Chapter 440 Second Curvature Perturbation

"Thirty-five. Dean He, I haven't verified anyone over thirty-five."

Qian Zhiyuan's hand hovered above the control knob, not turning it, his fingertips trembling slightly. The monitoring room was filled with the white mist left by the evaporation of liquid helium; the thermometer read 4.2 Kelvin. The superconducting ring emitted a low hum in the vacuum container, like a startled beast roaring in a low voice.

He Yuzhu didn't look at him, her eyes fixed on the temperature curve on the screen. "Do you trust your calculations, or your hand?"

Qian Zhiyuan bit his lip and turned away. Thirty-six. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. On the four wall monitors, a blurry halo began to appear in the fist-sized area at the center of the superconducting ring, distorted like looking through a flame, but quieter and colder.

Ma Yuejin was the first to see it. "It's bent...look, it's bent!" His voice was so loud it was unbelievable. Then he covered his mouth, his eyes still fixed on the observation window, and froze there.

Thirty-nine.

Qian Zhiyuan took a deep breath, pressed his hand on the knob, paused for half a second, and turned it to forty. The lights in the monitoring room dimmed briefly—when the backup power switched in, He Yuzhu saw that the light in that area had traveled in an arc. It wasn't refraction, it wasn't reflection; space itself had curved.

"How much is the disturbance?" he asked.

Lin Jianguo leaned closer to the data screen, tapped a few times on the keyboard, and then typed it again without saying a word. "One cubic decimeter. We compressed the space by one cubic decimeter."

The monitoring room fell silent. Old Zhou squatted in front of the cooling system, the pressure gauge in his hand almost slipping from his grasp. Ma Yuejin released his hand from his mouth, his lips trembling.

He Yuzhu walked to the observation window and placed his palm on the lead glass. He couldn't feel anything through the glass, but the distorted spot of light was still there, like a dented mirror.

"Maintain forty Tesla, run continuously for ten minutes." He pressed the timer.

Qian Zhiyuan withdrew his hand from the knob, wiped the sweat from his work pants, his palms were soaked. Old Zhou began to announce: "Liquid helium pressure is stable, temperature is 4.35 Kelvin."

In the third minute, the hum of the superconducting ring suddenly changed tone, from low and deep to sharp and shrill, like someone scratching glass with fingernails. Qian Zhiyuan turned his head sharply, and He Yuzhu pressed down on his shoulder. "Don't move."

The sharp sound lasted for more than ten seconds, then slowly returned to its original tone. Lin Jianguo pulled up the structural health monitoring curve, which showed a spike, then another, and another.

"Dean He, the stress sensor reports three transient peaks, located at 120 degrees, 240 degrees, and 300 degrees of the ring. Microcracks may have appeared."

Qian Zhiyuan's face turned pale. "Three places simultaneously?"

"At the same time, the time difference is less than 0.1 seconds."

He Yuzhu remained silent, his hand still on Qian Zhiyuan's shoulder. In the sixth minute, another scream rang out, shorter and sharper. Lin Jianguo shouted, "The stress peak has increased, but the magnitude is half that of the last one!"

Qian Zhiyuan's body was trembling. He Yuzhu could feel it; beneath the work clothes, his muscles were taut like stones.

The third scream came at the ninth minute. It was shorter and sharper, like a needle slicing through glass.

At the tenth minute, the timer reset to zero. Qian Zhiyuan immediately began demagnetizing, turning the knob rapidly: forty, thirty, twenty, ten, zero. The humming of the superconducting ring disappeared, leaving only the humming of the pressure gauge in Lao Zhou's hand and the breathing of a few people in the monitoring room.

Qian Zhiyuan picked up the handheld flaw detector and climbed into the vacuum container. The sound of the inspection door closing was muffled. He Yuzhu stood in front of the observation window, watching him scan back and forth on the surface of the ring. The flaw detector's display screen reflected light, making it impossible to see any patterns. Qian Zhiyuan scanned it once, stopped, changed the angle, and scanned it again. And again.

After waiting for almost ten minutes, Qian Zhiyuan finally emerged, his goggles pushed up to his forehead, his face covered in sweat.

"Found it. Three microcracks, all less than 0.1 millimeters deep, shallower than the 0.3 millimeters in the last experiment. But I had to scan three times to pinpoint their location—the cracks are hidden at the interface between the high-temperature superconducting cable and the carbon nanotube winding layer, where the ultrasonic echo is very weak. If I didn't know the location, I wouldn't have been able to see them on the first scan."

He turned the flaw detector's data screen towards He Yuzhu. Three red dots, embedded at the boundary between black and gray, resembled plaque on a blood vessel wall.

"How long will it take to repair?"

Qian Zhiyuan hesitated for a moment. "We can fill the cracks using a carbon nanotube bonding process, which will take a week. But if we just fill them, these three cracks will still appear when we test at 60 Tesla next time."

