Gazing at the dim star in the sky, Li Qingsong’s heart was heavy.
As long as he could still see it, it meant the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity Fleet was still accelerating. This meant the time until their inevitable return would be shorter, and his own hope of achieving a breakthrough would grow ever slimmer.
At this moment, calculations showed the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity Fleet’s speed was already approaching a critical threshold.
Just as despair began to creep into Li Qingsong’s heart—just as he started contemplating starting over, planning how to preserve as many Clones and as much of his hard-won technology as possible in the process—he suddenly saw it. The dim star had vanished.
’What’s going on? It vanished?’
In disbelief, Li Qingsong aimed more Deep Space telescopes in that direction for a detailed scan. But after failing to detect anything, a wave of elation washed over him.
The space was empty, holding nothing but the vast, deep expanse of the Cosmos. Even with his most advanced Deep Space detection methods, he could no longer find the slightest glimmer of light.
’It’s really... really gone?’
’The acceleration has actually stopped?’
Right now, the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity Fleet’s speed was only 9.4% of the speed of light!
At this speed, the time it would take them to reach a new Interstellar System, gather resources, recover their strength, and then return to the Pegasus V432 Star System would extend to at least 305 years. That was more than the time he estimated he needed to break through to the Strong Core Level!
He had a very real chance of making the breakthrough from the Electroweak Level to the Strong Core Level in that time, and even completing the initial phase of fleet construction!
Even if he did break through, he would only be at the Early Stage of Strong Core. He might not even have enough time to convert his technological advancements into actual combat strength, meaning he’d still be no match for the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity Fleet in a direct confrontation. But so what?
’If I can’t beat them, I can at least run, right?’
’Even if I still can’t get away—and that’s highly likely—I can at least buy myself some more time, can’t I?’
What Li Qingsong had been desperately striving for wasn’t to defeat or annihilate the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity Fleet, or even to truly escape their pursuit.
That wasn’t realistic.
After enduring for so many years—after exhausting his mind and body, calculating every possibility, and leveraging every conceivable advantage—all Li Qingsong had ever wanted was just to buy a little more time!
If his fleet’s speed could just be a little faster, Li Qingsong had a chance to achieve subsequent breakthroughs in "applied" physics during his escape, allowing him to truly convert his fundamental breakthroughs into tangible combat strength.
Only then would he have a chance of truly confronting the Intelligent Mechanical Calamity Fleet head-on.
At this moment, even though he had achieved the unprecedented feat of forcing back a Strong Core-level Intelligent Mechanical Calamity while only at the Electroweak Level, this was still just the first step in Li Qingsong’s grand plan.
In the future, there was no telling how many more trials awaited.
But at least, the first step had been taken successfully. ’Since that’s the case, why overthink it? No matter what the future holds, I’ll focus on giving my all to the present!’
"Finally, I can finally shut out all external distractions and throw myself completely into fundamental physics research."
Recalling the hardships of the past, Li Qingsong cherished this opportunity more than anything.
This opportunity was truly hard-won... Every minute, every second, was so precious that Li Qingsong felt that wasting even a moment of it would be a terrible crime.
"From this moment on, no one can stop me from studying fundamental physics. No one!"
Li Qingsong’s heart surged with emotion.
At this moment, the first major scientific instrument needed to truly challenge the unification of the Strong Core Force was complete.
It was a gigantic water tank with a total volume of over one hundred million cubic meters, built tens of thousands of meters deep beneath the surface of a dwarf planet.
It was a neutrino telescope.
Right now, Li Qingsong’s main task was to verify whether proton decay truly existed, and by extension, whether his own grand unification model was correct. Only once this foundation was laid could the subsequent work proceed.
The task of verifying proton decay, while seemingly unrelated to a neutrino telescope, was actually a closely connected one.
This was because when large scientific instruments like neutrino telescopes were first developed, their primary purpose was to verify proton decay. It was only because research into proton decay stagnated, and the device happened to show unique advantages in the field of neutrino research, that its focus gradually shifted to neutrinos.
A neutrino telescope functions by using an extremely deep external shield to eliminate as much outside interference as possible, allowing only neutrinos to enter the pure water inside the detector.
Once a neutrino collides with the microscopic particles that make up the water molecules, the resulting secondary particles travel faster than light does in water, triggering Cherenkov radiation due to their superluminal speed, which is then captured as a signal.
The method for detecting proton decay is similar.
A proton’s lifespan is extremely long, and its probability of decay is extremely low.
According to the preliminary research data Li Qingsong currently possessed, he believed the minimum lifespan of a proton was approximately 10^36 years—that is, a one followed by thirty-six zeroes.
This is the lower limit, meaning a proton lives for at least that long.
This number far exceeds the current age of the Cosmos, approximately 13.8 billion years.
Assuming a proton’s lifespan is this minimum number, then the probability of a single proton decaying at any point between the birth of the Cosmos and now is only about one in 7.25 x 10^25.
He could watch a single proton until the end of time, until the very death of the Cosmos, and he would still never see it decay.
So how could proton decay be detected?
The method Li Qingsong chose was to increase the probability of observing a decay event by increasing the number of protons under observation.
The probability of a single proton decaying in one year is one in 10^36. So what about 10,000 protons?
Obviously, the probability of one of those protons decaying within a year would increase to 10,000 in 10^36.
And what if Li Qingsong had 10^36 protons?
Then the probability of at least one proton decaying within a year would approach 100%.
The proton decay detector Li Qingsong had built—or neutrino detector, since they were essentially the same thing—contained a reservoir of 120 million tons of pure water.
A single water molecule contains ten protons. Therefore, 120 million tons of water contains approximately 4 x 10^37 protons.
This number was 40 times the lower limit of the proton’s expected lifespan.
In other words, if the proton’s lifespan happened to be exactly that number, the proton decay detector Li Qingsong had built would be able to detect approximately 40 decay events per year—an average of one event every nine days.
Even if the proton’s expected lifespan was ten times longer, at 10^37 years, the detector was still sensitive enough to capture one event every 90 days.