CCTV's Exclusive Interview

The interview was scheduled for a week later.

Lu Zhou had spent most of that time working on the miniaturization of controlled fusion.

To raise the peak temperature of the bubbles in the working liquid, Lu Zhou and several senior professors from the Acoustics Research Institute had tried modifying the ultrasonic generator. They removed its acoustic levitation stabilizer, increased the energy carried by the ultrasound, and raised the maximum acoustic pressure acting on the bubbles from 15 to 30 atmospheres.

Of course, that came at a cost.

Without the acoustic levitation stabilizer, the bubbles could no longer float steadily at the center of the container.

But sonoluminescence did not require the bubbles to remain in any particular position, so that side effect did not matter.

Once the equipment had been updated, Lu Zhou immediately repeated the experiment with Sheng Xianfu and the others. Using xenon and a deuterium-tritium mixture in separate runs, they measured the bubbles' temperatures and the crucial neutron recovery rate.

Sheng Xianfu handed Lu Zhou the completed experimental report, his expression a mixture of hope and worry.

"The situation still isn't encouraging. The peak instantaneous temperature can reach about ten million kelvin, but at its lowest, it's only around five hundred thousand kelvin."

Lu Zhou frowned as he leafed through the report.

"The variation is that large?"

Sheng Xianfu nodded gravely. "The temperature readings from blackbody radiation fluctuate a great deal. We don't know whether there's a problem with our measurements or something else."

If every bubble collapse could reach ten million kelvin, then, accounting for factors such as volume contraction, it would still be possible to sustain fusion through pulse ignition.

Unfortunately, that currently seemed difficult to achieve.

Lu Zhou asked, "What about the neutron multiplication rate?"

Sheng Xianfu hesitated. "It's improved... but it's still a