Volume 3: Dance of the Aurora Chapter 2 Quantum Communication
"If you mean our observatory, it's not far from the main star of this galaxy. Unless there are any emergencies, we will analyze and upload the collected data there."
What Observer No. 1 did not tell Fang Cheng was that their observatory was completely electromagnetically invisible. Apart from detecting the extremely weak distortion of space caused by its gravity, humans could not sense its existence by any means.
In fact, there are metal civilizations with the technology to restore space distortion, but for an observatory in a remote star region, such equipment is completely redundant . After all, the mass difference between the observatory and the sun is so great that the distortion can be completely ignored.
Fang Cheng tried hard to imagine what the observatory would look like. If it was next to the sun...
"If there is no superluminal communication equipment, it would take about... ten minutes to send a beam of electromagnetic waves from the Earth to your observatory? Is your observatory orbiting the sun?"
The electromagnetic wave communication time between the Earth and Mercury is between four and twelve minutes. This is because Mercury is also orbiting the sun and its distance from the Earth is constantly changing.
For Mars, this time is three to forty minutes, so the so-called "real-time video" transmitted back from the Mars rover is actually not real-time.
Not to mention the long delay in making such a long-distance call, the electromagnetic waves emitted by the mobile phone are also difficult to transmit to the near-solar orbit. After all, the energy it carries is not even as good as the background radiation. It's like a drop of ink being poured into the ocean.
"You're right. Our observatory is slowly orbiting the star. So there will be some delay when talking to you there."
"Then do you have...communication at a distance? For example, using entangled particles or something like that?"
Unlike what ordinary people think, "quantum communication" can transmit information instantly regardless of distance, current human physics has strictly proved that even entangled states cannot transmit information faster than the speed of light.
The principle of quantum communication is to divide a system into two entangled parts, A and B, and transmit them to two places far away. Due to the existence of entanglement, if a person on one side changes his A system, the person on the other side will observe that his B system has changed at the same moment.
This change does not consume any time at all. Even if A and B are at two ends of the universe, the systems in hand can evolve completely synchronously.
So what's the problem?
In fact, what hinders the transmission of information is quantum mechanics itself. Because no matter whether it is A or B, if the people on both sides do not actively "observe", then they will always be in the state of "Schrödinger's cat". In other words, you don't know whether the system has changed.
Assuming that A has been artificially encoded with information, then although B also encodes the same information in an instant, the person on A's side needs to use other means of communication to inform the person on B's side that observation will be carried out. This notification method is still non-quantum, and the speed of transmitting information will not exceed the speed of light.
But since the other party is an alien, maybe they have technology that humans cannot understand.
"This...I have no comment."
In fact, this technology was mastered by the metal civilization a long time ago, and two observers can communicate at superluminal speeds. But No. 1 realized that if he went deeper into this topic, it would violate the regulations.
According to the regulations, observers cannot spread information that would bring about a technological revolution to other civilizations, and can only popularize principles that humans can understand based on their existing scientific paradigms.
Of course, sometimes rules are made to be broken.
Fang Cheng felt a little embarrassed to be rejected, but he also felt that he had asked too many questions.
"By the way...I haven't asked you yet, what should I call you?"
"Just call me Keats. That's my name."
The language of metal life and carbon-based life are different in the underlying coding logic. Human language has only one time dimension, but the natural language of metal life has two time dimensions, and the information density is much greater than that of carbon-based life.
So theoretically there is no way to translate the real name of Observer No. 1, and this name was also made up by him based on the information on Earth.
"Okay, Keats...Sensei?"
Fang Cheng felt that this name was very familiar, but what honorific should be used later? Teacher didn't seem quite right, and Mr. was a bit strange too. Do aliens have genders?
Fang Cheng sorted out the honorifics in Chinese and found that except for occupational titles, they were basically all related to gender. He was not yet sure whether bisexual reproduction was exclusive to Earth creatures. Aliens might have four or five genders.
Plato once told a story that humans originally had three genders, and Zeus cut one of the genders into two and assigned it to men and women respectively, so today's humans are eager to find their other half.
"Just call me Keats. Let's get to the point. The protozoan you created without permission has completed its body reconstruction, and it will soon begin to spread."
Only then did Fang Cheng realize that the science building in front of him had completely collapsed while he was speaking.
Flying dust and heat waves rolled in the air, and his hair was also covered with a thin layer of dust.
When the mind is focused on the phone, the vision seems to be blocked, but it is also possible that the five senses have received too much shock during this period and the brain has activated a self-protection mechanism.
Fang Cheng held up his phone and scanned the surroundings. The campus was in chaos, with students running in all directions. Young men and women screaming and running kept flashing by him. The noise and chaos made people mistakenly think they were in a huge disco.
"So where should I go now?"
"You need to stop it. If you let it grow and multiply, everyone will die."
"Everyone...all the students?"
“…”
"Or people from this city..."
"Everyone, all humans on Earth, and all other carbon-based organisms, will all become extinct in a very short time. I just simulated the extinction model, and the results show that all native species on Earth will disappear within a few Earth years, and the planet will be completely occupied by iron-based life forms."
By then I'll have to ask the bureau for reinforcements to deal with them, which will be very troublesome.
The Earth has experienced countless extinction events in its four billion-year history, five of which were relatively large. The most famous of these five was naturally the meteorite impact on the Yucatan Peninsula. This extinction event caused the dinosaurs to disappear from the Earth, allowing the synapsids, including us mammals, to finally dominate here.
However, all previous extinction events failed to wipe out all life on Earth. The most serious Permian extinction event wiped out 95 percent of life on Earth, but still left some carbon-based life forms.
“…”
If humans were to become extinct, the Earth would probably become a different place, full of life. Without pollution and interference, plants would grow freely and animals would reproduce freely.
"I just said it. Not only humans, but all organisms that use protein as their skeleton and sugar to encode genetic information will completely disappear from the universe. Carbon-based life will once again become a legend."
All my observations and research results over such a long period of time will be wasted, so you must not become extinct!
Keats didn't say the last sentence, and the people on Earth don't need to know this.
The black monster in the distance has grown as tall as a building. It is moving with its fangs and claws bared towards the northwest of the campus, where the subway tracks are laid.
Humanity is about to be destroyed in the steel forest it has built..
