Miracles Through Brute Force, Once More
Failure is not terrible; what is terrible is not knowing why you failed.
Human engineers are not incompetent; after the first experiment failed, they quickly found the problem, improved the equipment, and then conducted a second experiment.
Once, twice, three times, four times.
Scientists and engineers constantly seek the reasons for failures, learn from them, analyze the causes, and then optimize the experiments.
However, as the number of experiments increased, scientists found that experimental optimization did not seem to bring success, because they had increased the Warp Engine's running time from the initial ten seconds to tens of hours, and still running stably for tens of hours, but the platinum plate remained motionless.
Just like Astronomical-Level Particle Collision Experiment, such results cannot defeat human scientists. When they fail, they look for the reasons, continue to work, and keep trying until they find the correct answer about the universe.
The fact that it ran for more than ten hours is enough to show that the Warp Engine is stable enough, but it still cannot move a 0.1-gram platinum plate by even one micrometer.
At this point, scientists have to look for other reasons.
Most scientists believe that the problem is not with the Warp Engine itself, because they have participated in every optimization process of the Warp Engine, and these scientists and engineers are capable of understanding the structure of the Warp Engine. They even participated in the disassembly of the 'Level 4 Civilization Warp Engine' back then, making them the most advanced experts in the field of engines in Human Civilization at this stage.
Among these people is Yu Nanfeng, who has lived since the Callisto Era's moon Ganymede.
Yu Nanfeng is a great engineer and scientist who keeps up with the times. He was originally a dynamics engineer during the Callisto Era, and was the most skilled dynamics expert on the Callisto Base. As human technology has advanced, his status has risen accordingly, and of course, his knowledge and skills have not declined, but have become even more proficient.
He was in charge of the Warp Engine research back then, and he also contributed to humanity's Mechanical Specialization. Now, he has once again become the head of the Warp Engine experimental project. Of course, he's not just doing this; he also works on research and experiments in other fields, but recently he's been focusing his main energy on the Warp Engine.
As for the current problem, Yu Nanfeng, as the person in charge, after careful investigation and analysis, believes that the problem is not with the Warp Engine, but is more likely with the energy system.
After reaching this conclusion, he wrote a report overnight on the compatibility of energy systems with Warp Engine, listing many examples of the dismantled Warp Engine power supply systems. Finally, he suggested that if humanity wanted to succeed in Warp experiments, it would need to use functional systems with the corresponding energy levels.
Simply put, the energy level is insufficient to generate the instantaneous energy that warps spacetime.
Hydrogen Nuclear Fusion is not feasible, and while Heavy Nuclear Fusion is also enormous and seemingly inexhaustible, its efficiency is insufficient and its output is not large enough. It's like having the volume of a large lake, but only being able to open a tiny, pinhole-sized opening to release the floodwater; that small amount of water has little power.
Yu Nanfeng's viewpoint received widespread support, but support is one thing, but a solution must be found after support is another; otherwise, it's just empty talk and the experiment cannot continue.
At that moment, all the scientists fell silent, because they too realized the key to the problem: the answer was obvious— Antimatter annihilation.
According to Yu Nanfeng, the main purpose of providing the Warp Engine Antimatter annihilation-level energy would be to provide it with a sufficiently large instantaneous energy, allowing its core to generate a powerful force that distorts spacetime.
However, everyone knows that humans do not have the ability to produce Antimatter in large quantities, and even if they could, they would not be able to preserve it stably.
It should be noted that charged antiparticles can also be called Antimatter, but the so-called large-scale production of Antimatter refers to electrically neutral Antimatter, just like the matter in real life.
Humans do have the ability to produce small quantities of charged antiparticles, such as Anti-Electron, Anti-Proton, and Anti-Neutron. These can be produced and separated, and with the current technological capabilities of Level 3 Civilization, they can even mix them together to form electrically neutral Antimatter. However, they do not have the ability to preserve them after they have coalesced into electrically neutral Antimatter.
However, Warp Engine require energy at the level of Antimatter annihilation to operate, which brings us back to the beginning of the problem— the Grand Unified Theory.
Humanity needs to master Grand Unified Theory before it can mass-produce and store Antimatter. From this perspective, Warp experiments seem to have reached their limit and can only continue after a Grand Unified Theory is mastered.
At this moment, human scientists have a clearer understanding of why the Grand Unified Theory has become the hallmark theory of Level 4 Civilization. Without this theory, it would be impossible to develop those Level 4 Civilization technologies. Even if one knows that a certain technology will inevitably be mastered after becoming Level 4 Civilization, it would be impossible to overcome the hurdle of the Grand Unified Theory.
The towering barrier of the Grand Unified Theory, like a High Mountain, once again looms over humanity.
A fortress, indeed a fortress.
However, just when everyone thought that the Warp experiment could only continue after the realization of the Grand Unified Theory, Yu Nanfeng put forward a bold idea.
He believes it is possible to create an external device based on a high-strength magnetic field confinement, specifically designed to store a large number of positrons. Once enough positrons have been stored, they can be driven by the magnetic field to be injected into the combustion chamber of Warp Engine, where they will annihilate with an equal number of electrons injected from another direction.
Then, the high-energy generated by the annihilation of these massive numbers of Anti-Electron is used to drive the Warp Engine.
Yu Nanfeng was as wild as ever. Everyone's eyelids twitched when they heard this idea, because according to Yu Nanfeng's explanation, this so-called 'external device based on high-strength magnetic field confinement' was actually a huge Positron Cannon, except that it had an additional ring magnetic field for binding positrons, which was what he called a storage device.
The entire device is a combination of a Positron Cannon and a strong magnetic field confinement device.
Yu Nanfeng even stated that if one Positron Cannon does not produce enough positrons, then two or three cannons can be used. In short, as long as there are enough positrons, they can be instantly annihilated to generate enough energy to drive Warp Engine.
That's true; Miracles Through Brute Force. But it's extremely risky to implement. At the very least, the laboratory can't be located on Research Ship like it is now. Otherwise, a single mishap could result in the energy spacetime created by the annihilation of a large number of Anti-Electron, leading to certain destruction and loss of life.
They decided to act on it immediately, since humans had already done things with even crazier ideas than this one.
The new Testing Ground was set up separately in outer space. In order to complete the experiment as soon as possible, Yu Nanfeng also applied for several warships with Positron Cannon as their main guns and removed and modified them.
Fearing that a mistake during the experiment might cause the Warp Engine used in the experiment to be scrapped, Yu Nanfeng specifically instructed the experimental team to prepare several experimental prototypes. That way, if one or two were destroyed due to a mistake, it wouldn't be a waste of time waiting for the next prototype to be produced.