Voyage of the Stars

Failure is not terrible, what is terrible is not knowing the reason for failure.

Human engineers are not good-for-nothings. After the first experiment failed, they quickly found the problem, improved the equipment, and then conducted the second experiment.

Once, twice, three times, four times.

Scientists and engineers constantly find the reasons for failure, learn lessons from failure, analyze the reasons for failure, and then optimize the experiment.

However, as the number of experiments increased, scientists found that experimental optimization did not seem to bring success to the experiment, because they had increased the running time of the warp engine from the initial ten seconds to dozens of hours, and it was dozens of hours of stable operation, but the platinum sheet remained motionless.

Like the astronomical particle collision experiment, such a result could not defeat human scientists. If it failed, they would find the reason, and then continue to do it, and keep trying and failing until they found the correct answer to the universe.

More than ten hours of operation is enough to show that this warp engine is stable enough, but it still cannot move a 0.1 gram platinum sheet even by one micron.

At this time, scientists have to find other reasons.

Most scientists believe that it is not a problem with the warp engine itself, because they have also participated in every optimization process of the warp engine, and these scientists and engineers can understand the structure of the warp engine. They all participated in the disassembly of the "Level 4 Civilization Warp Engine" and are considered to be the top experts in the engine field at this stage of human civilization.

Among these people, there is Yu Nanfeng who has lived from the era of Callisto to the present.

Yu Nanfeng is also a great engineer and scientist who keeps pace with the times. He was originally a dynamics engineer in the era of Callisto and the most powerful dynamics expert in the Callisto base. With the advancement of human technology, his status has also risen. Of course, his knowledge and technology have not fallen behind, but he has become more proficient.

He was responsible for the research on the warp engine back then, and he also contributed to the mechanical expertise of mankind. Now, he has once again become the person in charge of the warp engine experimental project. Of course, he does not only do this, but also has work in research and experiments in other fields, but he has focused his main energy on the warp engine recently.

As for the current problems, Yu Nanfeng, as the person in charge, after careful research and analysis, believes that it is not a problem with the warp engine, but the problem is likely to be in the energy system.

After reaching this conclusion, he wrote a report on the matching of the energy system and the warp engine overnight, in which he also listed many examples of the dismantled warp engine energy supply system. Finally, he proposed that if humans want to succeed in the warp experiment, they must use a functional system of the corresponding energy level.

In simple terms, the energy level is not enough to produce instantaneous energy that distorts time and space.

Hydrogen nuclear fusion is not good, and although heavy nuclear fusion is also huge and even inexhaustible, it is not efficient enough and the output port is not large enough. It is like having a large lake of water, but at most you can only open a small hole as big as a pinhole to discharge the flood, and this amount of water has no power.

Yu Nanfeng's views have been widely supported, but support is support, and after support, a solution must be found, otherwise it will be empty talk and the experiment cannot continue.

At this moment, all scientists were silent, because they also realized the key to this problem, and the answer was obvious, that is, antimatter annihilation.

According to Yu Nanfeng, if the warp engine can be provided with antimatter annihilation-level energy, it can provide the warp engine with enough instantaneous energy to make its working core generate a powerful force to distort time and space.

But everyone knows that humans do not have the ability to produce a large amount of antimatter, and even if they can, they cannot be stored stably.

What we want to say here is that charged antiparticles can actually be called antimatter, but the so-called large-scale production of antimatter refers to antimatter that is electrically neutral, just like real-life matter.

Humans do have the ability to produce a small amount of charged antiparticles, such as anti-electrons, anti-protons, and anti-neutrons, which can be produced and separated, and with the current technical strength of the third-level civilization, they can also mix them together to form electrically neutral antimatter, but they do not have the ability to preserve them after they converge into electrically neutral antimatter.

However, the warp engine requires antimatter annihilation-level energy to drive, which goes back to the beginning of the problem-the grand unified theory.

Humans must master the grand unified theory before they can have the ability to produce and preserve antimatter in large quantities. In this way, the warp experiment seems to have come to an end, and it must wait until the grand unified theory is mastered before it can continue.

At this moment, human scientists have a clearer understanding of why the Grand Unified Theory has become the iconic theory of Level 4 civilization. Without this theory, it is impossible to develop Level 4 civilization technologies. Even if you know that a certain technology will be mastered after becoming a Level 4 civilization, you cannot cross the Grand Unified Theory.

The tall barrier of the Grand Unified Theory, like a mountain, once again looms over the heads of mankind.

Barrier, it is indeed a barrier.

However, just when everyone thought that the warp experiment had to wait until the Grand Unified Theory was realized before it could continue, Yu Nanfeng proposed a bold idea.

He believes that an external device based on high-intensity magnetic field constraints can be made to store a large number of positrons. After enough positrons are stored, they can be driven by magnetic fields to shoot them into the combustion chamber of the warp engine, and annihilate with the same amount of electrons shot in from another direction.

Then use the high-energy energy generated by the annihilation of these massive positrons and anti-electrons to drive the warp engine.

Yu Nanfeng is still so wild. Everyone can't help but jump when they hear this idea, because in Yu Nanfeng's explanation, everyone knows that this so-called "external device based on high-intensity magnetic field constraints" is basically a huge positron cannon, but it has an additional circular magnetic field for binding positrons, which is what he calls a storage device.

The whole device is a combination of a positron cannon and a set of strong magnetic field binding equipment.

Yu Nanfeng even said that if the positrons generated by one positron cannon are not enough, then two or three cannons can be used. In short, as long as the amount of positrons is large enough, they can instantly annihilate and generate a tremendous amount of energy sufficient to drive the warp engine.

There is nothing wrong with this statement. It is true that great efforts can produce miracles. But it is very risky to operate. At least the laboratory cannot be placed on the research ship like it is now. Otherwise, if you are not careful, the energy space-time generated by the annihilation of a large number of positive and negative electrons will definitely destroy the ship and kill people.

Just do it, anyway, humans who are crazier than this idea have done it.

The new test site is set up separately in the universe. In order to complete this experiment as soon as possible, Yu Nanfeng also applied for several warships with positron guns as the main guns, and removed their main guns for modification.

Because he was afraid that there would be omissions during the experiment and the warp engine used for the experiment would be scrapped, Yu Nanfeng also specifically asked the experimental team to prepare a few more experimental prototypes, so that if there were mistakes and one or two were destroyed, it would not waste time waiting for the next prototype to be produced.