Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 374 Black Hole Factory
At this moment, the construction of this detector is being carried out by two massive factories that are as large as mountain peaks.

Both of these "mountains" have extremely flat bases and are connected to each other.

With the supply of numerous materials and energy from the outside, it quietly began to operate, and then the two mountain peaks separated, with a thin pillar stretching out between them.

This pillar is only one centimeter in diameter, which is insignificant compared to the massive mountain peaks. However, it was created by two giant factories, each the size of a mountain peak, operating at full capacity and using Li Qingsong's most advanced technology at this stage.

Inside the two giant factories, there is a series of extremely complex machines that, through a series of intricate mechanisms, transform conventional materials into this powerful core material, building it up from both ends of the pillar like building blocks, making it longer and longer.

After a series of complex processes, this stage of the construction process is completed, and the substance can then be "expelled" from the body.

After the pillar was stretched to a length of more than ten meters, some robots quickly approached and carefully inspected its condition.

What appeared to Li Qingsong at this moment was not some kind of powerful nuclear pillar made of advanced technology, but a mirror.

A round mirror.

Its surface is so smooth that it has an almost 100% albedo. Any light that hits its surface will be reflected back.

So Li Qingsong saw a sky full of stars, robots one after another, a factory as huge as a mountain, and spaceships parked in the distance from this pillar.

It has no color of its own, nor does it have its own shape. Whatever color you place near it, it takes that color. Whatever you place near it, it takes the shape of that thing.

After inspecting the structure and confirming that everything was normal, the robots immediately brought over two spherical shells, attached them to the outside of the pillar, and carefully protected it.

After the initial debugging period, the two mountain-like factories increased their speed in pulling out the pillar, reaching an average speed of 1000 meters per second.

This speed is not slow, but compared to its designed length of 10 billion kilometers, it will take about 32 years to complete the construction of this pillar.

This is taking too long. Li Qingsong doesn't want to wait that long, but there's nothing he can do.

He could not manufacture these pillars by having multiple factories operate simultaneously and then connecting the different pillars together.

Because of their unique atomic arrangement, these pillars cannot be "welded" together. Even if they were to be forcibly joined using other methods, it would inevitably lead to a significant decrease in detection accuracy, rendering them meaningless.

All Li Qingsong could do was to be honest and simply build the factory using a two-factory construction model.

Of course, this is not the only detector that has started construction.

At different locations, Li Qingsong simultaneously built ten of these pillars, which became ten gravity detectors.

Time passed quietly, and soon, this slender pillar stretched to a length of 100 million kilometers.

Despite its length, it remains almost perfectly straight, with virtually no bends.

Li Qingsong was able to confirm this without any detection device.

The reason is simple: once the curvature exceeds the threshold, the pillar will collapse on its own, and there is no way to save it.

At this length, Li Qingsong became increasingly cautious, fearing that the movement of the two giant factories might deviate even slightly.

To achieve such high precision and ensure that the pulled-out column would not bend in the slightest, Li Qingsong even had to build a complete high-precision positioning system.

By employing 36 positioning satellites operating together, using stars, planets, and distant neutron stars as positioning sources, Li Qingsong can ensure that even if the two giant factories are constantly traveling at a speed of 500 meters per second, which adds up to 1 meters per second, even if they fly continuously for 100 years, the deviation will not exceed one-tenth of the radius of a proton!

It is precisely because of this powerful and precise positioning system that the construction of this pillar became feasible.

Even with such high precision, one of the ten pillars under construction collapsed instantly when its length reached 2.6 million kilometers.

At that moment, losing its stability, the 2.6 million-kilometer-long pillar with a total mass of 14.3 billion tons instantly disintegrated into the most basic atoms, and after a violent release of energy, it turned into interstellar dust and disappeared.

Li Qingsong sighed.

This wasn't a technical issue, nor was it something that Li Qingsong could have resolved simply by being careful. It was just bad luck.

Fortunately, the other nine stations went smoothly.

While continuing the construction of the remaining nine telescopes, Li Qingsong then began building a new gravitational telescope.

Time slowly passed, and unexpected accidents kept happening, causing all the previous efforts to vanish in an instant.

Whenever a "pillar" collapses, Li Qingsong immediately starts new construction to make up for the shortfall.

