Chapter 302 Proton Decay

Before this moment, even before human civilization became a Level 2 civilization and before it encountered the colonization of the Eta civilization, a lot of research and theoretical work had been done on the grand unified theory that unifies the three basic forces of strong force, weak force, and electromagnetic force, and certain results have been achieved.

For physics, theory always comes before experiment, which is normal. Just like now, Han Yang has not yet unified the three forces to become a Level 3 civilization, but has already begun preliminary theoretical research on the unified universal theory of gravity.

Among these results, the most important achievement is the standard model.

The standard model is a theory that describes the three basic forces of strong force, weak force, and electromagnetic force and the basic particles of all matter that they constitute, but it does not unify the three basic forces.

The grand unified theory is an extension of the standard model. It assumes that at higher energy levels, above 100 GeV, these three forces will merge into one force.

Only at low energy levels will these three forces split due to symmetry breaking.

Now, Han Yang has integrated the achievements of his predecessors, combined with the scientific community of the entire human civilization over the past few hundred years, and his own continuous research and experiments, and proposed a more comprehensive and more credible grand unified theory.

But the current problem is that some of the values ​​in this theory cannot be determined, and Han Yang does not know whether it is correct.

A qualified theory should be able to predict future events and be verified in experiments.

At this moment, Han Yang fell into some difficulties.

Because the grand unified theory predicts the proton decay phenomenon, but he did not observe this phenomenon in the experiment.

He could only constantly look for the possibility of adjusting the theory while constantly conducting experiments to try to break through this shackles, but ten years of hard work have yielded nothing.

One day, the ultra-deep space telescope array composed of a total of 3,260 optical telescopes deployed in the solar system reported a slightly strange phenomenon to Han Yang.

A huge galaxy located more than 10 billion light years away seems to have a slightly abnormal number of stars, which conflicts with Han Yang's existing galaxy evolution theory.

The galaxy evolution theory that Han Yang mastered has been verified by tens of millions of extragalactic galaxies and is considered correct by Han Yang. Suddenly, a special case was discovered at this moment, which immediately aroused Han Yang's interest.

"A galaxy formed only 300 million years after the birth of the universe... It's really spectacular."

Looking at the data observed by the telescope array, Han Yang sighed in his heart.

As we all know, the speed of light is limited. The light emitted by a galaxy more than 10 billion light years away takes more than 10 billion years to reach the solar system and be observed.

The appearance of the galaxy numbered SNG-6015 that Han Yang saw at this moment was actually more than 10 billion years ago, when only 300 million years had passed since the Big Bang.

This young and huge galaxy has many massive blue-white first-generation stars and an extremely active galactic core.

Han Yang believes that there is a supermassive black hole there. It is estimated that its mass is at least 900 million times that of the sun. Endless interstellar dust and stellar matter poured into the black hole, triggering its extremely strong jets and releasing unimaginable energy.

It is actually a quasar. But because the jet does not face the solar system directly, humans cannot observe its super high brightness.

This galaxy is huge, but it is still small compared to the Milky Way. If it is near the Milky Way, it will probably become a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

Its total mass is estimated to be about 5 billion times the mass of the sun, of which about 900 million times the mass of the sun is concentrated on the central black hole, and its size is about 2,000 light years.

It is such a distant galaxy with abundant interstellar dust and activeness that made Han Yang notice the abnormality.

It has too few stars.

According to normal stellar evolution theory, it should be normal to have at least 1 billion stars inside it. But the actual situation is that Han Yang only saw a maximum of about 700 million stars.

There is a gap of up to 30% between reality and theoretical prediction. This is no longer something that can be explained by statistical errors or accidental phenomena.

Han Yang has a strong interest in this and has mobilized more observation forces and scientific researchers to study this distant and tiny galaxy.

Gradually, more observation data was generated. Through these data, Han Yang eliminated all the possibilities he had thought of before. Until no theory could explain this abnormal phenomenon.

Han Yang was puzzled.

No matter how you look at it, it should not be like this. But the reality is that it is just like this.

What went wrong?

The research on this abnormal galaxy only occupies one millionth of Han Yang's computing power. After all, there are too many things to study at the moment, and Han Yang can't invest all his computing power on this problem.

But with this one millionth of computing power, an inspiration suddenly came one day.

"Is it possible to be related to proton decay?"

Han Yang then incorporated the proton decay data predicted by the grand unified theory into the star population estimation model.

According to the prediction, proton decay will produce neutral pions and positrons. And the neutral pions will continue to decay into two photons.

