by <unknown>
After a wave of gentle vibration barely lasting ten seconds, the rifle produced a clicking sound, indicating that its bullets had been emptied.
"Such shooting speed is double that of an ordinary machine gun…"
Chen Chen touched the barrel of the gun and only felt mild heat on its surface. Needless to say, this was the diamagnetic effect of the superconductor at play. With this implementation, the metal should not experience any wear and tear even after firing tens of thousands of rounds.
Upon testing, it was concluded that this gun could fire more than 1,200 rounds per minute, blowing the regular 17 shots per second of common guns out of the water.
In the end, the firearms statistics as tested by Chen Chen was: 545mm long, weighed 4545g after loading, aiming baseline 203mm, barrel diameter 8mm, magazine capacity 200 rounds, initial speed 1200m/s, kinetic energy 2500J, and effective range of 600m.
Chen Chen was admittedly floored by such ridiculous statistics. Even a bullet shot from a regular rifle could not reach velocity up to 800m/s as its velocity should be hovering around 1000J and effective range merely 400 meters. Even a bullet shot from a sniper rifle could not achieve the bullet speed as displayed by this rifle.
As far as its destructiveness was concerned, though it may not reach the heights of high-caliber sniper rifles, it still held up well enough on its own. With the help of armor-piercing rounds, it had no trouble piercing through 50 millimeters thick steel panels.
"Not bad at all."
After concluding the tests, Chen Chen let out a sigh. "No muzzle friction, comparable to a silencer, low recoil, destructiveness close to a sniper rifle… With all these features perfectly incorporated together, it belongs to a class of its own. With the Black Knights fully fitted with these weapons, who would dare challenge us on the battlefield?"
"These are only the middle to low range electromagnetic weapons only."
Little X explained, "The superior firepower belongs to the high range electromagnetic weapons such as the electromagnetic railguns. Using an enormous amount of electric pressure, it compresses hundreds of kilograms of shells and accelerates them to first cosmic velocity. The resulting blast can instantly flatten a mountain or obliterate an entire city in an instant."
Chen Chen broke into a smile. "We sure can manufacture such weapons, but then how do we hit the city? These aren't anti-aircraft weaponry, not unless we mount these electromagnetic cannons on top of satellites and fire from above."
"That's true."
Little X pondered on the subject. "Which is to say that the most viable option on Earth are still missiles?"
"Yes. For instance, intercontinental missiles that can pass through the atmosphere and then dive at several times the speed of sound are conventional weapons of warfare on Earth."
Chen Chen nodded. "So, unless we have missiles and established air dominance, we cannot let the Earth Federation find out what we're doing. Otherwise, what good is a superior military force if we don't have an established air dominance? We're just live targets."
"According to the information extracted from the Elysium universe, there's a mini aircraft called the 'Bugatti-Folge Luxury Transporter'. It can pass through the atmosphere layer and travels back and forth between the Earth and Elysium. It's only the size of a car."
Little X considered for a moment. "Can you try to accumulate enough energy to extract it?"
It was then when Chen Chen suddenly recalled that John Carlyle, the misfortunate bloke in the movie who was the CEO of Armadyne, seemed to have boarded the aircraft.
Inside the movie, after the protagonist shot down the aircraft John Carlyle was in, John's memory was taken away by the protagonist before his death. He was probably the upper-class member who died the most embarrassing death.
After giving it some more thought, Chen Chen shook his head and shot down Little X's theory. "This aircraft doesn't have any built-in invisibility feature. My list of requirements for an aircraft includes optical, infrared, and radar invisibility capabilities. Besides, simply having one or two of such aircraft won't change things in the grand scheme. What I need is an aircraft that can be infinitely reproduced."
"Which means that at the end of the day, it's still an issue of industrial development."
Chen Chen expressed, "If memory serves me correctly, most of these aircraft use nuclear fusion engines to traverse space. Although we have our hands on information concerning nuclear fusion engines, we still have a long way to go before we can reproduce them."
