Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 231 Ultrapure Hydrogen

The universe is only about 138 billion years old and is still in its early stages of evolution. At this stage, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.

Because it has not yet had time to be processed into other elements through fusion by numerous stars.

Not to mention stars, just look at the gas giants, more than 90% of their total mass is hydrogen.

Although this newly designed proton decay detector uses a huge amount of hydrogen, it is nothing compared to the hydrogen reserves in the universe.

Li Qingsong then built more Jupiter planes and threw them into the dense atmosphere of Planet No. 2.

Previous Jupiter planes were designed to collect deuterium, while protium, or ordinary hydrogen, was filtered out. However, these Jupiter planes will also bring back protium, which will then be transported to a location about 432 billion kilometers from V1000 Pegasi.

This is far from the star, far from any major planets, and there isn't even a dwarf planet within hundreds of millions of kilometers.

This gives this place an extremely stable gravitational environment. Coupled with the appropriate orbital speed, the gravity here is reduced to a point extremely close to zero.

In this place, Li Qingsong built an ultra-large ultra-pure hydrogen separation plant.

Hydrogen from gas giants is transported here and then begins to undergo a series of processes such as pressurization and concentration, and finally ultra-pure hydrogen is extracted.

Its purity is so high that there is only one atom of other elements among billions of hydrogen atoms.

While refining ultra-pure hydrogen, Li Qingsong was also constructing the main body of the proton decay detector.

At a pressure of 40 times atmospheric pressure, the density of hydrogen is about 0.7 grams per cubic centimeter, which is about 70% of water.

Based on this volume, the total volume of 16 billion tons of hydrogen is 22.85 billion cubic meters.

If converted into a sphere, the radius of this sphere is about 650 meters.

What Li Qingsong needs to build now is such a huge sphere with a radius of 650 meters.

This number may not seem large, but some mountains on Earth only have a total height of about a thousand meters. The sphere that Li Qingsong needs to build is taller than those mountains!
At the same time, the mountain can be seen as a cone-like structure. But now, what Li Qingsong is building is a sphere!

At the same height, the volume of a sphere is much larger than that of a cone.

Compared with this sphere, even the most famous Nanyue Hengshan Mountain on Earth, its main peak is completely insignificant in front of this sphere.

Countless special steel plates, countless connecting parts, precision equipment, etc. from inside the galaxy converged here like a flood. Under the busy work of hundreds of thousands of general-purpose robots, these building materials were assembled bit by bit in space.

The forces acted in a mutual way. To prevent the sphere's outer shell from being ruptured by the immense internal pressure, Li Qingsong also assembled a large number of high-strength ropes, similar to those used in the construction of space elevators, and wound them around and secured them to the massive metal shell.

After completing the main construction, the next step is the most sophisticated and difficult internal construction.

Inside this spherical shell, Li Qingsong installed a large number of magnetic field control devices, creating an extremely strong magnetic field. Simultaneously, about five meters from the inside of the spherical shell, construction began on the inner layer of the proton decay detector.

The thickness of this inner layer is only 0.5 cm, and the strength of its material is also ordinary. It is completely impossible to withstand the pressure of 40 times the atmospheric pressure.

But this layer of material has two characteristics. First, it is extremely resistant to hydrogen embrittlement.

Because hydrogen has a very small molecular weight, it will "squeeze" into the structure of other substances under high pressure, causing the strength of other substances to decrease. This material can effectively prevent this from happening.

Second, it has good electrical conductivity, which means it can be manipulated by magnetic fields.

At that time, the magnetic control equipment manufactured by Li Qingsong will inject huge pressure into it, using it as a transit to exert pressure on the hydrogen inside.

While carrying out the construction of the detector body and the ultra-pure hydrogen refining plant, Li Qingsong also started the third construction project simultaneously.

A nuclear fusion power plant specially designed to match it.

Magnetic control equipment consumes enormous amounts of electricity. Furthermore, once the pressure is applied, it's not a one-time operation. It must operate constantly, without stopping, to maintain the pressure.

In fact, according to Li Qingsong's estimation, to maintain the operation of this detector, he needs to consume about 200 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per hour on average!
This is basically equivalent to the electricity consumption of an entire country in the Earth era, but at this moment, such a huge amount of electricity is only used to maintain the daily operation of a detector.

Assuming that the installed capacity of a deuterium-tritium fusion plant is 30 billion kWh, just to supply the operation of this detector, 7 power plants must be built around it!
In this deep space far away from any large celestial body, Li Qingsong was rapidly carrying out various construction projects.

Even with Li Qingsong's industrial capabilities, it took almost a whole year to build this detector.

After that, ultrapure hydrogen began to be injected.

Ultra-pure hydrogen, refined through multiple layers, was poured into the inner spherical shell through a dedicated pipeline. Soon, the pressure inside the inner spherical shell climbed to about one atmosphere.

The softer inner shell had been somewhat deflated. But now, supported by the internal atmospheric pressure, it expanded like a fully inflated balloon, returning to its standard spherical shape, without any dents or deflation on the outside.

If the internal pressure continues to increase, it may be torn apart.

At this time, the magnetic control equipment installed inside the outer spherical shell starts working.

Under the huge power supply, based on a mode similar to magnetic levitation or magnetic confinement, external pressure is evenly applied to every molecule and every atom of the inner spherical shell.

The internal pressure on the inner spherical shell is converted into the pressure of the outer spherical shell.

The space elevator material above the outer shell tightly binds the outer shell, eliminating all pressure. At the same time, the thick armor also blocks most of the radiation from the outside world, preventing it from affecting the inner detection.

With the continued infusion of hydrogen, the atmospheric pressure inside the inner spherical shell rose rapidly.

Five times the atmospheric pressure, ten times, fifty times, one hundred times, one thousand times...

At this moment, the pressure inside the inner spherical shell is almost the same as the atmospheric pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

If a clone entered the inner shell at this moment, he would be instantly crushed into a meat patty.

But even though the pressure is so great, the soft inner shell remains intact under the pressure of the magnetic control equipment.

(End of this chapter)