Chapter 147: Star Fragment Energy

As Jason spoke, he became increasingly animated, his strategic imagination running wild. “Just because *we* can’t comprehend the engineering doesn’t mean a vastly superior civilization can’t achieve it! If they truly found a way to throttle and control the expansion of exotic stellar fragments, it would be an energy source exponentially more powerful than our most advanced fusion reactors!”

It was a terrifying prospect: Star Fragment Energy.

Theoretical calculations showed that if a neutron star fragment the size of a common ant were to spontaneously expand, it would release the total energy output of the Sun in just three to five seconds, dwarfing any known nuclear fusion reaction. (For context, the Sun consumes 4 million tons of mass every single second to maintain its output.)

Although the theoretical energy conversion rate of stellar matter is only about 7%, making it less efficient than total matter-antimatter annihilation, antimatter is incredibly rare and obscenely expensive to synthesize in the Milky Way. White dwarfs and neutron stars, however, are practically everywhere!

If a civilization could somehow “mine” a chunk of one, its massive density and sheer weight would provide a practically limitless, immediately usable power source.

Jason’s wild theory stunned the room into absolute silence.

The idea was so utterly insane, so completely outside the realm of established human science, that the brilliant minds present were momentarily paralyzed, struggling to even process its feasibility.

Yet, the math held up: if a method existed to control the explosive expansion of degenerate matter, it would indeed serve as the ultimate power source.

Jason paused, letting the silence hang before continuing. “But that’s just a hypothesis on their propulsion…”

“Even if they aren’t using the fragments as an active energy source, they could be using them as a passive gravitational core! Think about it: place an ultra-dense fragment in the center of the spaceship, and it generates a massive, natural gravitational field for the entire ship.”

“The Viridian spaceship isn’t built like the Noah. I highly doubt it has the Precursors’ innate artificial gravity plating. Living in zero-G for years is incredibly detrimental to biological life. Maybe… mining a chunk of a white dwarf to use as a localized gravity anchor is actually simpler for them than mastering true anti-gravity technology?”

Mining a white dwarf or a neutron star? The senior scientists shook their heads in sheer disbelief. It was impossible to even fathom the sheer industrial scale and technological wizardry required for such a feat.

The surface gravity of a standard white dwarf is a billion times stronger than Earth’s! Under that crushing pressure, normal matter ceases to exist; atoms are physically crushed, and electrons are violently stripped from their orbits to form a sea of degenerate electron gas. In that state, the star’s core is harder than any conceivable material. Diamond, humanity’s hardest known natural substance? It would be utterly pulverized into subatomic dust instantly!

Neutron stars are even more extreme, boasting surface gravity a hundred trillion times that of Earth. Under that apocalyptic pressure, both the electromagnetic Coulomb force and the strong nuclear force buckle. Entire atomic nuclei collapse, forcing protons and electrons to fuse together into pure, hyper-dense neutrons.

The idea of flying a mining ship down into that apocalyptic gravity well and carving out a chunk to use as a battery? It was the kind of absurd sci-fi fantasy only a layman like Jason would propose out loud.

The physicists preferred to believe that manipulating gravitons for artificial gravity was achievable; manually mining a neutron star seemed like a violation of the universe’s fundamental rules.

To put it in perspective: if you somehow threw the entire mass of the Sun at a white dwarf, the resulting collision would trigger a massive supernova explosion, but the white dwarf itself would remain entirely intact. Its structural resilience was beyond human comprehension.

But Jason didn’t care about the physics constraints. Since they were completely in the dark anyway, he didn’t mind pushing the boundaries of the hypothetical. And once his strategic mind latched onto an idea, he couldn’t stop.

“I just thought of something else… regarding the logistical nightmare of moving a ship with that much mass. What about their warp drive? When a ship engages faster-than-light warp, its conventional kinetic energy essentially drops to zero, effectively bypassing the limitations of its own massive weight.”

“We have absolutely no idea how their warp engines actually function, nor do we understand the underlying physics… What if the energy cost of engaging a warp bubble has absolutely nothing to do with the ship’s *mass*, but is strictly dependent on the ship’s physical *volume*?! Yes, that must be it!”

Jason grew more and more excited as the pieces fell into place. He had a strange, unshakable intuition that his wild guesses were dead on target!

The room full of esteemed scientists sat speechless. They desperately wanted to refute his claims with hard math, but they simply lacked the data to do so. This gave Jason a strange, petty sense of satisfaction. A few weeks ago, he had been subjected to their endless disdain for requisitioning their precious alien materials for the quantum computer project. Now… he finally had his intellectual revenge!

