Chapter 303 Unreachable Energy Level

So, around this bright white, dazzling star that is impossible to look directly at, and whose radiation is strong enough to instantly scorch a person, the two teams started a unique chase.

A white dwarf is the "corpse" of a medium-mass star like the sun. Just like this white dwarf, its predecessor star was originally more massive than the sun.

But as the nuclear fusion fuel is consumed, its volume gradually expands, its core gradually compresses, and eventually loses a lot of mass. Only the core, which is about 0.5 times the mass of the sun, remains, and is compressed into an extreme star that is only slightly larger than the earth.

It still has extremely high temperature and radiation at this moment. However, these energies are just the "residual heat" of the previous stars. When these energies slowly dissipate, the white dwarf will gradually cool down and eventually become a black dwarf.

However, this process is too long, even longer than the age of the universe. Therefore, there is no such star as a black dwarf in the current universe.

In this extremely harsh environment, the expedition fleet chased the target asteroid for more than 1.7 billion kilometers, spent ten days, and revolved around the white dwarf for almost 15,000 times before finally catching up with it.

At this moment, the human expedition team and engineers were truly in the powerful gravitational field of the white dwarf.

If the asteroid did not move at high speed and offset the gravity of the white dwarf, then at this distance of about 10,000 kilometers from the white dwarf, people would feel a gravity about 23,000 times that of the earth.

In comparison, even the largest star in the solar system, the surface of the sun, has only a few hundred times the gravity of the earth, which is impossible to compare with it.

Such a strong gravitational field even triggered an extremely obvious relativistic effect.

The engineers on the asteroid and the engineers who were farther away to perform other tasks had different perceptions of the speed of time passing.

There was a difference of about 4.6% between the two. That is, for every 954 seconds that pass for people on the asteroid, 1,000 seconds will pass for people farther away.

This is just a white dwarf, and it is 10,000 kilometers away. If it is a neutron star, the relativistic effect will be more obvious.

If it is a black hole, and it is very close, then for every second that passes around the black hole, the universe outside the black hole has experienced the entire process from the birth of the Big Bang to the final demise of the entire universe. It is not impossible.

Or in other words, even if the universe has a lifespan of more than 10 billion years, the time around the black hole may not even have passed for a second.

Even the time there is basically stagnant.

What is the situation, Han Yang does not know at this moment.

With the knowledge he has, he cannot really understand the black hole and explore the situation around and inside the black hole.

He only knows that everything in the universe is so wonderful.

Wearing heavy special space suits, human scientists and engineers landed on this asteroid orbiting 40B Eridani.

Its orbit is not stable. In fact, it was observed that it only began to orbit the white dwarf 40 Eridani B more than 100,000 years ago. And, at most 20,000 years later, it will leave its current orbit again.

After all, this is a triple star system, and the gravitational relationship is too chaotic and unstable.

Compared with the lifespan of stars, a short period of 120,000 years is just a moment. And human civilization seized this momentary opportunity and began to dig holes on it, preparing to build a neutrino telescope.

With the full efforts of human engineers and the secret help of Han Yang, the huge neutrino telescope was completed in just one year.

The volume of the newly built neutrino telescope, or proton decay observer, reached about 500,000 cubic meters, and accordingly, it would take about 500,000 cubic meters of ultrapure water to fill it.

500,000 cubic meters of water is 500,000 tons. This is a large amount, but there is no shortage of water in the 40 Eridani star system.

There are a large number of ice comets, ice asteroids, etc. orbiting these three stars. Even because of the gravitational battles between stars, a large amount of water ice is often thrown out of this galaxy.

It is roughly estimated that at least 100 million tons of water are thrown out every year.

Not to mention that a large number of non-ice asteroids actually have a large amount of water ice on their surfaces.

Even the back of the selected asteroid has a large amount of unmelted water ice.

People directly built an ultra-pure water refining plant here on the asteroid, using local materials directly, and then poured the refined ultra-pure water into a huge container.

Then all you have to do is wait.

Although the lifespan of a proton is extremely long, up to billions of trillions of years, it is obvious that Han Yang does not need to wait that long.

The so-called proton lifespan is actually the probability of its decay. That is, the mathematical expectation value of a proton decaying in 10 trillion trillion years is one.

There are 3.15*10^40 seconds in 10 trillion trillion years. Conversely, the probability of a proton decaying in one second is one in 3.15*10^40.

