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Recovered from his previous faux pas, Yao Yuan continued after some serious consideration "Then could anyone ballpark for y fro as detailed as how many years because too many factors could play into that, so describe it instead in terms of revolution This civilization would represent which of our industrial revolutions?"

"The fourth!"

"The end of the fourth revolution!"

"The middle of the fourth…"

"The early fifth…"

There were eneral duration from the late middle of the fourth industrial revolution to the cusp of the fifth

Yao Yuan had studied plenty of scientific treatises ever since he got on the Hope, but he was ultimately not a trained scientist, so he asked, "Why are all of you so sure? Is there a huge difference between the end of the fourth revolution to the start of the fifth that there needs a distinction? Also, could such a huge fleet of warships really be created during the fourth revolution?"

The leading scientist, Silewei, stepped forth to answer "Captain, to understand all that, you first have to fix a misconception, one about industrial revolution… First, did you know that the advancement from the 20th century to the early 21st century is several hundred tireater than the total scientific advancement for the whole history of huress achieved in the 10 years after the start of the 3rd revolution was about 100 tihout both the first and second industrial revolutions?

"Industrial or scientific revolutions are scientific progress calculated in exponential and not incremental increase For example, if the first revolution is represented by the multiplier of 1, the second revolution would not be 2, instead it could 20 or even 200, and when it reaches the third revolution, the multiplier could be in the thousands or , we can only predict ill happen in the next revolution It is impossible to predict the one after that Take the first revolution for an example, people in the 18th and 19th century couldn’t possibly is would look like in the third revolution I, personal co were for theed to predict the pro the discovery of electricity This proves once more that my theory that man could only correctly predict the discoveries in the approaching scientific revolution but not the ones after that"

Silewei stopped before pointing straight at the music box "Captain, it is undeniable that this ies like space-warping and anti-gravitational systems that we couldn’t wrap our heads around, this music box provides us with faies in fields of electrical syste, and computer science This is definite proof that this alien civilization, with this music box as an example of its scientific product, is at the end of our fourth industrial revolution!"

Yao Yuan sighed in relief "That’s definitely good to know… I’ll be frank, I’ve been afraid the technology from this civilization would be far too advanced for us to study Just like hoith the space-warping technology, we couldn’t h it is technically in our possession That would also seriously deter our exploratory plans because its defensive systeh to annihilate us with just one hit

So thank you for relieving me of my worries This also confirms my suspicion that ill enter the fourth revolution after we acquire ies That will prove invaluable to our overall survival in space Knowing this, I’ our ht, Yao Yuan breathed in and out several ti adamantly, "The mission to scour the outer perimeter of the junkyard will resume tomorrow Please do not stop with your analyses and experiments, because after we’ve acquired several ical level…

"We shall venture into one of the warship husks!"