“By God, that makes perfect sense!”

Dr. Arthur Lambert, whose imagination was equally unhinged, suddenly shouted, slapping the table in excitement. His eyes were wide with fanaticism. “Director Jason’s hypothesis perfectly bridges the data gaps! It’s the only logical way to explain the alien ship’s impossible mass readings. That has to be it! The Viridian spaceship must house an ultra-dense stellar fragment weighing roughly 10^{21} kilograms!”

“They are using that star fragment as either a massive gravity anchor or an exotic power source!”

“Furthermore, their ship… must be utilizing a curvature engine, a method of FTL travel we haven’t even begun to theorize… It is physically impossible to accelerate a ship of that mass to 40% the speed of light using conventional Newtonian propulsion!”

As Dr. Lambert ranted, his voice gradually softened as the terrifying implications of his own words set in. He slowly sat back down, a deep frown creasing his face.

This entire theory hinged on the mechanics of warp drive, a technology humanity couldn’t even begin to comprehend. According to Jason’s theory, the energy required to fold space was tied only to the physical size of the warp bubble, completely ignoring the mass of the object inside it.

The room fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. These were prominent, meticulous scientists; making wild, baseless conjectures without peer-reviewed evidence went against everything they stood for. Given their academic standing, none of them would dare spout the kind of reckless sci-fi theories that Jason and Dr. Lambert were throwing around.

Was the Viridian Empire, the very same aliens who had just cowered and surrendered to humanity’s bluff, truly this unimaginably powerful? Were they genuinely capable of mining degenerate stars?

Was it possible… that manually carving up a dead star was actually easier than mastering true, localized anti-gravity fields?

It felt impossible! At least anti-gravity was theoretically possible within the bounds of quantum mechanics. Slicing up a neutron star… that was just madness!

The scientific council was utterly paralyzed by confusion.

And yet, if they followed Jason’s bizarre conjecture, the impossible math suddenly aligned perfectly. Without the “Stellar Fragment” theory, how else could they possibly explain a ship with an average density of 6,000 tons per cubic meter? They racked their brilliant brains but couldn’t formulate a more reasonable hypothesis.

A tense hush fell over the Astronomical Observatory, everyone lost in deep, terrifying thought. Jason, having successfully derailed the entire physics department, casually returned to playing with the Gravitational Wave Telescope interface.

The pulsating dot representing the Viridian spaceship remained perfectly still, yet the gravitational waves it emitted were ten times stronger than Sedna’s. It was as if the dwarf planet was firmly anchored to the ship, rather than the other way around. Jason idly wondered how the Viridians would manage to break orbit without dragging the entire planet with them. Could they generate a shielding field to block gravitational waves, just as one blocks electromagnetic waves?

For some reason, Jason felt incredibly sharp today, his mind effortlessly linking disparate, wildly imaginative concepts. Perhaps his raw intellect was finally leveling up after months of intense, high-stakes command?

At this rate, I might as well transfer to the physics department, he thought with a wry smile.

However, the concept of shielding gravity was clearly centuries beyond human science. Humanity still didn’t even understand what gravity fundamentally was. Jason quickly abandoned the thought.

He continued inputting different search parameters into the terminal. Peering through the lens of pure gravity, the Solar System had never looked so starkly beautiful.

Gravity is the true, undisputed master of the cosmos; its invisible hand is what sculpts the Earth-Moon binary, planetary orbits, solar systems, and the massive, sprawling galaxy clusters.

If only humanity could truly understand the nature of gravity... Jason thought longingly.

He adjusted the telescope’s maximum search radius to two light-years, commanding the quantum core to map every celestial body within the Solar System’s sphere of influence, down to the smallest comets and asteroids.

Because of the sheer volume of data, the alien supercomputer took several seconds to render the image. When it finally loaded, the remaining seven major planets of the Solar System were clearly visible as bright, pulsating spheres.

The Sun’s gravitational influence extends outward for roughly one light-year. In the rendered image, beyond the major planets, thousands of faint dots represented the asteroid belts and distant comets.

However, past the 500 AU mark, the dots became incredibly sparse. The vast majority of the Solar System’s mass was concentrated well within Pluto’s orbit.

“Wait… what is that?”

Jason frowned, zooming in on the distant Oort Cloud. Roughly 0.6 light-years away, at the very edge of the system’s influence, a massive gravitational dot pulsed slowly. Based on the reading, it was roughly the size and mass of Earth’s destroyed Moon.

Was there a rogue moon out there in the deep dark? A massive celestial body that humanity’s optical telescopes had never discovered?

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