It is three months to go until the launch of the Alpha Centauri galaxy exploration operation. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Work on the final preparatory phase of the Mirai spacecraft is well underway.

At this time, it has been a full five years since the Pupil of the Earth left the solar system.

At the Pacific base of the Interstellar Exploration Alliance, in the Pupil of Earth command center.

Hara Chenzheng and Durunike and other project team members discussed the latest situation of the Earth Pupil.

"Based on the speed of flight, the Pupil of the Earth is about 0.15 light-years away from Alpha A and B in the constellation Centauri." Trunik unfolded the route model of the Earth Pupil on the computer.

"The Pupil of Earth must have started to carry out the slowdown plan." Yuan added a dynamic simulation effect to the model between words.

"I hope the Pupil of Earth is lucky enough, otherwise it will only have to travel around the Alpha Centauri system." Durunik shrugged.

The slowdown plan of the Earth Pupil is actually not complicated, and it is even a little simple and crude.

Actually, it's more of a hodgepodge of bundled decelerations.

As early as two months ago, the Pupil of the Earth had already opened another set of nano light sails, which were much larger than the area of the light sails at the time of departure.

It has a diameter of 300 meters and an area of more than 70,000 square meters.

The photons of this set of light sails reflect in the opposite direction to the departure, and it will play three important roles during the deceleration phase.

The first action is to use the thrust reverser of the light energy of Alpha Centauri A and B to slow down.

The Pupil of the Earth project team used a computer to build a model and calculated:

If it is a 70,000 square meter light sail, a thrust of about 340n can be obtained based on the intensity of sunlight received on the earth.

The mass of the Earth Pupil is 10.1kg, so it will gain an acceleration of -34 m/s^2.

The Pupil of the Earth is traveling at 84% of the speed of light (with a decrease in speed during flight), which is about 252,000,000 m/s.

If you want to reduce the speed of the pupil of the earth to enough for the gravitational capture of Alpha Centauri A and B, it will take about 7.41 million seconds, or almost 85 days.

However, this is only a theoretical result, as the intensity of light actually obtained in the Alpha Centauri system varies greatly with distance. To put it bluntly, in the early days of the reverse nano-sail opening, the light intensity that the nano-sail could obtain was very weak.

The second effect, which sounds a bit rougher. Like the solar system, billions of years ago, the supernova explosion that created the stars in the Alpha Centauri system also scattered a huge amount of dust around the galaxy. When leaving the solar system, the sails of the Earth Pupil are retracted as much as possible to avoid colliding with these cosmic dust and monoatoms.

However, the situation is the opposite now, and the nano light sails of the pupil of the earth look like an arrogant ancient general shouting: "Who dares to stand in my way!" ”

It will use every collision with various tiny particles (mainly hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and other atoms) to reduce its speed.

By the way, it is a threat, and the interstellar dust that is large enough needs to be avoided. (As mentioned earlier, there are very few "big enough" dust in space, and the probability of them hitting a spaceship is estimated to be only 100,000.) [50 zeros].... 1 in 00000. ）

Of course, the actual slowing effect of this scheme is difficult to predict, and who knows how many tiny particles of hatred the pupil of the earth will pull along the way, there is a big error in this.

The direction in which the sail is deployed can be fine-tuned to ensure that there is no major deviation from the direction of flight.

What happens if the sail breaks?

If it's broken, it's broken, and the Earth Pupil doesn't plan to return to Earth anyway, as long as its main body isn't damaged.

The third role, the light sail will also take on the role of collecting and storing solar energy. By the way, it should not be called solar energy here, but Centauri energy, referred to as "horse energy".

The Pupil of the Earth is not the same as Hawking's nanospaceship, it carries a real thing. The photon thruster will be the killer weapon of the final deceleration stage of the pupil of the earth. After approaching the target area, the photon thruster will use the stored "horse energy" to complete an efficient "photon jet". to achieve the final deceleration effect.

These deceleration plans developed by the extraterrestrial civilization project team have been simulated and calculated, and the success rate is only 60%.

Well, if all the above slowdowns fail, the poor Earth Pupil will only be able to travel around the Alpha Centauri system, and perhaps it will continue its interstellar travel and fly into the distant deep space of the universe.

However, the speed of the Earth Pupil should be greatly reduced at this time, so it will have a relatively ample time to peek into the secrets of the Alpha Centauri system.

What made the Earth Pupil project team feel very embarrassed was that at this time, the Earth Pupil was fighting alone in the distant Alpha Centauri system, but they couldn't help at all.

Even if the Pupil of Earth will finally be able to slow down, it will be five years before it is known.

"Don't think about it, let's wish the pupil of the earth good luck!" Yuan Haochen smiled and patted Durunik on the shoulder and said.

"If you fly towards the Earth Pupil on the Future, you will be able to receive the signal from the Earth Pupil in advance during the flight." Trunik said with some envy, because not long ago, he had confirmed that he had not been able to finally become an astronaut in the exploration of the Alpha Centauri system.

"Don't feel sorry, the earth depends on you, just wait for our good news on the earth." Yuan Haochen comforted Durunik and said, "Moreover, this trip is very risky, many things are unpredictable, maybe we will never ...... again"

"Please, don't say that, you should sleep a few more times, dream a few more times, and then return to Earth and become a big hero." Durunik interrupted Hara's words.

The corners of Yuan Haochen's mouth went up, and he looked at Durunik with a meaningful smile.

"Twenty or thirty years from now, if I can return to Earth smoothly, what will I be like at that time, what will my relatives and friends be like, and what will the Earth be like?"

Yuan Haochen suddenly thought of the above questions.

General relativity holds that if you fly near the speed of light in an artificial black hole-powered spacecraft, time will slow down and you will age much less than your family and friends on Earth.

Coupled with the effects of long-term dormancy in the hibernation chamber during interstellar travel, your aging rate will be further slowed down.

So, if you're part of this interstellar trip, can you still imagine what it would be like to return to Earth? (To be continued.) )