If before, people still had some hesitations and doubts about whether to pay such a heavy price and spend so many resources to try, then there is nothing now.
Doing your best to improve your strength at all costs is what human civilization must do. On the road of pursuing civilization's survival, we cannot relax at any point and must seize every opportunity.
Survival turns out to be really not an easy task.
After reaching complete internal agreement, Zhao Changxing's order was issued again. This time, more skilled workers, engineers, scientists, as well as corresponding logistics personnel and personnel providing social services to the above people, totaling about one million people, were awakened.
At this moment, the number of awake people in the entire Yuan Voyage spacecraft has almost reached two million. And this has exceeded the load-bearing limit of the three "rollers" with gravity inside the Yuanhang spacecraft. Moreover, the consumption of various life-support supplies far exceeded expectations.
This is also one of the costs.
With the full cooperation of people, a large number of precious resources were transported out of the warehouse, and then, under the busyness of engineers and workers, they were turned into parts one by one, and then assembled into one machine after another. A piece of scientific equipment.
——This is of course accomplished with the assistance of numerous robots and numerous automated equipment. Zhao Changxing has always believed that tasks that can be completed by robots and automated equipment will never be done manually. Only in this way can efficiency be improved as much as possible.
The upgrade of the original neutrino telescope inside and the construction of the four new neutrino telescopes located in different parts of the Yuanhang spacecraft took a total of more than a year. As a result, the Yuanhang spacecraft stayed in this war relic. Along with the "mines" that may or may not be in space, they sailed in a direction slightly deviating from the Lakai 9352 star, about a hundred meters away. A distance of hundreds of millions of kilometers.
At this moment, after a long installation and debugging process, the detection of muons can finally begin.
Behind a thick radiation protection layer, in a pure black environment that is almost uninterrupted by any kind of radiation, there is a "big tank" filled with hundreds of thousands of tons of ultrapure water.
This large tank is in an extremely stable state, and because of this, there is almost no flow in the ultrapure water inside. They are as quiet as a solid piece.
At this moment, a particle quietly penetrated the thick radiation protection layer and reached the ultrapure water. In the process of penetrating this pure water, it coincidentally collided with a smaller particle in a water molecule.
This is indeed a coincidence, and a very low probability one at that. Because at the same time, there are more than a million particles passing through these pure water. But among them, only it collides with the particles that make up this ultrapure water.
This collision produced additional subatomic particles, including some photons.
Once the photons are generated, they begin to travel at the speed of light in the medium, and are then observed by numerous extremely sensitive photomultiplier tubes installed around the large jar.
These signals constitute an event and are then displayed on the computer screen.
"Professor Zhuang, we have observed the 1522nd event."
At this moment, Zhuang Yunwei's mood was slightly depressed.
A total of five neutrino telescopes have indeed observed a large number of muon collisions during the period after they were put into operation. But all of these incidents were ultimately confirmed to have come from the Yuan Voyage spacecraft.
Although people have shielded the neutrino telescopes as much as possible in the direction of the Yuanhang spacecraft, they really cannot withstand the penetrating properties of particles like muons.
On the earth, in the rock formation environment hundreds of meters below, it is still impossible to completely isolate muons from penetrating, let alone in space.
"Continue analyzing."
Zhuang Yunwei gave the order casually, but did not take this incident too seriously. But soon, with an exclamation from his researcher, Zhuang Yunwei's heart suddenly lifted.
"Direction, 36°22′19", the particles in this incident did not come from the Yuanxian spacecraft! "
"Let me see!"
Zhuang Yunwei almost threw himself on the computer screen. After clearly seeing the data displayed on the screen, he couldn't help but reveal a look of joy on his face.
The entire human civilization has invested so many resources, put down so many bets, and shouldered the expectations of so many people for this project. As the general person in charge of the project, how could Zhuang Yunwei not be under pressure?
God knows how he survived this period of time!
Now, is it finally coming to fruition?
"Continue to analyze, continue to analyze..."
He murmured an order, turned around and picked up the phone.
He wanted to report to Zhao Changxing immediately.
