There wasn't much time left for the "He-3" project team.
Everyone was like a tightly wound alarm clock; they were racing against time.
Finally, with everyone's hard work, a slightly rough prototype was finally completed.
The prototype was divided into two parts. One part was an "atom gun" used to accelerate and launch helium-3 atoms, and the other part was a target material installed in the vacuum chamber to receive helium-3 atoms. As for the computers and various observation components, they were all necessary; there was no need to mention them.
As for why this prototype was said to be rough …
That was because almost all of its parts were pieced together.
The acceleration track of the atom gun was modified from a small particle accelerator from the Argonne National Laboratory. The vacuum chamber used to bind the plasma was designed by the PPPL when they were researching the stellarator.
The entire set of experimental equipment could only heat the plasma to 7,000 degrees at most, which was far from 100 million degrees. The electromagnetic field used to bind the plasma was also much lower than the stellarator's 10T.
However, even then, this was enough.
Any experiment began with proving its feasibility. They didn't need to complete a nuclear fusion ignition in this simple vacuum chamber. They didn't even need to completely simulate the density of the plasma in the stellarator.
They only needed to successfully collect data from the plasma and analyze the data to obtain a more accurate "observation" conclusion than the plasma "diagnosis".
Finally, they had to solve the "method migration" problem and make this observation device work on the stellarator.
Actually, Lu Zhou's original idea was to get the stellarator that the WEGA experimental group had abandoned.
However, he only thought about it. Professor Lazerson clearly told him that this thing wasn't something that could be bought with money.
In short, this prototype was finally complete!
The particle accelerator was "loaded" with the atom gun, and the target material that received helium-3 atoms was tungsten-titanium alloy, which was widely used in high-speed particle impact experiments. Behind the target material, there were probes with different sensitivity and functions used to receive impact data.
So far, even though the entire project had encountered a lot of problems, it was generally quite smooth.
After the final debugging was completed, Professor Lazerson immediately announced the start of the first experiment.
The researchers in the laboratory had been working on this project for countless days and nights and had put in a lot of effort. Now that they had finally completed the assembly of the entire device, they needed a success to raise their morale!
However …
Things did not progress as smoothly as everyone had imagined.
The moment the helium-3 atom was shot into the high-temperature plasma, it was heated to the plasma state in a short time. The detector connected to the outer wall of the simulation device also collected electromagnetic wave data caused by the collision of helium-3 atoms.
Fate seemed to be playing a joke on all the researchers here. The helium-3 atom fired by the atomic gun did not pass through the plasma as expected.
No matter where it ended up, it did not hit the target material.
Apparently, they had successfully fired the bullets.
However, the bullet was not successfully retrieved.
Without a doubt, the first experiment had failed …
…
The 21st experiment ended.
The atmosphere in the laboratory was unusually heavy.
The probe installed behind the material still did not detect the helium-3 atom hitting the target material …
Up until now, they were facing the biggest bottleneck since the beginning of the project.
If the fired bullet could not be retrieved, then the bullet would be meaningless.
The first person to break the silence was a controllable nuclear fusion engineer.
He asked in an uncertain tone, "Is it possible that the probe isn't sensitive enough? Actually, the collision has already happened, we just didn't observe it. "
This was a possibility. If the collision signal was weak enough, it might have been ignored by the detector.
"Impossible." Another plasma physicist shook his head and said, "The electromagnetic wave waveform is very obvious. The energy of the helium-3 particle has already decayed beyond the threshold. There is no need to observe it at all, it has already deviated from its original trajectory … You should know this, right?"
The plasma physicist looked at Lu Zhou and said this.
Lu Zhou didn't say anything. He just nodded with a dignified look on his face.
From the changes in the electromagnetic spectrum image, he could tell that the helium-3 atom did not penetrate the plasma. Instead, it "disappeared" during the collision with the plasma particles.
It might have been confined to the electromagnetic field along with the plasma, or it might have broken through the electromagnetic field and plasma. However, the direction of the particle's motion had completely changed due to the collision …
If the particle that was shot into the chaotic system couldn't be observed, then it would become a part of the chaotic system. Even if it still existed, it would undoubtedly be "missing".
The research seemed to have reached a dead end …
"This idea might not work at all." Professor Lazerson took off his hard hat and looked at the computer screen with a dignified look. He then looked at Lu Zhou and said, "The plasma used in the experiment was only heated to a temperature of 7,000 degrees, and the density is far from the density of the plasma in the stellarator …"
Professor Lazerson didn't finish his sentence, but his meaning was clear.
Even though the difficulty was reduced to this level, the helium-3 particle still couldn't penetrate the plasma as expected. Not to mention, the temperature of the stellarator was hundreds of millions of degrees.
Lu Zhou stared at the dark screen with a dignified look on his face. After a long silence, he suddenly spoke.
"We need an atomic gun with a higher firing power!"
"Yes, we need an atomic gun with a higher firing power. It would be best to use the Swiss Hadron Collider as an acceleration module. We can insert a rocket into our helium-3 particle so that it can penetrate all the particles on the way …" Professor Lazerson laughed self-deprecatingly and shook his head. He then said, "But you know, this is obviously impossible."
"It's not that ridiculous." Lu Zhou shook his head and said, "I just calculated it. We only need to increase the acceleration electric field intensity of the atomic gun to 1T. Theoretically, our He3 particle can penetrate the plasma and hit the target material at a limited angle."
This wasn't a rigorous calculation; it was a conservative estimate based on experience.
Maybe not 1T, but 1T was definitely enough.
"This is ridiculous! The stellarator's magnetic field intensity is only 10T! " Professor Lazerson couldn't help but roar, "Seriously, do you mathematicians have any idea what your calculations are? Do you know how expensive the superconducting material and the liquid helium are? "
Ultimately, it came down to funding.
Even though PPPL was nutty, and they spent a lot of money to build this laboratory, the annual funding was only US $40 million.
This money had to be allocated to many projects, and the "He3 atom probe" technology was probably less than US $4 million.
They used the old equipment to modify and recycle the parts, not only to save time on customizing new equipment, but also to save money.
After all, every experiment they did was burning money.
An idea popped up in Professor Lazerson's mind.
Maybe working with this guy was a bad decision from the beginning.
The other engineers in the laboratory looked at Professor Lazerson, who was losing his temper, and remained silent.
Lu Zhou's request was a bit too much. It was like a rich man telling a poor man that bread wasn't enough to fill his stomach, so why not eat cake?
Lu Zhou didn't say anything as he quietly waited for Lazerson to finish speaking.
Lu Zhou looked at Professor Lazerson, who was trembling with anger, and he coughed and slowly spoke.
"What if I can solve the funding problem?"
(
Thank you to the leader of "Bookworm" for your tip!
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