Gazing at the dim star in the sky, Li Qingsong felt a deep sense of gravity.
As long as he could still see it, it meant that the acceleration of the Mechanoid Scourge fleet was still ongoing, meaning that the shorter the expected time for the Mechanoid Scourge fleet to return, the slimmer his chances of breaking through.
At this moment, according to calculations, the Mechanoid Scourge fleet's speed had already approached the upper limit he could accept.
Just as despair was gradually creeping into Li Qingsong's heart, and he was even beginning to plan for a restart, preserving as many clones as possible during the process to retain the technology he had developed over the years, he suddenly saw that the dim star had disappeared.
What's going on? Disappeared?
Li Qingsong, somewhat in disbelief, deployed more deep-space telescopes, aiming them at that direction for detailed detection, but after still failing to see anything, a surge of ecstasy welled up in his heart.
It was empty there, containing only the vastness and depth of the universe, and even with his most advanced deep-space detection methods, he could no longer detect any photons.
It really… really disappeared?
The acceleration really stopped?
Currently, the Mechanoid Scourge fleet's speed is only about of the speed of light!
Calculating with this speed, the time it will take them to reach a new star system, complete resource collection, restore their strength, and then come to the Pegasus V432 star system will be extended to at least 305 years, which exceeds the time he expects to need to break through to the strong nuclear level!
If I can't beat them, I can always run, right?
Even if I still can't escape—which is highly likely—but if I can't escape, I can at least delay them a little longer, right?
What Li Qingsong has been painstakingly pursuing is not to defeat or annihilate the Mechanoid Scourge fleet, or even to truly escape from their pursuit.
That's not realistic.
After enduring so many years, with constant dedication and all-out effort, exhausting every possible advantage, Li Qingsong's pursuit is merely to delay them a little longer!
As long as his fleet's speed can be a little faster, Li Qingsong has a chance to complete subsequent "application"-level physics breakthroughs during the escape, truly converting the breakthroughs in basic physics into tangible combat power.
Only in this way can he possess the possibility of truly confronting this Mechanoid Scourge fleet head-on.
At this moment, although he has unprecedentedly forced back the strong nuclear Mechanoid Scourge at the electroweak level, it is still only the first step in Li Qingsong's entire plan.
In the future, who knows how many difficulties he will have to overcome.
But at least, this first step has been successfully taken. Since this is the case, what's the point of thinking so much? Regardless of the future, first do your best to do the present well!
"Finally, I can finally eliminate all external interference and devote myself to the research of basic physics with all my strength."
Recalling the difficulties of the past period, Li Qingsong无比珍惜珍惜 this opportunity at this moment.
This opportunity is really hard-won… Every minute and every second is so precious that Li Qingsong feels that even wasting a little is a huge sin.
"From this moment on, no one can stop me from researching basic physics, no one can stop me!"
Li Qingsong's heart was filled with excitement.
At this moment, the first major scientific device used to truly launch an assault on the unified strong nuclear force has been completed.
It is a huge water tank with a total volume of hundreds of millions of cubic meters, built tens of thousands of meters deep underground on a dwarf planet.
It is a neutrino telescope.
Li Qingsong's main task at this stage is to verify whether proton decay actually exists, and then verify whether his grand unified model is correct. Only by doing this foundation well can subsequent work be carried out.
And verifying proton decay, which seems unrelated to neutrino telescopes, is actually closely related.
Because the original purpose of developing neutrino telescopes, this kind of major scientific device, was to verify proton decay. However, research on proton decay has been slow to progress, and this set of devices happens to have shown unique advantages in the field of neutrino research, so it gradually turned to the neutrino field.
The mode of neutrino telescopes studying neutrinos is to use extremely deep external barriers to eliminate external interference as much as possible, allowing only neutrinos to enter the pure water inside the detector.
Once a neutrino collides with a microscopic particle that makes up a water molecule, the secondary particles will move faster than light in water, causing Cherenkov radiation under the condition of faster-than-light speed, and then the signal will be captured.
The mode of detecting proton decay is similar to this.
The life of a proton is extremely long, and the probability of decay is extremely low.
Based on the preliminary scientific research data Li Qingsong currently has, he believes that the lower limit of a proton's life is approximately 10^36 years, or ten trillion trillion trillion years.
This is the lower limit, meaning that the life of a proton is at least this long.
This number far exceeds the current age of the universe, which is approximately billion years.
Assuming that the proton's life is this lower limit number, then the probability of a proton decaying from the beginning of the universe until now is only approximately one in billion trillion trillion.
Guarding a single proton and observing whether it will decay, even if Li Qingsong waited until the end of time, he would not be able to wait.
How should proton decay be detected?
The method Li Qingsong adopted was to increase the number of protons to increase the probability of observing proton decay.
The probability of a proton decaying in one year is one in 10^36, so what about ten thousand protons?
The probability of one of those protons decaying in one year is obviously increased to ten thousand in 10^36.
What if Li Qingsong had 10^36 protons?
Then in one year, the probability of at least one proton decaying would approach 100%.
At this moment, the proton decay detector that Li Qingsong built—or the neutrino detector, anyway, they are the same thing—has a pure water storage capacity of 120 million tons.
One water molecule contains ten protons, and 120 million tons of water contains approximately 4 * 10^37 protons.
This number is 40 times the expected lower limit of a proton's life.
That is, if the proton's life happens to be this number, the proton decay detector that Li Qingsong built can detect approximately 40 proton decay events per year, averaging approximately one event every 9 days.
Even if the expected life of a proton is increased to ten times its current value, that is, 10^37 years, with the performance of this proton decay detector, it can still detect one event every 90 days.