"So, for our next step, we will still have to tackle the issue of nuclear fusion…"
Chapter 259: Nuclear Fusion Device |
The three forms of nuclear reactions known to mankind were nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and nuclear decay.
Among these, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion provided energy for humans. According to Einstein's mass-energy equation, E=mc^2, as long as there was mass attenuation after the nuclear reaction, it meant that a certain amount of energy had been released.
Nuclear fission was the production of energy through mass loss caused by the fission of heavy atoms.
On the contrary, with nuclear fusion, the aggregation of light atomic nuclei produced heavier atomic nuclei and mass attenuation would occur, thereby generating energy.
Nuclear fusion was better than nuclear fission not only because nuclear fusion released a larger amount of energy, but also, more importantly, the raw materials for nuclear fusion could be extracted from seawater. Deuterium was abundant in the Earth's seawater, amounting to 40 zillion tons. If all of it was used in fusion reactions, the energy released would last humans tens of billions of years.
The common raw material for nuclear fission — uranium-235 — had scarce reserves and the resulting nuclear waste would affect geology for hundreds of years. Therefore, nuclear fission could not compare to nuclear fusion, both in terms of reserves and cleanliness.
Therefore, nuclear fusion energy was an infinite, clean, and safe new energy that countless people yearned for.
Of course, nuclear fusion did not refer only to deuterium-tritium fusion. As long as an element was lighter than iron in the periodic table, it could be used for nuclear fusion. The reason humans chose only tritium and deuterium as fusion materials was that their conditions for nuclear fusion were the simplest.
Compared with other elements, the hydrogen isotope deuterium and the tritium nucleus both only had one proton. The fusion reaction between tritium and deuterium just needed to overcome the repulsive force between the two protons, while other elements would have to overcome the repulsive force between a bunch of protons. The difficulty was not the same.
Now that Chen Chen had determined his next step to conquer nuclear fusion, he returned to his office and dug out the nuclear fusion reactor technology from the world of Elysium.
Still, after a few glances, Chen Chen frowned. He had always specialized in medicine and biology. Although he had some understanding of nuclear physics, it was superficial, a little better than lay people at most.
Thus, Chen Chen looked up and said, "X, put together immediately a document that will allow me to quickly understand nuclear physics."
As he spoke, he took out the chewing gum tin box, opened it gently, and an NZT-48 pill instantly flew into his mouth.
After that, Chen Chen's expression turned sharp and clear.
At the same time, Little X had swiftly compiled information on nuclear physics from the basics to advanced stuff. Chen Chen flipped through the technology document Little X had provided while corroborating it against the data regarding Elysium's nuclear reactor.
This time, Chen Chen could understand almost everything.
"I didn't think that there would be more than one type of nuclear fusion reactor technology used in Elysium's dimension."
Chen Chen smiled and turned to the second drawing. "It's an inertial confinement nuclear fusion reactor and a magnetic confinement nuclear fusion reactor? How incredible…"
"The
ones mainly used across the continents of the Earth Federation are mostly these two types too."
Little X explained, "But if these technologies are subdivided, they can be divided into multiple branches. There are even jokes of that sort circulating on the Internet..."
"What jokes?" Chen Chen could not refrain from asking.
"They would divide all kinds of fusion technology into the nine camps of DnD's alignment chart in a straightforward and intuitive manner. Each camp is even represented by an anthropomorphic statement."
Little X explained, "For example, a stellarator that represents 'lawful good' would state: My heart and my actions are as calm as stars and everything I do is steady.
"As for the neutral good magnetic confinement fusion, it's anthropomorphic statement is: there's no magnetism to exude, no helium-3 to combust, because I don't want to be a reactor anymore!
"And the chaotic good tokamak: Plasma current, I'll tell you again — don't you cause any more trouble!"