Perhaps...the photons formed by proton decay hindered the further fusion of interstellar dust clouds, resulting in the inability to form stars, causing the overall number of stars to be so much less than that of a normal galaxy?

After some calculations, Han Yang found that if the number of stars is to be reduced to such a level through the proton decay effect, then the life span of protons should be within 10^20 years.

But this is obviously impossible. Han Yang has proved through experiments that if proton decay really exists, then the minimum life span of protons should be more than 10^33 years.

There is a difference of more than ten orders of magnitude between the two.

At this point, this conjecture should have been abandoned. But Han Yang discovered again that if the proton life span is determined to be 10^20 years, the rest of the abnormal phenomena in this galaxy can be explained.

Even some abnormalities related to black hole jets can be fully explained.

This puzzled Han Yang again.

What's going on?

Mathematical calculations, theoretical predictions and actual phenomena are so consistent that it seems that it cannot be simply explained by coincidence.

This seems to imply that in this distant galaxy, the lifespan of protons seems to be really 10^20 years. But in the solar system, Han Yang can be sure that the lifespan of protons is at least 10^33 years.

Is there a change in the lifespan of protons? It decays slower here and faster there?

If so, what exactly causes this difference?

After thinking about it, Han Yang finally set his sights on the behemoth hidden in the core of the galaxy.

"Could it be... the gravitational field of a supermassive black hole?"

Even at this moment, Han Yang is still unclear about the nature of gravity. He has not even completed the quantization of gravitons, let alone unifying gravity into a force.

But this does not affect his assumption of this conclusion.

"If it is a super-strong gravitational field... I can do some experiments."

There are no black holes around the solar system.

There is not a single black hole, nor a neutron star. However, there are a few white dwarfs.

"The gravitational field around a white dwarf is also very strong. Why not try an experiment there?"

Han Yang made up his mind.

To detect proton decay, a scientific device similar to that used to detect neutrinos is needed.

Neutrino telescope.

In fact, the neutrino telescope was originally created to observe proton decay. However, proton decay was not observed, but neutrinos were observed instead, so this thing became a special tool for detecting neutrinos.

But there is a hard requirement for the neutrino telescope, which is that it must be located very deep underground. Only in this way can it shield various external radiations.

If there is no thick rock layer, this effect can only be achieved through an artificial shielding layer.

According to Han Yang's estimate, to achieve sufficient shielding standards next to a white dwarf, he must build a solid metal ball with a radius of more than 4 kilometers. And the mass of such a metal ball is at least one trillion tons.

Building such a metal ball with a mass of one trillion tons next to a white dwarf is beyond the capability of Han Yang's engineering ability.

There is no way. However, Han Yang immediately came up with an alternative plan.

If the artificial shielding layer is not feasible, can it be replaced by a natural star?

Han Yang immediately retrieved the data and immediately found that there is an asteroid around the white dwarf in the triple star system of 40 Eridani.

The size of this asteroid is about 86*75*40 kilometers. Based on this calculation, if a neutrino telescope is built in its core, the weakest part of its shielding layer will also have a 20-kilometer-thick rock layer, which can fully meet his requirements.

There is nothing to say then.

Under the leadership of Han Yang, a large scientific expedition fleet immediately began to prepare and set off in just three months.

After a long voyage of about 40 years, the scientific expedition fleet finally arrived.

In this magical galaxy where three stars revolve around each other, the scientific expedition fleet began to work.

The first task to be carried out is to land on this asteroid.

Generally speaking, this is very simple. But as long as it involves extreme stars like white dwarfs, even the simplest things will become very difficult.

This asteroid is too close to the white dwarf. The distance between the two is only about 10,000 kilometers.

Generally speaking, such a close distance will cause the asteroid to be directly torn apart by the strong gravity of the white dwarf.

However, this asteroid has a more peculiar orbit and its own structure is relatively special - Han Yang suspects that it was split from the core of a large planet. Its main components are iron and nickel, and its structural strength is much higher than that of ordinary rocky asteroids, which avoids the fate of being torn apart.

Such a close distance causes the asteroid to have an extremely high speed to orbit the white dwarf without falling off.

Its speed reaches about 2,000 kilometers per second. At this speed, it can rotate once every less than a minute around the white dwarf with a radius of about 7,000 kilometers.

As a last resort, the spacecraft of the scientific expedition fleet could only enter the orbit of the white dwarf first, with a roughly equal speed, and then approach the asteroid little by little.