Leaving the Jupiter system, Hawke's mood was overwhelmingly happy. Although he had received a few scares earlier, Hawke decided that they had been well worth it. The value demonstrated by these strange radiation sources was not simply that they could enhance the performance of the material.
The most important value was the mechanism by which the material was modified, i.e., why did the metal show a significant increase in properties after being affected by these radiation sources? If this question is clarified, Hawke can use it as a basis to develop more and more powerful materials.
This is the greatest value of these radiation sources. There is no doubt that researching this issue requires a huge amount of data computing power, and Hawke, above all, is not short of computing power.
The increase in power shown by the combination of a human soul and a computer is not as simple as one plus one. A true electronic being is no less capable of research than the entire collection of human society. For there is a near-infinite capacity for learning, arithmetic, innovation and a precision unmatched by humans underpinning him. Combining the two great virtues of humans and computers, Hawke's power is unquestionable.
Looking at the fading, diminishing Jupiter, Hawke set his eyes on a bright star in the distance, the planet Saturn.
After observing the orientation and other data of several neutron stars in the universe, Hawke determined his position. At his current position, he was still 700 million kilometres away from Saturn.
Determining where you are in the universe is a difficult task. But humans have done some research in this area and have basically solved the problem. That is to locate it by means of pulsars.
When a massive star evolves into its later years, after a supernova explosion, if the remaining core mass is less than the Oppenheimer limit, it forms a neutron star that relies on the balance between its own gravity and the neutron simplification pressure to stabilise itself. A pulsar is a type of neutron star that rotates at a very fast speed and is extremely stable with extremely powerful radiation emitted at its poles. It acts like a bright beacon in the universe. In this way, by observing the parameters of a few pulsars relative to themselves, one can deduce their position.
This, of course, presupposes that the position of these neutron stars has been determined beforehand. Before he escaped from Earth, Hawke had copied all the astronomical data observed by mankind to his hard drive, which, naturally, also contained the data of these neutron stars.
Another six months had passed since the journey through the universe. Looking at Saturn, which was getting bigger and bigger in front of him, Hawke's mood lifted.
This time could have been shortened by about a month if it had not been necessary to slow down when approaching Saturn.
During these six months, Hawke had run through the new data from Jupiter and made a modification to his previous theory.
Moreover, during these five months, Hawke also studied in detail the strange source of radiation that was kept in a box. For the sake of convenience, Hawke also gave the strange Jupiterian creature a name, calling it "Number One".
Of course, Hawke did not dare to release the One. If he did, the interior of the ship would be instantly burned and melted away. Studying it through the thick metal box was like scratching an itch, but it was better than nothing.
Even so, Hawke had obtained a considerable amount of data. He had tentatively discovered that this was indeed a creature, a strange one. It had all the characteristics of life, except that it had no solid mass.
For example, after Hawke had sent an extremely high frequency of electric waves at it, it would show annoying fluctuations, and the intensity of its radiation diminished a little accordingly. But no matter what Hawke did, he could not raise the intensity of its radiation.
After a lot of tests, Hawke measured that the intelligence level of No.1 was about the same as a trilobite from the ancient era. In other words, they were still in the early stages of evolution.
During this period of time, the metal material that made up the box had been strengthened a lot more, and its various performance indicators had almost reached as much as three times the initial level. But after reaching this level, there was no further enhancement, as if there was an upper limit to the One's performance enhancement of the metal.
In proportion to the increase in the metal's properties, the radiation intensity of the One was reduced by 0.03 percentage points.
Hawke estimated that for a tonne of metal to be boosted to twice its original performance, the total radiation intensity of No.1 would be reduced by 0.01 percentage point.
In other words, the radiation intensity of No.1 is enough to boost the performance of 10,000 tonnes of metal! This amount of metal material is enough to build the skeleton of a medium-sized spaceship.
It should be noted that before the destruction of Earth, apart from this ship that Hawk had secretly built, the heaviest human aircraft, the International Space Station, only weighed less than five hundred tons. Even Hawke's ship, when fully fueled, weighed only a few thousand tons, and the metal used was no more than two thousand tons at most.