"In addition, there's the spherical tokamak representing lawful neutral, the field-reversed configuration tokamak representing true neutral, the magnetized target fusion representing chaotic neutral, and so on…"
As Little X went on, its voice became increasingly excited. "The funniest one is the laser fusion technology that represents chaotic evil — its anthropomorphic statement is: I'm about to f*cking shoot my load!"
"…"
Chen Chen looked up, startled. "X, did I hear correctly — you're cracking a dirty joke?"
"I, I didn't…"
Little X started to stammer. "How is that a dirty joke? Humans are dirty jokes. I'm an intelligent lifeform… Are dirty jokes even possible with intelligent lifeforms? I'm just referring to a meme, the meme of nuclear physics!"
Chen Chen shook his head and did not press the matter. He just took note that Little X was becoming increasingly human. Meanwhile, he said, "Now I understand why the development of nuclear fusion is more difficult than nuclear fission. It's because the physical principles of the two reactions are different.
"The mass of nuclear fission nuclei is relatively large and it's unstable, so fission reactions can be induced under normal temperature and pressure. However, nuclear fusion is different, for it must overcome the strong electrostatic repulsion between the nuclei. Without enough energy or special environmental conditions to break past the critical point of this repulsive force, one wouldn't be able to fuse atomic nuclei together.
"So, the key is to create a high-pressure, high-temperature environment?"
"Yup."
Little X replied, "The most common nuclear fusion reaction in the universe is the Sun. Because of its own mass, the Sun forms an ultra-high pressure of 200 billion atmospheres at its core, plus a temperature of 15 million degrees. Thus it can fuse hydrogen atoms into helium atoms.
"However, if humans want to achieve the same nuclear fusion on earth, the ultra-high pressure conditions would be completely impossible to achieve. Therefore, humans' current nuclear fusion devices need to perform at high temperatures, requiring a temperature of more than 100 million degrees compared to the Sun's core temperature of 15 million degrees.
"The simplest, most direct method is to use a large number of energized coils to form a ring along the coils, generating a strong magnetic field that produces a magnetically confined nuclear fusion reactor. This device that can generate a sufficiently strong ring-shaped magnetic field is called a 'tokamak device'.
"The other option, which is the inertial confinement nuclear fusion reactor, uses a gaseous mixture of deuterium and tritium, measured to the milligram, to fill a small ball a few millimeters in diameter. A laser beam heats it up uniformly from the outside. The spherical surface absorbs the energy and expands outward, producing a reaction force where the gas inside is compressed and highly pressurized, accompanied by a sharp rise in temperature. When the temperature reaches the required ignition point, the gas in the ball will explode and produce a lot of heat!"
Chapter 260: Laser Components |
"This process of this explosion takes a very short time, only a few picoseconds. As long as three or four such explosions occur every second and continue without break, the energy released will be equivalent to a million-kilowatt power station!"
Upon hearing Little X's explanation, Chen Chen nodded immediately. "I know a little about the tokamak device, but I remember that the tokamak has a huge flaw. The other one is the inertial confinement fusion reactor. Does the Earth Federation have similar devices?"
"Yes, the tokamak device that represents magnetic confinement does have a big flaw because the core of the tokamak device is where the magnetic field appears. To generate a magnetic field, you need to use a coil. With a coil, there'll be an electrical lead and with an electrical lead, there'll be resistance.'
Little X replied, "The more practical a tokamak device is, the stronger the magnetic field has to be and the greater the current that must be passed through the lead. Thus, the resistance of the wire comes into play. The resistance will reduce the efficiency of the coil and limit the intensity of the current so that the tokamak device can't generate an adequate magnetic field.
"As such, superconducting technology is very important. Today's Earth Federation has made low-temperature superconductors into coils so that the problem with both the volume and the loss of current can be solved. Therefore, the combination of this superconductor and the tokamak device is called the super tokamak device.
