Chapter 329: Rewinding Time

Chapter 329 – Rewinding Time

In the novel Three-Body Problem, humans had discovered the Trisolaran’s fleet four light-years away by analyzing the tracks left in the interplanetary dust clouds.

Now, the livestream’s audience were similarly looking through four light-years of distance and seeing the blue Earth with their very own eyes.

However, the difference was that the 69th century’s human technology was much more advanced than the human technology available in Three-Body Problem. It was capable of enlarging the image resolution to a level beyond imagination.

Mountains, rivers, deserts, forests…as well as the slightly blurred urban agglomeration, everything had entered the audience’s view.

This was the Earth four years ago.

It was a period where humans had long since experienced…

As the telescope continued zooming in, the blurred urban agglomeration gradually became clearer. It was even possible to see the crowds and vehicles roaming on the streets if one looked closely.

[Damn! That’s Kunming City!]

[I see the Science and Technology Museum.]

[That’s the Science and Technology Museum four years ago. The museum’s backyard has already been developed at this time.]

[The image still isn’t clear enough. Can you zoom in a bit more?]

[I was born in 2017!]

[So, you gained enlightenment in 2021?]

[If you fly to a distance of two thousand light-years away, does that mean you can see the Qin Dynasty?]

[In theory, that’s possible. However, at such a long distance, a lot of the optical information should be lost already. You won’t get as clear of an image.]

[Maybe future review products might be able to do it.]

[I want to look at an ancient brothel.]

[I want to see it too.]

[Brothel +1…]

“We have reached the magnification limit.”

When the picture was zoomed in to the ratio of 1cm/100m, the spacecraft’s built-in telescope technology could no longer guarantee the image’s clarity. Zooming in any further would only result in the addition of randomly simulated pixels due to insufficient light information.

Stepping aside, Chen Yu gave the interactive participants behind him a better view of the image. He then shrugged and said to the camera, “We are simply too far away. At this distance, we can just barely see the flow of traffic. Moreover, it is also impossible to view any location that has clouds hovering over it. I feel that only if we are within a distance of two light-years can we get a clear view of a person’s face.

“Speaking of this, I suddenly came up with a brilliant idea. If, in the future, we install thousands of such telescopes one or two light-years away from the solar system, won’t it be even better than having an eye in the sky? Wherever crime occurs, we can just have one of these telescopes fly to the appropriate location. We can then look at the ‘historical records’ of the crime scene from one day ago to two years ago, solving the crime quickly.”

[You are such a genius.]

[The theory is feasible, but crap in practice.]

[It’s like using Victoria’s Secret to wipe your bum.]

[What kind of stupid metaphor is that?]

[I can’t hold it in anymore! Where did the female assistant go?! Is nobody paying attention to this?!]

…

“She became famous, just like that…”

Earth, Chen family’s abode, living room:

Holding her phone, Chen Yike gnashed her teeth as she watched the follower count ofo Xing Biqi’s Weibo[1] account skyrocketing.

By some supernatural means, netizens had managed to uncover the information of every person participating in Transdimensional Review’s interactive event this time in just a few hours.

Among the participants, the person who received the most attention was the cross-dresser Falling Dawn. Coming after him was Xing Biqi, who possessed an exquisite appearance.

Xing Biqi’s initial follower count of six had instantly shot up to 2.1 million.

She had instantly become an internet celebrity.

The comment section under her most recent post also exploded with activity.

[Goddess!]

[Beautiful…]

[@Azure Flag, are you interested in developing in the entertainment industry? I’ve already sent you a private message.]

[You are the real RNGesus!]

[Can you sell me the souvenir the UP is giving you? The price is negotiable.]

[What an innocent girl. Following. ( ͡°͜ʖ͡°)]

[What a beautiful goddess.]

“If others know that my brother is Transdimensional’s UP, I can definitely become even more popular!”

Clicking her tongue, Chen Yike swiped her finger across her phone and switched to looking at her own Weibo home page. When she saw her pitiful follower count of 12, she couldn’t help but sigh deeply.

“Sure enough, men only like the new and dislike the old.

“I was clearly here first…”

…

In the neighboring Alpha Centauri system…

A streak of white light gradually glided across the deep space and departed from the red dwarf known as Proxima Centauri.

After the spacecraft representing mankind’s majesty crossed a distance of 300 astronomical units, it had finally left the red dwarf’s strong gravitational field. Immediately afterward, the spacecraft entered FTL navigation mode.

“I wonder if anyone has noticed it?” Inside the spacecraft, Chen Yu pointed at a building in the urban area of Kunming and said, “The height of the tall building on the left is rapidly lowering. This is because we are moving further away from Earth at a speed faster than light. This has led to the phenomenon of time reversal. To explain it simply, we are rewinding time.

“The faster our speed gets, the faster we’ll see Earth go back in time. Once the spacecraft flies to a distance of 1,000 light-years away from Earth, the Earth we’ll see will be from 1,000 years ago.”

[Reversing my like!]

[It would be great if we could zoom in even further. I want to see what a poop getting retracted looks like.]

[?]

[You can also watch someone spitting out the noodles they just ate.]

[??]

[Stuffing the rescued wounded back into the vehicle.]

[???]

[The world moving backward really is beautiful. ( ͡°͜ʖ͡°)]

[The more viewers there are, the greater the chances for lunatics to appear.]

[Is nobody caring about the fact that a bug has appeared? The spacecraft is already moving faster than light, so why can we still see an image of Earth?! Light can’t even keep up with the spacecraft!]

Raising his watch, Chen Yu looked at the bullet comments and couldn’t help but be stunned.

“I see some excellent questions posted by the audience. Since the spacecraft is already moving faster than light, why can we still see the scenes behind the spacecraft? Logically, photons shouldn’t be able to keep up with us, so shouldn’t the scene behind the spacecraft be pitch-black?

“This line of thinking is definitely correct. When a person moves at supersonic speed, they won’t hear sounds coming from behind them. This principle should also apply to light. So, why can we see the view behind the spacecraft?

“The answer is actually very simple.”

Taking a few steps forward, Chen Yu reached out and tapped his knuckles on the cabin’s invisible wall. “I said before that the transparent spacecraft you see isn’t actually transparent. You can think of it as an ultra-high-definition screen. The scenery you see at the front, back, left, and right sides of the cabin are merely light signals collected by the ‘cameras’ outside the spacecraft. The collected light signals are then converted into a video format and played inside the cabin.

“The maglev train I reviewed before is also similar in this aspect. The walls of the train’s passenger compartments are also made up of screens.

“Therefore, even when this spacecraft is traveling faster than light, its ‘cameras’ will collect the photons they come across. If there is light information coming from the front, there is naturally light information coming from the back, left, and right sides. Hence, we can see our surrounding environment clearly even while traveling faster than light.”

[So cool!]

[Technology really is magical.]

[Full marks for this sophistry.]

[Quick! Look! Earth is rewinding!]

When the spacecraft reached 50 times the speed of light, everyone could see Earth rotating in a backward direction.

“Excellent. We can admire other places now.” Chen Yu immediately manipulated the telescope and directed it to China’s capital with enthusiasm. “Let’s show Tiananmen Square to our global audience…”

However, the next moment, no matter how much he zoomed in, the only thing he could see were layers of opaque, gray haze…

The livestream’s 170 million viewers: “…”

“Mhm.

“As expected of the country’s national weapon! Not only can it prevent missiles from aiming at it, but it can also block the prying eyes of higher civilizations…”