Abnormal crossing

Chapter 9 Star Sea Civilization
"Star Sea."

Gu Wei listened to Jin's introduction quietly, and then he recalled the word in a low voice, and asked Jin: "Who is the ruler of this era? Is it the small hut civilization that first walked out of the planet? Or is it someone else?"

"Neither. In the current Xinghai era, there is no ruler in the broad sense," Jin shook her head and put a strand of hair behind her head.

"As I said before, the civilization circle of this era is a complex and huge integrated system."

"The core organization that controls this integrated entity is called the Star Alliance. The entire alliance is composed of a large number of countries or ethnic groups of varying sizes. The nine most prosperous representatives are called 'Arbitration Countries'."

"As for the earliest hut civilization, after hundreds of thousands of years of differentiation and change, it also became one of the nine arbitration countries."

Gu Wei said thoughtfully, and a vague outline appeared in his mind: "I see. Then what about the territory? How big is this so-called Star Alliance?"

"The concept of territory is a bit complicated," Jin raised her eyelids and glanced at Gu Wei: "According to the current territory division, the universe can be divided into three 'domains', namely the known domain, the exploration domain and the unknown domain."

As he spoke, Jin waved his hand again, and a group of projection models appeared in front of Gu Wei again.

This set of projections is a 2D irregular shape. At first glance, it looks like a flat palm. Inside the shape, a large number of irregular blocks are divided by colors and lines, which is a bit like the map in a business game.

"This is the range map of the Star Sea's 'known domain', also known as the alliance territory map," Jin pointed at the projection and explained, "The known domain covers the territories of the 462 official members of the current Star Sea civilization circle. These members are at least civilizations or ethnic groups that have left their own galaxy."

"The members drew a border line based on trace lithium and photon decoupling scenarios, but there are too many blank areas in the universe where no civilization has been born, so many civilizations have been openly or covertly arguing or even going to war with each other over the years."

"Wait," Gu Wei interrupted Jin before she finished her words: "462 members. All of them are civilizations that have left the galaxy? --Ms. Jin, are you sure it's not a star system, but a galaxy?"

Jin looked at him again: "That's right."

Gu Wei was visibly stunned for a moment, his throat rolling, as if he was shocked by an invisible force: "."

Galaxy. This word is not a new concept on Earth. Even if you find a primary school student humming "The Lone Warrior" on the street, he can tell you by counting on his fingers that the Earth belongs to the solar system in the Milky Way.

Some knowledgeable kids can even come up with words like Oort Cloud or Orion Arm.

In many people's minds, the Earth is one of the eight planets in the solar system. Therefore, taking the Earth-Moon system and the solar system as reference, the galaxy as the superior system of the solar system, that is, the Milky Way, does not seem to be that big.

But in fact, the solar system and the Milky Way are not concepts of the same order of magnitude at all - the superior unit of the solar system in astrophysics is not the Milky Way, but something called the Local Interstellar Cloud.

Above the Local Bubble is the Local Bubble, above the Local Bubble is the Gould Belt, above the Gould Belt is the Orion Arm, and above the Orion Arm is the Milky Way.
根据目前的观测结果，整个银河系内的总恒星数量大概在2000-4000亿颗左右。（DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/801/2/105）

Even if we take into account that some of these star systems are binary or triple star systems, the number of star systems in the Milky Way will not be less than 1000 billion, which means there are 1000 billion solar systems - this is much larger than the 1:8 ratio of the Earth-Moon system to the solar system.
This is not the end yet.

The Milky Way is just a medium-sized galaxy in the universe, with neither too many nor too few stars.

There are about 100 billion small galaxies in the universe, such as the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is the closest to the Earth.

Large galaxies are much larger than ordinary people can imagine.

For example, there is a galaxy 30 billion light-years away from the Earth, whose diameter is 160 times that of the Milky Way and whose mass is about 2400 billion times that of the Milky Way.

