Chapter 288: A big explosion in technology

This person is Chinese American scientist Steven Russell, and he has two special identities, namely Lu Wen's only cosmic sociology student, and Lu Wen's grandson-in-law.

Russell's parents were environmental workers. When the war broke out, he was only seven years old and lived in New Zealand with his parents. During the war, Russell followed his parents to more than a dozen countries. He came to China at the end of the war and settled down. He became a Chinese nationality as an adult. When he was in college, Russell studied sociology. After graduation, he joined Lu Wen's scientific research institution, specializing in cosmic sociology research with Lu Wen. In 2074, he married Lu Wen's youngest granddaughter and became Lu Wen's grandson-in-law.

After Lu Wen's death, Russell took on the research on cosmic sociology.

In 2082, Russell put forward a very famous view: the technology booms**.

In fact, this view has nothing innovative, because there have been several technological explosions in human history. The most recent one was in the early 20th century. The result was that humans had brought into the era of nuclear energy, electronics, informatization and genetic bioengineering. In the 100 years after the 1910s, the scientific research achievements made by humans and the great development of productivity driven by technology exceeded the sum of 10,000 years before this, pushing human civilization to a new level.

However, the qualitative explanation of the technological explosion was proposed by Russell.

According to Russell's point of view, there is a simple measure of the scientific and technological level of human beings, that is, the level of using external energy. Before the industrial era, human beings could use human and animal power, that is, the main energy used to engage in production mainly comes from human and animal power. In the industrial era, human beings began to use chemical energy and made chemical energy the main energy for production and life. In the nuclear energy era, human beings mastered atomic energy and began to use atomic energy to engage in various activities, and their energy utilization efficiency was much higher than that of chemical energy.

At that time, Russell also put forward another extremely important point, that is, the technological explosion of human beings will always occur in a hundred years after a new form of energy emerges, and the social wealth created during this period will exceed the sum of past history.

However, this big explosion always occurs after the limits of the original energy utilization method.

When explaining the technological explosion that occurred in the mid-21st century, Russell gave a reason. This technological explosion was a result of some accidental factors.

According to Russell's theory, this technological explosion should have occurred in two hundred years or even three hundred years later, because it will take two hundred years before humans can use nuclear energy to reach its limit, and thus begin to find more efficient energy, which is the so-called space energy.

Without accidental factors, the technological explosion would never have occurred in the mid-21st century.

There is no doubt that this view is very novel and convincing.

In fact, China is indeed the first to make breakthroughs in the field of controllable fusion nuclear energy, which greatly improves the efficiency of human use of nuclear energy. This is very similar to the transition from steam engines to internal combustion engines in the industrial era, that is, fission nuclear energy is equivalent to steam engines in the industrial era, and fusion nuclear energy is equivalent to internal combustion engines. If it were not accidental discovery, then in the next two hundred years, human civilization will exert the utilization efficiency of nuclear energy to an unimaginable level. After discovering that nuclear energy can no longer meet the energy needs of human production and life, human beings will begin to look for more efficient energy, which will trigger a new technological explosion.

The emergence of accidental factors has changed the development process of human civilization.

At that time, Russell gave a clear conclusion that these accidental factors would be a matter of life and death for human civilization.

Here, Russell's contribution to cosmic sociology is involved.

First of all, we must admit that as Lu Wen’s only student in cosmic sociology, Russell was the only person who could understand the deep meaning of cosmic sociology at that time.

It can even be said that he is the only expert in cosmic sociology.

Russell inherited Lu Wen's research results in cosmic sociology, but also changed a lot, such as abandoning some rules and regulations that are easy to confuse people, and starting from a sociological perspective, explaining the essence of various civilizations in the universe, and then drawing conclusions from the next step.

According to Russell's view, no matter how civilization is formed or what kind of civilization it is, as long as the three laws of cosmic sociology proposed by Lu Wen are not wrong, then all kinds of cosmic civilizations have an internal commonality and there will be breakthrough points for in-depth research.

This commonality is the utilization of energy.

In fact, Russell was the first scholar to regard energy utilization as a measure of civilization level, and he has made many basic views in a pioneering way.

First of all, no matter what kind of civilization it is, its ability to use energy determines the level of development of its civilization.

