Earth Era

Facing the teacher's question, Mo Xiangsheng seemed to have forgotten what he had said before, and just said blankly: "I'm hungry and want to eat."

Dr. Huang Yuan resisted the desire to strangle his student, took out a large handful of dried meat from his pocket and placed it in front of Mo Xiangsheng. Mo Xiangsheng tore open the package and ate it with relish. The scientists looked at each other, and the atmosphere in the conference room became strange and heavy.

Just when Dr. Huang Yuan's patience was about to be exhausted, Mo Xiangsheng wiped his mouth, swept the packaging bag on the table to the ground, and said indifferently: "Based on the previous calculation method of particle characteristics, although it Because of its short half-life, it cannot be delivered to the vicinity of stars, but it must have a certain probability of self-decaying into another dark matter particle, and this particle has similar characteristics to the original particle. This probability is about one in 170,000 . This particle has a long half-life and can directly invade the interior of the galaxy."

A scientist asked in surprise: "How did you derive it? Is there a detailed calculation formula?"

Mo Xiangsheng casually opened a virtual interface and quickly sketched on it using his finger as a pen. Following the movements of Mo Xiangsheng's fingers, a series of extremely complex formulas that had to be calculated and verified with the help of high-performance computers in the past appeared smoothly on the virtual interface. Some people looked thoughtful, but more people just looked blank. Only Dr. Huang Yuan's body began to tremble continuously, and cold sweat gradually penetrated from his forehead.

Mo Xiangsheng spent more than ten minutes writing the calculation processes. At this moment, there was no sound in the conference room.

"I'm hungry, is there any dried meat?"

Dr. Huang Yuan wiped the sweat from his forehead and growled outside the conference room: "Bring the dried meat."

A waiter hurriedly placed some dried meat in front of Mo Xiangsheng, and then withdrew. Mo Xiangsheng, as if nothing had happened, began to wolf down the food in front of him again.

Dr. Huang Yuan was silent for a long time, and finally called up a virtual interface and began to conduct his own verification on it. Some of the other scientists were still meditating, and some also started making calculations.

More than an hour later, Dr. Huang Yuan stopped his movements and leaned weakly on the back of his chair, but did not speak. Until the slightly frightened voice of another scholar broke the calm in the conference room.

"Onomatopoeia's calculations are completely correct. This kind of dark matter particle - if our premise is not wrong, if it does exist and is consistent with our existing theory, it can indeed affect the space near stars. We originally thought The Phoenix Galaxy is a safe haven that allows us to avoid the invasion of dark matter particles, but we were wrong, we were all wrong..."

Dr. Huang Yuan had veins popping up on his forehead: "We are still unable to determine this. Note that all this only exists in our calculations, only in calculations! In reality, we have not even confirmed the existence of dark matter!"

One scholar whispered: "Our calculation results have been verified time and time again. In this case, it makes no sense to deny the existence of dark matter."

"This matter is beyond our scope of authority. We must report it to the head of state..."

Biochemistry Laboratory, School of Life Sciences.

Although the resources and power at Wang Hao's disposal have been greatly enhanced, even hundreds or thousands of times more than before, what makes Wang Hao and his experts a little desperate is that there has been no progress in research on the treatment of this disease.

With further research and development, the possible existence of dark matter particles—or the magical power that has not been completely understood—is not just as simple as damaging genes or causing errors in gene replication. It seems to be able to change the physical properties of certain substances in living bodies, and allow it to continuously and uninterruptedly affect the composition of living bodies. That's what makes it so tricky and difficult to treat.

The wisdom of many experts and scholars has been gathered, but only one progress has been made during this period that cannot be regarded as progress - atypical gene mutation syndrome can be treated symptomatically, that is, which aspect of the patient's symptoms According to the symptoms, which aspect of treatment is carried out. For example, if you are dehydrated, you will need to rehydrate, if you have a heart failure, you will need an artificial heart, if you cannot hear, you will need a cochlear implant, etc. When all symptomatic treatments are ineffective, the patient can only watch helplessly and die.

These problems were enough to make Wang Hao very anxious, but what Wang Hao didn't expect was that something more serious and bad would happen later.

