Chapter 144 Collision
This box weighs between 100 and 200 kilograms. If it were on Earth, even a strong man would have to struggle to lift it.
But on Mercury, Zhou Cheng, who is not very strong, can easily lift them.
Zhou Cheng moved them into the cave one by one.
Before this, Zhou Cheng had already pulled out a long electric wire to connect the Hope spacecraft with the cave and installed a lighting source.
So in the bright light, the dismantling of these boxes officially began.
The materials that make up these boxes are also not wasted.
They are specially designed with good toughness and radiation resistance, and the box panels also have buckles for easy disassembly and assembly.
So these boxes were taken apart into pieces, and finally put together to form a huge door panel, which was fixed by Zhou Cheng at the entrance of the cave, completely covering the entrance.
Therefore, radiation from the outside cannot enter the cave.
But it is still a vacuum inside, so Zhou Cheng still needs to wear a space suit to work in it.
But it doesn’t matter. After so long, Zhou Cheng has already gotten used to working in a space suit.
So, according to the drawings, the particle collider components that had been disassembled into many modules were gradually combined together, and eventually became a huge circular ring with a diameter of about 95 meters and a circumference of about 300 meters.
Together with the attached workbench, controller, sensors, etc., its total mass reaches about 300 tons.
Even though it was a modular design and several installation and disassembly training sessions had been conducted on Earth, it still took Zhou Cheng more than a month to assemble it.
At this time, the most important moment arrived.
Device self-test.
The progress bar slowly advanced, eventually reaching the top. A prompt window popped up: "The device has a total of 36 faults that need to be repaired."
Zhou Cheng took a closer look and found that these were minor faults that could be repaired by himself on Mercury. They were not complicated, and he finally felt relieved.
After another ten days of hard work, all the faults were finally fixed. This time, Zhou Cheng finally received the "Self-Test Passed" message.
"Well, it's time to get started then."
Zhou Cheng murmured.
According to his own theoretical calculations, if the force that caused the abnormal vibration of neon trifluoride molecules really came from dark matter, and if the properties of dark matter particles calculated by him were correct, then in such a high-energy environment inside the particle collider, dark matter particles would very likely interact with ordinary matter particles, leading to some phenomena that have never been observed before.
By analyzing these phenomena, Zhou Cheng and human scientists will hopefully further understand the secrets of dark matter and then know the secrets of the Moon.
Because after our own analysis, it is very likely that the Moon Goddess has some connection with dark matter.
Of course, all of this is just speculation, and the future is still uncertain. But for now, there's no need to overthink it; just do it.
Powered by solar panels and hydrogen-oxygen generators, the particle collider began its first operation in the highly vacuum environment on the surface of Mercury.
Some protons start out from somewhere in the collider and begin to move forward.
A large number of acceleration rings are installed on the pipes of the collider. They are driven by electricity and use magnetic fields as a medium to continuously convert electricity into the kinetic energy of these protons.
So their speed became faster and faster, until it was close to the speed of light.
The faster an object moves, the more energy it possesses.
These particles, too small to be seen with the naked eye, then possess extremely high energies, and eventually they collide with other particles.
At the moment of collision, they will burst out unimaginable energy.
This total energy isn't very high, not even as much as the energy of throwing a stone, but these protons are so small that the energy level at the impact point is extremely high.
Just like a piece of wood cannot penetrate the skin, but if one end is sharpened, it can easily penetrate the skin.
The smaller the area, the higher the unit energy. The same is true for these protons.
According to Zhou Cheng's previous calculations, this extremely high energy level may cause ordinary matter particles and dark matter particles to interact, thereby producing some phenomena that have never appeared before.
After countless acceleration cycles, the proton beam finally collided with other particles. Because of the extremely high energy level, the subatomic particles that made up the protons were instantly "knocked out."
It's like two watermelons colliding, and the flesh and seeds are knocked out.
These secondary particles usually only exist for a short time and will be transformed into other particles or trigger other effects in an instant.
But it doesn’t matter. The sensors inside the collider can record all these changes for later analysis.
Several hours had passed from the beginning of preparation to the end of the collision.
Zhou Cheng immediately came to the operating table and began to analyze the data collected by the sensors at the time of the collision.
This data is huge. Just some text information alone can reach hundreds of MB in total.
It is obviously impossible to analyze it by relying on Zhou Cheng alone.
He then transmitted this data back to Earth and analyzed it with a team of scientists there.
But the final analysis results disappointed Zhou Cheng.
This collision did not produce any unknown phenomena. All the data it produced is recorded in the human knowledge base.
Because in the peak era of the past, similar energy level collisions have occurred countless times.
Zhou Cheng was not discouraged. He stockpiled hydrogen and oxygen energy again and repaired the equipment again. Two days later, another collision began.
Time passed slowly, and Zhou Cheng repeated these tasks day after day until the night came on Mercury.
The sun had completely sunk below the horizon.
Without solar energy as an energy source, the particle collider cannot be turned on.
Zhou Cheng began a long wait.
It took about 88 days, or half a Mercury year, for the sun to peek out from under the horizon again, and then it stabilized, neither rising nor setting.
During the past dark night, Mercury has orbited the sun once.
Next, after orbiting the sun once more, night will come, and the cycle will repeat.
Zhou Cheng continued his previous work, day after day.
This time, another collision ended. While checking and analyzing the collision data, Zhou Cheng discovered something unusual.
"Is the clock wrong?"
Zhou Cheng was full of doubts.
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