After the second purification battle of Blue Star, Huang Mingzhe has been busy with meetings. It was only in October that he had time to devote to scientific research projects.
The project Huang Mingzhe is currently working on is called "Multiple Controllable Nuclear Fusion Reactor", which is an advanced version of the controllable nuclear fusion reactor.
When antimatter cannot be produced on a large scale, multiple controllable nuclear fusion is the next stage of energy technology for new humanity.
Inside the Lianhuashan Nuclear Research and Development Base in Lingnan.
Huang Mingzhe was in the laboratory with Wei Feng, Dong Kuan and others.
Lines of nuclear fusion reaction formulas appeared on the virtual display, as well as structural improvements to the controllable nuclear fusion reactor.
Dong Kuan stopped helplessly and said: "We can only fuse hydrogen nuclei to the carbon atom stage now, and there is still a long way to go before iron atoms."
"We must improve the nuclear fusion reactor. In the future era of interstellar navigation, if we can only fuse heavy hydrogen nuclei into carbon atoms, the utilization efficiency of nuclear fuel will be too low." Huang Mingzhe is very determined.
This project was established by him personally. Although the particle collider in Xi'an can produce antimatter, the antihydrogen they have collected so far is only a pitiful 0.000026 milligrams.
Even the very large particle collider planned to be built on the moon is estimated to be able to produce up to 0.02 to 0.03 milligrams of antihydrogen per year.
This small amount of antihydrogen is of no use at all, and even for experiments, it is too little. As for using it to generate energy, the new humanity may lose its pants.
Until the antimatter output reaches one kilogram, nuclear fusion technology will still be the most advanced energy production technology for new mankind.
"From DD nuclear fusion to carbon atoms, the energy production efficiency has actually improved a lot." Wei Feng feels that it has reached a bottleneck period.
Huang Mingzhe touched the stubble on his chin and thought for a long time: "We have to start from two aspects. On the one hand, we need to improve the power generation efficiency of the nuclear fusion reactor, that is, the heat utilization rate and light utilization rate."
"It makes sense." Dong Kuan nodded.
Everyone else understands this truth. Currently, the highest energy composite utilization rate of the Jinwu nuclear fusion reactor is between 76.53 and 77.21%, which means that 22.79 to 23.47% of the energy is wasted.
You must know that the current controllable nuclear fusion power generation of New Humanity alone on Blue Star has reached 127 trillion kilowatt hours.
After the large-scale entry into outer space in the future, the application scale of controllable nuclear fusion will be even larger, and this waste will be very huge.
Wei Feng suddenly remembered something: "By the way, I remember that the Heart of Nibelung I obtained before had an energy siphon system. How was the research?"
Huang Mingzhe shook his head and replied: "The materials have been analyzed by research, but the problem is that there is no way to synthesize it. The laboratory has tried many methods, but is at a loss."
"Why is the material so difficult to work with?" Dong Kuan was very surprised.
With the current material technology of New Humanity, and as long as we have a sample in hand, there should be no problem in replicating it.
"You will understand after reading it." After Huang Mingzhe said this, he shared a top-secret document with the two of them.
Wei Feng glanced at it and studied it carefully. After a while, he shook his head with a wry smile: "I understand."
"It's no wonder it's an 8-neutron material." Dong Kuan also suddenly realized.
The so-called 8-neutron material is an atom composed purely of 8 neutrons. This is a special kind of atom that the new human academic community speculates exists, but has never confirmed its existence - a pure neutron atom.
Huang Mingzhe spread his hands and said: "You understand now! We have no way to reverse engineer it for the time being, because pure neutron materials are a new field."
After casually deleting the file, Wei Feng asked: "Pure neutron materials Mingzhe, I think this is a general direction for the future, what is the scientific committee's attitude towards this?"
"I have discussed it with others and have increased investment in this area." Huang Mingzhe is not a fool.
With the Heart of Nibelung in hand, if he still does not pay attention to research in this area, then he is not worthy of being the chairman of the scientific committee.
Everyone brought the topic back to nuclear fusion.
Currently, it is possible to fuse heavy hydrogen atoms into carbon atoms, but there is not much improvement in energy production.
The atomic weight of the heavy hydrogen atom is 2.016, the atomic weight of the helium atom is 4.003, the atomic weight of the carbon atom is 12.011, and the atomic weight of the iron atom is 55.845.
84 heavy hydrogen (169.344) = 42 helium atoms (168.126)
84 heavy hydrogens (169.344) = 14 carbon atoms (168.154)
78 heavy hydrogens (157.248) + 12 neutrons (12.084) = 3 iron atoms (167.535)
From the above reaction raw materials to the final product of the reaction, it can be seen that heavy hydrogen → helium and heavy hydrogen → carbon. The mass loss in these two processes is more heavy hydrogen → helium than heavy hydrogen → carbon.
According to the test of the Jinwu nuclear fusion reactor by Huang Mingzhe and others, the energy output power only increased by 4.36 to 4.61% when the nuclear fusion reaction reached the carbon atom stage.
And if the iron atomic stage can be reacted, the energy output is expected to increase by 50 to 60%.
The difference between the two is very huge, so the carbon atom stage is just a transitional stage.
Of course, this does not mean that the carbon atom stage is useless. The carbon stage does not necessarily need to use deuterium as nuclear fuel. Helium, lithium, etc. can also be used as nuclear fuel.
As nuclear fusion gets closer to iron atoms, it means that more types of nuclear fuel elements can be used, and more types of nuclear fuel can be used, which can improve the convenience of supplying spacecraft in outer space.
After all, there are a lot of elements before iron atoms in the universe. Even in the empty interstellar space, there are more or less free hydrogen atoms and helium atoms.
For example, the amount of helium 3 brought out by the solar wind is very large.
Even worse, there are asteroids and the like that can be captured and used as nuclear fuel supplies.
Huang Mingzhe encouraged: "Let's work harder. Anyway, there are a lot of scientific researchers now. I don't believe that the new human race with hundreds of millions of engineers and scientists will be weaker than the poor and useless people in the 1950s and 1960s."
"That's true." Dong Kuan replied with a smile.
Now the engineers and scientists of the new humanity are the main components of society.
Currently, the number of registered engineers and scientists reaches 460 million, and there are still many who have not had time to be certified, or simply have no interest in certification.
So many engineers and scientists are now involved in thousands of fields, large and small. On average, tens of thousands of engineers and scientists can be assigned to one project.
Compared with the 1950s and 1960s, not only has there been a qualitative leap in terms of quantity, but also in terms of personnel quality, the new humans equipped with biocomputers can almost outnumber ten.
If they can't come up with anything good, they might as well buy a piece of tofu and kill him.
The Scientific Committee, which is going all out, is vigorously developing various fields, and many projects have been launched one after another. Regardless of whether there are gains or not, we will study them first.
If out of 10,000 laboratories, only 100 achieve results later, it will not be a loss for the new humanity and the Science Committee.
In the new era of extremely abundant materials and energy, new humanity has already broken away from the operating model of the capital economy.
It is no longer the capital market that determines R&D, but the needs of civilization that determine R&D. This is an essential difference.
If the capital market operates controllable nuclear fusion and biological computers, it is estimated that the gap between the rich and the poor in human society will further increase.
This is a different purpose, resulting in different results.
One is for money, the other is for civilization, the two are very different.