Chapter 44: Ultimate Precision
Facing Gu Changshan’s words, Jiang Yang was full of emotion: “I really didn’t expect this…”
Beside him, Zhou Yu was also full of shock.
For her, national power had previously been just an illusory term, without much real experience. But at this moment, she truly felt that irresistible, unmatched, and even unimaginable immense power.
After sighing, Jiang Yang asked: “How is the construction of Sen Mountain Base and Qinghu Base going?”
“Everything is going smoothly, and it can be guaranteed to be completed within the scheduled time.”
……
Sen Mountain Underground Base. You Zhicheng, wearing a full-body dust-proof suit, stood quietly in front of that huge sphere, which, including the foundation and auxiliary facilities, was as tall as more than ten stories.
Standing below, a person seemed as tiny as an ant.
It was like the creation of a giant, something that tiny humans fundamentally couldn’t have made. But You Zhicheng, who had participated in the entire construction process, knew clearly in his heart that tiny humans not only had the ability to build it, but if needed, the construction time could even be compressed to just ten days!
At this moment, this huge sphere had already been capped. Unless for equipment inspection and maintenance, it would not be opened again.
Ultrapure water filling had already begun.
The large and small jars that had been transported over earlier and piled up like a small mountain on the side had their stored water sources slowly pumped into the huge sphere interior through special water pumps.
Through internal monitoring equipment, You Zhicheng clearly saw the scene inside the neutrino telescope.
Under the illumination of lights, its interior appeared to be empty, with only silver-gray jars, equipment installed on the jars, and a few buoys floating in mid-air.
But he knew that the reality was not like that.
At this moment, about 42,000 cubic meters of water—approximately equivalent to the water volume of 22 standard competition swimming pools—had already been filled in.
This water was so clear, with such high transparency, that the human eye couldn’t see it at all, which made the buoys floating on the water surface appear as if they were suspended in mid-air.
You Zhicheng knew in his heart that if he wanted to destroy this water right now, he only needed to find a way to enter the jar interior and sneeze at this water.
No need for even contact, and all this water could be destroyed.
However, even though this water was already so clear, it still wasn’t enough.
The transportation and storage processes had already mixed some impurities into it, and these impurities also needed to be removed.
The circulation purification equipment installed at the bottom of the jar was already working at full capacity, expected to complete one purification cycle in 3 days, at which time the water body would truly reach usable standards.
In fact, for a neutrino telescope formally put into operation, this water body circulation purification equipment is always on, and only in this way can the water quality be continuously maintained in a standard-compliant state.
Because although the jar has undergone special treatment, some ions, impurities, etc., will still mix into the water.
In one more day, pure water filling will be completed. After two days of debugging, it can be formally put into operation for neutrino detection.
Although neutrinos have strong penetrating power, they don’t pass through 100% of the time; there are always a very small number of neutrinos that happen to collide with atomic nuclei of water molecules, thereby producing secondary particles: electrons and muons.
In water, the speed of light is only about 75% of the speed in vacuum. And the movement speed of electrons and muons in water is faster than this speed.
Once exceeding the speed of light, it will trigger a phenomenon called Cherenkov radiation, releasing a pale blue glow.
At that time, this light will be captured by thousands upon thousands of photomultiplier tubes.
By observing these light signals, the entire neutrino collision event can be reconstructed, and thereby the various properties of neutrinos can be studied in reverse.
This is the operating principle of the Sen Mountain neutrino telescope.
Obviously, the more pure water inside the neutrino telescope, the larger the volume, the higher the probability of being hit by neutrinos, and the stronger the performance.
Precisely because of this, it needs so much pure water inside. And because it needs to improve detection accuracy and eliminate interference, it needs to be so pure.
Based on the neutrino environment where Earth is located and the comprehensive detector performance, You Zhicheng knew that this neutrino telescope could detect about 35 neutrino collision events on average per day.
“It’s finally almost built…”
You Zhicheng sighed deeply in his heart.
Thousands of kilometers away, Qinghu Lake laser interferometry gravitational wave observatory.
The current construction had progressed to the final and most important step.
Stabilizer installation.
The location of Qinghu Base is far from the city, with extremely little human activity.
The geology here is also sufficiently stable, with no volcanoes or earthquakes occurring.
This makes the stabilizer installation seem somewhat redundant. But the reality is not so.
Its precision requirements are too high. This leads to even without people, a stone falling from the nearby mountain, a wild animal running nearby, a car driving by dozens of kilometers away, or even people walking inside the base, all causing huge impact on detection precision, making it completely lose detection capability.
And this set of stabilizer device can reduce the influence of external vibrations to one millionth of the original, to ensure detection is not affected.
After two days of busy work, the stabilizer installation finally came to an end.
It was time for the first calibration experiment.
Along its full 10,000-meter length, two interferometry arms extending outward at right angles, inside the interferometry arms that had been pumped into high vacuum, two laser beams were emitted simultaneously, arriving at the end of the interferometry arms at the same time in about 30 microseconds, accurately hitting the reflector mirrors installed on the stabilizers.
The reflector mirrors instantly reflected this beam of laser back to the origin, where it was reflected again by another reflector mirror, circulating a full 10,000 times inside the interferometry arm.
One cycle, this beam of laser travels 20 kilometers. 10,000 times, that’s 200,000 kilometers.
Because the interferometry arm length is fixed, the speed of light is fixed, and the number of cycles is fixed, the time consumed for the laser to circulate 100 times in the interferometry arm should be a fixed value.
But actually it is not.
Because gravitational waves stretch space, causing extremely subtle changes in space distance.
Thus, by simply measuring the changes in time consumed for these laser beams to travel these distances, the traces of gravitational waves can be sensed, and research on them can be conducted.
According to design standards, the detection precision of the Qinghu gravitational wave detector can even reach the level of measuring the distance change of just one-fifth the thickness of a hair between the Sun and Proxima Centauri 4.2 light-years away!
At this moment, this extremely precise gravitational wave detection device had truly been completed.
Apocalypse Base No. 7. Gu Changshan looked at Jiang Yang: “Seven neutrino detectors, four gravitational wave detectors, 26 muon detectors, and supporting electromagnetic wave detectors, etc., have all been fully prepared.”
