Chapter 812: Chapter 810: Electromagnetic Pulse, EMP!
Busy, constantly busy.
In the blink of an eye, three days have passed.
Three days later, Eden Mechanical Processing Sector, Laboratory.
Richard stood in front of the console, a weary look he couldn’t hide on his face, but his eyes were sharp, staring intently at the five crystal balls placed on the console.
These were five crystal balls he had personally crafted, compared to the ones Joseph gave him, they were extremely crude. First of all, they were much larger in size, like the head of an ugly baby. Secondly, the magic rune layout on them was quite chaotic, as if randomly pieced together.
But Richard, looking at the five crystal balls, didn’t show any disdain. Instead, he solemnly reached out and pressed his hand on the leftmost crystal ball.
Injecting mana in a specific sequence, the interior of the leftmost crystal ball soon showed red, yellow, and blue colors, which gradually dissipated after two seconds.
And just at the moment when the colors inside the leftmost crystal ball disappeared, the other four crystal balls on the right buzzed and showed the same three colors — red, yellow, blue — appearing simultaneously, lasting for two, five, ten, and twenty seconds respectively, before fading away in succession.
Seeing the phenomenon, Richard’s eyebrows shot up, and then his whole body relaxed.
After almost three days of tireless effort, his research had finally made the anticipated breakthrough, achieving a preliminary decryption of the Truth Society’s communication crystal balls.
In other words, he now understood the basic principle of the communication crystal balls and could use these principles to do some interesting things.
Very interesting things!
Thinking of these, Richard smiled. He walked over to a table, took out a brand new blank scroll, and with a quill, thought while writing, summarizing this research project.
“Rustle, rustle, rustle…”
“Through a series of experiments, it can now be basically confirmed that the Truth Society’s communication crystal ball transmits information through a special type of energy wave.
The mechanism involves inputting mana as an energy source, using specific magic rune magic to convert the energy into energy waves imbued with certain information and sending it out.”
The sent energy waves have very strong penetration power, able to pass through numerous obstacles and reach the receiving crystal ball. After receiving, the crystal ball will decrypt the signals contained in the energy waves and express them.”
Writing this, Richard paused, thinking of some uncertainties.
For example, the issue of the effective range of energy wave transmission.
In his laboratory experiments, it was almost a face-to-face transmission, so naturally, there wouldn’t be any issues with transmitting and receiving energy waves, but it was different outside.
The intensity of the energy waves emitted by the crystal ball was limited, and in a one-to-one transmission process, the quality of communication worsened as the distance increased due to scattering and absorption by the medium.
According to the information he got from Joseph, the crystal ball not only supported one-to-one communication but also complex communications like one-to-many and many-to-many.
This is definitely not something that can be achieved solely by the terminal communication crystal balls, at least not without a signaling transmission and processing center acting as a hub.
Moreover, as Joseph mentioned, in every corner of this world, seamless contact is achievable, which is not easy to accomplish.
In a sense, this technology is already on par with Earth’s.
How is it done on Earth? It is achieved by a vast communication network consisting of densely packed signal transmission stations on the ground and numerous communication satellites in outer space.
In this world, there are no satellites, so how is it solved?
After thinking for a long time without an answer, he had to give up temporarily, planning to research it slowly later.
“Rustle, rustle, rustle…”
Richard continued writing.
“The results of the seventh and eighth experiments show that the information transmitted by the crystal ball can be intercepted…”
Yes, the information from the crystal ball can be intercepted.
In a sense, the crystal ball is like a radio on Earth, able to intercept the energy waves it transmits to obtain the transmitted information.
Of course, to actually achieve this, one must know the frequency of the energy waves sent by the other party in advance, as well as the precise time of emission.
That said, once successfully intercepted, according to the current level of communication of the Truth Society, the intercepted information is almost equivalent to plaintext, requiring no decryption at all.
Currently, this is naturally of no use, as he is within the Truth Society and can easily acquire the desired information. But if he ever breaks ties with the Truth Society in the future, he could use this method to give them a big surprise.
Thinking of this, Richard squinted his eyes subconsciously, then returned to normal, held the quill, and continued writing.
“Rustle, rustle, rustle…”
“The tenth and eleventh experiments conclude that the energy waves transmitted by the crystal ball can be interfered with by high-energy reactions.
Under normal circumstances, the crystal ball transmission is unaffected. However, once a high-energy field appears nearby, the signal transmission of the crystal ball is likely to become distorted, and the transmission distance is noticeably reduced. When the intensity of the nearby high-energy field exceeds a certain threshold (Appendix 1), the crystal ball’s transmitted energy wave becomes ineffective and gets shielded.
If the energy field intensity continues to increase, reaching a peak value in an extremely short time (Appendix 2), generating unstable fluctuations, with the fluctuation amplitude exceeding half the peak value, the surrounding environment of energy wave transmission will be severely disrupted, completely unable to communicate in a short time.
In this process, if the communication crystal ball within the range is in working state, it will also be severely damaged, with consequences including but not limited to cracking, magic rune melting, and partial shattering…”
After writing a lengthy passage, Richard, out of habit, read it through, and his eyebrows suddenly raised as he couldn’t help but murmur, “This seems a bit like an electromagnetic pulse.”
Yes, it indeed seems a bit like an electromagnetic pulse.
An electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, explained as a special kind of physical phenomenon. It is generally caused by explosions, lightning, solar flares, conduit effects, or electric sparks near electromagnetic radiation, or due to Compton or photon scattering creating violent changes in alternating electromagnetic fields, affecting electronic materials, explosive devices, or surrounding media.
The effective time of an electromagnetic pulse is generally no more than one second, and in just that brief second, any unshielded electrical and any connected electronic devices, such as power systems, electronic equipment, microchips, etc., will be irreparably damaged by the electromagnetic pulse.
Additionally, electromagnetic pulses can cause drastic changes in atmospheric charge density, severely interfering with all frequency bands below ultra-high frequency, leading to complete communication disruption for some time.
For example, if a sufficiently large electromagnetic pulse occurs in the center of a city, the entire city’s mobile phones, computers, digital products, and electronic instruments would be instantly destroyed. The entire city’s power is cut off, cars careen off the road due to electronic system damage, factories explode due to uncontrollable reactions, and those in distress go mad from being unable to contact the outside world, pushing the entire city to the brink of collapse.
This is an electromagnetic pulse; this is EMP.