Chapter 1,133 Fermi Paradox and the Sieve of the Universe

Although he is over seventy years old, this old man does not have much of the stability that an old man should have. Whether it's his walking posture or his habit of looking to the right, he looks like a sixteen or seventeen-year-old child.

But thinking about it, Jiang Chen asked himself, if he had been in a wheelchair for decades, he might be more mobile than him.

Just as Jiang Chen was looking at the old man's back, Hawking turned his head, looked at him with his slightly funny face, and said in a teasing tone.

"Then Mr. Executive Officer, if you have any questions, you'd better ask them as soon as possible. You are a big shot with hundreds of thousands of dollars per second, so you shouldn't have much time to waste on campus."

Jiang Chen smiled noncommittally, and after pondering for a moment, he asked.

"Thirty-seven billion years ago, do you think if there really was a civilization that existed for that long, what would they have developed into?"

"This is an interesting question. What do you think the dinosaurs would have developed if they were given 100 million years?" Hawking did not directly answer Jiang Chen's question, but asked another question.

"Are dinosaurs considered civilized?" Jiang Chen asked rhetorically.

"Are ants considered civilized? Are bees considered civilized? Do birds in the sky have their own society? Maybe they do, but we can't understand them, or we never take them seriously." Hawking shrugged and said, "Arrogance is civilized. One of the attributes is that those who are weaker than us become slaves, those who are even weaker become food, and those who are not even food are regarded as bugs."

At this point, Hawking suddenly grinned.

"We are lucky that at least our civilization has attracted the attention of our neighbors and has not been ignored by them as dispensable bugs."

"You call this luck?" Jiang Chen said with a bitter smile.

He would rather beg the bugs to treat him as a bug instead of trying to kill him across a distance of 20.5 light-years.

"Of course you are lucky. The Indians at least have a chance to fight back against the European colonists, but will the bugs have that chance? Stop, look, you almost trampled that little life to death." Hawking reached out and gave Jiang Chen a hand , under Jiang Chen's surprised gaze, he pointed at his feet, "Yes, I'm referring to that ant. If I hadn't reminded you, you wouldn't have even noticed it. You wouldn't know how to communicate with it, and you wouldn't care. It is thinking about something, not to mention whether they have made a technological breakthrough in the nesting process."

As he spoke, Hawking grinned, squatted down, picked up a dead wood branch, and placed it in front of an ant.

The little ant was confused by the sudden obstacle.

The tentacles on its head swayed back and forth, and finally it chose to go around...

"We have been taught a lot of common sense throughout our lives, but common sense is often just synonymous with prejudice."

Turning his head, Hawking looked at Jiang Chen.

"Do you think he will think about why this branch is in front of him?"

"Do you think I should answer this question from a philosophical perspective or a scientific perspective?" Jiang Chen said helplessly.

I'm not an ant. How do I know if it knows that this branch will block its way?

Hawking smiled, turned his head, looked at the ant walking around the branch, and continued.

"It has nothing to do with philosophy or science. If I have to say it, it should be cosmology."

Jiang Chen felt the corners of his mouth twitch.

"cosmology?"

"That's right. The definition of cosmology is the study of the universe as a whole, and it extends to the discussion of human beings' position in the universe. It cannot be regarded as philosophy, and certainly cannot be regarded as science, but it has a little bit of both."

As he spoke, Hawking reached out and picked up two branches, blocked both sides of the ant, and surrounded it.

"If you had come an hour earlier, you should have been sitting in the classroom just now, listening to me tell the story of the Fermi Paradox and the cosmic sieve. But unfortunately, you missed that lively and interesting public elective class. But not yet It’s too late, if you treat me to a pinecone pie, I—”

"No problem, it doesn't matter how much you eat." Jiang Chen said quickly.

Hawking smiled and pointed to the triangular cage made of branches on the ground, a "masterpiece" that he completed in three seconds.

"This branch is the sieve of the universe it faces. If it bypasses it, it can survive. If it figures it out, it can become a different ant. If it is blocked..."

After a pause, Hawking slowly stood up and patted the dust on his clothes.

"It will starve to death here."

After listening to Hawking's words, Jiang Chen frowned. Suddenly, a flash of inspiration flashed in his mind, and he opened and closed his lips thoughtfully.

"Fermi Paradox, the sieve of the universe..."

Jiang Chen's eyes gradually brightened as he seemed to have caught something in his mind.

At this moment, he noticed that the ant extended its tentacles to the branch. Trapped in the triangular cage and unable to find a way out, it began to try a new idea and crawled over the branch. However, from beginning to end, it was not aware of, or never thought about, who was manipulating the obstacles in front of it.

"Now let me answer your question. You ask me how far 3.7 billion years is enough for a civilization to develop. I can't answer you unless you can tell me what exactly they encountered in these 3.7 billion years. .”

"On a time scale of billions of years, there are always endless troubles. Natural disasters, diseases, wars...actually these are small problems. Just like this branch, no matter how many more branches come back, it will eventually pass."

Looking at the ant that successfully climbed over the branch, Hawking smiled.

"Of course, it's not always so lucky, especially when it encounters a moody 'god'."

Hawking raised his foot and trampled the ant and the triangular branches under his feet...

…

After chatting with Hawking for a while, Jiang Chen felt that he had figured out a lot of problems.

Not only the civilization 3.7 billion years ago, but also the extraterrestrial civilization twenty light years away. The answers to the questions that he had originally been unable to figure out or hesitated to answer were all found at this moment.

After arriving at the canteen, Jiang Chen paid for the treat as promised and ordered two pine cone pies for the old man.

To be honest, he really didn't know what was so delicious about this sweet and greasy stuff, but Mr. Huo, who was sitting across from him, was chewing it with gusto, and he could only sigh at the difference between Eastern and Western food cultures. In line with the principle of not wasting food, Jiang Chen had no choice but to use a fork to dismember the portion on his plate, and patiently ate it one bite at a time.

What a miscalculation, I actually forgot that this guy is from England, a pioneer in the dark cuisine world!

"Don't force it if you can't eat it." Crossing his legs, Hawking suppressed a smile and stuffed the pie pieces into his mouth with his fork, his wrinkles knitting together.

Jiang Chen suddenly felt that the old man's smile was really mean.

"I won't eat, I have no appetite."

Jiang Chen finally gave up on the plate with more than half of the pie left, threw the fork into the plate, said goodbye to Hawking, picked up the plate and walked to the food cart at the door.

Because the car was parked under the teaching building, he had to go back the same way.

However, when he passed by the forest that he had passed through earlier, he found a group of students gathered in a circle on the lawn and set up a temporary stage, which looked very lively.

Out of curiosity, Jiang Chen took two steps towards that direction, grabbed a passing student, pointed there and asked casually.

"What are they doing there?" (To be continued.)