This is My Plan!

"When will the Trisolaran Fleet arrive? Hundreds of years from now. With such a vast timespan, not a single one of you thought to leverage this temporal capital to put humanity in a strategically advantageous position."

"I'm just asking, what else could you call this if not idiocy?"

The human elites present exchanged glances and whispered amongst themselves, but none understood Lin Feng's meaning.

Leverage hundreds of years of time?

How could they leverage it?

Time couldn't be directly taken!

Finally, someone couldn't suppress their curiosity and asked Lin Feng, "Mr. Taylor, what do you mean by 'leverage'?"

"Energy storage, of course. War is fought with resources, an eternal principle. The Trisolaran Fleet is invading us, and they won't receive any resource replenishment for hundreds of years. This means their fleet's energy is conserved, or even constantly depleting."

"And us? We humans possess our home turf, the Solar System, which naturally provides a vast energy source. By collecting and storing energy, over hundreds of years, the amount of energy we'd obtain would be astronomical. This would be a massive war resource to counter the Trisolaran Fleet."

As his voice fell, the entire conference room fell silent for a few seconds. Everyone was stunned by Lin Feng's words.

However, they weren't shocked by the brilliance of Lin Feng's idea, but rather by its absurdity.

"Mr. Taylor, I mean no offense, but may I presume to ask if your physics grades in school were ever passing?"

"Speak plainly, or I'll have you chatting with the CIA."

Lin Feng glared at the speaker with a forced smile. The other person rephrased their question and asked again.

"Mr. Taylor, I'd like to ask if you believe energy is like a robot? Something that can be manipulated at humanity's will? Can it be stored in a bank like money, where it doesn't deplete when not in use, and you can just swipe a credit card when you need it?"

Lin Feng nodded. He wasn't surprised by the question, having anticipated it.

Energy dissipates naturally. There is nothing that can absolutely contain energy. Even extreme celestial bodies like black holes, from which light cannot escape, have an evaporation property.

When it comes to freedom, nothing is freer than energy.

To say that energy is like money stored in a bank, only depleting when used, is a tale fit only for fairy tales.

"What's your name?"

"Are you trying to intimidate me? Or arrest me as well?"

The other person retorted fearlessly. Scholars had their pride.

"No, I just want to remember you. Finally, someone is asking a technical question, and I am deeply gratified."

"My name is John Smith. I'm a nuclear physicist."

"A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Smith. Since you're a physics professional, allow me to ask: do you consider 'ball lightning' to be a natural, semi-permanent capacitor?"

Ball lightning in the Trisolaran context, also known as 'macro-electrons,' is part of a macro-atom.

It possesses the general characteristics of an electron. After being excited to an excited state by lightning or similar phenomena, the macro-electron and the matter destroyed by its energy enter a quantum state where its position can only be described by probability—it's a probability cloud.

On a macroscopic level, it is visible and has no physical form. Macro-electrons exist as 'bubbles' and can only be observed through the refraction of visible light. They are visible to the naked eye. After being excited by lightning or similar phenomena, they become ball lightning—to put it simply, imagine intangible light bulbs that light up when powered on. One can feel the light and heat from the bulb, realizing its existence.

After excitation, it exists as a wave. Upon selecting a suitable target, it resonates with the object, realizing the wave-particle duality of matter. The wave only interacts with the object it resonates with, thus not harming surrounding objects—in layman's terms, it can convert matter into a wave and a physical form. Electromagnetic waves, gravitational waves, and sound waves are all intangible; humans can only indirectly perceive their existence through changes in matter.

In other words, it can be understood as 'nihilizing' matter.

After excitation, in the absence of an observer, the macro-electron exists in a quantum state, and all its properties can only be described by probability. The chance of it being excited is very small—it stays put when someone is watching, but wanders around when no one is.

If this were Lin Feng's previous life on Earth, he wouldn't guarantee the existence of macro-electrons. But on the Earth of this Trisolaran world, macro-electrons are as objective a reality as gravity, because the author wrote them into the book.

Like other scientific technologies, upon discovering macro-electrons, humanity's first thought was to develop them into weapons and then consider how to deploy them in actual combat.

Utilizing the characteristic of macro-electrons to 'only interact with the object it resonates with,' direct strikes that ignore physical barriers can be achieved.

Even if one hides in underground nuclear facilities or at the Earth's core, as long as the target's resonance information is known, a ball lightning weapon can still inflict damage.

This is because ball lightning only interacts with the resonating target.

Matter can 'block' matter because matter can interact with itself. If interaction is impossible, any form of 'blocking' ceases to exist.

In humanity's future Doomsday Battle, the droplet's strong interaction force armor is indestructible. Electromagnetic cannons and gamma rays have no effect, but ball lightning can bypass it.

If humanity had the means to obtain the droplet's internal resonance information, in a one-on-one duel, destroying a droplet with a ball lightning weapon would be as easy as drinking plain water.

However, humanity has never played fair in battle, and neither do the Trisolarans.

The Trisolarans possess divine artifacts like Sophons, which can reveal the entire map. By exploiting the characteristic of macro-electrons being 'easily influenced by observation,' no attack in the form of macro-electrons or quantum ghosts can pose a threat to the Trisolarans.

Even if the human fleet were to use ball lightning weapons, in the Doomsday Battle, they would still be like firecrackers—loud but ultimately ineffective.

Not to mention the Trisolarans' other technological means, which Lin Feng never encountered in the original work. As a civilization far surpassing humanity in technology, the Trisolarans couldn't possibly have only the droplet and Sophons as their technological tools!

But then again... why fight if you can't win?

Who decreed that macro-electrons must only be used to create weapons?

In Lin Feng's view, the many characteristics of macro-electrons make them an incredibly suitable low-loss, unlimited, and super-BUG capacitor.

First, ball lightning has no physical form; it exists only as a wave, and waves have no concept of volume.

Even if the entire Earth were converted into electrical energy according to the E=mc^2 formula and stored within a macro-electron the size of a fingernail, it would theoretically be perfectly feasible.

This is a capacitor with no upper limit! Those Ark Reactors in science fiction are utterly pathetic in comparison!

Second, it only reacts with specific resonant frequencies, meaning energy-based interactions. This selective energy transfer implies that energy dissipation would be reduced to an absurd degree.

For example, if you throw a macro-electron into space, who can it resonate with in a vacuum to transfer its own energy?

No one. The only way is for it to release its own light and heat, but the efficiency of this energy transfer is extremely low!

How low, you ask?

So low it can be ignored. Otherwise, they wouldn't have specifically mentioned that it 'wouldn't harm surrounding objects.'

Energy can neither disappear nor appear out of nowhere; it only moves from one place to another. When something high-energy has inefficient energy dissipation, it means that thing naturally possesses the physical property of storing energy.

John Smith paused, then incredulously asked, "Are you saying we should use 'macro-electrons' as capacitors to store electrical energy, accumulating the electricity generated by human civilization over the hundreds of years before the Trisolarans arrive, and then use that stored energy when we have our decisive battle with them?"