Start sweeping the universe by rubbing the CPU with your hands - Chapter 480

c476 Antiproton field

Han Yang sighed silently in his heart, but did not ask about the current situation of the two civilizations.

His energy and computing power are still all devoted to the development of human civilization itself.

After completing the previous major breakthrough, the space theory system has made great progress again. Countless scientists have worked day and night to perfect the flesh and blood of this framework from every corner and every inconspicuous corner, just like filling pixels on a huge canvas.

A single pixel seems inconspicuous. But countless pixels combined can assemble a magnificent picture.

After thousands of years of accumulation, iteration and improvement, the development of theory has encountered a bottleneck again.

Countless formulas, countless conjectures and deductions, countless problems, finally summarized into one problem.

If we use an energy level that is unimaginably high to influence a limited space, then what will happen?

Will it directly form a black hole due to the excessively high energy level, achieving a substantial tear in space, or will it connect the positive and negative universes, causing a certain degree of positive and negative matter exchange, or will it trigger a strange space shock and destroy all the existing matter around it?

Based on different theoretical derivations, people have put forward hundreds of conjectures. But each conjecture seems imperfect, lacks sufficient evidence, or the theoretical system is not rigorous enough, and it is difficult to convince people.

At this point, the research on space theory has been limited by the backward experimental level, and theoretical research can no longer go further.

At the same time, Han Yang also realized that this is most likely the last bottleneck before human civilization can truly master space theory.

As long as this point is truly confirmed, and “what will happen when ultra-high energy levels are applied to limited space”, the future direction of theoretical development will immediately become clear.

Obviously, this requires another ultra-large-scale experiment.

Compared with the three previous projects of observing the Canis Major dwarf galaxy, colliding particles at the edge of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way Telescope, the scale of this experiment may not be large-only a small space is needed, but the demand for engineering is no less than the previous three phased experiments.

The most critical point is that due to the energy conversion rate, in order to reach the energy level that meets the standard, nuclear fusion, quark fission, quark fusion, and quark fission-fusion dual reactions are all unattainable.

There is only one way to reach this energy level.

Positive and antimatter annihilation.

Only this way can release enough energy in a sufficiently limited space and a sufficiently short time.

Theoretically, micro black holes can also do it. After all, micro black holes can also convert all mass into energy in a very short time. But it is obvious that humans cannot master the preservation technology of micro black holes.

In this case, large-scale preparation of antimatter has become the only way.

Antimatter has been confirmed to exist as early as the Earth era and has been widely used.

In the Earth era, some medical devices use positrons – normal electrons are negatively charged, and positrons are a kind of antimatter – to achieve an effect similar to X-rays, which can detect the situation in the patient’s body.

Positrons can also be seen at any time in the natural environment. For example, bananas are a very good source of positron radiation.

Bananas can be enriched with potassium, and part of the potassium is potassium 40, which is a radioactive substance. It is not stable and has three decay modes, one of which is to decay into argon 40 by emitting a positron.

It is estimated that an ordinary banana will produce a positron in about 75 minutes on average.

It seems that it is not difficult to prepare antimatter on a large scale. But in fact, until now, when it has developed to the peak stage of level 5 civilization, humans have not mastered the ability to prepare antimatter on a large scale.

This is of course because there is no relevant demand, and secondly, it is extremely difficult to prepare antimatter on a large scale.

The difficulty lies in that even at this stage, the only feasible preparation plan seems to be through a particle collider.

In addition, high-energy cosmic rays can also generate antimatter in the natural environment. But Han Yang estimated that even if he made a giant net with a diameter of 100,000 kilometers, he could only capture 0.5 grams of antimatter per year on average, which is obviously not enough.

Even a particle collider can only produce antimatter bit by bit through a particle-by-particle method. On average, one gram of antimatter contains hundreds of trillions of antiparticles. It is conceivable how difficult it is to prepare enough antimatter in this way.

However, no matter how difficult it is, no matter how large the project is, it must be done.

After the development of space theory to the current stage, after the continuous intergalactic navigation, kilogram-level black hole experiment, and galactic telescope, human civilization has once again launched this huge project.

Han Yang chose a relatively safe star system with abundant materials and directly transformed this galaxy into a huge construction site.

Trillions of robots and intelligent devices, more than tens of millions of unmanned intelligent spacecraft, tens of billions of human engineers and workers, and all relevant scientists have all invested in this project.

The first thing to be done is the research and development of a new type of particle collider dedicated to antimatter manufacturing rather than scientific research.

After countless iterations, people finally developed a small proton-antiproton collider.

The principle of producing antiprotons is that through the collision of some protons and antiprotons, while the protons and antiprotons annihilate each other, their kinetic energy will stimulate many times more proton and antiproton pairs in the vacuum.

At that time, through magnetic field manipulation, the proton and antiproton pairs will be separated, the antiprotons will be recovered, the protons will be discarded, and some antiprotons will be put into the experiment to continue the collision, while the other antiprotons will be enriched and collected, so that antiprotons can be produced continuously.

After using the special design and optimization of the fifth-level peak civilization, this small proton and antiproton collider can produce about 100 trillion antiprotons in an average experiment, which takes about half an hour. In this way, 480 trillion antiprotons a day and about 1.75 trillion antiprotons a year, with a total mass of about one ten-thousandth of a gram.

This small particle collider is about 20 meters long, less than one meter in diameter, and has a total mass of only about 15 tons.

According to Han Yang’s estimation, to successfully obtain complete data, at least 20 experiments with ultra-high energy levels in a limited space are required. Assuming that each experiment requires one ton of antimatter, plus unexpected losses, a total of 22 tons of antimatter, or 22 million grams, is required.

