Bright Sword starts with the grenade flat.

Chapter 515: The Difficulty of Turning Stone into Gold

Therefore, in addition to outputting part of the energy generated by nuclear fusion to the outside, the other part is used to maintain the high temperature inside the nuclear fusion reactor so that the internal reaction of the nuclear fusion reactor can continue.

However, after the material of nuclear fusion reaction is replaced with elements with heavier atoms, such as helium, carbon and other elements.

Not only will the temperature required be higher, but more importantly, the energy released by their fusion reaction will also be less. So nuclear fusion can only ultimately get to the step of turning silicon into iron. If it wants to fuse further, such as fusing iron into elements with heavier atoms, it will not release energy but absorb energy instead.

In this way, the fusion reaction naturally cannot continue.

The same is true for nuclear reactor stars in nature. Although nuclear fusion seems to continue after massive stars fuse to iron, the nuclear fusion at this time has "changed" and no longer releases energy, but instead needs to absorb energy!
However, nuclear fusion is meant to release energy. Nuclear fusion that absorbs energy always seems strange. This is why it is often said that "stellar nuclear fusion stops when it reaches iron", because in the understanding of nuclear fusion, if energy cannot be released, it is not nuclear fusion!

But why is it that after nuclear fusion reaches iron, further fusion will not release energy, but instead absorb energy?
This is because iron is the most stable element, and matter always develops in a more stable direction, just like a stone on a mountain, it is unstable and always keeps rolling down to the valley, because the valley is the most stable.

But why is iron the most stable? This is mainly because iron has the highest specific binding energy.

As for what is specific binding energy! We must first understand the concept of binding energy. The energy that separates the nucleons in an atomic nucleus is the binding energy, and the specific binding energy is the binding energy divided by the number of nucleons, which can also be called the average binding energy.

The higher the specific binding energy, the more stable it is, and the specific binding energy of iron is the highest, so it is the most stable.

The nuclear fusion process before the iron element will release energy, which is converted from the mass loss of the star and can be calculated based on Einstein's mass-energy equation. However, after the iron element, the mass will increase as the fusion continues, and the increased mass is converted from the absorbed energy.

Once a star needs to absorb energy to continue fusion, it actually means the death of the star, because the star becomes very unstable at this time and begins to collapse inward rapidly, eventually forming a white dwarf, neutron star, or even a black hole.

The reason why stars can remain stable is due to the balance of two forces: the outward thrust generated by nuclear fusion and the inward gravity generated by themselves. Only when these two forces are balanced can the stars continue to burn stably.

If the fusion process does not release energy, the outward thrust will be lost, and only the gravity generated by itself will remain. At this time, the star will quickly collapse inward under the action of gravity, forming powerful energy in the process of collapse, which is enough for the core material of the star to absorb energy and continue to fuse, and then due to the violent cosmic event, a supernova will explode.

The energy produced by a supernova explosion is enormous. In just a few seconds, the energy produced is more than the total energy produced by the sun in its entire lifetime! During the supernova explosion, elements heavier than iron are produced, such as gold and silver.

The process of a supernova explosion will scatter various elements into the vast interstellar space, becoming the raw materials for the next generation of stars and planets!
The superconducting stable isotope of silver, mithril, was created in this way. However, mithril is also very rare in the universe. Apart from other things, the Cosmic Alliance, which has at least thousands of planets with life and explored nearly ten thousand star systems, has never encountered an isotope like mithril.

Liu Xiu's wandering blue planet also launched many probes to explore the surrounding star systems, but found that planets like Pandora are indeed very rare.

This can prove that Mithril, an isotope of silver, was definitely obtained in a coincidental supernova explosion.

Therefore, since this kind of mithril cannot be found, it naturally means that the more it is used, the less it will be.

The scientists of the Wandering Blue Planet could only think of two solutions to this problem.

The first method is to find a substitute, that is, to use low-temperature superconducting materials to replace mithril, a room-temperature superconducting material.

Of course, although room-temperature superconducting materials plus a cooling system will greatly increase the weight of the spacecraft, it is not impossible to use it. It is just that it is more difficult to put it on a small maneuverable spacecraft, such as a space fighter. Fortunately, the Academy of Sciences has given a second solution, which is to try to turn stone into gold.

That is to use scientific means to artificially synthesize mithril, a room-temperature superconducting material.

The principle is very simple, that is, energy fusion, since fusion under iron requires a large amount of energy.

Then this is naturally very simple. Use a large amount of energy to provide a large amount of energy for fusion in the fusion reactor, so that nuclear fusion can continue.

However, in addition to fusion, there is also fission reaction, which can also produce elements such as silver.

After all, apart from uranium, heavy metal elements whose atomic mass is closer to iron find it difficult to release energy during fission and instead have to absorb energy.

However, the experimental results sent back from the Academy of Sciences left Liu Xiu at a loss.

Because a lot of energy is required not only when elements are artificially synthesized.

The most critical thing is that the superconducting isotope of silver, mithril, is extremely difficult to synthesize, and it will easily be synthesized into conventional silver.

If you want a stable synthesis, you can only synthesize it atom by atom.

Such efficiency is naturally unable to meet the demand for mithril on the Wandering Blue Star.

So Liu Xiu had no choice but to give up. After all, just imagine that it is a bit far-fetched to simply want to artificially synthesize materials that can only be produced by special supernova explosions.

Therefore, it is impossible for Wandering Blue Star to possess the ability to turn stone into gold, which is only possessed by the legendary immortals. Even if it does exist, it can only be produced in the laboratory and cannot be mass-produced.

Of course, although Wandering Blue Star’s current mithril inventory is almost running out.

However, Liu Xiu still decided to use mithril instead of conventional low-temperature superconducting materials for the technology to build the lost spaceship obtained from the ship girl of the lost spaceship Asuka.

Although the cooling system for the nuclear fusion reactor on the lost spacecraft was already very sophisticated, the nuclear fusion cooling system still occupied a large space.

Of course, it's not just the space it occupies, but more importantly, the cooling system is very heavy. So if mithril material is used to make a nuclear reactor for backup energy, it will reduce the weight of the super spacecraft a lot.

This will greatly improve the mobility of the lost spacecraft.

Of course, as to why the prehistoric super civilization did not use antimatter annihilation reactors as backup energy sources for spacecraft, but instead used conventional nuclear fusion reactors as backup energy reactors, it is probably to enable the super spacecraft to have better survivability!

(End of this chapter)