A genius? I just love studying.

Chapter 350 One Cannot Look Directly at God

Unfortunately, even with Chen Hui's current strength, he couldn't find any clues in the data panel. It was as if it didn't exist at all, let alone any connection to dark matter or dark energy.

After a period of research, Chen Hui finally returned to reality and focused on the construction of the Eye in Deep Space. He knew that mastering the unified theory of the four fundamental forces was like obtaining a key, but the deepest secret chamber in the cosmic palace had not yet been opened.

Since dark energy and dark matter do not interact with electromagnetic forces, the only way to observe them is by manipulating gravity. The Deep Space Eye is equipped with his latest gravitational lens.

Three years have passed in the blink of an eye, and Chen Hui's research has not made any progress. His proficiency with the data panel is still slowly improving. Now, there are no problems in the Blue Star civilization that can stump him, but this seems to be of no use in the research of dark matter and dark energy.

Stepping into the Deep Space Eye's control room, Chen Hui chose the famous Bullet Cluster as his first observation target. This system, consisting of two galaxy clusters colliding at high speed, is an ideal laboratory for verifying the existence of dark matter.

On the holographic screen, the first thing that appears is a familiar map of visible matter distribution, with the halos of two galaxies distorted by the collision. But then, the algorithm begins to render the total mass distribution captured by UFL.

In the image, two clear, blue clumps of mass, roughly coinciding with the location of the visible galaxy cluster, but much larger and more clearly defined, emerge. Like two ghosts, they pierce through each other and through the hot gas that has lagged behind and concentrated in the central region due to the collision.

These blue clumps of mass, almost unaffected by electromagnetic interactions, passed directly through each other during the collision, while the ordinary gas, which depends on electromagnetic interactions, was left behind.

"This is dark matter!"

Chen Hui's voice trembled with excitement.

The Deep Space Eye directly detected the gravitational field generated by a massive mass source, whose mass distribution is significantly different from that of visible matter, and whose dynamic behavior indicates that it hardly participates in electromagnetic interactions.

After a brief moment of excitement, Chen Hui began recording data about the dark matter.

Once anything is observed, it will no longer hold any mystery for him.

Based on the massive amount of data collected by Deep Space Eye, especially the collision-free characteristics of dark matter in galactic collisions, Chen Hui has made a more precise definition of its properties.

Having understood its properties, Chen Hui began designing a dark matter detector that could operate in normal environments.

Traditional underground laboratories attempt to capture the extremely rare collisions between dark matter particles and atomic nuclei with little hope, but Chen Hui takes a different approach. His detector does not aim to capture individual particles, but rather to detect the collective gravitational effects produced by dark matter as a continuously distributed fluid or field.

Three months later, the prototype of the Eye of the Underworld was deployed in the Tiangong-3 laboratory.

Chen Hui couldn't wait to start the prototype.

Immediately afterwards, an unprecedented scene slowly emerged and coalesced against the background of emptiness, in the form of a cold blue data stream.

It was an incredibly complex and magnificent three-dimensional spiderweb structure woven from countless fine and dense gravitational flows.

It is like a huge, fractal nerve bundle that runs through and wraps around the entire galaxy cluster. Visible galaxies are like luminous dust particles stuck to this invisible giant web, their trajectories being silently pulled and shaped by this web.

Chen Hui held his breath.

This is not speculation, not a model; this is direct imaging.

He saw it, not with light, but with gravity itself as a probe, and saw the true, invisible skeleton of the universe.

His voice carried a barely perceptible tremor, “This is dark matter, not a cloud of particles, but… structural folds in spacetime, the very fabric of gravity itself.”

However, Chen Hui's exploration did not stop there.

Beyond the skeleton, what drives the expansion of the entire universe?

He pushed the sensitivity of the Eye of the Underworld to its limit, aiming it at the emptier region of the universe—a vast intergalactic void. His goal was to probe the most elusive dark energy.

This time, the probe is not of gravity, but of the fluctuations in the rate of expansion of spacetime itself at the microscopic scale.

He devised a revolutionary observation mode that measures the theoretically possible difference in separation velocity between two infinitely close points in a vacuum, caused by the expansion of the universe.

The data stream initially resembled chaotic snowflakes.

Chen Hui implanted a state-of-the-art filter based on his unified field theory, aiming to capture traces of the primordial pressure that drives expansion.

After a few minutes of waiting, the changes on the screen shocked Chen Hui, who was used to seeing cosmic wonders.

The originally pitch-black background began to be replaced by an extremely faint, pervasive, dark golden pulsating light.

This radiance is not evenly distributed; it is like a lung imaging of a living organism, showing the interweaving and flow of vast high-energy and low-energy regions.

In some areas, the dark golden light seemed to boil, pushing the spacetime structure outwards; in other areas, the light was relatively dim, as if gathering strength for the next breath.

This is no longer a static image, but a dynamic, cosmic-scale diagram of an energy field breathing.

Chen Hui understood instantly.

Dark energy is not some mysterious force, but rather an inherent, dynamic energy ocean within the quantum vacuum itself.

The accelerated expansion of the universe is not driven by external forces, but rather is a natural consequence of the uneven pressure within this energy ocean itself on a macroscopic scale; it is the expansion of nothingness itself.

Just as Chen Hui was immersed in the magnificence of this sea of ​​nothingness, his eyes caught some extremely subtle abnormal structures in the detection data.

Among these rivers and lakes where dark energy flows, there are areas where the patterns of energy flow exhibit astonishing complexity and self-organization.

They don't resemble naturally formed fluid dynamic structures; rather, they resemble... some kind of enormous, incomprehensible topological life form.

He saw a giant serpent, composed of highly ordered dark matter and spanning several astronomical units, lazily curled up in a gravitational depression of a nebula, its body undulating slightly with the gravitational waves of the nebula.

In another direction, a colossal, deep-sea jellyfish-like structure with countless shimmering tentacles is drawing gravitational radiation energy from a pulsar…

This is not simply the distribution of matter, this is... life!
Dark matter life forms with gravity as their lifeblood and spacetime structure as their body!
He saw a whale-like silhouette made of pure dark energy, its shape constantly changing, slowly swimming in the void, the expansion rate of the space around its body significantly different from the surroundings.

In another direction, a patch of dark energy, like outstretched wings, pulsed with an ineffable, ancient, and magnificent rhythm.

These structures subtly overlap with the images of certain primordial beasts and celestial giants described in ancient mythology!
Chen Hui understood instantly.

The dragons, deities, and mythical beasts in ancient mythology are not entirely the imagination of the ancients.

They were individuals among the ancient humans with exceptionally strong perceptions who, unconsciously, glimpsed, to varying degrees, the magnificent dark matter entities hidden beneath the dimensions of reality!
Those supernatural abilities such as flying, burrowing underground, and summoning wind and rain are merely projections of these life forms in a lower-dimensional world, manifested by manipulating gravity and spacetime structures in a higher dimension!
Suddenly, the giant snake directly in front of them opened its eyes and looked in Chen Hui's direction.

In an instant, Chen Hui felt a chill run down his spine, from his tailbone all the way to the back of his head, making him feel as if he had just been pulled out of an ice cave, his whole body ice-cold.

Even though they were separated by countless light-years, Chen Hui could sense that the other party seemed to have noticed his spying; it was watching him!

(End of this chapter)