After letting go of this heart, Yu Yifeng shifted his attention to another major event: the development of gas giants.

The scientific investigation of Mio 2 went well, and the industry on Mio 4 was not particularly difficult, but the development of the gaseous planet "Mio 5" was the first time.

"The theoretical difficulty is not high."

The development of gas giants is an important link in the industrial chain, and it involves the energy problem of the entire new human industrial chain.

Everyone understands the principle of sitting and eating empty, and it is impossible to hold on indefinitely with the helium-3 reserves in Noah.

Therefore, the relevant gas collection spacecraft is being built with great fanfare.

"If we can successfully develop this gaseous planet, we will have access to an almost endless supply of nuclear fuel. That's a lot of energy...... We could even build a luxury antimatter production base to burn off this extra energy. ”

A group of scientists were eating and chatting in the cafeteria, led by Professor Ding Yidong.

He is not only an expert in weapons, but also a very well-known nuclear physicist with a considerable understanding of the reactions between atoms.

Ding Yidong said in his usual loud voice: "We can now use specific laser collisions to produce antimatter...... More research is needed to improve the utilization of energy as much as possible. If you can only produce a few micrograms of antimatter with all your efforts, it will definitely not work. ”

To be honest, people didn't pay much attention to antimatter research in the past.

Because antimatter is almost the same as positive matter except that it is electrically opposite. In other words, it is not particularly significant to study antimatter, which is of similar nature, at great expense.

"But the main value of antimatter is ...... It is an important secondary energy source, the main trading unit of interstellar civilizations, and can also be used to craft weapons that surpass nuclear bombs - antimatter missiles. ”

The energy density of antimatter is two orders of magnitude higher than that of nuclear fuel, which means that the power of this weapon is also two orders of magnitude higher than that of nuclear weapons.

The Milky Way may have some unique antimatter fountains, but such antimatter fountains require a very strange geography. They tend to be in the vicinity of black holes and require a very high level of technology to collect.

The vast majority of antimatter is produced by interstellar civilizations themselves.

So, scientists are discussing how to use the excess energy to produce antimatter.

“…… lest when you trade in the future, your pockets will be empty, like a poor ghost. We always have to deal with interstellar civilizations, and we can't trade cheap helium-3...... This thing must be worthless. ”

A scientist laughs and says he is also a person in charge of the Ministry of Industry. They had discussed it many times.

There are many ways to produce antimatter, the simplest of course, is to generate high-energy particles through an accelerator, hit a fixed target to produce antiparticles, and then decelerate to synthesize. However, the energy required for this process is much greater than the energy emitted by annihilation, and the rate of formation of antimatter is extremely low.

The second method, of course, is with a laser.

When an electron meets a positron, an annihilation reaction takes place to form two high-energy photons, which is the principle of energy release of antimatter.

In fact, this process is reversible, that is, after two powerful laser beams collide, the photons collide with each other, and the energy can also be forcibly converted into matter.

If, at this moment, a large magnetic field is used to quickly separate the positive and antimatter with different charges, one can obtain a considerable amount of antimatter.

"It's just that the current mass energy conversion efficiency is extremely low. It is not that two lasers collide at random, and both can produce matter, nor is it that the greater the energy, the better...... We had to find a more suitable laser ...... Research in this area should be accelerated. ”

However, scientists are not worried that, at current levels, a small amount of antimatter will definitely be produced, it is just a matter of energy efficiency. This utilization, as experience grows, should be able to be raised.

Solved the manufacturing, as well as the preservation ......

The preservation of antimatter is, of course, inseparable from vacuum and magnetic fields.

"I would still recommend that only the simplest antimatter, 'positron', be produced. The vacuum technology of our accelerator is relatively mature, and the beam tube can reach a very high vacuum, which can be stored for a long time. ”

After calculating a few data in his head, Professor Ding Yidong said: "In addition, annihilation does not happen as soon as it is encountered, and there is also the problem of annihilation cross-section. To do the math simply, the specific formula for the annihilation reaction to occur is...... N=sigma*rho*velocity……”

"So we'd better build a superconducting tokamak-like device that magnetically confines antimatter...... Difficulty...... There should be no problem. ”

After this discussion, people suddenly found that the technology for producing and preserving antimatter has quietly matured, but there is still a lack of practical experience.

This kind of fact can't help but make people secretly sigh that the technological progress of human beings in the past few hundred years is really too big.

Sometimes the development of science needs to be gradual, and sometimes it is leapfrogging. The reason for this is not only because of the extraterrestrial garbage picked up, but also because of the social system, material affluence, and the materialism that worships natural science, which greatly promotes the process of science.

Think about it, scientists in the earth period had very limited resources at hand, and if they wanted to do experiments, especially high-energy experiments, they had to get all kinds of approvals and were constrained by various funds.

But now there is no such thing, every scientist has gained great freedom, and the cost of scientific research has long been far greater than the cost of ordinary life.

For the Noah Society, the degree of attention paid to the natural sciences was far greater than any other aspect, including various entertainment products, military industries...... It is an era when almost all people are advocating science, and such an academic atmosphere is incomparable to that of any country or university in the earth period.

In this case, if science is not yet able to progress quickly, there is only one situation: the civilization has touched its limit......

Soon, six months passed quietly, and the first nuclear fuel gathering spacecraft was officially completed, and it was already sailing on the road to the gaseous planet "Mio 5".

Today is the day when the spacecraft officially arrives at the gas planet, and there are more than 300 staff members sitting under the huge control room.

Among them were engineers and scientists, all of whom stared nervously at the big screen with serious expressions.

The ship was about three hundred meters long and looked like a barrel-like cylinder. In the face of the upcoming gaseous planet, "Mio 5" is as small as a mosquito.

"About what you call antimatter...... After making it, is it safe? My main concern is the storage problem, the magnetic confinement alone seems to be a bit thin, and the superconducting ring needs to be continuously powered......"

"What if there is a power outage, accidentally released and blown up?"

Yu Yifeng listened to Professor Ding Yidong's next step and asked with a frown.

Although he also longed for all kinds of antimatter weapons, he had to be concerned about the more important issue of security.