This process continued for over 30 years, during which nine of the original ten detectors failed, with only one succeeding. Even if everything went smoothly, the remaining detectors, which were to be rebuilt, would not be completed for at least another eight years.

"That's good. As long as one is successfully built, we can start observations."

At this moment, the outer shell built around this pillar, which tightly encloses it, has been laid out, and various observation equipment has been installed.

Under the watchful eyes of countless eager eyes, Li Qingsong finally issued the order that everyone had been waiting for.

"Gravity 1 probe...start!"

In an instant, the entire space inside the pipe, surrounding the almost perfectly straight pillar, was filled with a soft, pale red light.

Those were various detection devices observing the changing light emanating from this pillar.

Once a gravitational wave of sufficient intensity carrying energy and capable of interacting with matter and spacetime passes through, causing a corresponding change in the pillar, these detection devices can immediately detect it.

Li Qingsong and the scientists can then use the changes in this pillar to deduce the various properties of gravitons.

Compared to the past, Li Qingsong's gravitational wave detection technology has advanced significantly, with current detection precision reaching the level of 10^-24. At such precision, even a slight increase or decrease of just one hundred millionth of a meter in length of a light-year can be detected.

Such gravitational wave events are not uncommon in the universe. Not to mention violent physical events such as neutron star collisions, black hole mergers, and supernova explosions, even planetary-scale collisions can be detected.

After it was completed, Li Qingsong began to wait.

He didn't have to wait long. Soon, the first gravitational wave event occurred.

The spacetime distortion caused by this gravitational wave event is about 5*10^-23, which is roughly equivalent to a change of only 1/50 millionth of a meter in the length of a light-year.

For this column, which is 10 billion kilometers long, this would be equivalent to the gravitational wave event causing it to shorten by 2 nanometers for about 0.3 seconds.

So……

What happened inside a pillar made using strong nuclear technology, with extremely high density and a very tight and orderly arrangement of atoms, that was shortened by 2 nanometers?
What changes did this alteration cause in the atomic arrangement? What about energy? What about the arrangement?
Li Qingsong knew that the mysteries of gravitons were hidden within these changes.

The mere 0.3 seconds and 2 nanometers of change in length of the pillar during that time were all detected by the ubiquitous detector.

In such a short period of time, the detector generated approximately 800 million TB of observational data.

Using the original AI as a tool, Li Qingsong's hundreds of millions of clones, along with about 100 million scientists in the same field, all devoted themselves to analyzing this data.

Less than five hours after this gravitational wave event, another gravitational wave event occurred. This time, the Gravitational Telescope 1 (GTT) showed a length change of about 0.8 nanometers, generating another 7.2 million TB of data.

On average, this telescope observes about three gravitational wave events per day.

After the second telescope was built, the number of events observed remained at three, but the amount of data doubled.

Although it is the detection of the same gravitational wave event, the generated data will differ due to different angles, just like observing the shape of the same object from different directions.

This undoubtedly helps to understand the original appearance of an object more accurately.

As a result, the amount of data that Li Qingsong and his team of scientists needed to analyze each day climbed to around 4000 million TB.

Once all ten gravitational telescopes are completed, the amount of data that needs to be analyzed daily will surge to approximately 1.9 million TB.

As a result, Li Qingsong had to build more than 10,000 large supercomputing centers to barely stop the surging data flow.

Even with the assistance of the Primordial AI, Li Qingsong and the scientists were still working day and night, with their rest time greatly reduced.

"Fortunately, I have the ability to control clones, and my data analysis and processing efficiency is high enough."

In a typical civilization, let alone building a gravitational telescope, the data analysis and processing alone would probably take hundreds of years. Hmm… perhaps spending hundreds of years painstakingly completing this data analysis is the normal state of affairs in this universe. Someone like me, simultaneously building ten gravitational telescopes and completing the data analysis within 20 years, is truly an anomaly.”

Thinking this way, Li Qingsong felt even more motivated and threw himself into the seemingly endless data analysis with even greater enthusiasm.

Time passed little by little, and those 10 strong nuclear pillars, each 10 billion kilometers long, were constantly compressed, stretched, "vibrated," and changed by gravitational waves that came from an unknown source, like kneading dough.

