The Droplet is one of ten Trisolaran advanced probes. Even when looked at under a microscope with a zoom of 10,000,000, the surface of the droplet remains the same.
“Adjust to a hundred thousand times,” the lieutenant colonel said. Still they saw a smooth mirror.
“A million times.”
A smooth mirror.
“Ten million times.”
Macromolecules would be visible at this magnification, but what they saw on the screen remained a smooth mirror without the slightest sign of roughness, no difference in smoothness from the surrounding unmagnified surface.
“Push it up again!”
Xizi shook her head. This was the electron microscope’s highest level of magnification.
Xizi examined one of the spots with the microscope, and at a magnification of ten million times, she still saw a smooth, flawless mirror.
The droplet is composed of strong-interaction material, meaning its molecules have been 'nailed in place,' and even their own vibrations are gone.
“All we can do is guess,” he said, looking up. “The molecules in this thing are neatly arranged, like an honor guard, and they’re mutually solidifying. Do you know how solid it is? It’s as if the molecules are nailed into place. Even their own vibrations are gone.”
“That’s why it’s at absolute zero!” Xizi said. She and the other two officers understood what Ding Yi was getting at: At normal densities of matter, the separation between atomic nuclei is quite large. It would be no easier to fix them all in place than it would be to join the sun to the eight planets with rods to form a stationary truss.
“What force would allow that?”
“There’s only one option: strong interaction.”*23 Through his visor, it was obvious that Ding Yi’s forehead was covered in sweat.
*23 Translator’s Note: Strong interaction is the strongest of the four fundamental interactions, and is responsible for the strong nuclear force that binds together subatomic particles. It is roughly 100 times more powerful than electromagnetism, but is only effective at distances of less than a femtometer.
The droplet is 100 times more durable than the sturdiest material in the solar system, with all other known substances being as 'fragile as paper' compared with it. It could pass through the Earth 'like a bullet through cheese' without the slightest harm to its surface.
The droplet wasn’t fragile like a tear. Entirely the opposite: Its strength was a hundred times greater than the sturdiest material in the Solar System. All known substances were as fragile as paper by comparison. It could pass through the Earth like a bullet through cheese, without even the slightest harm to its surface.
Nothing in the Solar System is capable of damaging the droplet.
Strong-interaction material differs from ordinary matter like solid differs from liquid. The attacks on the droplet by human weapons were like waves striking a reef. Damaging it was impossible, which meant that nothing in the Solar System could destroy it. It was untouchable.
The droplet powering up generates multiple halos with temperatures close to the core of the Sun, which instantly vaporize the four members of the expedition team.
But it was too late. Powerful interference had already wiped out their communication channels. The image being transmitted from Mantis vanished, and the fleet was unable to hear the lieutenant colonel’s final call.
A blue halo emerged from the tip of the droplet’s tail. It was small at first, but very bright, and cast a blue shroud over its surroundings. Then it dramatically expanded, turning from blue to yellow and finally to red. It almost seemed as if the droplet wasn’t producing the halo, but had just
drilled out from within it. The halo weakened in luminosity as it expanded, and when it had reached a diameter twice that of the largest part of the droplet, it vanished. The instant it vanished, a second small blue halo emerged from the tip. Like the first one, it expanded, changed color, weakened, and quickly disappeared. The halos continued to emerge from the droplet’s tail at a rate of two or three a second, and under their propulsion, the droplet began to move forward, and then rapidly accelerated.
But the four members of the expedition team never saw the second halo emerge, because the first one was accompanied by ultra-high temperatures approaching that of the sun’s core, which vaporized them instantly.
The droplet melts the Mantis (the expodition ship that went to retrieve it) almost entirely.
The hull of Mantis glowed red, resembling from the outside a paper lantern whose candle had just been lit. Its metal body melted like wax, but no sooner had the ship begun to melt than it exploded, dispersing into space as an incandescent liquid with hardly any solid fragments left behind.
