Chapter 145: The Great Era

Downing's trip to France only went to one city, Paris, because of the oil frenzy in Pennsylvania, he returned to England early, and the wedding of the girl on the Seine River did not go, so he went to Plymouth to lay out the British Petroleum Company. In fact, there was another event that happened not long ago that caused him to return to England early - a solar storm broke out, and the Northern Pole aurora could be seen even in Cuba.

Thanks to the super solar electromagnetic explosion, the global telegraph network of the British telegraph company was completely paralyzed, which caused panic among the earthlings, and the sales of the global telegraph suddenly skyrocketed, because everyone wanted to see the god-level scientists' opinions on this event, and it was estimated that even the die-hard Christians turned to the Magister in front of the powerless God.

The Magister did not disappoint everyone, and put forward the theory that the global magnetic field is attacked by the sun, and once again emphasized that light and electromagnetic waves are the same physical phenomenon, but the wavelength is different, since the aurora, a phenomenon that should only be seen in the North Pole and the South Pole, can now be seen from such a distance, then it means that the interference of radio waves is quite strict. As for why it comes from the sun, this is easy to conjecture, because the sun is the closest and most active celestial body to the earth, and a large amount of energy is spewed every moment, among which there must be charged high-energy particles, and when these high-energy particles collide, a higher intensity of energy release occurs, that is, in the form of light and radio waves.

In order to ensure that the intense activity of the sun can be predicted in advance today, Downing donated a radio fund to the Greenwich Observatory dedicated to the observation of solar activity, which is used by the observatory to develop, manufacture and maintain solar observation instruments.

The information security of the Windsor consortium has become increasingly important, and the loss and panic caused by the prolonged unavailability of the wireless telegraph network have raised the alarm to Downing, and it seems that the fiber optic project must be accelerated.

There is a problem in the manufacture of optical fibers - there is no problem when there is only one fiber, but when a large number of fibers are put together, because the conduction medium has changed so much that the total reflection effect can no longer be generated, the fiber fails.

The raw material of optical fiber is basically the same as glass, which is silica, which can be recycled again and again. How to cover the wired glass with a layer of total reflection film at a low cost is the difficulty of the process. The highlight is that the refractive index of high-purity quartz will be different as long as it is mixed with a little impurity, which is the direction of research and development of the Tyndall team.

At present, it is possible to produce a small number of optical fibers using the double-layer pipe method, but it is obviously not suitable for large-scale use. The finishing touch of Downing's promotion of optical fiber industrialization is not only to use such a trace impurity medium, but also to make the production process of this trace impurity completely realized by the temperature change when the molten wire is drawn and cooled, that is, when the fused silica is cooled, the outermost layer naturally absorbs a small amount of impurities in the air because it is exposed to the air, so that the optical fiber can be drawn on a large scale and at low cost.

Others have optical fibers that are useless at all, (except for "bending light" to probe the inside of the human body), because it must be combined with a photoelectric converter to play a communication role, and this thing is not easy to understand.

In the process of the explosion of the solar energy of science popularization, the masses and even scientists who do not know the truth have begun to worry, it turns out that the sun that we have always thought of as selfless also has tyrannical times, just like there were sage monarchs and tyrants in ancient times. Will one day the solar energy burst so violently that it is unbearable for mankind? Scientists know that most of the creatures that once lived on Earth have become extinct, could this have something to do with the solar outbreak?

Although this concern is superfluous, newspapers around the world are discussing this matter, and they are analyzing it in a more rational manner, and many people who could not have cared about the end of mankind before have begun to care, and populist newspapers like The Times like to cater to the people and create sensationalism.

There is a typical conjecture that the extinction of the dinosaurs was related to the solar explosion, because the dinosaurs were too large to hide in caves, and humans escaped because they were able to burrow. This statement is quite interesting, and it is basically the same as the asteroid collision conjectured by later generations, which is nothing more than guessing the wrong murderer. But because according to the Bible, the universe has only existed for thousands of years, so in the minds of Europeans, the earth has a lifespan of thousands of years, which means that their fear of this statement has reached a new peak, does this not mean that when the sun comes again, human beings must all hide in caves? Then the current civilization is completely destroyed, and all human beings have become cavemen again.

Many earthquakes are preceded by a prelude, this time the Northern Lights swept to the tropics, does such a terrible "prelude" mean that the solar explosion is close at hand? In the face of the apocalypse, the sales of the Telegraph are unprecedentedly high, and before you know it, everyone has regarded the god-level scientist as a true god, even if he comes out to say something as comforting as "impossible", the Times and the like invite unreliable experts every day to talk nonsense that the panicked human beings can't stand it.

At the beginning, Downing analyzed that the sun is a very stable celestial body, because light energy is an extreme of energy, and the average distance from the earth is ten to the eighth power, and the fastest speed of light in the universe from the sun will take about 8 minutes to reach the earth, so the so-called violent fluctuations of the sun will not cause a short-term impact on the earth.

The effects of the long period are there, and there is evidence, ask astronomers to look at Mars, why is the surface of Mars the same color as the Sahara Desert? Because it's as barren and lifeless as a desert, and why is Mars lifeless? But it's because there's no water on it. The reason for the absence of water is the great power of the solar tyrant, in the North Pole and the South Pole, you will often see the appearance of huge energy from the sun - aurora, indicating that the energy wind from the sun is constantly blowing, and the earth has a planetary level large magnetic field, which can deflect the solar wind, but Mars does not have such good luck, after a long geological time, the ocean that Mars may have contained was slowly dried by the solar wind, creating the current appearance.

