Research starts with PhD students

Chapter 268 The Golden War Begins!

"ten times?"

“It can improve so much…”

Teacher Zhao was shocked when he heard Zhang Shuo's words.

Normally, technological improvements are gradual. Originally, an average of 2 kilograms of gold were produced at a time, so an improvement of several dozen points is already a high level.

For example, on average three kilograms of gold are produced at a time.

This increase is already very exaggerated.

ten times?
Twenty kilograms at a time? I dare not even think about it.

"If we can make 2 kilograms at a time, we can now produce more than a ton a day."

“This efficiency…”

Teacher Zhao felt very happy after doing a simple calculation.

If the efficiency could be more than ten times, even at the current production scale, more than 400 tons could be produced per year.

According to the established plan, the R&D base will increase the number of devices to more than ten within a year, and the maximum number may even reach 20.

By then, production capacity will be able to increase 3 to 5 times.

Then it would only take one year to produce one thousand to two thousand tons of gold.

What does it mean to produce more than a thousand tons per year?
The gold reserves of major countries are only at the level of thousands of tons.

The country's gold reserves are approximately 8000 to tons, which already ranks among the top in the world; the U.S. dollar is an international currency, and the United States' gold reserves are the largest in the world, fluctuating around tons.

These figures may sound high, but a country's gold reserves are accumulated slowly over many years.

The world's annual gold production can also be used as a reference.

In recent years, the global annual gold production has remained around 3000 tons, of which domestic gold production is between 350 and 400 tons, ranking first in the world.

In other words, the base's annual output accounts for half of the world's gold production, and it will only increase in the future.

If the production scale of the base is continuously increased, in two or three years, perhaps it will be possible to produce dozens of tons of gold a day as Liu Xu said. By then, what will be the meaning of thousands of tons of gold reserves?
Now for the story…

It seems like there is an opportunity for golden harvest?
……

Although the imagination is beautiful, the reality still has to wait for experimental results.

Teacher Zhao was getting a little impatient, but he had to continue waiting.

There will be no results on the day of the experiment, because the temperature of the material after the reaction is very high, and the state is unstable, and it will emit weak radiation to the outside. It is necessary to wait a day before various professional processing can be carried out.

After the legacy materials are processed, it takes a long time to test and refine them, which is also time-consuming.

Therefore, if you want to know the approximate result, you have to wait at least three days, and the accurate result requires waiting for ten days or half a month.

Teacher Zhao is very busy at work and he usually doesn't stay in one place for more than a few days, but for the final result, he turned down all other work and just waited at the base.

While waiting, Teacher Zhao continued to visit the base and talked with Zhang Shuo and Liu Xu about many technology-related issues, and gained a better understanding of gold production technology.

By the next day, there were already many noises in the base.

Those who had the first access to the remnants could not help but discuss, "There must be a lot of gold produced this time. I saw gold residue in the powder."

"That is definitely gold, much purer than usual. The powder also looks brighter, and has turned golden yellow."

"You probably don't know this, but I even found a piece of gold that was twisted into a ball from the powder. I weighed it in my hand and it was very heavy!"

"Unfortunately, it was taken away by Team Leader Liu..."

The ball of gold was indeed taken away by Liu Xu. After a radiation test, Liu Xu took it to find Teacher Zhao.

Teacher Zhao and Zhang Shuo were watching the gold-making process from a distance.

They were about half a kilometer away, standing on a small hill, watching the smoke rising from the target location from afar.

"How long will the smoke last?" Teacher Zhao asked the experimenter next to him.

The experimenter said, "It will last about two to three hours, but there will still be some smoke on the surface, mainly seeping from the inside."

He also reminded, "Now that the reaction has just finished, don't get close to the periphery. There may be some mild radiation, which is harmful to the human body."

"But it only takes a day for the radiation outside to disappear and the materials inside to be moved and radiation-proofed."

“Then you can test and extract it normally.”

Teacher Zhao asked, "Will there be results by then? I mean, roughly how much gold can be produced."

“It can only be estimated.”

The experimenter said, "Because different parts of the material react differently, the center and edge of the impact react fully, while those farther away do not react fully."

"So after sending it for inspection, we can only make an estimate, and the deviation is generally around 30%."

"The deviation is not that big!" Teacher Zhao nodded and commented.

It is good to have an estimated value now. Zhang Shuo said that the efficiency can be improved tenfold. Having an estimated data will give us a rough idea of ​​the situation.

At this time, Liu Xu ran over from a distance, and their expressions were obviously excited, "Look what this is?"

He handed over a small ball of yellow substance in a transparent sealed bag as if to seek credit.

"gold?"