The droplet crosses 1500km in 51 seconds, and is able to exceed the third cosmic velocity by the first 300km. By the time it reaches the corner of the fleet, it has reached 31.7km a second.
The computer had, however, also noted the fragment’s high rate of acceleration. By three hundred kilometers it had already passed the third cosmic velocity and was continuing to gain speed. The alert was upgraded to level two, but was still ignored.
By the time the fragment had flown roughly 1,500 kilometers from the explosion site toward the corner of the formation, only fifty-one seconds had elapsed. By the time it reached the corner, it was traveling at a speed of 31.7 kilometers per second.
The droplet executes a 30 degree turn at these speeds, and doesn't slow down.
Now it was on the periphery of the formation, 160 kilometers away from Infinite Frontier, the first warship in this corner of the array. The fragment did not pass by the formation, but executed a thirty-degree turn, and, without slowing down, sped straight toward Infinite Frontier. In the roughly two seconds it took to cover that distance, the computer actually dropped its alert from level two back to level three, concluding that the fragment wasn’t actually a physical object due to the fact that its motion was impossible under aerospace mechanics. At twice the third cosmic velocity, executing a sharp turn without a drop in speed was like slamming into an iron wall. If it was a vessel containing a metal block, the change in direction would have exerted such force as to flatten that metal block into a thin film.
The droplet slams into the first ship in the fleet, the Infinite Frontier, and effortlessly passes through it, and both the heat of its kinetic energy and the droplets own immense heat melts half the ship.
In that manner, the droplet struck Infinite Frontier at twice the third cosmic velocity, at a heading straight along the first row of the fleet rectangle.
The droplet struck Infinite Frontier in its rear third and passed through with no resistance, as if penetrating a shadow. The extreme speed of the impact meant that two highly regular entry and exit holes roughly the diameter of the droplet’s thickest part appeared in its hull. But no sooner had they appeared than the holes deformed and vanished as the surrounding hull melted under the heat produced by the high-speed impact and the ultrahigh temperature of the droplet’s trailing halo. The part of the ship that had been hit turned red-hot, and the redness spread from the point of impact until it covered half the ship, like a chunk of iron that had just been taken out of the forge.
In the next three seconds, the droplet travels 90km at a speed of 30km per second, and smashes through four more ships.
After passing through Infinite Frontier, the droplet continued onward at a speed of thirty kilometers per second. In the space of three seconds it had crossed ninety kilometers, passing first through Yuanfang, Infinite Frontier’s neighbor in the first row, and then through Foghorn, Antarctica, and Ultimate, leaving their hulls red-hot, as if the warships were giant lamps lined up.
Then the Infinite Frontier explodes in a nuclear fireball, due to it's fuel being sparked (either by the incredible heat of the droplets propulsion halo or another factor), and the following explosion illuminates the entire fleet and outshines the Milky Way (locally). This all happens within the first few seconds of the droplets attack. Similar explosions then follow on the other ships that the droplet rammed
Then Infinite Frontier exploded. It and the four warships after it were hit in the fusion fuel tanks. But unlike Mantis’s conventional, high-temperature explosion, this explosion was a fusion reaction triggered in Infinite Frontier’s fuel. No one ever figured out whether the fusion reaction had been sparked by the droplet’s ultra-high-temperature propulsive halo or some other factor. The fireball of the thermonuclear explosion appeared at the point of impact with the fuel tank and swiftly expanded until it illuminated the entire fleet against the velvety background of space, outshining the Milky Way.
Nuclear fireballs then took shape on Yuanfang, Foghorn, Antarctica, and Ultimate in succession.
In the next eight seconds, the droplet passed through ten more stellar- class warships.
By this point, the expanding nuclear fireball had engulfed the entirety of Infinite Frontier and had begun to shrink, while more fireballs were lighting up and expanding on other ships that had been struck.
The droplet continues its advance, destroying more ships and leaving more nuclear fireballs behind it. In one minute and 18 seconds, it has traversed 2000km and destroyed 100 ships.
