Alchemy has been a dream of Human Civilization since ancient times.

Throughout history, countless alchemists dedicated their entire lives to this field, but never succeeded.

Unexpectedly, during this cosmic escape journey, Tom inadvertently achieved it.

To "refine" gold from hydrocarbons seems strange, but its principle is actually very simple.

Nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, and other material changes involving the atomic nucleus are not as profound as they seem, and do not necessarily require precise equipment to achieve.

The universe is full of interstellar high-energy radiation, and full of particles with extremely high speeds and kinetic energy.

At this moment, Tom's fleet speed is as high as 8 % of the speed of light, so particles that originally did not possess such high kinetic energy passively gained extremely high kinetic energy upon impact, and thus high-energy interstellar particle collision events became more frequent.

Thus, the carbon and hydrogen atomic nuclei that make up this special plastic sheet may be struck by these particles, either gaining or losing protons. This manifests externally as nuclear fission or nuclear fusion.

That's right, in fact, during this journey, within the material that makes up the plastic sheet, these changes that can release enormous energy are happening every minute and every second.

As a result, their elemental composition was also altered, and dozens of other elemental atoms appeared out of nowhere in materials that originally only contained carbon and hydrogen atoms.

After refining and purification, they became the gold bars, iron blocks, tin blocks, and the like, laid out before Tom.

Of course, the higher the atomic number of an element, the smaller the quantity formed. This is because elements with higher atomic numbers are more difficult to form.

According to Tom's estimation, under current conditions, an average of about 30 grams of gold will be produced out of thin air each year.

Of course, if the speed continues to increase, leading to more frequent and intense high-energy interstellar particle collisions, the efficiency of this "alchemy" will further increase.

"Take them for industrial use."

With a sigh, Tom threw these materials into various factories. The plastic sheets that had been "eroded" to tatters by these impurities were reshaped and produced to be as smooth as new again, then thrown into the warehouse, awaiting use.

In addition to the "alchemy" that even Tom found somewhat astonishing, at a speed of 8 % of the speed of light, even more peculiar phenomena caught his attention.

He saw that in front of the fleet, the colors of the myriad shining stars seemed to have changed slightly.

They seemed to have become a bit bluer.

This change was very subtle. Even the clone, where Tom's consciousness resided, which had undergone hundreds of genetic optimizations and possessed super vision, could only barely perceive this.

Behind the fleet, the colors of those stars became slightly redder, also a very subtle change.

Tom knew this was due to redshift and blueshift.

Light waves possess properties similar to sound waves. When moving forward, the wavelength of light waves shortens and their frequency increases. When moving backward, the wavelength lengthens and the frequency decreases.

And the color of light is determined by its wavelength.

Because of the fleet's speed of approximately 24,000 kilometers per second, the colors of those stars changed.

Based on the Doppler formula corrected by relativity, Tom calculated that the stars in front had their colors shifted bluer by approximately 8.3 %, while the stars behind shifted redder by approximately 7.7 %.

Such a subtle change made it understandable that the clone could only barely perceive it.

Of course, for instruments and equipment, this change was extremely obvious.

In fact, in addition to the color changes perceivable by the naked eye, those stars also undergo many more changes due to the fleet's current high-speed travel.

Stars usually emit electromagnetic waves across the entire spectrum, with the only difference being their energy levels. Some electromagnetic waves, due to excessively long wavelengths and low frequencies, or excessively short wavelengths and high frequencies, have exceeded the limits observable by scientific equipment.

However, these specific wavelengths of electromagnetic waves may carry many mysteries about the internal operating mechanisms of stars.

They could not be observed in the past, but now it is different.

Because in front of the fleet, those electromagnetic waves that were previously unobservable, with excessively long wavelengths and low frequencies, now, through the blueshift effect, have their wavelengths shortened and frequencies increased, thus entering the observable range from the unobservable range, and can be captured by radio telescopes.

Similarly, at the rear, through the redshift effect, those electromagnetic waves with excessively short wavelengths and high frequencies can be brought into the observable range.

As a result, a large number of signals that Tom could not observe or capture before now entered the equipment, revealing to Tom the mysteries hidden behind heavy curtains.

Tom vaguely felt that he seemed to have pioneered an unprecedented field of astronomy.

"Beyond fields such as visible light astronomy, infrared astronomy, X-ray astronomy, neutrino astronomy, and gravitational wave astronomy, this current field… can it be considered high-speed astronomy?"

Tom knew that he had gained another means of exploring the mysteries of the universe.

In addition to these peculiar phenomena, there was one phenomenon that troubled Tom more.

That was the time dilation and length contraction effect.

Simply put, during the movement of an object, the flow of time changes.

In low-speed motion, the change in time flow is very small and can be ignored. Therefore, Newton's equations of motion can be used to calculate object motion.

But at a speed of 8 % of the speed of light, the change in time flow is no longer negligible, and using Newton's equations of motion would result in many errors.

For example, Tom has always used neutron star positioning technology for fleet positioning.

By observing the relative positions and angles of several neutron stars whose coordinates have been predetermined with the fleet, the fleet's precise coordinates in the cosmic starry sky can be indirectly determined.

But at this moment, due to the excessively high speed, the flow of time has changed.

According to Tom's calculations, at this moment, the fleet's time flow is approximately 0.32 % slower than the outside world's time flow.

That is, when 365 days pass in the outside world, only about 364 days pass within the fleet, which is one day slower than the outside world.

This leads to significant errors in the positioning system. Not only that, but changes in time flow will also cause a series of troubles, even affecting the accuracy of scientific observation data.

Fortunately, this situation is not without a solution.

After introducing relativistic formulas as corrections, the data that had been "interfered" with was converted into raw data, and the fleet's various operations were also cleared of interference.

Amidst these peculiar phenomena, the massive fleet continued to advance at high speed.

And after the preparatory work of the previous period, the various large scientific facilities could finally begin operation.

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