This is the most basic point of view and the most important point of view.

This leads to the second point of view, that is, high-level civilizations do not pose a threat to low-level civilizations, because low-level civilizations do not have the ability to compete with high-level civilizations for energy. Therefore, the existence of low-level civilizations will not have an impact on the development of high-level civilizations and will not conflict with high-level civilizations.

Obviously, this is a point of view that does not require proof or has been proven.

The best proof is that when people have already had contact with alien civilizations, humans have not been extinct, which means that those alien civilizations of higher levels do not regard humans as threats, and have no reason to deal with humans, or there is no reason to deal with humans.

However, the third point Russell gave was enough to scare everyone to death.

The view is that if a civilization makes a major breakthrough, then a civilization at the same level will carry out a devastating blow. Moreover, as the level of civilization is higher, the ability of the backward civilization to resist such devastating blows becomes weaker.

In fact, this is also a point of view that has long been proven by humans.

For example, in the age of animal power, even the most powerful cavalry had no absolute advantage when dealing with infantry. After entering the industrial age, the initial combs were definitely not the opponent of tanks. In the nuclear era, the power of hydrogen bombs far exceeded that of atomic bombs, and the productivity converted from controllable fusion nuclear energy and the war power driven by this far exceeded that of controllable fission nuclear energy.

Then, when the space energy civilization stage, the advantages of advanced civilization will be more prominent.

It was not until this time that Russell proposed a crucial point that China's accidental discovery in the mid-21st century had changed the fate of human civilization.

Of course, this view must meet a prerequisite.

This prerequisite is that advanced civilizations can roughly determine when the backward civilization will pose a threat based on their own development history.

In fact, this prerequisite is also valid.

The reason is very simple. There are almost countless terrestrial planets in the universe, and the number of civilizations exists is almost infinite. Therefore, even if advanced civilizations are already very developed, it is impossible to monitor all surrounding civilizations anytime and anywhere, and it is even more impossible to destroy all civilizations that have potential threats but do not constitute substantial threats. They can only make judgments based on their own development laws and only destroy civilizations that have constituted substantial threats when most necessary.

Under this premise, the important point mentioned by Russell emerged, that is, human civilization has a period of one hundred to two hundred years, and will encounter alien civilizations at about the end of the 22nd century or the beginning of the 23rd century, and will have a death-related cosmic war with the explosion of alien civilizations.

In fact, Russell's inference has been proved, but he is not very accurate in his judgment of time, and the real time point is the 24th century. In other words, human civilization still has about 250 years, and the progress made during this period will determine the life and death of human civilization.

It can be seen from this that the accidental discovery of Chinese scientists in the mid-21st century is of great significance.

It can be said that without this discovery, human civilization will likely not be able to discover and master space energy until the 23rd century. The alien civilization that has been monitoring humans will return to the solar system in the 24th century and destroy the solar system before human civilization develops and grows.

At this point, Russell focused on the explosion of technology.

According to his inference, after any new energy utilization method emerges, human civilization will fully master the energy utilization method in the next hundred years, and this is the so-called "technology explosion", and the progress made by mankind in this hundred years will surpass the sum of historical periods.

Of course, Russell also mentioned that because humans ushered in a new technological explosion before fully mastering nuclear energy, the accumulation time in the early stage will be longer. Therefore, within the next 150 to 200 years, human civilization will be in a critical period of rapid development.

It must be admitted that Russell's judgment is extremely accurate and the time error is not very large.

It was not until the beginning of the 23rd century that humans had fully mastered the use of space energy, and simultaneously raised the utilization efficiency of nuclear energy to the highest level.

If we count from the middle of the twentieth century, it took human civilization almost 150 years to complete the technological explosion. If we count from the 1930s, it took human civilization nearly 200 years to complete the technological explosion, which was just within the time limit predicted by Russell.

It can be said that this is the most glorious 150 years in human history.

However, anyone who truly understands Russell's theory knows that this is also the most dangerous 150 years of human civilization.

In these 150 years, alien civilization invasions may occur at any time, and the invasion and destruction methods used by alien civilizations are completely beyond the scope of resistance of human beings. More importantly, what happened in these 150 years will ultimately determine whether human civilization can continue to survive.

It can be said that human civilization is racing against time.
Chapter completed!