"Correct."

"What's the big deal? Aren't they everywhere in the base?" Teacher Zhao was a little confused.

After he arrived at the research base, the thing he saw the most was gold.

The gold produced by the research base has just been refined and is still in an unformed state. After being refined at the base, it will be sent to a professional factory for further refining.

“That’s different.”

Liu Xu said excitedly, "This piece was produced in yesterday's experiment, and it has not been refined. I guess it should appear at the center strike position. The reaction rate is very high, and it is directly twisted into a ball."

"I estimate that this small ball weighs at least 50 grams!"

Teacher Zhao and Zhang Shuo immediately looked over carefully.

The situations with and without refining are different. A small ball of gold can be formed without refining, which shows that the reaction rate and gold generation rate of the experiment are very high.

A small ball weighs more than 50 grams. So, how much gold was produced in the experiment?
Teacher Zhao's eyes sparkled with gold again.

Zhang Shuo said, "I remember there were small balls of gold like this in the past, but usually only a tiny bit, two or three grams was good enough."

"Correct!"

Liu Xu nodded vigorously, "So I feel like this is really amazing!"

"Professor Zhang Shuo! Your data is truly amazing. The efficiency may be increased by dozens of times."

"Everyone in the base is saying that we may have found dozens of kilograms of gold!"

"So many?"

"It's possible!"

Just the idea that it's possible is exciting enough.

Teacher Zhao couldn't wait to go back, and Zhang Shuo, Liu Xu and others hurried to follow. They walked to the testing room in one breath.

Over the past two months, the testing room has expanded in size because of the large number of tests that need to be conducted and the need for initial refining of large quantities of gold, so an extraction center was built next to it.

The extraction center is much larger than the testing room and is constantly expanding.

Even so, there is never enough work to do.

There are even more staff here than people participating in the experiments.

Teacher Zhao and his team did not go to the extraction center, but waited in the open space outside the testing room. They waited for about half an hour, and the door inside was pushed open.

Zhao Xin, the head of the testing room, pushed the door open and walked out, saying excitedly, "The estimated data is out."

"Teacher Zhao, through the testing of mercury and lead compound residues, we estimate that we have produced more than 80 kilograms of gold!"

Even though they were mentally prepared, everyone still stared in amazement after hearing the estimated data, and remained silent for a long time. Teacher Zhao was also stunned for a long time, and finally sighed, "The world..."

"There's going to be a big earthquake!"

……

After obtaining the estimated data, Teacher Zhao prepared to leave. He emphasized two things before leaving.

The first is the issue of confidentiality.

The confidentiality level has been raised to the highest level. Except for Zhang Shuo, no one in the base can leave or use any communication equipment.

The requirements this time were very high. Even Xue Baikun, Wang Qiang and others who came with Zhang Shuo could not leave. They could only stay in the office assigned to them at the base and work.

The second thing is to order Factory 259 to continue to make every effort to ensure the production of parts related to the ion cannon manufacturing.

"spare no effort!"

“Do your best to support!”

"If you have any problems, go directly to the higher authorities and they will solve any problem!"

Zhang Shuo left with Teacher Zhao, and he returned to the Source Point Theory Research Center.

He certainly did not mention a word about the ion cannon research base, and as for Xue Baikun and Wang Qiang, he only said that they would stay in other institutions to do experimental research.

He patiently summarized the theoretical research.

The summary is aimed at 'strong'.

Theoretical research related to the manufacture of gold elements has also resulted in an understanding of the strong force, which is a single force evolved from a chaotic force field and acts between particles.

There are already many explanations of the strong force in fundamental physics.

Zhang Shuo's summary is to start from the basic force relationship model, give a basic description of strong force, and produce a manifestation of the "intensity" of strong force.

Part of the content uses reactions such as nuclear fusion and nuclear fission as examples to illustrate the relationship between the "intensity" of strong force and reactions.

In addition, it is also related to the basic content of quantum mechanics and high-energy physics.

These contents are very complicated, involving a lot of descriptive mathematics, and the summary is also completed bit by bit.

Zhang Shuo attaches great importance to the summary work, because it is a detailed description of strong force based on the new theoretical direction.

If you want to publish a paper in the future, the relevant content must be at least 70 pages.

The title is "Strong Force", and the subtitle is "Microscopic Analysis of Strong Force".

In addition to summarizing the strong force, Zhang Shuo also did a lot of theoretical work related to chaos force fields. However, much of the theoretical work was groundless and only contained frameworks and descriptions. This was mainly because there were too few experimental discoveries of chaos force fields, and Zhang could only use chaos force fields to connect with basic forces and make some inferential explanations.