How long is this "long"? Although people who care about the fate of mankind have received a small amount of comfort from god-level scientists, they are still not completely reassured.

Well, it seems that all the worries are focused on the fact that people's concept of celestial-level and geological-level time is too vague, and the scientific magister can only magnify the trick, and it just so happens that the biggest feeling of going to France in the Catholic country recently is that the negative evaluation comes from his atheistic views, and since the debate has begun, give the believers another blow. This punch may be heavier for some than the theory of evolution, because the origin of species is a process that cannot be reproduced in the real room, and the time of its occurrence is relatively vague, and the word "long" can only be used instead of specific numbers, so now let my great, glorious, and correct archmage uncover the secrets of this time.

Now the heaviest element on the periodic table is the last in the list is uranium with an atomic weight of up to 92, when revealing the radioactive properties of natural stone, the archmage once mentioned in vague terms that the source of radioactive radon is actually uranium, this time, the archmage wants to completely uncover the hole card - this heaviest element can be transmuted.

Uranium in nature exists in the form of three isotopes: uranium-238 (99. 2739 to 99. 2752%), uranium-235 (0. 7198 to 0. 7202%), and trace amounts of uranium-234 (0. 0050 to 0. 0059%）。 The Grand Magus is not going to tell everyone about the two types of uranium that are not common, because that would have a terrible consequence, they can produce fission under the bombardment of slow neutrons, and if their mass exceeds the critical mass, they will both be able to sustain a nuclear chain reaction, and the small mass loss during the nuclear reaction will be converted into a huge amount of energy. You should have guessed what this is. So, the current mention of uranium refers specifically to uranium-238, which accounts for the vast majority, and its half-life is 44. 700 million years, which means that if we know the initial uranium content and the amount of uranium present in an object, we can calculate the longest ultra-long age of this substance, and this billion-level number can already represent the longest celestial and geological time.

So, how do you know the initial uranium content of an object? This brings us to a peculiar crystal - zircon. Gem-quality zircon is cut to resemble a diamond, and fraudsters can use it to fool the uninitiated. Its crystallization process could not contain lead, (lead is the end product of uranium decay), but uranium could enter zircon at the initial time, which gave scientists an excellent opportunity to finally have a uranium-bearing object (zero) that knew the initial value of the decay product. Monazite, slanted zircon, and oblique zircon also have properties similar to those of zircon crystals.

After months of preparation, the Archmage finally dropped the bombshell, and there was no doubt that the main paper was published in Nature, along with a popular science introduction in the Telegraph and a briefer introduction on the BBC, with the headline - How old is the earth?

After months of suffering, the poor human beings finally got the fruit they were looking forward to, and whether it was sweet or bitter depends on your personal character. The Telegraph's creation-like shocking scientific explanation, first look at the conclusion, the oldest stone found so far is 4 billion years old, and the dinosaurs that everyone cares about, basically their fossils out of the rock layer 65 million years ago, can be concluded that a planetary catastrophe 65 million years ago led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

If this number is confirmed, it is not a matter of slapping the face in the face for the Bible, but of slapping the head into the air. The biblical figure of no more than 10,000 years is simply a childish fantasy in the face of the age of the earth and the dinosaurs, and it is not much better than Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. Note that this is no longer the case with the vague words "long" left by evolutionary scientists like Darwin and Wallace and Huxley to leave the church with a huge amount of quibble space, and the whole scientific method can be reproduced over and over again. Based on the history of the Magus of Science, this must be true.

The archaeologists at the British Museum were excitedly testing every day, and the Telegraph itself had become a must-have in the headlines of major newspapers during this time, and a new number was detected in three days. These numbers are consistent with the expectation of the sequence of the rock formations, and with the evolutionary paths of various ancient fossils.

Except for Downing's chamber, no one else has the ability to calculate the half-life of uranium, which involves another important technology, how to detect radioactivity?

Radioactive substances can ionize the air to produce electric current, and a mysterious crystal produces a "piezoelectric phenomenon", that is, when under pressure, one side of the crystal will form a positive charge, and the other side will form a negative charge. （http:／／.）。

In order to prevent other scientists from gaining access to advanced radioactive technology and triggering further scientific discoveries, such as the discovery of uranium isotopes that could cause a chain reaction, Downing made this mysterious crystal "top secret". The best testing equipment is not available, but the ordinary-grade equipment that can detect the age of rock formations is open to all scientists, so that universities around the world can verify the correctness of this epoch-making technology.

Now, people finally have a whole new concept of time and are no longer afraid of geological events because they are too far away to happen in their lifetimes.

However, further damage to religious authority also led to a crisis of faith, and there was a historic defection of Christianity, especially among Protestants, who were already less restrictive and had no secular cost to conversion.

As Dickens famously said in A Tale of Two Cities, "This is the best of times, this is the worst of times." ”

The open opened their minds to welcome the new age of godlessness, and the timid were even more trembling to see the age of God dying and death immortal, and those who wrestled with God had the upper hand.