For this reason, Han Yang set the number of small particle colliders at 200 million, and the average annual antimatter output can reach 20,000 grams. It will take about 1,100 years to accumulate enough antimatter.

This time seems long, but compared with the galactic telescope built in the previous stage, it is nothing.

And, this is the maximum output after Han Yang goes all out and adds all the industrial power of human civilization.

The total mass of 200 million small particle colliders seems to be only 3 billion tons, which is almost the transportation volume of a super-large aerospace carrier, which does not seem to be much.

But particle colliders are different from other things. It is too sophisticated and requires too high a technical level – both the manufacturing process and the operation process are extremely high, and it is not something that ordinary people, even ordinary experimenters, researchers, and scientists can handle.

What’s more, particle colliders are energy-intensive and have extremely high natural losses. For such a small particle collider, on average, one large power station is required for every 100 units. 200 million units will require 2 million large power stations.

Even if these pre-requisites are met, the enrichment, collection, storage, and transportation of antimatter will also require a huge amount of engineering power. After all, this thing is not an ordinary substance. As long as it comes into contact with ordinary matter, it will explode immediately.

Overall, Han Yang invested almost all of his computing power, plus the power of human civilization itself, but it was just enough to meet the manufacturing and operation needs.

Therefore, relying on hundreds of planets above a certain scale in this star system, a “antiproton field” quickly developed in the vast interstellar space.

Small particle colliders are arranged one after another, like rows of wheat in the field, and there are countless complex pipes connecting different wheats;

Every distance, there is a tall power station. On the reserved channels in advance, countless small intelligent spacecraft and robots shuttle back and forth, like farmers working hard in the fields.

Two hundred million small particle colliders, plus reserved channels, power stations, etc., are arranged in a cube as a whole.

The side length of this cube reaches about 14,000 kilometers, and it is divided into more than a thousand layers in total. On average, about 2 million small particle colliders are neatly arranged in each layer.

At this moment, equipment debugging, energy supply, antimatter collection, transfer, transportation, and final storage have all been completed, and the exciting moment has finally arrived.

With the order of President Zhou Yunhai, the first experiment finally began.

Millions of large quark fission-fusion dual reaction power stations are ignited and powered, and energy continuously enters each particle collider, and the collision begins.

Positive and antiprotons collided and annihilated each other in the vacuum environment of the collider. A large number of positive and antiproton pairs were born out of thin air. Afterwards, based on the magnetic field control technology, a large number of antiprotons were forcibly separated from positive protons and transported to the transfer station through a dedicated magnetron pipeline. From the transfer station, they passed through the magnetron pipeline and finally gathered in the temporary storage center next to the “antiproton field”.

Half an hour passed in a flash. In the temporary storage center, two numbers kept jumping.

One of the numbers was in billions, and the jumps and growth was very fast. It jumped to 200 million in a short time. This is the particle number statistics.

The other number was in grams, and the growth rate was slower, only jumping to a few grams.

This means that this experiment produced a total of a few grams of antimatter.

Endless antiprotons gathered in the temporary storage center like a torrent, and then passed through the magnetron pipeline to a place next to it.

This is the place for producing positrons.

Compared with antineutrons, positrons have a much lower mass. Although one antineutron needs to be paired with a positron, the absolute mass of the positrons required is still very small overall, and it is easy to produce.

So the antineutron and the positron combine to form the hydrogen element – of course, it is antihydrogen, not normal hydrogen.

Elemental hydrogen is composed of only one proton and one electron, and does not require neutrons, which saves the trouble of preparing antineutrons.

After that, antihydrogen was solidified into a solid by low temperature, bound by a magnetic field in a high vacuum environment, and stored in an environment where it could hardly come into contact with any positive matter.

Interestingly, even antihydrogen can convert mass into energy through normal nuclear fusion. But it is obvious that human civilization will never do such a wasteful act.

After the initial attention, human society returned to peace again. Ordinary people continued their daily lives, but all those who were related to the scientific community were always paying attention to the situation of the antiproton field.

As people expected, the antiproton field was like a fertile field, continuously growing antiprotons.

After the antiproton field had been running for about 50 years, about one ton of antimatter needed for an experiment was finally collected.

People’s enthusiasm was ignited again, and countless eyes gathered at the experimental site again.

Under Han Yang’s personal control – only in this way can accidents and mistakes be eliminated, the one ton of antihydrogen that was perfectly stored was precisely divided into one million portions, one gram each, by the magnetic knife.

Afterwards, each portion of antihydrogen was placed in a special metal sphere.

This metal sphere can form its own internal magnetic field under the stimulation of an external magnetic field, strictly isolating the antihydrogen from itself.

There are a total of one million spheres, but the total volume is only about 1.5 cubic meters. Including the external magnetic field generation and control equipment, the total volume is only about 100 cubic meters, and the mass does not exceed 120 tons.

This 120 tons of mass was carefully transported by a special spacecraft to a place where no one existed within 10,000 kilometers around. Then, with Zhou Yunhai’s order, the strong magnetic field that bound the antihydrogen and prevented them from contacting positive matter was instantly evacuated.

At the moment the magnetic field was evacuated, based on the internal pressure, this gram of antihydrogen immediately exploded and spread around, and instantly contacted the wall of the sphere.

One million spheres, a total of one ton of antihydrogen and one ton of positive matter were instantly in full contact, followed by an extremely violent explosion.

Endless light and heat were generated instantly, as if a sun appeared out of thin air there. The numerous observation devices deployed around the area have already been put in place, desperately collecting all the data during the reaction process. (End of this chapter)