That's why he was very eager to do more experimental research related to chaos force fields.

At the same time, there are two good news.

One is that the equipment of the Chaos Force Field Research Group of the Institute of High Energy Energy has been repaired.

However, due to an experimental accident on the other side of the earth, the chaos field research team was not allowed to resume experimental research.

The superiors also took Zhang Shuo into consideration, hoping that he could point out an experimental direction, or actually establish a large team for chaos force field research.

The second is the artificial sun project. The tokamak device has also been packaged, and some equipment related to strong strength measurement has been added.

The Origin Point Theory Research Center sent a team of people to work there.

This team of people will work in the artificial sun project group for a long time and participate in subsequent experiments to obtain test data for strong-force strength research.

At the same time, news related to gold has appeared in the international financial market:
Domestic banks began to sell physical gold reserves in large quantities.

Large quantities, in fact, are 'tens of tons'.

Although the quantity sold was only a few dozen tons, because it was reserve gold, a reduction of several dozen tons in a single month was also a high amount.

The news did not attract attention at first, but soon there was news that dozens of tons of reserve gold were sold again, and it was a transaction between international banks, which seemed very unusual.

Gold is the precious metal that attracts the most attention in the financial market.

Even ordinary people are concerned about the gold market, and many people make related investments. Domestic news is not official, but there are still people who have confirmed the accuracy of the news.

Then there was a lot of discussion in public opinion.

For example, some pessimistic experts have said, "The economy can't keep up!"

"We should have some economic problems that require us to sell our gold reserves."

"Shouldn't we? China's gold reserves are not even among the top five in the world. We should increase our reserves, not reduce them. This is obviously a wrong approach."

“Gold is a hard currency, and every country is increasing its reserves. Why are they selling it?”

There are also some analytical arguments, "Gold is just a financial instrument, and domestic operations should be aimed at balancing the gold price."

"Against the backdrop of a sharp rise in gold prices, domestic operations are aimed at maintaining a balance and preventing gold prices from continuing to rise."

"This should be just a routine operation. The sales quantity is very small compared to the reserves."

"Conventional financial means, in order to hedge against gold inflation..."

Although there are many analytical arguments, which seem normal to ordinary people, in fact, most professionals are confused.

What is sold in China is 'physical' gold.

It is easy to sell physical gold, but it is not easy to buy it back.

Generally, what you buy on the market are just gold notes. Buying a gold note does not mean you have bought gold. The gold needs to be transported back before it can be converted into real reserves.

If the goal is just to balance the gold price, there are many operations that can be done.

News related to gold has not appeared continuously in public opinion. After all, the sale of dozens of tons is still between banks and cannot be directly involved in the gold market.

But the same news appeared later, and the country continued to sell physical gold.

When the sale of physical gold is carried out continuously, the situation will naturally be very different, and the price of gold will be affected accordingly.

After the news appeared for the third time, the price of gold plummeted, falling three points in one day.

Soon, some experts called on the country not to continue selling gold, saying, "Gold is the strongest financial reserve currency!"

"Without the support of reserve gold, the credibility of the currency may be affected. In the context of the general increase in international gold reserves, it is a wrong approach to sell off gold reserves on a large scale."

"If this continues, the consequences will be disastrous..."

There have also been many discussions internationally, with many professional financial experts analyzing the reasons behind the domestic sale of physical gold.

They analyzed it over and over but got no result, because no matter which angle they analyzed it from, there was no reason to sell physical gold.

However, the opportunity is not to be missed.

Large quantities of physical gold cannot be purchased with just money. Many banking institutions are eager to exchange all their excess reserve currencies for physical gold.

Of course, it is impossible for the country to exchange all physical gold for reserve currency. They only exchange part of the currency, and the rest are exchanged for physical objects that preserve value, or other precious metals or rare metals.

Compared with the entire gold market, the amount of gold sold by domestic banks is insignificant. In addition, there are always buyers for physical gold, so the price of gold has risen instead of fallen.

Many international institutions continue to absorb physical gold sold domestically.

The products are still being sold continuously in China, and it can even be described as a "dumping".

For this reason, some top financial institutions have begun to discuss, "Why are they selling so much physical gold?"

"This makes absolutely no sense, we have to know why!"

“Maybe it’s really about balancing the gold price, or is there just too much gold being produced?”

"Impossible. The scale of gold mining and refining each year is limited."

“Maybe it’s just for selling, or maybe they are pessimistic about the prospect of gold and hope to suppress the price of gold?”

"Of course the price of gold cannot fall, otherwise we will lose money..."

"..."

Amidst the numerous discussions, a silent gold war began.

(End of this chapter)