Before Gu Wei traveled through time, the astronomers named this galaxy after the giant "Alcyoneus" in ancient Greek mythology. If the star structure there is similar to that of the Milky Way, the number of stars inside would be about 960 trillion trillion.

Well, the above numbers are not wrong. Therefore, in Gu Wei's opinion.

If a civilization develops successfully for hundreds or thousands of years after entering the industrial age, then it is not too surprising to leave its star system. At least the result is acceptable and even reasonable.

But a civilization can go beyond its galaxy. This greatly shocks his cognition.

After that, Gu Wei calmed down and asked Jin, "Ms. Jin, may I ask how big the area of the known domain is?"

"How big is it?" Jin thought for a while, and gestured in the air with his slender fingers: "According to the light-year scale you gave me, it's roughly an irregular polygon with a long axis of 4.88 million light years and a short axis of 2.13 million light years."

Gu Wei was silent again: "."

He had no idea how many cognitive shocks he had encountered today.

Let’s still take the Milky Way as an example.

The Milky Way belongs to the Local Group, above which is the Virgo Supercluster, and above the Virgo Supercluster is the Laniakea Supercluster—there are more than 100,000 galaxies in the Laniakea Supercluster. (So your exact address in the universe is observable universe·Laniakea Supercluster·Virgo Cluster·Local Group·Milky Way·Orion Arm·Gould Belt·Local Bubble·Local Interstellar Cloud·Oort Cloud·Earth, the third planet in the solar system.)

Apart from super structures such as the Hercules-Corona Borealis Wall and the giant gamma-ray burst ring, which may still be questionable due to statistical coincidences, the Laniakea Supercluster is already one of the largest stellar structures in the universe.

And how big is the Laniakea Supercluster?

The answer is that the long axis is 500 million light years, which is close to the long axis of the Star Sea Civilization, and the short axis is shorter than that of the Star Sea Civilization.

A 'known domain' comparable to the Laniakea Supercluster, with more than 400 members outside the galaxy, and undoubtedly a large number of civilizations below the galaxy.
Gu Wei had previously guessed that this was an interstellar world with highly developed technology, but he had never imagined that it would be so developed. Compared with the civilization of the interstellar world, the Earth is no longer just trash.

A long time passed.

Gu Wei just came back to his senses from the shock. He took a deep breath and looked at Jin again: "What about the exploration area? Is it the untouched area outside the territory?"

"You can understand it this way, but it's actually a little more complicated, otherwise the exploration domain will be the same as the blank area in the known domain." Jin waved his hand again, and the map of the known domain in front of Gu Wei began to shrink, and patches of dark shadows appeared around it:
"This involves a very complicated interstellar development convention. With all due respect, the exploration domain and the unknown domain are not what you need to understand right now."

Gu Wei was slightly stunned: "A treaty on land reclamation?"

"Well," Jin shrugged. "To give a simple example, if two pioneering teams that do not belong to the same faction enter an uninhabited star system at the same time, how should its ownership be determined? - Like you said before, is it based on stellar winds and interstellar media? Or is it based on the range of gravitational radiation?"

"For example, if we discover other civilizations during the process of land reclamation, what should we do? War? Integration? Or relocate the civilization?"

"There are too many similar problems. If there is no credible and complete convention, then the Xinghai civilization would have long been in chaos or even ceased to exist."

Jin paused and continued, "Milo and I are explorers who came here based on the Treaty of Land Reclamation. This spaceship can be seen as our exploration tool and base. There are a total of seven crew members on board, including the ship spirit Mee Mee."

"We just completed a macro transmission not long ago. Both the deduction and the execution of the process went smoothly. However, at the moment of transmission, something unexpected happened."

Neither party was stupid, and without much explanation, Gu Wei understood what Jin meant by "accident".

So he looked at the exquisite and perfect woman in front of him, took a deep breath, and asked the most crucial question: "In this case, how do you plan to deal with the accident?"

(End of this chapter)