Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 230 Another Path

Under the remote control of numerous clones, one thousand probes with a radius of about five meters and an overall spherical shape, like a submarine, were transported by Jupiter aircraft and dropped into the gas giant planet numbered 2.

Amid the supersonic gales, the almost ubiquitous giant thunderstorms, and the countless hailstorms, these submarine probes avoided numerous obstacles and penetrated deeper than ever before into the atmosphere of this gas giant planet. The next moment, they lost contact with Li Qingsong.

There was no way. The gas here was too dense, the magnetic field too strong, and the interference too much. No matter what communication methods Li Qingsong had mastered, it was impossible for him to maintain contact with the submarine detector under such circumstances.

The only hope lies in the intelligent programs installed inside those submarine detectors.

If all goes well, they will be able to penetrate tens of thousands of kilometers into the atmosphere, reach the metallic hydrogen layer of the gas giant planet, and then surface again to bring back information from there.

Of course, this is just an experiment, and they don't need to dive that deep.

Time passed quietly. According to the preset program, they should have dived to a depth of about 5000 kilometers.

After staying here for an hour, they will surface. If all goes well, they will complete the surface work in three days.

Li Qingsong controlled numerous clones and waited at the edge of this huge gas giant planet.

Time passed quietly and several days went by in a flash.

Numerous Jupiter planes and Xuanniao platforms gathered at the preset ascent location, closely searching the planet's surface in the midst of the storm.

"No matter how harsh the environment, with the peak technology of an electro-weak civilization, one out of ten detectors will always survive, right? Even more so, I don't expect a hundred out of a thousand detection submarines to return, as long as ten can."

Li Qingsong thought silently.

The time to return has arrived, but all we see is the supersonic winds and thunderstorms of the gas giant.

There was no sign of a submarine detector.

Li Qingsong waited for another three days, and finally saw the shadow of a submarine detector.

It floated up with great difficulty, and its hard metal surface was covered with dense scars, as if it would collapse at any moment.

Fortunately, all the equipment inside it is still intact.

Li Qingsong dragged it back to the laboratory and quickly began analyzing it.

After reading the data, Li Qingsong sighed and completely gave up his plan to explore deep into the metallic hydrogen layer of the gas giant planet.

The pressure there was so great that even the detectors he had designed couldn't withstand it. The weather there was also too harsh, with the constant changes in air currents easily tearing apart the detectors Li Qingsong had designed.

It is already a great fortune if one out of a thousand submarine probes can return home safely.

And this is only 5000 kilometers deep into the atmosphere of the gas giant planet.

The depth of the metallic hydrogen layer is about 20,000 kilometers.

The environment there is countless times worse than the depth the probe has reached now.

I'm afraid that even if I really unified the strong nuclear force, it would be almost impossible to create a probe capable of reaching the metallic hydrogen layer of a gas giant planet.

"If exploring gas giants isn't feasible, then there's another avenue to try.

The most important thing in the entire detection plan is the "vibration" caused by the sudden decay of protons.

This vibration must be extremely small, and sufficient pressure is a necessary condition to amplify it.

The reason is obvious: the greater the pressure, the more intense the collisions of matter, the more likely protons will suddenly decay and disappear. Furthermore, there must be enough matter. With enough matter, the number of protons is high, and the probability of proton decay increases.

Combining the above factors, perhaps... I can mimic the environment inside a gas giant planet and build a new type of probe?"

Li Qingsong gradually had some inspiration.

"This detector must be of sufficiently large volume and mass, and its internal medium must be subjected to sufficiently large external pressure. Only in this way can the 'vibration' after the proton decay be strong enough.

At the same time, this internal medium must be hydrogen, and other elements cannot be used. This is because the nuclei of other elements have many protons. Even if a proton is lost, it will only decay into another element, and it still has sufficient material support.

The hydrogen nucleus has only one proton. Once it decays and disappears, its atom will disappear directly, creating a "cavity", which can trigger vibrations.

Such a detector must be located in zero-gravity space because any external gravitational pull could interfere with the detection accuracy, causing the detector to miss the slight vibrations caused by proton decay.

Once this type of detector is built, no mechanical operation can be allowed inside it, because the operation of any machinery will cause vibration, interference, and affect the detection accuracy.

Therefore, its main detector device and power supply device should be separated. I need to build a nuclear fusion power station dedicated to powering it next to it..."

As he slowly conceived the idea, this unprecedented new type of detector gradually took shape in Li Qingsong's mind.

After completing the principle design, the next thing to do is to implement the project.

The first challenge facing the project is how to keep approximately 1.6 million tons of hydrogen at a pressure of about 20 times the atmospheric pressure and keep it stable?
A pressure of 20 times atmospheric pressure is an almost unimaginable number.

You should know that the pressure in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Earth's ocean, is only about 1100 times the atmospheric pressure.

At this moment, this number is more than 180 times the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench!
This is almost equivalent to the pressure exerted by a human fingernail if the weight of more than 180 elephants were placed on it.

In a laboratory environment, Li Qingsong has indeed used laser shock and magnetic compression technology to create pressures far exceeding this number, even up to hundreds of millions of times the Earth's atmospheric pressure.

But that was in a laboratory, and only with extremely small objects.

At this moment, the mass of material that Li Qingsong needs to pressurize is as high as 1.6 million tons!

The two are simply not the same.

Moreover, even if Li Qingsong really managed to stably apply a pressure of 1.6 times the atmospheric pressure to 20 million tons of hydrogen, this would only reach the lower limit of detecting proton decay vibrations.

1.6亿吨氢气约含有10^38颗质子，以质子寿命为10^37年计算，这么多质子平均每年仅有10颗质子会发生衰变。

A pressure of 20 times atmospheric pressure would only amplify the vibration to the lower limit of observable precision. To achieve even greater sensitivity, it would be best to increase the mass of hydrogen contained within the detector tenfold and simultaneously double the pressure.

This is 40 times the pressure of atmospheric pressure, 16 billion tons of hydrogen.

Faced with these performance indicators, even Li Qingsong felt a little heavy.

The difficulty of building this detector is really high...

But it is still easier than going deep into the metallic hydrogen layer of a gas giant planet to try to distinguish that tiny "starquake".

At the same time, Li Qingsong confirmed that this is indeed the correct way to detect proton decay.

Because theoretically speaking, although it is difficult to build this detector, it is still possible for ordinary electroweak civilizations to build it.

In that case...there's nothing more to say.

Made!
(End of this chapter)