Hawke had high expectations for the performance of No. 1.
The research into controlled fusion and the study of No. 1 took up less than ten percent of Hawke's calculation rate. During these five months, most of Hawke's efforts were devoted to discovering new stars and replenishing data on old ones.
Hawke was compiling a huge catalog of all the stars. Of course, this work is just beginning now.
This work would have seemed almost impossible to humans in the past. The number of stars in the universe is too large. In one galaxy alone, there are between 100 and 400 billion stars.
So to make things easier, mankind compiled many catalogues classifying each of the different types of stars, the common types being hd, sao, bd, etc. But Hawke did not care about this, he intended to compile all types of stars, nebulae, clusters, white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes, galaxies, etc. into one catalog.
Because of Hawke's almost unbelievably powerful storage and retrieval capabilities, the sheer volume was not a hindrance to him.
In the past few months, Hawke has used the Hubble Space Telescope's detection system on board his ship, combined with data already available to mankind, to initially number more than five million stars and attach the corresponding observations to them. For example, mass, volume, age, absolute magnitude, spectrum, metal mass, angular diameter, rotation speed, orbital velocity, position information, etc.
This catalog is dynamic. Because all the stars in the universe are in motion, the catalog compiled by Hawke slowly changes its own data over time.
"Such a great star catalog deserves to have a shocking name. Well ... let's call this great star catalog the Swarm Cthulhu. The vault of heaven is the universe, and the stars of the universe are the stars of the universe!"
"Qun Ying Cang Dao Record!" Reciting this loud name, Hawk was secretly pleased with himself.
The star numbered one in the Group of Heroes Vault was undoubtedly the sun, and the sun, to Hawke, had a special meaning.
Jupiter was getting closer and closer, and in Hawke's field of vision, Saturn, encircling the spectacular rings of Saturn, looked like a dancing beauty.
Saturn's rings have surprising physical properties. It is extremely large, but extremely thin. With a radius of about 110,000 kilometres, Saturn's rings are only about 20 metres thick and are mainly made up of meteorite chunks, ice particles and so on.
Saturn has a structure similar to that of Jupiter, which means that the same resources that are available at Jupiter are available at Saturn.
Moreover, Titan is no less resource-rich than Io for Hawke.
Reducing his speed relative to Saturn to thirty kilometres per second, Hawke entered orbit around Saturn and then slowly adjusted his speed relative to Titan to two kilometres per second, successfully entering orbit around Titan.
At this point, there was much more to be done. For with Hawk's current technology, it was not possible to take off directly from above the star while away from the rocket. Not even on a small star like Titan, with an escape velocity of 2.6 km.
In other words, there is no possibility of Hawke moving his position again in a short time after this landing. So Hawke had to choose the most suitable area to land, which had to be land, but there had to be a methane lake nearby to provide energy, and in order to get enough building materials, the landing location had to be near an area where iron was relatively abundant.
Hawke began the long orbit around Titan. Over the course of tens of thousands of orbits, Hawke gradually mapped out a three-dimensional map of Titan. On this map, Hawke marked the differences in terrain, such as where the mountains were, where the volcanoes were, where the areas were rich in iron, where the areas were rich in silicon, where the areas were lakes and where the areas were land.
After careful analysis, Hawke finally selected a place.
The Upper Capital Region, also known as Shangri-La, is a highly bright reflective region in Titan's leading hemisphere, the size of an Australia.
Conventional theory suggested that this was a huge methane lake, but after field observations, Hawke disproved this.
Through the dense atmosphere, the surface of the upper capital region came into Hawke's lens. What unfolded before Hawke was a magical world.
There was solid ground, with lakes, but not very large. At the same time, there were rivers made up entirely of liquid methane flowing slowly, just like on Earth.
Geological soundings reported an extremely rich iron ore deposit somewhere in the Upper Capital District. Hawke took stock of the situation and chose this as the landing site.
After detailed orbital calculations, Hawke slowly reduced his altitude and speed and began to slowly approach the smooth surface of Titan.