Time was running out for the "He-3" project team.

Everyone is like a wind-up alarm clock, racing against time.

Finally, with everyone's efforts, a slightly rough prototype was finally completed.

The prototype is divided into two parts, one is an "atomic gun" to accelerate and fire helium-3 atoms, and the other is a target material installed in a vacuum chamber to receive helium-3 atoms. As for the computers connected to the devices, and the various observation elements, they are all necessary and need not be mentioned.

As for why this prototype is crudely made......

That's because it's almost all pieced together.

The Atomgun's acceleration trajectory was modified from a small particle accelerator that had been eliminated from Argonne National Laboratory. The vacuum chamber used to bind the plasma is an experimental subject designed by PPPL when it was researching stellarators.

The whole set of experimental equipment heats the plasma inside to 7,000 degrees at most, which is far from the high temperature of 100 million degrees, and the electromagnetic field that binds the plasma is more than an order of magnitude worse than the 10T of the stellarizer.

Even so, though, is enough.

Any experiment starts with proving that it is feasible, and they don't need to complete a fusion ignition in this rudimentary vacuum chamber, or even fully simulate the astonishing density of plasma inside a stellarator.

They just need to successfully collect data from these plasmas and analyze them to come up with more accurate "observational" conclusions than plasma "diagnosis".

Finally, it is enough to solve the problem of "method migration" so that this observation device can work on the stellarator.

In fact, Lu Zhou's original idea was that it would be nice if he could get the stellarumers that had been eliminated by the EGA experimental group.

But he was just thinking about it, and Professor Lazersson made it clear to him that it wasn't something that could be bought with money.

All in all, this prototype is complete!

The orbit of the particle accelerator is "loaded" by an atomic gun, and the target material that accepts helium-3 atoms is a tungsten titanium alloy that is widely used in high-speed impact experiments of charged particles. Behind the target material, there are probes with different sensitivities and functions for receiving impact data.

So far, although there have been many problems in the whole project, it has been smooth overall.

As soon as the final commissioning was complete, Professor Lazersson was eager to announce the start of the first experiment.

The researchers in the laboratory have stayed up countless days and nights for this project, and have paid countless sweats. Now that the entire installation has finally been assembled, they need a success to boost their morale!

However......

Things didn't go as smoothly as everyone imagined.

When the helium-3 atom was injected into the high-temperature pressure plasma, it was heated to the plasma state in a short time as expected, and the detector connected to the outer wall of the simulator also collected the electromagnetic wave data generated by the helium-3 due to the collision and other reasons.

Fate seems to have played a joke on all the researchers here, the helium-3 atoms fired by the atomic gun did not pass through the plasma as expected.

Regardless of where it ended up, it didn't hit the target material.

Apparently, they succeeded in firing the bullets.

However, the bullet was not successfully recovered.

There is no doubt that the first experiment failed......

……

End of the 21st experiment.

The atmosphere in the laboratory was unusually solemn.

The probe mounted behind the handle material still did not detect the signal from the helium-3 atom striking the target material......

Now that the experiment is underway, they are facing the biggest bottleneck since the beginning of the project.

If the fired bullet cannot be recovered, then the bullet will be meaningless.

The first to break the silence was an engineer with controlled nuclear fusion.

In an uncertain tone, he asked tentatively, "Could it be that the sensitivity of the probe is not enough?" In fact, the impact has already happened, but we have not observed it. ”

This is a possibility, and if the collision signal is weak enough, it may indeed be ignored by the detector.

"Impossible," another plasma physicist shook his head, "the waveform image of the electromagnetic wave shows that in one-third of the area the energy of the helium-3 particles has decayed beyond the threshold, and it does not need to be observed at all, and theoretically it has deviated from its original orbit...... You should be clear. ”

The last sentence, which is an expert in plasma physics, is said by looking at Lu Zhou.

didn't speak, Lu Zhou just nodded solemnly.

From the change in the crest of the wave on the image of the electromagnetic spectrum, he was already able to make a judgment that the helium-3 atom, which was a bullet, did not penetrate the plasma, but "disappeared" in a collision with particles inside the plasma.

It may have been confined to the electromagnetic field along with the plasma, or it may have broken through the binding of the electromagnetic field and the plasma, but the direction of motion has been completely changed in the constant collision......

If a particle injected into a chaotic system cannot be observed, then it becomes part of the chaotic system, and even if it still exists, it is still "missing" in the sense of physics.

research, it seems, is at a dead end......

"This line of thinking may not work at all," Professor Lazersson looked at the computer screen with a solemn expression, and then looked at Lu Zhou, "The plasma used in the experiment was only heated to a high temperature of 7,000 degrees, and the density was far from reaching the density of the plasma of the stellarator......

Professor Lazersson didn't finish his sentence, but the meaning was clear.

Even with this level of difficulty, the helium-3 particles failed to penetrate the entire plasma as expected. That's not to mention in the orbit of a stellar simulator with a temperature of up to hundreds of millions.

Staring at a dark screen with a solemn expression, and after being silent with the researchers in the laboratory for a long time, Lu Zhou suddenly spoke.

"We need to fire more powerful atomic guns!"

"Yes, we need to launch a more powerful atomic gun, and it's better to use the Swiss Hadron Collider as an acceleration module, and plug our helium-3 into a moon rocket, so that it can break through all the particles it encounters along the way, instead of crashing them out......," Professor Lazersson laughed self-deprecatingly and shook his head, "but you know, it's obviously impossible." ”

"It's not that exaggerated," Lu Zhou shook his head and continued, "I just calculated, we only need to increase the strength of the accelerating electric field of the atomic gun to 1T, and theoretically our He3 particles can hit the target material with a limited deflection angle after penetrating the plasma. ”

This is not a rigorous calculation, it is a conservative estimate based on experience.

Maybe you can't use 1T, but 1T is definitely enough.

"That's an exaggeration! The confined magnetic field strength of the stellar simulator is only 10T! "Seriously, do you math folks have an idea of the data you calculate?" Do you know how expensive superconducting materials and used liquid helium are? ”

In the final analysis, it is a question of funding.

Although PPPL is very awesome, it costs a lot of money to build this laboratory, but the annual cost is actually only 40 million US dollars.

This money needs to be allocated to many projects, and the money that can be used for the "He3 atomic probe" technology is probably less than $4 million.

They use the old equipment they have replaced to recycle parts, not only to save time in customizing new equipment, but also to save money.

After all, every time they experiment, they are burning money.

Professor Lazersson even had a violent thought in his head.

Perhaps, working with this guy was the wrong decision from the start.

Looking at Professor Lazersson, who lost his temper, the other engineers in the lab were silent.

Lu Zhou's request was indeed excessive, like a rich man saying to a poor man, since the bread is not enough to fill his stomach, why not eat the cake?

Without saying a word, Lu Zhou waited quietly for him to finish all his words.

Looking at Professor Lazersson, whose beard was shaking, he coughed lightly and spoke slowly.

"What if I can solve the financial problem?"

-

（

Thanks to the leader of the "bookworm who lost the number" for reward~~!

Anyway, it's been breaking out these days, can I ask for a ticket with confidence? I'll ask if I can...... Asking for a monthly pass!! ）