relieved."
"My name is John Smith. I research nuclear physics."
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Smith. Since you are a physics professional, let me ask you this: do you think Ball Lightning is a naturally occurring semi-permanent capacitor?"
Ball Lightning in Trisolaris, also known as the Macro Electron, was part of a macro atom.
It possessed the ordinary characteristics of an electron. After being excited into an excited state by lightning and the like, the Macro Electron and the matter destroyed by its energy entered a quantum state. Their positions could only be described by probability; they became a cloud of probability.
It was visible on a macroscopic scale but had no physical form. The Macro Electron existed as a "void bubble" and could only be observed through its refraction of visible light. It could be seen with the naked eye. Once excited into an excited state by lightning and the like, it became Ball Lightning—put simply, it was like a series of lightbulbs with no physical form. Once powered up, they lit up. People could sense the light and heat from the bulbs and become aware of their existence.
After excitation, it existed in the form of waves. Once it selected a suitable target, it resonated with the object and manifested the wave-particle duality of matter. The waves acted only on objects that resonated with them, so they would not harm surrounding objects—in plain language, it could convert matter between waves and physical entities. Electromagnetic waves, Gravitational Waves, sound waves, and the like had no physical form. Humanity could only indirectly detect their existence through changes in matter.
In other words, it could be understood as a form of "nullifying" matter.
Without an observer, an excited Macro Electron existed in a quantum state, and everything about it could only be described through probability. The probability of it remaining excited was very low—when someone watched it, it stayed put, but when no one watched, it ran all over the place.
On Earth in Lin Feng's previous life, he could not guarantee whether Macro Electrons existed. But on the Earth of this Trisolaran World, Macro Electrons were objective realities, just like gravity, because the author had written them into the book.
Like other technologies, after humanity discovered Macro Electrons, its first thought was to develop them into weapons, then figure out how to deploy them in actual combat.
By exploiting the trait that Macro Electrons "acted only on objects that resonated with them," it was possible to strike directly while ignoring physical barriers.
Even if someone hid in an underground nuclear facility or at the center of Earth, as long as one possessed the target's resonance information, a Sophon weapon could still harm them.
Because Sophons interacted only with resonant targets.
Matter could "block" matter because matter could interact with matter. If interaction was impossible, then every form of "blocking" ceased to exist.
In humanity's future Doomsday Battle, the Droplet's strong-interaction-force armor was indestructible. Electromagnetic cannons and gamma rays could not inflict even the slightest damage, yet Ball Lightning could ignore it.
If humanity had been capable of obtaining the resonance information inside the Droplet, then in a one-on-one duel, a Sophon weapon could destroy the Droplet as easily as drinking water.
However, humanity had never cared much for fair play on the battlefield, and naturally, neither would the Trisolarans.
The Trisolarans had a miraculous tool like the Sophon that gave them a fully revealed map. By exploiting the Macro Electron's susceptibility to observation, no Macro Electron or quantum-ghost-form attack could threaten Trisolaris.
Even if the human fleet used Sophon weapons, during the Doomsday Battle, they would still be nothing more than a firecracker with two thousand pops.
Not to mention the other technological methods of the Trisolarans, methods Lin Feng had never encountered in the original novel. As a civilization technologically far beyond humanity, the Trisolarans could not possibly possess only two technologies: the Droplet and the Sophon!
But... if they could not win, why fight at all?
Who said Macro Electrons had to be made into weapons?
In Lin Feng's view, the many characteristics of Macro Electrons made them the perfect low-loss, unlimited-capacity, ridiculously overpowered capacitor.
First, Ball Lightning had no physical form. It existed only as a wave, and waves had no concept of volume.
Even if the entire Earth were converted into electrical energy through the formula E=MC^2 and stored inside a Macro Electron no larger than a person's fingernail, there would theoretically be no problem at all.
This was what it meant to have no capacitance limit. Those Ark Reactors in science fiction were pathetically weak by comparison!
Second, it reacted only with resonant targets of specific frequencies—that was, it interacted energetically only with them. This selective energy transfer meant that the natural dissipation of energy would be reduced to an absurd degree.
For example, if a Macro Electron were thrown into space, who could it find in a vacuum to resonate with and transfer its energy to?
No one. The only method was through the light and heat it released itself, yet the efficiency of that energy transfer was extremely low!
How low?
So low it could be ignored. Otherwise, no one would specifically say that it "would not harm surrounding objects."
Energy neither vanished from nothing nor appeared from nothing. It merely moved from one place to another. When a high-energy object had an extremely low rate of energy dissipation, it meant that object naturally possessed the physical property of storing energy.
John Smith froze for a moment, then incredulously asked, "You mean using the 'Macro Electron' as a capacitor to store electrical energy, continuously storing the electrical energy generated by human civilization over the centuries before the Trisolarans arrive, then using that electricity when the final battle against the Trisolarans begins?"
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