To give another example, if Han Yang has 3.15*10^40 protons, then from the perspective of mathematical probability, wouldn't it mean that about one proton decays every second?

Neutrino telescopes are such a device that increases the probability of proton decay by enriching a large number of protons - water atoms also contain protons.

Once a proton decays, the speed of its secondary particles in water will exceed the speed of light in water, triggering Cherenkov radiation, which can be captured.

This is the same mechanism as the observation of neutrinos entering it.

At this moment, under many high-precision photomultipliers, all the subtle changes in ultrapure water are captured.

Han Yang saw that the first Cherenkov radiation event was captured in just a few minutes.

But unfortunately, this is just a neutrino event.

This place is very close to the white dwarf, and there are two real stars around it. There are a lot of neutrinos, so it is normal to observe neutrinos.

Han Yang can take advantage of this opportunity to study the internal structure of the white dwarf through the face-to-face observation of the neutrino telescope. In this way, even if the proton decay event cannot be observed, this trip will not be in vain.

"Well... it's confirmed. The white dwarf is indeed layered. There is convection inside, and sometimes earthquakes occur..."

Han Yang closely observed the movements of the white dwarf.

Time passed quietly, and in the blink of an eye, several days had passed.

On this day, Han Yang captured another Cherenkov radiation event.

Unlike the previous radiation event caused by neutrinos, this event seemed to have some special properties.

Han Yang quickly analyzed the 3.6GB of data generated by this event, and his spirits immediately lifted.

He suspected that this was a proton decay event!

But there was not enough evidence at the moment, and further observation was needed.

It didn't matter, Han Yang had plenty of time and was not in a hurry at all.

Five days later, the second such special radiation event occurred. This time, after careful analysis and the introduction of many human scientists to jointly study and analyze, people finally came to a conclusion.

This is proton decay!

In a strong gravitational field environment, proton decay actually occurred!

Although it is still unclear why the gravitational field can affect the decay probability of protons-this is likely to involve the theory of everything, which is not something Han Yang can figure out for the time being-but it doesn't matter.

As long as proton decay does exist, it will fill the last gap in unifying the three basic forces of strong force, weak force, and electromagnetic force!

After thousands of years of development, at this moment, Han Yang finally saw the hope of being promoted to a third-level civilization.

At the same time, Han Yang also truly solved the mystery of why the number of stars in that distant Milky Way is so small.

Because under the influence of the super-strong gravitational field of the core black hole, the probability of proton decay in the Milky Way has been increased, and proton decay has affected the collapse of the nebula, resulting in a decrease in the number of stars.

The entire human scientific community was shocked by this discovery. Han Yang mobilized almost all the forces that could be mobilized and invested them all in the study of proton decay.

After a decade of long research, a total of hundreds of proton decay observation events, and different changes between these different events - the asteroid is constantly moving away from the white dwarf, the distance between the two is constantly expanding, and the strength of the gravitational field is also changing accordingly. Han Yang finally calculated the exact probability of proton decay under different gravitational fields.

With this data, Han Yang immediately calculated the energy level required to unify the three fundamental forces by substituting it into the original grand unified theory.

It is almost tens of thousands times higher than the energy level required for the unification of the electroweak force.

Only at this energy level can the three fundamental forces be unified. Below this energy level, the three fundamental forces will separate due to spontaneous breaking.

The next thing to do is to truly verify it.

But at this time, Han Yang encountered difficulties again.

The reason is that this energy level is too high. Han Yang simply cannot build a particle collider with such an energy level.

If it cannot be verified, who knows whether it is correct? If more scientific data cannot be obtained, how can the grand unified theory be truly applied to reality?

If it cannot be applied, let alone truly becoming a level 3 civilization.

Faced with this situation, the entire human scientific community launched a great discussion. Scientists put forward various fantastic ideas, and some even proposed to push an asteroid to hit the white dwarf, on the grounds that at the moment of impact, the unit energy level of certain parts may reach this level, and then by observing certain effects of secondary particles, it can be confirmed whether the three fundamental forces have really achieved unity at the predetermined energy level.

However, this proposal was questioned by a large number of peers, who thought it was too fantastic. Han Yang also thought it was a bit absurd and not worth trying.

After this plan was rejected, dozens of plans were proposed, but they were still rejected.

Finally, a scientist proposed a brand new plan, which attracted Han Yang's attention.

"Borrowing the power of lightning... Well, at least it seems that this plan is a bit reliable..."