Volume 4: Spacetime Singularity Chapter 19: One Flower, One World
Before flying to the surface of Jupiter, Observer No. 1 had no idea that he would find the third and fourth planets in the solar system where carbon-framed gaseous life exists or has existed.
After arriving in the solar system, he only screened the eight planets and the asteroid belt, and had not yet conducted detailed inspections of the planets' satellites, so he did not discover this.
The existence of such an extremely fragile life form as carbon-skeleton organisms in the universe is already surprising in itself, and it is even more incredible that all the carbon-skeleton organisms discovered by civilization so far are actually within the same star system.
Could it be that this star system is a breeding ground for more advanced civilizations to raise carbon-based organisms?
The metal creatures have never doubted the existence of more advanced civilizations, and there is a consensus in their scientific community that only civilizations with similar technological levels can observe each other, while there is one-way transparency between civilizations with obvious gaps in technological levels.
Every level of civilization has no way to deal with this one-way transparency, and has never thought about solving this problem. After all, if the other party wanted to destroy their civilization, they would not wait until now; and the other party's attack must be something they cannot understand, so there is no need to prepare anything, everything is in vain.
However, it is still unknown whether advanced civilizations will invade lower civilizations. After all, different levels of society require different resources, just like primitive people will not compete with you for oil. The universal resource of civilization, that is, negative entropy, seems to be inexhaustible in the universe and does not need to be competed for.
As for whether or not to go to great lengths to contact some higher-level civilization, that is even more unnecessary. The other party will take the initiative to contact you when they want to, so there is no need to rush to get close to them.
Based on the information currently available, the current conclusion of the metal civilization is that the universe has infinite scales, so the universe and the "external universe" should have a fractal structure. Civilizations of different levels are likely to live at different fractal levels, in which case all attempts to contact them are in vain.
There is a high probability that new cosmic structures exist on a scale smaller than an electron, and the universe we exist in may be even smaller than the elementary particles of the larger world.
Due to the limitation of the geometric size of matter at each scale level, it is absolutely impossible to observe civilizations at smaller or larger fractal levels. In other words, no matter how much technology develops, humans will never be able to see the world smaller than the microscopic world or larger than the cosmic world with their own receptors. All observations are indirect, which is the limitation of the scale of human beings.
The creator who created these universes seemed to want to use this method to completely isolate the mutual interference between universes at different levels.
The metal civilization has made many attempts to break through this barrier, all of which were operations on the microscopic world. After all, it is absolutely impossible to observe a giant world that is dozens of orders of magnitude larger than the known universe.
They have tried to continuously transfer consciousness to smaller brain carriers, or to artificially construct microscopic organisms with independent consciousness and ability to communicate on materials much smaller than a normal brain. However, these attempts can only shrink the body of the organism by less than ten orders of magnitude, far from the scale of microscopic particles.
Later, they began to manipulate the symmetry, pushing the scale of direct observation to one billionth of its own scale. That seemed to be the limit of known technology, and it was still a long way from being able to observe civilizations smaller than elementary particles as predicted.
Of course, the so-called elementary particles themselves are borrowed terms from the human scientific paradigm. Metal civilization has conducted much deeper research on field theory and quantum systems and has long abandoned the concepts of gauge fields and elementary particles.
These technical difficulties did not diminish their enthusiasm for exploring smaller worlds. According to the metal civilization's conjecture, there were a large number of civilizations at every scale, but they did not know how many scales there were in the entire world.
Compared with space and time, the limitations of scale are much more difficult to break through, and we can only understand structures that are similar to our own scale.
Observer No. 1 turned back from its advance toward Jupiter and soon arrived near the third largest satellite in the solar system, the fourth Galilean satellite. This speckled planet and its companion Europa are both buried beneath other carbon-based life.
Those spots tell the history of this satellite, which seems to be the most intensively bombarded object in the entire universe. However, because its surface is a hard icy lithosphere about 100 kilometers thick, these impacts have not affected the internal structure below.
Below the lithosphere is a liquid ocean with a depth of 300 kilometers. Its composition is very similar to that of the Earth's oceans, but it contains more nitrogen and chlorine. Carbon-based life exists in this vast ocean.
This time, the Observer No. 1 did not enter a parking orbit, but landed directly on the surface of this icy moon of Jupiter. Because Jupiter's own gravity is too strong, it is very unstable to park in the space around Callisto, and it is not easy to maintain the posture, so landing on the surface of the satellite is more conducive to observation.
The ice layer on the surface of this planet is bumpy, covered with impact craters and tumor-like protrusions. Standing on this cold wasteland and looking up at the starry sky, you can see the huge shadow of Jupiter and the dim sun.
“So many cephalopods…”
In the oceans of the earth, jawed fish, that is, creatures with the phylum Hypodiophorum, are the absolute dominant species. In fact, not only in the ocean, but more than 99% of the vertebrates in the entire animal kingdom have jaws, including the current absolute dominant species, Homo sapiens.
The average size of mollusks on Callisto is much larger than that on Earth, which seems to be a necessity for survival in cold regions. What is more noteworthy is that these giant octopuses have far more tentacles than creatures on Earth. When they swim slowly, they look like a huge black shadow, and if a human is in front of it, his vision will be completely blocked.
It seems that these terrifying giants have not evolved civilization or social structure. They simply roam the ocean, preying on smaller mollusks that rely on the heat of underwater volcanoes for survival.
These animals have one thing in common, that is, they have no eyes. After all, there is no light source under the ice, so they only need to sense smell and temperature.
Observer No. 1 completed the collection work quickly, but he felt a little strange while doing it, as if he had seen this creature somewhere.
However, he has been wandering in the universe for so long and has seen countless creatures, so it is normal that he can't remember.
