Chapter 51: Dream Realm: Crystal or Not

In the dream realm, Du Qiu rapidly searched for silicon and began to meticulously study the purification process related to it, as well as the synthesis program for binary materials.

He discovered there were astonishingly several hundred kinds of binary materials related to silicon—an impressive feat.

It’s essential to note that on the current task list of the super machine, there are 116 kinds of pure single-element substances being purified, with over twenty of these substances not found on Blue Star.

This indicates that silicon can almost combine with most other elements to synthesize valuable binary materials, and more than one material can be synthesized with each element.

Du Qiu, who has been researching new materials lately, realizes this means different purities could yield materials with completely different properties.

Silicon is abundant on Blue Star, and it is also a primary material for computer chips.

Science fiction novels on Blue Star have even postulated the existence of silicon-based life.

On Blue Star, the main component of crystals is silicon dioxide, which forms different colors when containing various trace elements.

Pure silicon dioxide is colorless and transparent, crystallizing under specific conditions.

Based on their origin, crystals are categorized as natural crystal, synthetic crystal, and melted crystal.

Natural crystals are quite rare and are considered one of the gemstones.

Synthetic crystals are industrially produced by imitating the natural formation of crystals. Natural silica ore and some chemicals are placed in a high-pressure autoclave and cultivated for 1-3 months.

Melted crystals are typically created from crystal waste through high-temperature, high-pressure melting, generally exhibiting high-temperature resistance.

Du Qiu had previously identified a crystal pillow using some instruments and tentatively determined it belonged to melted crystal.

This was the perplexing part for him—how could the Maya civilization have melted crystal? It is, after all, a modern industrial product.

However, the unique function of the crystal pillow, which allows entry into a marvelous dream realm and connects to the super machine of an alien civilization, raises questions.

Could it be that the Maya civilization is a remnant of an alien visitation to Blue Star?

Or were humans on Blue Star created by an alien civilization?

Du Qiu is currently not very interested in these mysteries surrounding human origins.

Since he can access the super machine through the dream realm via this crystal pillow, that alien civilization must have visited Blue Star.

This is undoubtedly conclusive, and it instills a sense of urgency in Du Qiu.

If the alien civilization has visited before, it might visit again in the future.

When they visited Blue Star in the past, humans might have been in a state of ignorance and regarded them as deities from the heavens.

However, now that humanity has embarked on the fast track of technological development, the potential return of this alien civilization could be a disaster.

Fortunately, Du Qiu can now slowly gain access to the technology of this alien civilization, which might enable Blue Star to stand a fighting chance should the aliens revisit.

Du Qiu always believed that the only reason two civilizations could coexist is equal strength, preventing either from annihilating the other.

This has been vividly demonstrated throughout the thousands of years of human development on Blue Star.

Even the current peace on Blue Star is maintained under the threat of nuclear weapons capable of annihilating humanity.

As for the claim that nuclear weapons can destroy the earth, that’s an overestimation by humans. With the global nuclear arsenal, at most, the Earth would experience a nuclear winter, akin to catching a cold.

It’s just that humanity might not survive this “cold.”

As Du Qiu searched among the hundreds of binary materials containing silicon, his persistence paid off—he finally found a material that looked very much like crystal.

The process of creating this material differs from crystal production on Blue Star.

After undergoing an intermediate purification process, silicon was combined with oxygen in a specific ratio through a special synthesis program while the oxygen was in a solid state.

Interestingly, this synthesized substance immediately transformed into a crystal-like material.

The resulting crystal-like materials were all sizeable cubic blocks, each approximately twenty times the size of the crystal pillow Du Qiu held in his hand.

However, the production of this crystal-like substance ends there, with no further processing tasks in the super machine.

Clearly, this crystal-like substance must be a raw material meant for further processing.

After pondering for a while, Du Qiu checked his crystal pillow with devices available on Blue Star but found nothing unusual.

He was able to observe the crystal-like substances using the sensory systems of the super machine, particularly some sensory subsystems he did not fully understand.

These sensory subsystems were likely beyond the technological levels of Blue Star.

Perhaps their advanced capabilities might reveal how this crystal-like material differs from the crystals on Blue Star?

Du Qiu acted on his thought, but first, he carefully ensured there were no unidentified objects around the super machine.

He also activated a subsystem to specifically observe the crystal material production area.

He believed such caution would prevent startling any potential caretakers.

First, Du Qiu used perception methods similar to those on Blue Star. He stored the internal images of the crystal-like materials obtained by each sensory system in the intelligent core while also keenly memorizing them.

After observing the crystal-like material with all the sensory subsystems and ensuring he remembered the images perceived by the dozens of subsystems,

Du Qiu then used the intelligent core to search and compare the stored images, finding that more than ten of the sensory subsystem images were incomparable.

Their perception methods were very unusual, and some were beyond Du Qiu’s understanding, making the images indecipherable.

Fortunately, among the comparable images, Du Qiu finally detected some clues.

The six-sided crystal clusters in the melted crystals of Blue Star were discontinuous, unlike the complete and consistent clusters found in natural or regenerated crystals.

Furthermore, the crystal-like material produced by the super machine had not only perfectly intact six-sided crystal clusters, but they were also exceptionally orderly in their arrangement.

At this moment, in one of the images that resembled the scanning tunneling microscope effect on Blue Star, Du Qiu could clearly see the even and continuous arrangement of silicon and oxygen atoms within the crystal-like material.

The scanning tunneling microscope is capable of observing the atoms of a material and is essentially the top-level experimental observation device for micro-materials research on Blue Star.

Although Du Qiu had used it, he had never observed the crystal pillow in this way.

Hmm, it seems he needed to make a trip to his alma mater.

Shanghai University’s Department of Physics has a scanning tunneling microscope, and Du Qiu plans to observe the crystal pillow there.

Du Qiu memorized the image from this sensory subsystem once again, ensuring he wouldn’t forget it.

Considering that the super machine’s single sensory subsystem has an observational precision equivalent to Blue Star’s most advanced micro-observation equipment, when can Blue Star’s intelligent machines reach such a level?