"So what are you going to do?"

Qian Zhiyuan gritted his teeth. "Unwrap those three sections of the winding layer and redo the stress relief of the cable. Increase the bending radius of the high-temperature superconducting cable from the current fifteen times the diameter to twenty times the diameter. This will take three weeks."

The monitoring room fell silent again. Old Zhou squatted on the ground, no longer looking at the pressure gauge in his hand. Ma Yuejin leaned against the corner of the wall, his hands in his pockets, his knuckles white from clenching his fists.

He Yuzhu stared at the three red dots for over ten seconds. "I'll give you three weeks. After it's fixed, do the 60 Tesla test directly."

Qian Zhiyuan opened his mouth, but didn't say anything, only nodded. Old Zhou spoke first. "Sixty Tesla? The design specification for a superconducting ring is only forty."

"The copper coil was designed to withstand a force of forty. Now we've switched to high-temperature superconducting cables." He Yuzhu turned to look at Lao Zhou. "Have you calculated the critical magnetic field?"

Old Zhou fell silent. He had calculated it. Two hundred Tesla. But that was a theoretical value.

Ma Yuejin walked over from the corner, holding a stack of printing papers in his hand. The edges were curled, and the ink was still a little sticky. He didn't hand it over directly, but held it in his hand and hesitated for a moment.

"Dean He, we have a result from the Galaxy 6 mission... I don't know if I should tell you now."

"explain."

Ma Yuejin placed the paper on the table and pointed to the graph in the middle. "If the diameter of the superconducting ring reaches one hundred meters and the magnetic field strength is one hundred Tesla, it can compress the space around the spacecraft by three percent, thus allowing the spacecraft to cruise at ten percent of the speed of light."

He didn't use the phrase "significant curvature effect." He presented the hardest numbers.

Qian Zhiyuan was the first to react. "A hundred meters in diameter? We haven't even made one meter yet."

"That's why I don't know whether I should say this or not." Ma Yuejin's voice lowered. "The 100-meter ring requires 12 tons of high-temperature superconducting wire, with a total mass of 30 tons. The Kunlun has a current payload capacity of 50 tons, which can fit it. But we don't have the wire, the technology, or the design. It's too early to even dream about it."

He Yuzhu picked up the stack of papers, flipped through them one by one, and then put them aside. "Director Qian, starting today, you will lead the team to conduct preliminary research on the 100-meter superconducting ring. This includes structural design, material requirements, cooling solutions, and power systems. We don't require it to be built immediately, but it must be feasible in principle and implementable in engineering. A report must be submitted every two months."

Qian Zhiyuan wrote it down in his notebook, the pen tip piercing the paper.

He Yuzhu walked out of the monitoring room. The corridor was long, the fluorescent lights making the concrete walls appear white and shiny. He walked slowly, but each step was firm and measured. Reaching the end of the corridor, he stopped, took out a cigarette, and lit it. The smoke dispersed faintly under the light.

He recalled the spot of light he had just seen. The space had been compressed by a cubic decimeter, and the light had taken a detour there. The camera had captured that moment. Now, that cassette tape was locked in a safe in the archives, destined for a museum someday.

He stubbed out the cigarette, which had burned down to the filter, and threw it in the trash can. Walking back to the monitoring room, he wanted to go in and give Qian Zhiyuan a few more instructions, but then he heard people talking inside.

"Why didn't you dare to speak up just now?" Qian Zhiyuan's voice asked.

Ma Yuejin's voice was very low. "I'm afraid he'll say I'm crazy."

He didn't say you were crazy.

"So he's crazier than me."

He Yuzhu didn't push the door open; he turned and left. He went downstairs and out of the building. The wind from the Gobi Desert hit him—dry, cold, and carrying sand. He squinted and walked to the old jeep. A layer of dust covered the roof; he didn't wipe it off, but opened the door and got in.

The phone rang. He picked up the receiver; it was Qin Huairu.

"Nianhua twisted his ankle while playing basketball. It's not serious, but he walks with a limp."

"I can't go back. Take him to the hospital to get him checked out."

"He said no need, just an ice pack will do. When are you coming back?"

"Uncertain. Qian Zhiyuan is going to conduct a 60 Tesla experiment in three weeks, and I need to keep an eye on it."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. "Okay. Take care of yourself."

"I know."

He hung up the phone. He put the receiver back and started the engine. The headlights illuminated the dirt road ahead. The roads in the Gobi Desert are very straight, and when you drive fast, you get the illusion that the road is receding rather than the car moving forward.

He gripped the steering wheel with one hand, and with the other, he retrieved Ma Yuejin's stack of data from the system space and reviewed it again. A hundred meters in diameter, three percent compression, one-tenth the speed of light. He put the data away and stepped on the gas.

The streetlights came on. He drove through them, the light and shadows casting alternating patterns on his face. Three weeks later, sixty Teslas. If that works, the next step is one hundred meters.