Chapter 288: A Sleepless Night
The historic conference ended abruptly. There was almost no further discussion; the attendees filed out of the room in absolute, heavy silence.
The revelation of the "Great Filter" was profoundly shocking, laying bare the grim reality of a powerful civilization’s total extinction for all to see.
It was right in front of them, radiating a palpable, bone-chilling cold. But even if humanity had finally uncovered this truth, what did it change? Even knowing the cosmic trap existed, what could anyone actually do to bypass it?
Jason left the venue with a deep scowl. His mood was incredibly bleak and somber, to the point where he could barely register the murmurs of the people passing by.
Controllable nuclear fusion, the ultimate hurdle the Nix Civilization failed to clear was the monumental challenge the Federation was now destined to face. Humanity had no choice but to confront it head-on. Whether they could actually cross this insurmountable barrier was the ultimate question.
On the surface, the "Great Filter" was a brutal technological barrier created by the sheer, mind-bending difficulty of controllable nuclear fusion. Without the limitless energy provided by fusion reactors, the dream of becoming a true interstellar civilization was nothing more than empty talk.
If the vast majority of civilizations could never invent stable fusion, how could they ever hope to colonize the stars? This was exactly why interstellar empires were practically non-existent. It painted a dark, utterly hopeless picture of the future.
Because the core theory of controllable nuclear fusion is so deceptively simple, it directly lures almost every developing civilization down the exact same flawed path: magnetic confinement. This cosmic trap steadily erodes every civilization’s funding, confidence, and patience.
Or rather... maybe the path itself isn’t fundamentally wrong, but the engineering difficulty is simply too high. It’s scaled to an unbelievable, unimaginable degree, so steep that there is literally no end in sight.
Even in his final days, the last Great Sage of the Nix didn’t completely rule out the magnetic confinement method. By that logic, while the difficulty was astronomically high, the method wasn’t necessarily physically impossible. It retained a tiny sliver of theoretical feasibility.
If a civilization has enough time to keep grinding forward, and their overall technological foundation accumulates to a high enough level, they could still crack controllable nuclear fusion! Yes, theoretically, it is possible.
However, the Nix Civilization was incredibly unlucky. As a subterranean, geothermal species, their population exploded unsustainably. When their accessible nuclear fission fuel ran dry, they were instantly plunged into an apocalyptic dark age.
But... what if the species belonged to a solar-based surface civilization? Jason frowned, pondering this new angle.
Take Earth, for example. Even if humanity had exhausted every drop of its fossil fuels, would they have immediately fallen into absolute, apocalyptic despair?
Most likely... no. Earth possessed a practically inexhaustible supply of solar energy, which was more than enough to maintain basic survival and avoid immediate extinction.
The sheer volume of solar radiation is staggering. The total power of sunlight hitting Earth’s surface is roughly 1.7×10^17 watts, hundreds of thousands of times greater than the planet’s total electricity consumption at its peak! In essence, almost all wind, hydroelectric, and fossil fuel energy originally derived from the sun. Therefore, even if humanity burned through all its coal and oil and had to rely entirely on solar infrastructure, society wouldn’t collapse completely.
At worst, it would cause severe economic recessions and lower standards of living. Based on Earth’s population before its destruction, a post-fossil-fuel society could still scrape by.
By that logic, humanity originally had a virtually unlimited window for technological development. According to sociological models, the vast majority of civilizations in the universe should be solar-based surface dwellers, just like Earth! As long as these civilizations didn’t wipe themselves out in nuclear fire, they should be able to develop peacefully for eons.
But... the universe was dead silent. That was an undeniable fact.
This meant that even these solar-based civilizations, blessed with practically infinite time to research were still ultimately blocked by controllable nuclear fusion!
The only logical explanation lay within the nature of civilization itself!
The first possibility is that once fossil fuels begin to dwindle, the ensuing global economic recession sparks endless resource wars. The transitional period, when cheap fuel is almost gone but not completely exhausted is a uniquely dangerous tipping point!
The second possibility is that, due to internal societal rot, civilizations simply do not progress indefinitely. Once their technology reaches a comfortable plateau, they stagnate.
Jason chuckled self-deprecatingly. In the late stages of a dying planet, once the economic collapse sets in, a civilization can barely feed itself. How could it possibly fund bleeding-edge physics research?
The tragic history of the Nix offered a terrifyingly clear picture. In their later stages, almost all of their hard sciences stagnated, with only profitable sectors like medical biology moving forward. This was fundamentally a societal issue.
It’s truly depressing. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss, Jason thought silently. Realizing that the Great Filter wasn’t just a technical engineering problem, but an inevitable social cancer, filled him with profound despair.
However, these social dysfunctions were merely symptoms, not the root cause. If almost every civilization in the cosmos encountered this exact same social decay, exhibiting a chilling, perfect uniformity, there had to be a deeper biological driver behind it.
In other words, it traced back to the "Gene Philosophy" framework he and Lily had discussed earlier, the fundamental directives programmed into the very DNA of all life. It required asking the ultimate biological question: Why does life choose to live?
Jason firmly believed that this genetic philosophy was the ultimate, truest explanation for the Great Filter.
Driven by deep-seated genetic instincts to seek efficiency and safety, once a civilization reached a sufficient level of technological comfort, it inevitably fell into the traps of hedonism, complacency, and rampant capitalism, entirely losing the collective drive to suffer for the sake of future progress.
This wasn’t just true for the Nix, but for the vast majority of intelligent species in the universe!
He let out another heavy sigh. The initial euphoria of salvaging the Nix technology had completely vanished, replaced by a suffocating, heavy sorrow that clouded his vision like a thick white mist.
It wasn’t just the tragic extinction of the Nix that broke his heart. It was the terrifying realization that the Federation was heading toward the exact same destiny, and the grim tragedy that countless other alien empires had all been snuffed out by the exact same inherent flaw!
Now, the baton had been passed to the Federation. If humanity failed to crack controllable nuclear fusion, they would be marooned on this dark, freezing planet until they, too, faded into dust!
Yes, the planet possessed massive reserves of methane ice and ambient oxygen. Humanity wouldn’t have to worry about a basic energy crisis for tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
But... the Nix people had once possessed enough uranium to last a hundred thousand years! And despite that massive buffer, they still perished!
Jason wasn’t the only one smart enough to see the writing on the wall.
A long-forgotten sense of existential dread blanketed the Noah. Almost all the senior scientists tossed and turned in their beds, completely unable to fall asleep.
The Great Filter was so utterly despair-inducing that simply knowing its true nature offered no real advantage in overcoming it. It sat there, cold, unyielding, and insurmountable—a colossal mountain stretching across the cosmos, mercilessly blocking the path of every intelligent species.
The night was long and sleepless. For the universe, the dark night was an eternity.
In the dead of night, Professor Hao Yu shot up in bed. He rushed out into the corridor and broke down, large tears rolling down his weathered cheeks. This titan of physics had never looked so frail and vulnerable.
Dr. Arthur Lambert leaned heavily against his headboard, silently wiping away his own tears. His wife whispered soft words of comfort in the dark, entirely unaware of the horrifying truth her husband had just learned.
Dr. Felix typed frantically at his workstation. When the glowing code on the monitor began to blur with his tears, he rubbed his eyes fiercely and forced himself to keep working.
In the face of this cosmic mountain, individual strength was laughably pathetic. They were like ants trying to move a glacier, incapable of even taking the first step. Only the unified, unyielding power of an entire civilization could ever hope to stand against it!
Jason slowly got out of bed. He needed to go for a walk.
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