In these repeated changes, the interaction mechanism between gravitons and matter was revealed through the changes in the tightly packed atoms, gradually appearing before Li Qingsong, allowing him to deduce the various properties of gravitons.

On this day, when the roar of supercomputer 77656 ceased once more, and the final calculation results were displayed on the computer terminal, and then combined with many other results, the last missing piece of the puzzle regarding the theory of gravitational quantization was finally put together in front of Li Qingsong.

call……

Li Qingsong let out a long sigh of relief, a surge of indescribable joy welling up inside him.

The work on quantization of gravity is finally complete at this moment.

Gravity, this "barbarian," was finally enlightened by Li Qingsong, this "intelligent race," and possessed various values ​​belonging to the same framework, which could be described by the same physical language.

The most crucial prerequisite for the systematic work of unifying gravity has finally been met.

At that moment, all the researchers involved in this work applauded enthusiastically, and cheers filled every research institution.

When this progress spread to intelligent life forms, people cheered and celebrated even though they did not understand the scientific logic and principles behind it.

Because people understand the significance of this work, and know that once the work of quantizing gravity is completed, the biggest obstacle to becoming a gravitational civilization will be removed.

In this moment of universal celebration, Haimeran and Li Qingsong personally convened a large-scale celebration that affected every race in the entire civilization, including the human race and the electromagnetic race.

With a wave of his hand, Li Qingsong set off hundreds of thousands of special fireworks centered around a high-yield hydrogen bomb. The cultural performances, featuring outstanding artists from all races, lasted for five days. All the researchers involved in this scientific research project received hero treatment, and Li Qingsong even granted them a six-month vacation.

"According to the descriptions in some literary works of human civilization, I was probably a peak civilization with strong cores before. Now that I have completed the work of quantizing gravitons, I can probably be considered as... a half-step gravity?"
Unfortunately, this so-called half-step into gravity is merely a breakthrough at the theoretical physics level, and it has almost no corresponding application in physics. My current combat power is still no different from my previous peak strength.

We still need to work harder and take this half step in one go.

While allowing researchers who had worked tirelessly for over a century to take turns resting, Li Qingsong maintained a consistently intense work ethic.

Having completed the work on quantizing gravitons, Li Qingsong finally understood what exactly the environment was that allowed gravitons to transform from virtual to real.

Now is the perfect time to build the corresponding experimental equipment while the scientists of intelligent life are taking a break.

After several months of research, Li Qingsong designed a brand-new particle collider system.

Particle colliders have been in widespread use since the electroweak period of human civilization, and have played an irreplaceable role.

Now, it has been revitalized once again and has taken on a vital mission once more.

The biggest change in particle colliders built using high-energy physics technology compared to the electronegative era is the increase in energy levels.

This energy level is even high enough to mass-produce miniature black holes!
That's right, the kind of environment that can cause gravitons to transform from virtual to real is the annihilation of a black hole!

The lifespan of a black hole is related to its mass. Based on Hawking radiation, even a black hole can be considered as constantly "radiating" energy outwards.

Of course, this radiation is not ordinary radiation, after all, the gravity of a black hole is so strong that even light cannot escape.

This radiation is Hawking radiation, a special type of radiation based on virtual particle pairs and the mechanism by which virtual particles transform from virtual to real.

Based on the vacuum fluctuation mechanism, pairs of virtual particles will frequently appear out of thin air in space, one carrying positive mass and the other carrying negative mass. The moment they appear, they will annihilate each other and return to calm.

However, the environment around a black hole is extremely unique. Virtual particle pairs born there will undergo a certain mechanism that causes virtual particles carrying positive mass to transform from virtual to real, thereby escaping the black hole's gravitational field and radiating outwards.

Where energy is created, there is also energy loss. Thus, from the outside perspective, it appears as if a black hole is constantly radiating energy outwards while losing its own mass.

The lower the mass of a black hole, the more intense its Hawking radiation, and the shorter its lifespan.

如同太阳一般质量的黑洞，其寿命约为1.6*10^67年，地球一般质量的黑洞，寿命便只有1.1*10^50年了。

A black hole with the mass of Mount Everest has a lifespan of about 6.5 x 10^19 years. So... what if a black hole had a mass of only one proton?

Through calculations, Li Qingsong knew that its lifespan was only about 3.1*10^-97 seconds, which was even far less than the Planck time.

