Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 196 Gluon Plasma
The first device to be put into operation was the particle collider, which Li Qingsong valued the most and was also the most important equipment for conquering the grand unified formula.

Dozens of manned ferry ships left the living spacecraft and transported numerous clones and blueprint scientists to the bamboo-shaped spacecraft with a length of 30 kilometers. Along with the personnel, there were also a large amount of fusion fuel, experimental materials, etc.

The large-scale nuclear fusion power station started operating again, and the surging electricity was transmitted to the particle collider. Through the electromagnetic effect, the electricity was converted into kinetic energy and applied to extremely tiny protons.

Of course, there is a lot of energy loss in this process. However, facing the surging energy provided by nuclear fusion power plants with installed capacity of up to millions of kilowatts, even if the loss is great, the energy ultimately applied to the proton beam is still very considerable.

And how much is the mass of a proton?
The huge energy, combined with the extremely low mass of the proton, naturally results in extremely high speed.

They were instantly accelerated to a speed extremely close to the speed of light, and it took only about one ten-thousandth of a second for them to fly from one end of the particle collider to the other, and then violently bombarded the special target.

At this moment, many particles were knocked out.

These particles may have originally existed inside the proton, but more often than not they did not exist at all.

In the microscopic world, mass is not conserved. Particles can be created out of nothing through energy, and their mass can also be dissipated through energy.

These particles usually only exist for a very short time and will be transformed into other particles in an instant.

But it doesn't matter. The highly sensitive observation equipment in the particle collider will record all of these intermediate particles, which may have a lifetime of only a billionth of a second, and fully record all their changes.

Therefore, Li Qingsong can explore the physical laws behind these changes.

What is particularly strange is that under such violent collisions, even protons and neutrons sometimes "melt", and the quarks inside them and the gluons that transmit strong nuclear force will be released, forming a peculiar "quark-gluon plasma" with some fluid-like properties.

In this quark-gluon plasma, the strong nuclear force exhibits properties that are completely different from those at room temperature. Studying this change in the properties of the strong nuclear force will obviously be very helpful in exploring its nature and further unifying it with the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force.

But of course it is impossible to do so at this stage. All the research Li Qingsong is currently conducting is just for scientific preparation.

If the unification of strong nuclear force is compared to the college entrance examination, then the collision experiment that Li Qingsong is conducting at this moment is like studying junior high school or even elementary school courses, accumulating knowledge at a lower level, and making progress bit by bit, so that he may eventually pass the college entrance examination.

Proton collisions are just one type of particle collider. In other particle colliders, Li Qingsong is also conducting collisions of heavy ions, neutrons, positrons, and other particles. These collisions are conducted in a variety of ways, including target collisions, collisions of two particle beams, circular acceleration, where the particles are accelerated many times until they reach speeds extremely close to the speed of light before colliding, and direct collisions.

As for array telescopes, Li Qingsong released tens of thousands of large telescopes to the outside of the fleet, allowing them to float autonomously in space. While maintaining the same speed and course as the main fleet, they formed an array, obtained an unimaginably large aperture, and then began research on deep-space objects.

The evolution time of stars, nebulae, galaxies, and even large-scale cosmic structures such as star clusters, galaxy clusters, superclusters, and cosmic filament structures is usually calculated in billions of years.

It is obviously not possible to just sit on a star or a galaxy, wait for it to evolve slowly, and then explore the principles behind this evolution.

Fortunately, the universe is large enough and there are many stars. Since there are so many stars, they must contain every type of star, galaxy, star cluster and other structures in all stages of life.

They are like specimens. By observing them, we can have a panoramic view of all the evolutionary stages of the universe from its birth to the present. Light travels at the speed of light, traveling one light year in one year.

The total age of the universe is approximately 138 billion years. Therefore, if Li Qingsong wants to study the state of celestial bodies 138 billion years ago, when the universe was just born, he only needs to observe celestial bodies about 138 billion light-years away.

Because it takes exactly 138 billion years for the light emitted by celestial bodies 138 billion light-years away to reach Li Qingsong's fleet.

So, what Li Qingsong sees now is what it was like about 138 billion years ago.

Of course, there is a problem, which is that they are too far away and the light is too weak.

This requires improving the performance of the telescope and increasing the aperture of the telescope in order to see them.

Fortunately, Li Qingsong's array telescope technology is advanced enough, and the number of large and even giant telescopes it carries is sufficient to barely see them, and then study them to obtain information about the early state of the universe.

Gravitational wave telescopes have also begun work.

Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that cause tiny changes in the size of objects as they pass through.

For example, the two detection arms of gravitational waves: when a gravitational wave passes by, one of its detection arms will become shorter and the other will become longer.

This kind of change will happen to every kind of object. Spaceships, warships, even planets and stars will all undergo this change.

But this change is so tiny that only gravitational wave detectors can detect it.

Because a beam of laser will be constantly reflected back and forth inside the detection arm of the gravitational wave detector.

The arm of Li Qingsong's gravitational wave detector is 15 kilometers long. The laser beam will travel back and forth 30 times for each detection, so the total length is equivalent to kilometers.

Suppose a gravitational wave event causes the arm length of a gravitational wave detector to change by one ten-thousandth of a proton radius, which is too small to be observed.

Then, if the laser goes back and forth 1 times, it is equivalent to amplifying this change times, reaching the radius of a proton, which can be sensed by high-precision equipment.

Therefore, the gravitational wave detector can explore the phenomenon behind this gravitational wave event through the changes it senses, and even find the optical counterpart that caused this change, and then directly detect it through an optical telescope to obtain more information.

Li Qingsong also has many such gravitational wave detectors, all of which have now entered full-power detection mode, collecting information on gravitational wave events from deep in the universe through various methods and means.

(End of this chapter)