A document was forwarded to Wang Hao's desk as quickly as possible. On top of that document, the instructions left by the head of state Shen Qingyuan personally revealed the importance of this document. Wang Hao opened the document with some trembling, and saw the news that he least wanted to see.

"The latest research by the team led by Dr. Huang Yuan found that the dark matter particles are very likely to have an impact on life forms within the stellar circle. The Ministry of Health, the Academy of Life Sciences, and the Biochemical Laboratory are hereby ordered to immediately join forces to conduct an investigation on everyone in the entire civilization. Check and verify immediately..."

Investigating hundreds of billions of people in an entire civilization is a huge project, but people have to do it. It is better to catch hidden dangers when they first appear than to wait until they are discovered when they erupt.

The document also specifically stated that this investigation will be carried out under the premise of high confidentiality. After all, no one wants to let the society, which is already full of public opinion, bear the impact of bad news again. The health department and the epidemic prevention department have joined forces to collect specimens - of course, these tasks will be carried out in the name of health examinations or daily inspections. After the specimens are collected, the School of Life Sciences, the health department, and the epidemic prevention department will organize efforts to analyze these hundreds of billions of specimens, and feed back the final results to the biochemistry laboratory led by Wang Hao for final processing.

Putting down this document, Wang Hao's heart became heavier.

"If we lose even the last safe haven, where will our future go? Is our final destiny really to perish silently in this vast universe?"

Human beings are too powerful, and humans are too weak. Humans are powerful enough to change the world, travel faster than light, and transform an entire planet. But humans are unable to solve even one disease. Just a cloud of interstellar dust that is common in the universe leaves humans helpless.

Human beings know too much and too little. Human beings even know the origin of the universe, the evolution of the universe, and the ultimate fate of the universe, but they do not even know the interaction between gamma ray bursts and dark matter, nor the specific structure and composition of dark matter.

"This is us humans, this is us humans..."

Wang Hao sighed silently and devoted himself to his busy work again.

Under the direct organization and intervention of the government, 80% of the large-scale specimen collection involving all human beings was completed in only about a month. The remaining 20 percent will be completed gradually over the coming period. However, the number of specimens is enough, and it doesn’t actually matter whether there is the 20% or not.

After the genetic analysis was completed, a team of computer experts dedicated to analyzing and retrieving data led the data to the biochemical laboratory. So Wang Hao and his colleagues began to analyze these data.

The most basic analysis results were actually obtained in the previous step. The health department and epidemic prevention department have confirmed that of the approximately 80 billion people whose specimens have been obtained, nearly 97.6% have detected abnormal genetic mutations in their bodies, in the form of genetic mutation syndrome. It is very similar, but the degree is very slight, far from being noticeable, and there is a high probability that the disease will not occur during the entire life course. In other words, without this investigation, the vast majority of people would carry these mutated genes with them until the end of their lives without knowing anything about them.

Only one in 270,000 people will develop mild symptoms due to genetic mutations, but they will get better quickly. One in every 16 million people will suffer from an unexplained serious disease that cannot be cured, and only one in every 200 million people will die from it.

Although this has proved the correctness of the theory proposed by Huang Yuan's team, that is, the dark matter particles will indeed affect the interior of the galaxy, but as Wang Hao said, physics belongs to physics, and medicine belongs to medicine. It is Wang Hao's responsibility to continue testing and analyzing these samples and confirm whether they will affect the human population. It is the responsibility of biochemical experiments.

The final analysis results made Wang Hao and his colleagues feel heavy again.

"These mutated genes will not affect the carriers themselves, but will affect the next generation. In our civilization, 100 million babies are born every year under normal circumstances. Of course, since entering the interstellar escape stage, the birth rate has increased significantly. It has declined. It is currently stable at about 50 million babies per year. Among them, three years ago, the average infant deformity rate was 3 in 10,000. But I noticed that from two years ago, the infant deformity rate rose sharply to 10,000. Seven out of every 1,000 babies with malformations last year increased to 1.5 per 1,000. This means that every year, more than 70,000 babies with deformities will be added to our civilization. I remember that the medical community held many meetings, We discussed and studied the reasons for the rapid increase in the rate of infant malformations, but every time we ended up with no results, but we never expected that the original reason was here."

"If we continue to climb at this rate, in just a few hundred years, our civilization will no longer be able to give birth to a healthy next generation..."