The Three-Body Problem: The Most Competent Wallfacer of All Time

Chapter 217 Developed Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
Donald heaved a long sigh: "In the future, we can only improve this engine at most, and we will not be able to produce a completely new concept engine.

"Now the maximum speed of this engine has reached 1% of the speed of light, but there should be a lot of room for improvement.

"There are already two such engines equipped on the spacecraft, but many problems have been discovered during the application process. We should spend another year or two to improve and then implement new applications."

At first, the nuclear engine was jointly developed by Guanghan City and PDC. Later, PDC became more and more hostile to Guanghan City, and the cooperation between the two parties stopped.

Under the influence of genetic modification technology, classes and ideologies in the world have gradually solidified, but there has been no breakthrough in the research of PDC's nuclear fusion engine.

After Guanghancheng developed the nuclear engine, it means that there is a generation gap between the development technology of the solar system and the PDC.

This engine made interstellar travel possible, but it will take a while to develop, otherwise this journey will take thousands of years.

Jiang Yu remembers that the limit of this type of engine is 15% of the speed of light. Obviously, there is a long way to go for the development of nuclear engines.

In addition, Guanghan City has made great achievements in the space industry and the construction of colonies.

It's just that these achievements are not new technologies, but more efficient, which can only be regarded as icing on the cake compared with nuclear engines.

Next, Donald told Jiang Yu about the achievements of the Academy of Sciences in genetics. Human DNA is divided into two types, one is human DNA and the other is useless DNA.

The concept of useless DNA has long existed. Most of the DNA genetic information is in a dormant state, and those genetic information are basically the "records" of human evolution.

The so-called "human DNA" is a concept given by Bai Xiangdong. Controlling these DNA can change all aspects of the human body, and it is DNA that can be directly expressed through the human body.

Bai Xiangdong has basically mastered the controllable technology of human DNA, and Gu Zhize is making improvements in this area. It is estimated that in another 20 to 30 years, human beings will be able to master their own controllable DNA technology.

However, how to use this technology has not yet been determined, so the technology is still in a state of secrecy.

On the contrary, the regeneration agent proposed by Gu Zhize was successfully developed, and it is precisely because of the application of this agent that Guanghan City can treat most diseases caused by human aging.

The upper limit of the lifespan of the residents of Guanghan City has reached the limit given by nature to human beings.

Finally, the technology of space agriculture and space animal husbandry. Donald briefly described the development of these two technologies and the achievements they have made so far in the form of pictures and narration.

Let’s talk about space agriculture first. The research team has gained great inspiration and reference from Bai Xiangdong’s research results.

The genetic modification of crops quickly changed from uncontrollable radiation seedlings to controllable gene modification.

Jiang Yu can see from the picture that the newly cultivated wheat has basically lost its original appearance.

The ears of wheat are almost the same as the original ones, but they are much bigger and look like small corns.

In addition, the leaves and stalks are very different. The stalks become very short, but there are more leaves, forming a green circle like a sunflower.

The root system of the new wheat is also very developed. It can be seen that the roots in the culture medium are several times larger than the combined volume of the leaves and wheat ears.

As long as there are enough nutrients and water, such wheat can go from germination to maturity in a week.

Such wheat is planted layer by layer in a huge cultivation room, with lights simulating sunlight on the top of each layer, allowing the wheat to grow day and night.

There is another research direction in agriculture. The current artificial starch can be synthesized by adding other trace substances, such as corn, sweet potato, potato, etc. Almost all crops whose main component is starch can be synthesized.

It's just that according to the observation of the Academy of Sciences, the human digestive system is not very good at absorbing products synthesized with artificial starch.

Experts in related fields of the Academy of Sciences studied this topic for several years and finally came to the conclusion:
The human digestive system is not yet well adapted to the synthetic products of artificial starch.

When Donald talked about this, he gave a detailed explanation.

According to reliable research reports, the human digestive system has undergone a drastic change.

The original Homo sapiens were omnivorous animals, and even obtained the nutrients they needed from grass in a very inefficient way.

Later, Homo sapiens began to hunt, and they could obtain nutrition faster from meat, and their brains became more and more developed.

In order to supply enough nutrients to the brain, the human body begins to "throttle" from the digestive system.

The cecum began to shrink from this time, and eventually became a useless organ.

Later, after farming began, humans could obtain carbohydrates directly from the seeds of plants, and the digestive system further shrank.

Now let alone grass leaves, even raw meat can't be digested.

This evolutionary process lasted for 10 years or even several 10 years. In order to cooperate with the digestive system, the "chemical factory" of the liver has also undergone tremendous changes.

In order to avoid being eaten, plants are also gradually evolving, either with poisonous thorns, hard shells, or toxins.

When plants become more and more toxic, the liver is also evolving, otherwise Homo sapiens would have been poisoned to death.

Although the current artificial starch products also contain a lot of trace elements, they are still more "pure" than the fruits grown from crops.

This makes the liver and digestive tract a little confused: don't you say there are toxins?Why not?
Artificial starch foods can further reduce the burden on the digestive system, but this change is too fast and does not give the body time to respond.

Therefore, the absorption of artificial starch-related products is not very thorough.

Hearing this, Jiang Yu suddenly recalled 36's words: Natural evolution is no longer able to give human beings a new height, and human beings can only evolve themselves if they want to go further.

To deal with problems like artificial starch, it is obviously too slow to rely on natural evolution.

Donald said: "So the fast-growing crops in space farms are equivalent to the transition between the original crops cultivated in the ground and artificial starch products."

Jiang Yu asked: "Have you ever thought about using genetic technology to change the human digestive tract?"

"Someone raised it," Donald said, "but everyone said that this idea is too radical. The reply given by Consul Burton is: it will not be considered within 20 years."

Jiang Yu nodded, the human mind obviously has not kept up with the required evolutionary speed.

There is no rush for this matter, it can only slowly change people's ideas.

Donald went on to introduce the space ranch. If the space farm only borrowed from Bai Xiangdong's research, then the space ranch directly applied Bai Xiangdong's research.

At the beginning, the project team had two directions, one was to build a pasture in space similar to that on Earth, and the other was to use 3D printing technology to print meat.

However, animals introduced from the earth have difficulty adapting to the low-gravity environment of the moon, and the growth cycle is not as fast as expected.

And the meat made with 3D printing technology is so smelly, it makes people have no appetite at all.

After these two paths failed, the project team began to use Bai Xiangdong's technology to directly cultivate pork, beef, and mutton.

By studying the DNA of livestock such as pigs, cattle and sheep, the project team quickly found a controllable way to breed meat.

First place pork cells in a petri dish, then provide it with nutrients, and issue an order to reproduce meat cells in a bioelectric way.

In one day, a piece of pork about two kilograms can be formed.

Whether it is texture or taste, it is no different from real pork, because this is a piece of real pork.

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(End of this chapter)