Ramla Ant Nest.
"You're both right, that's exactly the problem," Situ said. "The speed of ocean waves is finite, and each wave takes time to form. The theoretical maximum speed of warp drive is ten times the speed of light, but we are now a thousand light-years away from Earth. If my conscious atomic clock is not malfunctioning, a year has passed since we were in the South Pacific. That means we have traveled at least a thousand light-years in a year, and our speed is a thousand times the speed of light, far exceeding the theoretical maximum value of warp drive."
"Maybe your atomic clock is inaccurate!" said the Crow.
"That means a hundred years, or even longer, have passed on Earth," Situ said.
"Uh..." The Crow, recalling the image of the over-a-hundred-year-old Ruhua leaning on a cane making braised pork knuckle for it, quickly shook its head and then said seriously, "After a thorough evaluation by this undergraduate crow, your atomic clock is still very accurate, quack!"
Situ laughed heartily, "Thank you for your assessment, Science Raven!"
Alice said thoughtfully, "Then is it possible that it's a wormhole, and we've experienced a space jump?"
Su Huilan said, "Anyone attempting to traverse a wormhole will die in the trap. Theoretically, only wormholes connecting black holes and white holes are traversable; matter is sucked in at the black hole end and ejected at the white hole end. Leaving aside whether a black hole even exists on Earth, even if an unstable wormhole exists somewhere in the South Pacific, if we were captured when it opened, our bodies would be torn to pieces upon entering the event horizon. Unless, of course, all that remains is our consciousness, and our nervous system is too slow to perceive the fact that we've been torn apart, we'll still think we're alive."
This sounded a bit creepy, but even though Boris was a roughneck, he could still understand the meaning of being torn apart by a black hole and being dead. He pinched his cheek hard, cried out in pain, and said, "No way! I can still feel the pain!"
Situ laughed, "That's right, we're all alive and well, there's no doubt about that! Even if stable wormholes that allow for traversal exist, such as space jumps based on cosmic strings, the problem is that our location is constantly shifting. This means we're still in the process of traversing, not at the end point. No one can stay inside a wormhole or a spatial rift!"
"So what kind of hellish place is this?"
"This is Ramla!" Mrs. Larry, who had been silent until now, suddenly said.
" Ramla?"
"Yes," Mrs. Larry said, looking at the savages standing or sitting quietly not far away. "That's what they call them."
"That's what my tribe calls it too," Situ said. "It seems that although their languages are different, they agree on the names of some important terms."
"What's the use of just knowing a name? I could give it a 5A-level scenic spot in the Milky Way! You at least have to give it a definition—" Boris said, "Is it Ramla Island? Or Ramla Planet? Or the Ramla Bragging Club?"
Mrs. Larry said, "There's more than one island here, but I'm not sure if it's a planet; they clearly don't have that concept."
"I can help them refine this term—" Situ said, " Ramla Ant Nest!"
" Ant Nest?"
Situ nodded. "In our memory, we've always been on the island. But from the changes in the starry sky, we can deduce that we've been constantly changing our spatial location. That is to say, the Ramla Space we're in is likely not a wormhole connecting two endpoints, but a complex, distorted space composed of multiple wormholes or cosmic strings. It connects not just one endpoint, but possibly three, five, or even countless ones. Any two endpoints can be interconnected. As the number of endpoints increases, the number of spatial connections, or channels, will multiply. Two endpoints have only one channel, five endpoints have ten channels, and n endpoints have (n-1)n/2 channels. All these channels return through a higher-dimensional space, just like the neck of Klein Bottle returns to the body of a three-dimensional bottle through four-dimensional space."
When exploring the structure of the universe, we once created a model and named this structure the ' Ant Nest ' structure. We called the higher-dimensional space through which all passages flow the "Mother Nest Mother Nest," which is typically a black hole.
"Why is it called Ant Nest? It sounds a bit like..." Boris imagined a black hole with many soft, twisted tentacles extending out, "... a black anemone?"
Situ said, "Sea anemones might be a more vivid representation, but they don't fit the definition of space. Have you ever seen an ant nest? Ants can be simply defined as near-two-dimensional creatures; in their world, everything is flat, and the ground is level. That's why when we describe the planar structure of a Möbius strip or Klein Bottle, we always like to show an ant crawling across it. But the structure of an ant nest is extremely complex, even in a three-dimensional world, it's quite intricate. This is a typical example of a creature building a spatial structure that transcends its own dimension. Therefore, we call such complex spatial structures that exist in our dimension but are higher than our dimension ' Ant Nest '."
"To put it bluntly, it's still a wormhole!" the Crow muttered.
"That's right, an ant hole is still a wormhole!" Situ laughed, "But this wormhole is much more complex and advanced than a regular wormhole."
"Then we still have to go through the black hole, right?" Su Huilan felt that going through the black hole was unrealistic.
"A single wormhole must begin and end at a black hole or a white hole, but Ant Nest is different. All the channels in Ant Nest connect to a black hole, but it doesn't necessarily have to pass through one. Remember the Klein Bottle you mentioned? When the neck enters the body of the bottle, it passes through a four-dimensional space, but the surface of the bottle can be completely exposed in three-dimensional space because it has only one plane, and the same plane cannot exist in two different three-dimensional spaces. The same is true for Ant Nest. Its channels pass through a black hole or are affected by the black hole's gravity, but when we travel along its three-dimensional walls, we don't need to enter the interior of the black hole."
"Because it's wriggling?" Su Huilan thought for a moment and said.
"That's right, because it's wriggling." Situ nodded. "Any type of wormhole that conforms to general relativity will collapse unless it's supported by exotic matter with negative energy. We're currently inside the Ramla Ant Nest, filled with exotic energy, and this is the surfboard we're riding on. As we approach the black hole, this energy and the black hole's repulsive force will cause space to wriggle, and we'll slide away from the edge of the black hole."
"You mean, every time there's fog, we're getting closer to a black hole?"
"That's not necessarily true. For example, we land on the island when it's foggy on Earth, but Earth obviously can't get close to a black hole. I think it's possible that when some kind of energy accumulates to a certain level in this space, Ramla automatically opens its closed state to release that energy, and the fog is just a symptom. It's like when we drive; if we're in the car for a long time, the windows will inevitably fog up, and then we need to open the windows to let in some fresh air."
"So, when the fog rolls in, the spatial rift opens, giving us a chance to return to Earth!"
"Yes, but it's also possible to go to even farther places."