The droplet continued its advance, following a straight line through more warships and leaving a line of ten nuclear fireballs behind it. The entire fleet shone in the flames of these burning small suns as if it had been set ablaze and turned into a sea of light. Behind the line of fireballs, the melted warships continued to fling waves of hot molten metal into space, as if massive rocks were being pitched into a magma sea.
In one minute and eighteen seconds, the droplet had completed a two-thousand-kilometer course, passing through each of the hundred ships in the first row of the combined fleet’s rectangular formation.
The droplet performs another sharp turn ('15 degrees off a total reversal,' so around 165 degrees), then slams into the first ship of the second row at 30km a second.
After punching through Adam, the droplet flew a short distance of about eighty kilometers through empty space, then executed another sharp turn unexplainable by humanity’s aerospace mechanics. This time the angle it described was even smaller: just fifteen degrees off a total reversal, executed nearly instantaneously even as it maintained a constant speed. Then, after a small heading adjustment that brought it in line with the second row of warships in the fleet’s array—or what was now
the first row, in light of the recent destruction—it sped toward the first ship in that row, Ganges, at thirty kilometers per second.
The droplet is able to hide itself from the SFJC's ships scanners.
However, the computer did not provide any information about that enemy force. Only two things were certain: 1. The enemy space force was located at the position occupied by the droplet, and 2. The force was invisible to every means of detection they possessed.
The droplet continues its attack at 30km per second, each turn a sharp corner rather than a smooth curve.
Following this broken path, the droplet drilled through the ships in the third row one after the other, never dropping its speed below thirty kilometers per second.
When analysts subsequently observed the droplet’s route, they were amazed to discover that its every turn was a sharp corner, not the smooth
curve of a human spacecraft. The diabolical flight path demonstrated a space drive entirely beyond human comprehension, as if the droplet was a shadow without mass, unconcerned with the principles of dynamics, moving at will like the nib of God’s pen.
Certain observers (who'd arrived in the future via hibernation), are the first to notice that whatever it is that's destroying the combined fleet is re-accelerating back to 30km a second everytime it passes through a ship.
LI WEI: I’ve noticed something about the speed.
ZHAO XIN: What speed?
LI WEI: The speed of the small projectile. Its speed when it’s launched from each warship is slightly slower. Then it accelerates to thirty kilometers per second during flight. Then it strikes the next warship, and when it launches from that warship prior to the explosion, its speed is a little slower. Then it accelerates....
ZHAO XIN: That doesn’t mean anything....
LI WEI: What I mean is ... it’s a little like drag.
ZHAO XIN: Drag? How so?
LI WEI: Every time this projectile passes through a target, the drag slows it down.
Within 13 minutes, more than 600 warships were destroyed by the droplet. What's more, due to the sophon block, humanity did not posses the AI needed for fast-pace space warefare either.
But space battles were measured in seconds, and in that thirteen-minute span, more than six hundred warships were destroyed by the probe. Only then did humanity realize that command of a space battle was beyond their reach. And due to the sophon block, it was beyond the reach
of their artificial intelligence as well. Purely in terms of command, humanity might never have the capacity to engage in a space battle with Trisolaris.
The droplet is invisible to the SFJC ships radars.
The speed of the droplet’s strikes and its invisibility to radar meant that defensive systems on the first ships hit never responded
Due to the speed of its attack, it's invisibility to radars and the confusion of the people on board, it takes a while for the combined fleet to actually start fighting back. When they do however, the attacks are still futile. The Nelson fires several powerful lasers, but when they strike the droplet, the frequency of the laser is altered, and the resulting light is so bright it drowns out the nuclear fireballs going off around it and forces the fleet to dim their monitoring systems so as not do damage their optical components, and causes sustained blindness to anyone who looks directly at the immense of light.