Clearly, since only the annihilation of a black hole can create the special environment that allows gravitons to materialize, and the lower the mass of a black hole, the shorter its lifespan, the solution for detecting gravitons becomes quite obvious:
Mass-produce miniature black holes and observe their annihilation process extensively!
Particle colliders are a very suitable tool for mass-producing miniature black holes.

Of course, this requires an extremely high energy level for the particle collider. And Li Qingsong, who already possesses the technological prowess of a high-powered nuclear collider, happens to have this capability.

Thus, another large-scale construction project was launched.

Around a planet in this galaxy, countless large industrial spaceships began to converge. With the concerted efforts of numerous intelligent robots and machines, a giant particle collider with a radius of about 20 meters and a length of about 5 kilometers gradually appeared before Li Qingsong.

Building such a giant particle collider would likely take an ordinary, high-level nuclear civilization, even one like the Purple Moon civilization, which possesses near-limited internal organizational power due to being infected by the Demon Eye, hundreds of years.

For Li Qingsong, however, building it only took less than a year. Furthermore, Li Qingsong didn't build just one, but ten!

At different orbital altitudes and next to different planets, Li Qingsong built a total of 10 giant particle colliders!

In this way, Li Qingsong's rate of producing miniature black holes is ten times that of ordinary civilizations. While an ordinary civilization would need a thousand years of continuous observation to accumulate enough data, Li Qingsong could do it in just 100 years.

In addition, Li Qingsong's even stronger data analysis and processing capabilities save even more time.

With the construction of the giant particle collider completed and the scientists working on their rotations finished, they are now ready to get back to work.

So, with Li Qingsong's command, these colliders were put into operation simultaneously.

Powered by the abundant energy supply from thousands of large nuclear fusion power plants, a series of amazing changes are taking place inside these particle colliders.

A beam of helium nuclei was launched, and then accelerated by a series of electromagnetic coils. The energy from the large nuclear fusion power plant was converted into their speed, making them faster and faster.

It took about 1 second, and after 6 laps, or about 300,000 kilometers of continuous acceleration, the speed of these helium nuclei was accelerated to about 0.999... (13 nines) times the speed of light, and then they violently crashed into the target.

Because the energy is so high at the moment of impact, and energy is equal to mass, which is confined within the Schwarzschild radius, the point of impact between the helium nucleus and the target collapses into a black hole in an instant.

This impact created approximately 1000 miniature black holes!
These black holes, on average, have a mass of about one two-hundred-millionth of a gram, and based on this mass, their lifespan is approximately 10^-36 seconds.

Although its lifespan is short, it far exceeds the Planck time. And as long as it is longer than the Planck time, it means that it can be observed.

Thus, just 10^-36 seconds after the black holes were formed, these tiny black holes, each with a mass of only one two-hundred-millionth of a gram, instantly annihilated, dissipating in the form of high-energy photons.

At this point, the particle collider built by Li Qingsong faced its second test.

Particle colliders are extremely precise devices; even the slightest disturbance can lead to accidents or damage.

The annihilation of a micro black hole can be viewed as its entire mass being converted into energy.

If one two-hundred-millionth of a gram of matter is completely converted into mass, it is easy to calculate, based on the mass-energy equivalence formula, that the energy released is approximately 46 joules, equivalent to the energy released by the explosion of 0.1 kilograms of TNT.

At this moment, on this target, there are a thousand miniature black holes that are born and annihilated almost simultaneously!

This is equivalent to detonating 100 kilograms of TNT inside this giant particle collider in that instant!

Even a large building would be razed to the ground by such a number of explosives.

However, the protective layer on the inner wall of the particle collider, made of high-energy materials by Li Qingsong, completely blocked such a violent energy release, preventing it from affecting the multiple detection devices on the inner wall.

With this burst of intense light and heat, that extreme environment appeared for a fleeting moment. In that brief instant, multiple detection devices generated a staggering 100 million TB of data.

After cleaning the interior and quickly performing an equipment inspection, the second collision began just four hours later.

It was still about a second of acceleration, still a deafening collision, and another 1000 micro black holes were created, only to be instantly annihilated.

With a total of 10 particle colliders, the average number of miniature black holes generated each year is as high as approximately 2200 million!

(End of this chapter)