"Today, there are only three continents in the Earth Federation that have a super tokamak, namely the North American Continent, Mainland China, and the European Continent. Of these, there are five in North America, two in China, and one in Europe.
"As for inertial confinement fusion reactors, this equipment is available in many countries and continents all over the world, but the one that is truly famous is the National Ignition Facility Project in North America or NIF for short.
"This device focuses 2 million joules of energy through 192 laser beams onto a deuterium-tritium pellet with a diameter of 3 millimeters. Each laser beam discharges for about three-billionths of a second, generating a high temperature of 100 million degrees. The pressure exceeds 100 billion atmospheres, which triggers nuclear fusion."
"I got it."
Chen Chen snapped his fingers. "In other words, magnetic confinement nuclear fusion uses a strong magnetic field to confine deuterium and tritium in a magnetic container, heating it to hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius to achieve fusion reactions. On the other hand, inertial confinement uses ultra-high intensity lasers, irradiating deuterium and tritium in very short bursts to produce the fusion reaction."
After understanding this, Chen Chen looked at the nuclear fusion reactor technology from Elysium and suddenly saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
In simple terms, the focus of each of the two technologies, magnetic confinement and inertial confinement, was not the same. The magnetically confined super tokamak device had a good nuclear fusion reaction effect and did not require repeated ignition, but was disadvantaged in that it was large and rather inflexible. Moreover, the cost of electricity required to maintain a strong magnetic field was not low.
Therefore, the super tokamak device was used as a nuclear power plant reactor in Elysium's world.
The advantage of inertial confinement was that the equipment could be made to be very small and one would have more control over the ignition fire. Even so, the disadvantage was that it had to consume a lot of energy to generate lasers for continuous ignition.
Therefore, the inertial confinement device was used as a spacecraft engine in Elysium's world.
Chen Chen reviewed these two technologies and compared them with the nuclear fusion devices of the countries in the Earth Federation. He found that the biggest factor. Other than conceptual innovation, that allowed these two types of nuclear fusion devices to be produced in Elysium's world was the normal-temperature superconductor.
The normal-tempera
ture superconductor eliminated the need for a liquid helium cooling system in the super tokamak device, thus greatly reducing its complexity and cost. Coupled with the stability of high-displacement metal, a mature nuclear fusion device was naturally a matter of course.
The same was true for the inertial confinement device. The normal-temperature superconductor could increase the energy released by the laser ignition device several times over, thereby augmenting the laser's energy, even forming a laser effect called "ultra-high field". This would instantly produce an output of 200x1015 watts, which was 100,000 times larger than the total global electric energy output, yet took only less than one trillionth of a second.
With this energy, the fuel formed by deuterium and tritium could reach the critical point of nuclear fusion at once. One would not require something as complicated and huge as the NIF device, whose efficiency was not high enough anyway.
Even so, the only caveat was that if one wished to create a mature super tokamak, one still needed to use materials like high-displacement metal. Chen Chen was not capable of producing this high-displacement metal for the time being. To do so, he would need the help of particle accelerators.
Chen Chen could only flip to the page "High-Displacement Metal" and pore over its contents.
The so-called high-displacement metal was a kind of aluminum. However, it was not normal aluminum, but an isotope of aluminum.
Generally speaking, metals such as aluminum did not produce isotopes, but with the help of particle accelerators, artificial interference and manufacturing became possible.
For example, the high-displacement metal made of metallic aluminum was essentially an aluminum element with a high number of excess neutrons. One would first rely on superconductivity at room temperature to form a strong magnetic field, then used a particle accelerator to fire iron atoms through the strong magnetic region.
As the magnetic field in this region had reached an energy level that could break apart an atom, the iron atoms would disintegrate when passing through the magnetic field. The electrons would fly to one side of the magnetic field, while the protons would fly to the other side, leaving only the neutron which continued to fly forward, unaffected, while maintaining its flight trajectory.