The speed of the droplet’s strikes and its invisibility to radar meant that defensive systems on the first ships hit never responded. But as the distance between the warships grew and the droplet’s striking distance increased, defensive systems on all warships were recalibrated based on the droplet’s target characteristics. This meant that Nelson was the first ship to attempt to intercept, using laser weapons to increase the accuracy of firing on the small, high-speed target. When struck by the multiple beams, the droplet emitted a powerful visible light, even though the Nelson had fired gamma-ray lasers that were invisible to the naked eye. The droplet’s imperceptibility to radar had never been understood, since it had a completely reflective surface and a shape that was perfectly diffuse, but perhaps the ability to alter the frequency of reflected electromagnetic waves was the secret to this invisibility. The light emitted from the droplet when it was struck was so bright it drowned out the nuclear fireballs going off all around it, forced the monitoring systems to dim their images to avoid damage to their optical components, and caused sustained blindness to anyone who looked directly at it. In other words, this superpowerful light was indistinguishable from darkness in its effect. The droplet, wrapped in this all-engulfing light, entered Nelson and was extinguished, plunging the battlefield into pitch darkness. Moments later, the nuclear fireballs reestablished their dominance and the droplet emerged from Nelson unscathed and sped straight for Green, eighty-odd kilometers away.
The Green then opens fire with it's railguns, launching rounds that are individually comparable to bombs, and whose sustained fire can level a mountain in a short period of time. However, even though the droplets own velocity makes these impacts even greater, the droplet is completely unharmed and proceeds to ram the Green.
Green’s defense system switched over to EM-based kinetic weapons to intercept the attacking droplet. The metal shells fired by the railgun possessed enormous destructive power, and the kinetic energy inherent in their high speed meant that every shell that struck the target hit with the force of a bomb. Against ground targets, they would flatten a mountain in no time at all. The droplet’s relative velocity only added to the shells’ energy, but when they struck, the droplet slowed only slightly before it adjusted its propulsion and recovered its speed. Under a dense hail of shells, it flew straight at Green and penetrated it. Under the ultrahigh magnification microscope, the droplet’s surface would still be mirror-smooth and totally scratch-free.
As the distance between the ships begins to grow, the droplet accelerates to 60km per second, and still is able to maintain it's speed and calculations as it continues its merciless slaughter.
The merciless slaughter in space continued. As the distance between ships grew, the droplet accelerated and had soon doubled its speed to sixty kilometers per second. Exhibiting a cool and precise intelligence in its continuous attacks, it solved the traveling salesman problem in local regions with perfect accuracy, hardly ever retracing its path. With its targets in constant motion, the droplet accomplished a huge range of accurate measurements and complex calculations effortlessly and at high speed. In the course of its intensely focused massacre, it would occasionally veer off to the edges of the group of ships to quickly dispatch a few outliers and arrest the fleet’s inclination to flee in that direction.
More than a thousand warshipsships are destroyed in the span of 20 minutes.
More than a thousand ships, over half the fleet, had been destroyed in a twenty-minute attack.
The droplets speed increases to 170km a second.
The droplet’s speed was now ten times the third cosmic velocity, or roughly 170 kilometers per second.
Of the 2015 ships in the combined fleet, only two escaped, and of the 1.3 million members of the fleet, only around 60,000 survived the Doomsday Battle. Such is the massacre that the remains of the combined fleet eventually forms it's own very thin belt of metalic debris around the Sun. All of humanities space force was destroyed by a single probe, of which there were a total of ten, and even the ten of them weren't even a ten-thousanth the size of a single Trisolaran warship, which the Trisolarans have a thousand of.
The region eventually became still, and the metallic cloud lost its luster in the coldness of the cosmos and disappeared into darkness. Over the years, under the pull of the sun’s gravity, the cloud stopped its expansion and began to lengthen, ultimately forming a long strip that
turned into an extremely thin metallic belt around the sun, as if a million restless souls were floating endlessly in the cold outer reaches of the Solar System.
The destruction of the entirety of humanity’s space force was accomplished by just one Trisolaran probe, and nine like it were three years away from the Solar System. The ten of them together weren’t even one ten-thousandth the size of a single warship, and Trisolaris had a thousand of those that even now were flying onward toward the Solar System.
“If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?”
(All of the above is from The Dark Forest)
