Volume 3: Dance of the Aurora Chapter 7 Superfluids
Fang Cheng pushed aside the crystal clear and thick liquid and slowly dived down. The light around him was gradually dimming and becoming less dazzling.
This must be some kind of organic solvent. He remembered that he had seen fluorine-nitrogen liquid solvent before, which allowed mammals immersed in it to breathe the oxygen dissolved in it. This liquid was non-toxic, odorless and colorless, and its ability to dissolve oxygen was several times that of the human body. After being inhaled into the lungs, the oxygen could diffuse in the blood, while the liquid would evaporate quickly.
However, he didn't know what liquid the aliens used, but it must be based on a similar principle.
"Why is your storage room immersed in liquid?" Fang Cheng found that he could even open his mouth while diving, and his mouth full of liquid did not hinder his speaking.
In the human imagination, isn't a storage room supposed to be a large room filled with shelves?
"The device is launched from space to Earth, and the liquid protects the contents from impact and keeps it from 'turning upside down' when it lands and swims away."
It makes sense, if it has an asymmetrical structure like a building, it will need to adjust its posture to face up when it lands. But isotropic liquids don't have this concern.
"Wait, what does 'wander' mean?"
"This storage room can be moved underground, although we normally don't allow it to do so."
"Huh? How did you do that?"
"It's very simple. Just let one side of the ball absorb matter and spit it out from the other side. After all, there is no friction on its surface, so there will be no dissipated heat energy or resistance... That's it, no need to swim anymore."
Fang Cheng then saw a black stone tablet taller than a man appear in front of him. It was dark and heavy, but stably suspended in the liquid. He estimated that the length, width and height ratio of the stone tablet was about 3:1:9.
He stretched out a hand and touched the stone tablet, and a wave of excitement came from his fingertips.
"Poke it with each of your keys."
Fang Cheng raised the two cubes in his hand, and now they showed different colors against the backdrop of the stone tablet.
He picked up one of them with one hand and stretched it towards the stone tablet. When he got close to it, the key was automatically sucked to a certain position on the surface. The seemingly extremely hard stone tablet was broken into a small piece like a soap bubble, just like the semi-arc at the entrance just now.
A small silver-white iron ring appeared in the middle of the broken part, about the size of a bracelet. Fang Cheng reached out to grab it, but found that he could just squeeze his curled hand into it.
He put away the first key, then touched the stone tablet with another piece of metal.
This time, what came out of the box was a round cake with a small hole in the middle. It was about the size of a bottle cap and fit perfectly in the hand. Fang Cheng held it with his other hand, and the skin on the palm of his hand still hurt when it touched the cake.
“Do you just need these two?”
"These two are enough."
You have so much stuff in your body, but you have so little to use.
"I've been wanting to ask this for a long time... What is the principle of this key? Can you explain it to me?"
"Inside this square box is antimatter plasma confined by a field."
This is what they just said.
“Well, that’s why it can exist stably.”
"When the key touched the fluid door and the locker, it was stimulated by the surface fields of the two, and the energy level of the antiparticles inside the plasma jumped. It jumped out of the field and tunneled out. It annihilated after contacting the positive particles on the surface of the container and the door."
"Quantum tunneling effect ...that means the outer wall of this square box is extremely thin, reaching the level of micrometers or even nanometers?" Fang Cheng remembered that he had taught himself this most basic principle of quantum mechanics before. If the energy of microscopic particles is high enough, they can penetrate the wall, but only a little.
"But... the few particles that tunnel out won't cause any serious damage to this interface..."
"This breakage is caused by surface tension, just like a soap bubble bursting. Once one point is broken, the other parts will be pulled and disintegrated until they reach the edge of the surface or the force is balanced."
Fang Cheng roughly understood what he meant. This explanation was much more approachable than the cool alien technology he had imagined.
"Then...why did that door heal automatically?"
"Because it's made of a kind of smooth metal, in your language it seems to be called... um... let me see... ah, it's called 'superfluid'."
Superfluid? Helium-3? Is helium-3 that hard? No, doesn't helium-3 only have superfluidity when the temperature is very low?
"To be precise, this substance should be translated as 'metal superfluid'. Since it has no friction at all and is only affected by tension, it will continue to climb up along the solid surface to form a channel."
Fang Cheng recalled the terrifying moment when he just slipped.
"Then why did the superfluidity disappear after it came into contact with the key... Is it because of the temperature?"
" Yes , the key heats the surface, turning it back into a super-hard metal with friction."
"Superhard metal...what is that..."
How hard can metal be... The metals on Earth are definitely not as hard as diamonds.
"To put it simply, the atomic lattice structure is a regular hexahedral metal material like diamond. It is much harder than anything on your planet, so it can only be opened with the key we provide."
It seemed very reasonable, but why would metals with regular tetrahedral lattices have stable bonds and produce roving electrons... Fang Cheng felt that if he continued like this, more and more questions would arise, so he gave up the idea of asking further.
"So how can I get out now..."
Yes, this is the primary issue that should be considered now.
"The two devices you took out are called the 'surface ring' and the electromagnetic lens. You can use the former to move within the gravity of the planet, but now you can float to the surface of the liquid first."
Fang Cheng then saw the silver ring on his right hand emit a faint green arc of light, floating on his arm. He looked around the liquid and could clearly see the smooth and glowing inner wall around it. If it weren't for the gravity, people here couldn't tell up, down, left, and right.
He subconsciously held his breath and began to swim upwards, and it took him a few seconds to realize that he could breathe.
"Will you run out of oxygen here?"
"Yes. Under normal circumstances, there won't be any oxidizing gases inside our building. The oxygen you are breathing now was just produced. It will be actively absorbed after you leave."
Fang Cheng poked his head out from under the liquid surface and suddenly felt a piercing chill. This was due to the rapid evaporation of the solvent on his body surface and in his respiratory tract.
He looked up at the top. The flawless dome pulled his face out of shape. His face had become much cleaner after the immersive wash just now, but the wound was still oozing blood.
“So how do I get out now…”
Just as he was about to ask this question, the metal ring in his hand suddenly stretched horizontally, turning into a tubular structure like half a donut, and his two hands entered the two ends of the tube respectively. The two ends of the semicircular tube grew forward at the same time, covering his two arms, then his entire upper body, and finally his entire body.
