Reincarnated as incubus: I didn't mean to seduce you!

"And then?" Kael quietly stared at the light grey chitin shell inside the huge culture dish in the laboratory and turned his head to look at Dr. Osborne, "I am once again astonished by your capabilities, but how should I put it, you truly are fearlessly ignorant!"

Kael gained a deeper understanding of the capabilities of these oddballs who battled at the frontier of goblin theory, where the ignorant teemed with arrogance and prejudice towards the forefront of science, assuming that all research could simply "pop" out of a stone. Your journey continues at NovelBin.Côm

Yet a look at the history of goblin scientific development showed that many aspects were foresightful, not merely ideas impulsively popping into a few goblins’ heads.

"The reason I mention radio telescopes," Dr. Osborne approached the huge culture dish, his gaze somewhat vacant, "is to tell you that our ancestors poured their hearts and souls into developing a new generation of the Heavenly Eye project for us." Dr. Osborne continued, "The advent of the new Heavenly Eye project means we have the ability to radiate neutral hydrogen observation radiation to the edge of the universe."

Kael rubbed his head, feeling some pain as he started to lose track of what Dr. Osborne was saying, "I know about neutral hydrogen, the hydrogen atoms that are in their ground state, but what does that have to do with observing the universe?"

Dr. Osborne’s body paused, and he finally said in a low voice, "You might not have often heard about it, but it is related to a very well-known ’Big Bang’ that everyone is familiar with.

Most researchers believe that the universe originated from a Big Bang about 13.74 billion years ago. However, since it is difficult to extend observations back to such a distant past, the details of the Big Bang, especially what happened in the crucial first 60 seconds, remain unclear.

Luckily, the universe still has an ’old-timer’ nearly as old as the Big Bang itself, which is neutral hydrogen.

It can radiate the 21-centimeter hydrogen spectral line, traverse interstellar materials such as cosmic dust and dark clouds, and by creating maps from the 21-centimeter spectral line of neutral hydrogen, we can infer the distribution of interstellar neutral hydrogen atoms, the structure of our galaxy and extragalactic star systems, helping us unravel the mystery of the Big Bang," said Dr. Osborne.

Kael saw the expression on Dr. Osborne’s face that screamed "Come ask me," and his mouth twitched as he resisted the urge to punch Dr. Osborne’s old face, saying,

"So, what did you observe? Was there a divine presence at the start of the Big Bang, and then beings from the stars plan to come and have a deadly romantic affair with the goblins?"

"Nothing at all."

"Isn’t that right? If bugs could survive in that environment, I think smashing them on the Shenhua Continent wouldn’t be harder than popping a soap bubble."

"You don’t understand... Oh, Kael," Dr. Osborne resumed, "This data comes from the ’Night Watchman’ of the Heavenly Eye, and when we passed by, there was already nothing left; the goblins who stayed to observe the endless mysteries of the universe had all died, but they were brave.

They maintained the operation of the Heavenly Eye and recorded everything until they died. If the Hubble Redshift and 3K cosmic background radiation hinted at the possibility of the Big Bang, then the data they observed before being starved to death could completely overturn our current understanding of the universe," he continued.

At this point, Dr. Osborne’s eyes slowly filled with fear, and his voice seemed to tremble, "When we used neutral hydrogen as our antennae, radiating into the Extragalactic Star Systems and exploring the edges of the universe, in the structure of the Extragalactic Star System outlined by the 21-centimeter hydrogen spectral line, there appeared a substantial area of void.

This lasted for nearly five days, but when they observed it again, everything returned to normal."

Kael’s mouth twitched, but a moment later, a chilling sensation ran through his brain.

A bewildering thought flashed through his mind, but he suppressed it instantaneously: "And then?"

"Kael, you might not understand what this means. We might observe minor inconsistencies in different parts of the universe, but on the cosmic scale, there is no issue with the overall cosmic radiation background.

Our dark matter detection telescope, the ’Eye of God,’ and the hard X-ray modulation telescope satellite, ’Eye of Wisdom,’ and several other instruments for observing the macro universe all tell us how the universe should be.

But those dark five days of the Heavenly Eye tell us that the universe we observed was vast, yet clearly within our observational range, that star domain supposedly bustling with stars was utterly empty.

Do you know what this resembles? It’s like a texture applied in a massive bathtub at the origin of the universe by an entity we cannot comprehend, perhaps the World Mother we aspire to, adorned with a night sky."

Dr. Osborne’s hands began to shake uncontrollably, making the usually composed man look like a madman, swinging his somewhat aged hands erratically:

"How is this possible? There should be a cluster of stars there, but the data tells me there’s nothing, the endless starry sky is a lie, we are like those goldfish, unable to break free from the feed scattered around by the caretaker, unable to sail toward the vast ocean of stars.

There was nothing there, everything we observed might just be a ’texture’ applied by ’God,’ and one day, God fell asleep, failing to update the texture in time, and so those goblins who were nearly starved to death but still managed to preserve relevant data provided us with an answer."