Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 235 Comprehensive Leap
Only after truly mastering the grand unified formula and pushing his own technological level to a strong nuclear civilization did Li Qingsong realize how powerful a strong nuclear civilization is compared to an electroweak civilization.

Although Li Qingsong has not yet truly mastered the application technology of any kind of strong nuclear civilization, it does not prevent Li Qingsong from developing prospects based on the existing foundation.

First of all, energy.

Electroweak civilizations, such as Li Qingsong before and now, mainly rely on deuterium-tritium fusion for their energy source.

The energy conversion efficiency of deuterium-tritium fusion is about 0.375%, while protium-hydrogen fusion, that is, proton chain fusion involving only ordinary hydrogen, has an energy conversion efficiency of up to 0.7%, almost twice that of deuterium-tritium fusion!
At the same time, by combining proton chain fusion and deuterium-helium-3 fusion, the energy conversion efficiency can be increased to more than 1%, which is three times that of deuterium-tritium fusion!
Think about it, carrying the same mass of fuel but being able to release three times the original energy, what does this mean for a spacecraft or a fleet?
Of course, it is extremely difficult to change deuterium-tritium fusion to proton chain + deuterium-helium-3 fusion mode.

Because proton chain fusion requires extremely high temperatures and pressures. Even the cores of massive stars like the Sun and V432 Pegasus cannot meet these requirements.

Of course, the type of fusion that occurs in the core of a star like the Sun is indeed proton chain fusion, but this does not prevent the reality that the requirements for proton chain fusion are not actually met inside it.

This seems a bit contradictory. Why can proton chain fusion be carried out when the requirements are not met?

This is because of quantum tunneling.

With an extremely low probability, a proton inside a hydrogen atom may directly pass through to the side of a proton inside another hydrogen atom, and the two protons combine, resulting in proton chain fusion.

In other words, it does not begin to combine because of sufficient temperature and pressure, but is able to combine and fuse based entirely on the probability of quantum tunneling.

So, is the probability of quantum tunneling occurring, leading to proton chain fusion, high?

The answer is not high at all, on the contrary it is very low, even less than one in a hundred million.

So why can stars like the Sun maintain such a high rate of fusion?
The answer is simple. It is too big, and there are too many protons inside. Even if the probability is very low, there will always be a large number of protons that "tunnel" to the side of other protons for no reason and fuse.

From this perspective, stars should not exist according to conventional theory, but the magic of quantum mechanics allows them to exist.

This shows the difficulty of proton-proton chain fusion.

Even the core of such a huge star cannot reach the corresponding temperature and pressure, so how can intelligent life do it?

The answer is also simple.

After mastering the grand unified formula, intelligent civilizations will be able to change the strength of various forces inside the atomic nucleus by influencing the strong nuclear force, thereby reducing the difficulty of proton chain fusion and making controlled proton chain fusion a reality.

At the same time, the main product of conventional proton chain fusion is neutrinos, and more than 90% of its energy is carried away by neutrinos, making it unusable.

Similarly, after mastering the grand unified formula, Li Qingsong is also confident that he can find a way to change the fusion mode of particles, reduce the neutrinos in its products, and make better use of its energy.

Although Li Qingsong cannot achieve all these ideas now, the grand unified formula has solved the theoretical obstacles and foreshadowed the direction of future engineering implementation.

In addition to the huge improvement in energy supply, Li Qingsong also sees the future direction in ion thrusters.

Also through the influence and manipulation of the strong nuclear force, Li Qingsong will be able to create an electromagnetic accelerator that is completely different from the previous principle, which can increase the speed of ions ejected by the ion thruster by dozens or hundreds of times.

The reverse thrust generated by a unit of working fluid is positively correlated with its injection velocity. The faster the working fluid is injected, the greater the reverse thrust it generates, which in turn increases its utilization efficiency.

The change in fusion mode has brought about a huge increase in energy supply, which is about three times the previous level.

The increase in the working fluid injection speed has brought about a huge improvement in the working fluid utilization efficiency, even reaching dozens of times the previous level.

What does the combination of the two mean?
Obviously, higher speed!
Li Qingsong was certain that this was the reason why the speed of the Intelligent Scourge Fleet could reach such a high speed.

In addition, the mastery of the grand unified formula also allowed Li Qingsong to truly understand the principle behind the intelligent mechanical disaster fleet's magical energy shield that almost crushed him.

This is also based on the manipulation of strong nuclear force!
Through some special equipment - Li Qingsong does not know the working principle of this equipment yet, but the grand unified formula also foreshadows the existence of this equipment. A strong nuclear-level civilization will be able to change the state of matter into a thin layer of gluon plasma, and then cover it on the surface of the spacecraft.

The different particles in this layer of gluon plasma are connected to each other by the strong nuclear force, and its strength is higher than the toughest special fibers that Li Qingsong can make, such as the materials used in space elevators.

This is equivalent to wearing a layer of super bulletproof vest for a spacecraft or other facility.

The best part is that this layer of gluon plasma controlled by the magnetic field can be manipulated conveniently and sensitively.

It can be seamless and integrated, or it can be conveniently opened with a hole to allow projectiles or other weapons fired by one's side to pass through.

When needed, it can envelop the entire spacecraft in a very short time. When not needed, it can also completely dissipate in an instant.

In addition, Li Qingsong also found another possibility suggested by the grand unified formula.

Energy cannon!
Energy cannons are similar to electromagnetic cannons in that they both fire projectiles.

Of course, the energy cannon is based on a more advanced mechanism and fires projectiles at a much faster speed.

At the same time, it has another most important improvement.

That is, a strong nuclear civilization can also place its projectile in a certain "strong nuclear excited state" and maintain stability by influencing the strong nuclear force.

The fundamental reason why atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs are called nuclear weapons is that their energy comes from the release of strong nuclear force inside elementary particles.

The energy cannon's projectile, after being placed in a strong nuclear excited state, can also release a small part of the huge energy contained in the strong nuclear force.

From this perspective, the projectile released by the energy cannon in a strong nuclear excitation state is not a projectile in essence, but can be regarded as an ultra-micro, less efficient nuclear bomb!

But no matter how small or inefficient it is, it is still a nuclear bomb.

On one side is an ordinary electromagnetic cannon projectile, which is just a little faster and has a little higher kinetic energy, but it mainly relies on kinetic energy to cause damage.

But now, the projectiles used by powerful nuclear civilizations are ultra-micro nuclear bombs. How can they be defeated?
(End of this chapter)