Chapter 282: Forever Fifty Years
After lunch, the Senior Scientists returned to their seats with pale, worried faces. No matter how you looked at it, they would eventually have to face the final, brutal truth of the Great Filter.
The conference resumed, diving into the next Chapter of the Nix Civilization’s history.
Great Sage Oppenheimer’s mass-energy equivalence equation, E=mc^2 , fundamentally solved the Nix people’s energy crisis. It was a breakthrough far more powerful than the discovery of electricity!
Nuclear power plants appeared, bringing an unprecedented abundance of electricity. Nuclear reactors made their world richer and more peaceful. For the first time, the Nix didn’t have to wage life-or-death struggles over active volcanic zones, and the endless wars that had raged since antiquity were finally extinguished. Nuclear energy could easily support a massive population explosion!
At the time, their surface uranium reserves were enough to supply the Nix for 100,000 years!
Compared to their entire recorded history, a hundred thousand years was a functional eternity. The average lifespan of a Nix citizen was only fifty or sixty years; no one worried about running out of energy. The entire civilization cheered, welcoming a golden era of prosperity.
However, Great Sage Oppenheimer remained unsatisfied. Although surface uranium was abundant, it was still a non-renewable resource that would eventually run out. Resources that could be depleted were not the ultimate solution. Driven by his perfectionism, the Great Sage astutely pointed out the ultimate path: controllable nuclear fusion!
All stars are powered by nuclear fusion. It is the most common energy source in the cosmos, and the most promising path forward. Only by mastering controllable nuclear fusion could the Nix enter "God Mode," completely freeing their civilization from energy constraints forever!
Theoretically, fusion is a simple concept: two hydrogen isotopes are smashed together with overwhelming force, overcoming their natural repulsion to fuse and release a colossal amount of energy. If controlled fusion could be achieved, the Nix would possess limitless power. Compared to fusion, nuclear fission was practically worthless!
Having charted the correct path, Oppenheimer’s anxieties eased. In his journals, he wrote: "It is foreseeable that within fifty years, the Nix people will conquer controllable nuclear fusion... We, the Nix Civilization, will stride out into the cosmos and conquer the Milky Way!"
Oppenheimer was overly optimistic. The Nix had just unlocked fission, their technology was undergoing an explosive boom, and their future looked brighter than ever. It was impossible not to be optimistic. The pace of scientific advancement during that golden age was unprecedented, with groundbreaking theories emerging every single year. Even a genius like Oppenheimer couldn’t fathom what technology would look like in ten years, let alone fifty. Thus, he confidently predicted that future generations would master this ultimate energy source within half a century.
The theory of fusion seemed so simple. Since hydrogen bombs had already been successfully detonated, the Nix had effectively mastered uncontrollable nuclear fusion. It felt like they were only a hair’s breadth away from achieving controllable fusion.
Yes, they were so close! It seemed like a completely solvable engineering problem. The theoretical groundwork was already laid. Surely, the brilliant minds of the Nix couldn’t be stumped by a mere engineering hurdle?
However, history proved Oppenheimer’s dream was a complete illusion. Fifty years came and went in the blink of an eye, and the descendants of the Nix failed to deliver an answer.
Controllable nuclear fusion was nowhere near as simple as it seemed on paper.
Fission is a spontaneous process; controlling it simply requires introducing neutron-absorbing materials to regulate the reaction rate. Fusion, on the other hand, requires temperatures of tens to hundreds of millions of degrees and staggering atmospheric pressures. It does not occur spontaneously under normal conditions!
Achieving temperatures of a "hundred million degrees" requires an absurdly high baseline of scientific prerequisites. For instance, containing plasma requires immensely powerful magnetic fields, which in turn require advanced superconductors. And all of this requires entirely new classes of synthetic materials...
Therefore, most of the scientific advancements Oppenheimer envisioned couldn’t actually solve the fusion problem. They barely scratched the surface.
However, the Nix scientists didn’t believe fusion was impossible. If fifty years wasn’t enough, they assumed another fifty years would do the trick. With the advent of quantum mechanics and general relativity pushing science forward, their confidence was understandable.
Without a doubt, science was rapidly advancing. Computers, satellites, the internet, and mobile phones began to emerge. The Nix entered an era of unprecedented prosperity. Very few individuals possessed the foresight to worry about an energy crisis tens of thousands of years in the future. If a scientist claimed the Nix would perish from an energy shortage, they would be laughed out of the room.
They firmly believed fusion was achievable... but there was no immediate rush to pour endless resources into it. Let’s wait until our foundational technology advances a bit more!
Even the human scientists reviewing this history felt this was a logical mindset. Looking at human history, launching a satellite in the 20th century was vastly more difficult than in the 21st century, simply due to the natural progression of technology. Why not wait for better tools to solve the fusion problem?
Consequently, controllable nuclear fusion was relegated to a side project rather than a civilization-wide priority. Since the Nix had abundant, cheap fission resources, there was no urgency. Top scientists shifted their focus to relativity and quantum mechanics—the exciting new frontiers of theoretical physics that offered a faster track to earning the title of "Great Sage."
Like an overnight technological renaissance, innovation blossomed everywhere. Science surged forward, and social development kept pace perfectly. As productivity skyrocketed, the average citizen’s wealth grew, and free-market trade flourished. This rendered their original feudal structures completely obsolete. In such a modernized era, an absolute monarch couldn’t realistically govern everything, right?
Naturally, the tide of capitalism swept across their world. Dictators either stepped down entirely or transitioned into figurehead "constitutional monarchs" stripped of real power. Democratic parliamentary systems rapidly replaced autocracies.
This transition was relatively peaceful, with very little bloodshed. It was simply the unstoppable trend of the times, and no one wanted to cling to a dictatorial system. Rulers gracefully stepped down to preserve their dignity.
From this perspective, their era of democracy, equality, and freedom had officially arrived!
They were extremely similar again...
Jason felt goosebumps erupt all over his body; he didn’t even have the energy to complain about the eerie parallels anymore. But looking closely, it was completely logical. The evolution was perfectly normal. Their entire society smoothly transitioned into a capitalist democracy, and the entire process unfolded with flawless, undeniable logic.
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