Earth Era

The cold night of Siberia finally passed. Today the weather is sunny, the sky is azure blue, and the faint breeze carries the scent of the fragrant lake water of the Baikal Lake. The only downside is that it's really cold here.

After breakfast, Zhao Huasheng sat in his tent, flipping through some material. After a brief pause, Zhao Huasheng called out: "Meng Zhuo?"

Meng Zhuo pushed open the curtain and walked in, "I'm here."

"Let's go." Zhao Huasheng said, "It's time to go back."

"Where are you going?"

Zhao Huasheng hesitated and said, "Let's go to Equator City."

The "Equator City" is actually not a city, its area is even bigger than a country. In the latest geographic division, the government has included all of the tropical ocean, mountains, and land into the Equator City. That is a vast area with a radius of 2500 kilometers from the equator and a total width of 5000 kilometers. The total area of this region is 200 million square kilometers, of course, including many uninhabitable terrains such as mountains, deserts, and oceans. After excluding these places, the inhabitable area is only 40 million square kilometers. All of humanity's resources and construction capabilities are concentrated on this 40 million square kilometers of land.

"Okay, I'll go arrange it." Meng Zhuo nodded and turned to leave.

"Let someone else arrange the itinerary, Meng Zhuo, I have something to ask you." Zhao Huasheng said.

Meng Zhuo then issued orders to the other staff members before returning to Zhao Huasheng's tent.

"In this period of time... what progress has the human society made in the research of the sun? Is there anything I need to know?"

"A lot has happened in this month or so," Meng Zhuo nodded and said, "Let's start with the exploration of the sun. Thanks to the efforts of many telescopes, detectors, and researchers, we have preliminary analyzed the physical process of the emergence of the low-temperature material belt on the surface of the sun and even reproduced it in the physical laboratory."

"Oh? Such a huge breakthrough? Quickly bring me the relevant materials to have a look."

Meng Zhuo nodded. It seemed that he had expected Zhao Huasheng to have such a question, so he had prepared the relevant materials earlier. After Zhao Huasheng's request, Meng Zhuo reached into his pocket and handed Zhao Huasheng a stack of materials.

Zhao Huasheng took about half an hour to finish reading the data.

The data listed the reaction process, physical equations, and reaction models in detail. With Zhao Huasheng's scientific literacy, understanding the data was not difficult.

In short, the physical process is as follows: Under the extreme environment on the surface of the sun, sparse material can also undergo nuclear fusion reactions. However, this fusion is different from the nuclear fusion that supports the burning of the sun and generates heat in the core. It is not fueled by hydrogen or helium, but by elements that are heavier than these two elements.

In the fusion reaction chain, elements lighter than iron release energy when they undergo fusion, while elements heavier than iron, including iron, absorb energy. Of course, this is under normal conditions. The nuclear fusion process occurring on the surface of the sun at this moment is different. Although the materials participating in the fusion are lighter than iron, they still absorb energy instead of releasing it.

This fusion mode has been named "inverse fusion" by physicists.

As to why inverse fusion occurs, it involves the intricate physical mechanisms of the microscopic world, and physicists are still not very clear about it. They only know that this situation of inverse fusion does exist and is happening on the surface of the sun.

The factors triggering inverse fusion may be related to the motion of certain substances on the surface of the sun and strong magnetic fields, and may also include many other extremely strict conditions. Physicists are still not very clear about the specific conditions, but one thing is certain, that this process of inverse fusion is extremely rare, so rare that among the tens of millions of stars observed by astronomers so far, only the sun has experienced this phenomenon.

What is happening on the sun can now be given a reasonable explanation. The mass of the sun has not decreased, its volume has not changed, and neither has its pressure. It is simply due to a reverse fusion event occurring on the surface of the sun, where the energy radiated by the sun is absorbed by the "reverse fusion layer", thus leading to a decrease in the solar radiation level.

But this brings up three new questions. Among these three questions, the first one is: What is the first driving force? What is driving the reverse fusion phenomenon on the surface of the sun? According to the assessment of physicists, the conditions for the reverse fusion reaction are too stringent. Physicists have spent endless effort to only recreate the phenomenon three times in the laboratory, which means that the chances of such a phenomenon occurring spontaneously in the natural environment are very low.

In the material Zhao Huasheng had seen, a physicist described the probability of inverse fusion occurring in nature in a very vivid way: "It's like we walk into a primitive jungle that has been untouched by human beings for millions of years, and we unexpectedly find a tree shaped exactly like a wardrobe, and when we open the wardrobe, we even find the partitions and hangers inside."

This is a probability so low that it can almost be ignored. So the question is, why is it that humans have never found this phenomenon in any other star in the universe, yet it appears in the sun? Is this a coincidence, or is there some kind of force at work?

The second question is: what force is keeping inverse fusion alive?

Based on the limited understanding of the phenomenon of inverse fusion, physicists can now be certain that it requires many conditions to maintain its existence. Even if it really appears on the sun, it cannot remain for a long time. Just like a house, if no one cleans it, it cannot remain clean and new. So, what power keeps the inverse fusion layer not only existing, but also expanding to almost wrap the entire sun?

Another physicist left a sentence on this document: "This seems to mean the existence of aliens. I would rather believe that it was done by aliens than believe this was naturally occurring and evolving on the sun on such a large scale."

The third question is, where does the energy absorbed by inverse fusion go?

Reverse fusion will also form new elements; however, these elements are very unstable and can only exist in a natural environment for a very short time before exploding and releasing all the absorbed energy, reverting it back to its original state. In other words, in general, reverse fusion neither absorbs nor releases energy, it merely stores it for a while and then releases it.

But why have we never observed energy release phenomena on the sun? Where did all that missing energy go?

Zhao Huasheng closed the folder thoughtfully, saying: "This is an ideal Dyson sphere model. Think about it: if we can artificially create such a reverse fusion layer and then find a way to collect and store the 'anti-matter', stars will become an inexhaustible source of energy for us. Perhaps in the future, our spacecraft will no longer need any chemical or nuclear fuel; just store some antimatter, and we can complete interstellar voyages that we wouldn't even dare to imagine now."

"So, what do you think?" Meng Zhuo asked.

Zhao Huasheng put down the folder and stood up, saying, "The existence of the anti-fusion layer implies the presence of an extraterrestrial supercivilization, which has at least reached the K2 level. They have chosen the sun, so they have set up the Dyson Sphere outside the sun to collect its energy for their own use. As for why the sun was chosen, who knows? "Perhaps it really has something special."

Meng Zhuo shook his head, saying, "This argument has no value. After the existence of the anti-fusion layer and related physical mechanisms were confirmed, scientists from the Research Department of the Crisis Management Center also believed that this was done by an extraterrestrial supercivilization. Some optical and radio telescopes have even been allocated to search for possible extraterrestrial spacecraft and signals. But humans don't care about these things. Humans only care about how to solve the current problem."

A group composed of many physicists, social psychologists, science fiction writers, etc. is discussing why the K2 level civilization, if it exists, directly ignores us and does not contact us, whether we should contact them proactively and what attitude should be used for contact. Scientists are also speculating about the possible social model and culture of this K2-level civilization and the ways to convince them to spare the sun, how to contact them, whether contact will anger them and lead to the destruction of the earth, etc.

More experts are assessing the data left by Li Qi and your role in this incident. After combining previous data, they think Li Qi had contact with this K2 level civilization a long time ago, then found the weakness of this K2 level civilization in the dark, and then told you how to defeat this K2 level civilization through hints.

"That's right, they're doing that now," Meng Zhuo said, spreading his hands towards Zhao Huasheng.