Chapter 607 - 595 Observatory

"Will that thing of yours be able to fly next year?"

"Pretty much, after March we’ll proceed with the engine installation test. Anyhow, there’s certainly no issue before November."

In the cafeteria of the Aerospace Development Committee, Lin Ju and Zhong Cheng struck up a conversation.

Although fully capable, having never been in the aerospace sector, especially with the numerous changes in the past two years, Zhong Cheng was still gradually getting accustomed to the work here.

The aerospace bureau had already confirmed the injection of a massive influx of new forces. Aside from him, He Tang, Yun Hongjun, and other mainstays had been showing up frequently in Capital recently, obviously to better adapt to the switch in jobs.

Despite rapid development in the aerospace bureau over the past two or three years, due to the constantly changing situation, various plans seemed somewhat haphazard; most of Zhong Cheng’s energy was devoted to readjusting these hastily incorporated plans.

He also soon realized that the uncertainties mostly came from New Yuan or, to be more specific, from the young man in front of him. He wanted to know as much as possible about it.

Take, for instance, the mystical XN90 plan, which was said to be attacking the summit of propulsion technology within and outside the atmosphere together with A100 using fission technology—the mere technical brief was staggeringly impressive.

"So, your team..."

Zhong Cheng wanted to ask more, but a ringtone from his cell phone interrupted him. He looked at the number, puzzled for a few seconds, then picked up.

"Hello... This is... I’m here, okay... okay."

The call lasted several minutes. After hanging up, Zhong Cheng stared at Lin Ju with a strange expression, making the latter a bit uneasy.

"What’s the matter, Director Zhong?"

Lin Ju guessed that it might concern him, but was unsure what it was about.

"You’re planning to build a Gravitational Wave Observatory on the Moon?"

When Zhong Cheng said it, even he found it somewhat unbelievable, but that was exactly what the Academy of Sciences had told him.

"Huh?"

Lin Ju looked surprised, genuinely unaware of this matter.

The Moon, gravitational waves?

There were no related projects at the base, could it be...

"Director Zhong, who told you that?"

"Who else could it be? The call was from the Academy of Sciences. President Ye from your team convinced Wu Yunfeng, saying that you and the Institute of High Energy will build a super-precise gravitational wave observatory on the Moon.

The Academy of Sciences was asking me about the schedule for construction here; if it’s true, they will invest more and expand several scientific facilities."

"??"

...

Base B.

"Brilliant, truly brilliant."

Lu Qun was reading through Zhang Xueyou’s paper on quantum entanglement communication, clapping his hands in admiration.

After reading, he gazed at Wu Yunfeng and Ye Changsi beside him, exclaiming with awe:

"Remarkable, turning the impossible into possible, such brilliant methods indeed opened my eyes."

"Haha, Professor Lu, that’s why we really need your help."

Ye Changsi maintained a smile; the man before him, Professor Lu Qun, was a rare domestic scholar who primarily studied gravitational waves.

Gravitational waves were only confirmed at the beginning of last year, and it was only a couple of months ago that the Nobel Prize organization awarded a prize for this discovery. Compared to other fields, research on gravitational waves was indeed difficult.

Firstly, they had only just been confirmed, and secondly, humanity simply lacked the capability to create or interfere with gravitational waves, only able to remain at the level of observation, waiting for a signal that might suddenly emerge from somewhere in the universe. The real scientific significance was limited.

And celestial observation was an exceedingly lengthy and uncertain process. One might spend an entire lifetime without encountering a detectable gravitational wave signal, and to describe the future as dark was an understatement.

Last year, Lu Qun proposed the "Tianqin" plan, different from America’s LIGO Gravitational Wave Observatory. The "Tianqin" plan involved launching large satellites towards the geostationary orbit or higher, forming a laser array at vast distances.

The principle of the laser interferometer gravitational wave detector was simple: when a gravitational wave passed through, space would be distorted, and a highly accurate laser reflector array would continually amplify the degree to which the light was deflected, achieving indirect observation.

The larger the laser array, or the longer the distance, the higher the sensitivity, and the more capable it becomes of detecting faint gravitational wave signals.

The satellites in the Tianqin plan could be over 60,000 kilometers apart, which could naturally take the sensitivity to an astonishing level.

If on top of this distance, the reflector pathway could be completed, then the sensitivity could be increased by several orders of magnitude.

But at that time, the Tianqin plan encountered substantial difficulties during the demonstration phase because the requirements for the laser source and control system were too high—so high that it was nearly impossible to achieve.

After all, Earth itself was not a perfect sphere, and it was impossible for satellites to orbit on a perfectly stable trajectory. These errors were unimaginably high for the Tianqin plan, far beyond the current and likely for several years ahead, the capacities that could be possessed.

The Tianqin plan thus came to a standstill. Although at that time Lu Qun turned to New Yuan, known for generously funding the aerospace sector, in hopes of investment and did secure some funding support, almost no progress had been made after a year. With their capabilities, they were fundamentally incapable of solving the technical requirements of the Tianqin plan.

But now a turning point had finally arrived—not entirely in technology, at least not entirely.

All this stemmed from a no-latency communication plan orchestrated by Ye Changsi and Wu Yunfeng; however, as the preliminary research deepened, it turned out that calling it an ultra-short latency was more accurate.

To start with, we need to understand what quantum communication is:

Quantum particles possess an observer effect and are typically in a superimposed, chaotic state.

Quantum particles are essentially photons, which display characteristics like polarization direction and angle—possibly at 90 degrees, possibly at 0 degrees. If it’s a state superimposed with these two conditions, the angle of polarization is 45 degrees, with neither being certain.

Before observing a quantum particle, it is impossible to determine its state, which is the uncertainty of a quantum particle; only upon observation does it become fixed, a process known as collapse.

Schrödinger’s cat is dead or alive only when the box is opened, just as the state of a quantum particle can only be known upon observation.

For a pair of entangled quantum particles A and B, when one particle, A, is observed to exhibit a certain state, the other particle, B, no matter how far away it is in space, will display the same state as A.

If particles A and B are at two different locations, the observer will see consistent results.

This is the so-called instantaneity of quantum entanglement, but this principle cannot be used for real-time communication.

The reason is that observer A cannot know which state particle A is in after observation; each result is random, and therefore observer B cannot receive any meaningful information.

For instance, if a string of information is 0101001, indeed one could define several quantum states as 0 and 1, but observer A transmitting the information cannot be sure whether the state being sent out is 0 or 1. Thus, quantum entanglement cannot achieve real-time communication.

What we call quantum communication today is actually quantum encryption communication.