After a more detailed analysis of the data generated by this impact event, people roughly determined the direction of the arrival of the particle, and confirmed the upper limit of the farthest distance through the energy level of the particle.
The half-life of muons is only 2.2 microseconds. Based on this time, during their lifetime, even if their speed is the speed of light, they can only travel an average distance of about 300 meters.
But muons usually have extremely high energy and their speed is very close to the speed of light. In them, the relativistic effect is extremely obvious. In this case, they can transmit distances well beyond 300 meters.
The higher their energy, the faster they are, the more obvious the relativistic effect is, and the farther they are transmitted. Then, as long as the energy level of the particle can be measured and its energy determined, the upper and lower limits of the distance can also be determined.
Now, as long as you conduct a detailed search for an area within a certain direction and distance, you can actually find it.
A combat spacecraft was ordered to set off and headed to a place about 476,000 kilometers away from the Yuanhang spacecraft.
The range that requires manual detailed search is about 6 kilometers in diameter and the total volume is about 113 cubic kilometers.
It doesn't take much manpower and equipment to search such a small place.
Sure enough, about an hour later, a picture was transmitted to the command room.
Zhao Changxing saw a piece of "wreck" that was about 2 meters long and more than a meter wide, with an overall L-shaped shape.
This is not a gravity bomb.
"It doesn't matter. This at least proves that we are heading in the right direction. Keep searching. As long as there is a gravity bomb, we will always find it."
Just as Zhao Changxing expected, this day is not too far away. After seven more incidents and the wreckage was finally found, for the eighth time, soldiers on a search mission sent a picture of something very similar to the previous gravity bomb about 3.26 million kilometers away from the Yuanhang spacecraft. Come back.
"This is a gravity bomb, you can't go wrong!"
At this moment, everyone in the control room was in high spirits.
"Order, spacecraft No. 56 stop where it is and don't get closer to the target!"
Gravity bombs are extremely dangerous and unstable. Although it is almost certain that they have lost the ability to "actively search for targets and actively approach targets", according to experience, a certain collision can still detonate them.
Catching this stuff requires special equipment. Moreover, it may not succeed the first time and may require multiple attempts and experiments.
This time, what people sent out to capture it was a small unmanned spacecraft. The specific facility used to capture it is a special box.
The box is filled with soft, specially made padding. This kind of filling can greatly extend the release time of gravity exerted on the contents.
People try to capture it this way without blowing it up.
Under people's slightly nervous gaze, the unmanned spacecraft stretched out its long mechanical arm, opened the large box that was almost five meters in length, and then slowly covered it.
The moment the inner filling came into contact with it, everyone's hearts jumped.
It seems that in the next second, the video screen will disappear and turn into pure black - that means that the facility has been destroyed, that is, the gravity bomb has been detonated.
But that didn't happen. Nothing unusual happened until the big box finally closed and the gravity bomb was completely wrapped in soft stuffing.
"good!"
Warm applause erupted in the control room.
After that, it was captured in the cabin of the unmanned spacecraft and fixed. After that, the unmanned spacecraft began to accelerate extremely slowly compared to its performance.
It is only 3 millimeters per square second, which is only a little faster than the acceleration of the Yuanhang spacecraft with a mass of more than 100 billion tons.
"Are the spaceships used to store these gravity bombs ready?"
Zhao Changxing looked at a civilized leader.
"Ready. The space shuttle ship numbered j3 has completed internal modifications and has been moved to a location 100,000 kilometers away from the Yuanhang spacecraft."
It is obvious that something so dangerous and uncontrollable to a certain extent cannot be stored in the Voyage spacecraft.
Zhao Changxing didn't want to wake up one day and find that the entire spacecraft was crushed into an iron ball.
The plan that people have formulated is to store all these gravity bombs in a special space shuttle ship, and then connect it to the Yuanhang spacecraft through a rope, and let the Yuanhang spacecraft pull it forward.
The kind of material used to make space elevator cables would be up to the task.
In this way, even if unfortunately, those gravity bombs explode, they will not have any impact on the Yuanhang spacecraft itself.
