Chapter 186: Superconductive Charging Device

After a series of authentication steps, Chen Chen finally entered the tightly secured main control room in the center of the substation.

However, unlike the extremely complicated situation outside, there were only a few seats in the main control room and a radiation isolation glove box.

This glove box was rather similar to a biological safety cabinet. Both were apparatuses by which one could manipulate and operate items within an isolated compartment by putting their hands into the gloves.

For example, if Chen Chen put the computer and the USB drive into the isolation glove box, he would only need to put his hands into the gloves of the box to then take out items from the movies directly within the chamber. He would not have to go to the trouble of putting on an entire nuclear protective suit, like when he did to extract crystalline.

This would be used to deal with radioactive items.

In addition, the entire main control room was protected by armor up to half a meter thick. Even if someone outside wanted to break in, it would be extremely difficult. If they succeeded, Chen Chen could trap the source of danger within the secret chamber to prevent it from breaking out...

This was a form of double preparation.

The core equipment of the main control room was a superconductive charging device that was the height of two individuals and shaped like a freezer.

The core of this device was a piece of yttrium barium copper oxide superconductor. This was a high-temperature superconductor that maintained a temperature of 77K by using liquid nitrogen, thereby realizing the physical effect of zero resistance.

Of course, a “high-temperature superconductor” did not refer to a high temperature of several hundred degrees or thousands of degrees but rather, a superconductor with a temperature greater than 77K (-196 degrees Celsius). As long as it could reach the critical temperature of liquid nitrogen, it could be called a high-temperature superconductor.

This device was here as part of Chen Chen’s preparations for charging the USB drive.

In the beginning, Chen Chen had used copper ingots as a connector for charging. However, as the charging equipment evolved, the current had been getting higher and higher, and ordinary metals could no longer hold up.

For example, copper and silver — these two metals were the most conductive substances in physics. Nonetheless, the melting point of copper was only 1083.4 degrees Celsius while the melting point of silver was even lower, only 961.78 degrees Celsius.

When Chen Chen inserted the USB drive for charging, these metal pieces were likely to melt due to the high current.

Once the metal melted and the USB drive was disconnected, the immense current would have nowhere to go in an instant. This would have been catastrophic for the nuclear power plant.

Therefore, Chen Chen came up with the idea of using a superconducting device as a connector.

Using a superconducting device as the USB drive’s interface would not only eliminate the risk of melting the connector due to the excessive current but also reduce some of the original wear and tear. This was like killing two birds with one stone.

In the substation, Chen Chen waited for a while. When Little X sent an update saying that the substation had been completely renovated, Chen Chen walked into the main control room alone and locked the door.

Following that, Chen Chen took out the USB drive and inserted it into the port of the superconducting device.

After he did all this, Chen Chen looked at the large power switch at the controls and held it gently.

“Success or failure, it’s all up to this moment...”

Chen Chen murmured in a low voice. While speaking, he decisively pulled up the power switch.

“Buzz!”

There was the buzzing of the electric current. The main control room of the substation formally took over the electric current from the nuclear power station. In an instant, the massive electric current was directly transmitted to the superconducting device and quickly surged into the USB drive!

At this moment, the entire superconducting device was fully operational and it emitted a deep loud hum.

Even so, this situation was different from the way things were at the Eiffel Power Plant. Due to the superconducting device, the input current did not go through any wastage, to say nothing of the corona phenomenon.

The only difference was that the USB drive seemed to have changed color slightly.

Chen Chen raised his eyebrows.

With the influx of the huge electric current, the USB drive glimmered faintly with a scarlet hue.

The scarlet glow seemed to pulse as if it was breathing or it was an unidentified substance that was squirming ceaselessly.

Chen Chen was familiar with this sight.

Back when Chen Chen was drawing power at the Eiffel Power Plant in the Rainbow Nation, this special phenomenon had occurred to the USB flash drive. Even so, once the power supply was stopped, this phenomenon would disappear.

No matter how Chen Chen examined it later, he could not detect any changes including physical and conceptual changes.

In the end, Chen Chen could only attribute it to the magnitude of the current. This phenomenon would occur when the USB drive had received a certain amount of current.

If he interpreted this phenomenon as something like an LED indicator, it would make sense.

Chen Chen could not help thinking that it was just like when a person was charging a mobile phone. There would be a “charging” indicator on the phone’s screen. Now, this scarlet light meant that the USB drive was “charging”.

The red light had not appeared during previous instances of charging because the previous current was too small for the USB flash drive. It was like a mere trickle. Therefore, the USB drive could not be bothered to provide any response.

Of course, all this was just Chen Chen’s conjecture.

If Chen Chen was right, then the question was — if the USB drive was fully charged, what would happen?

Chen Chen could not help but look pensive when he thought of this.

This strange, magical USB drive had shattered everything that humans understood up to this point. Chen Chen had flipped through countless books but could not decipher the USB drive.

If Chen Chen was forced to come up with his own theory, he would say that the USB drive was a key that could unlock a parallel universe.

The so-called parallel universe was just a theory, which originated from quantum mechanics.

According to Everett’s theory of the multiverse, the entire universe was multitudinous and parallel universes were similar but non-identical universes that split out of a certain universe while existing in parallel with the original universe.

In these universes, there might be planets that were the same as the planet inhabited by humans or planets with the same history or even people who were exactly the same as humans.

At the same time, in these different universes, the development of events might have different results. There were endless things that could have gone differently, so there were endless parallel universes as well...

The advantage of this theory of the multiverse was that, whether it was the “double-slit experiment” or an experiment such as “Schrodinger’s cat”, things could be explained. This was because the Schrodinger equation would always hold true and the wave function would never collapse.

The problem with this was: the assumption was too bizarre and the tradeoff was that all these parallel worlds would be equally real. Therefore, some people commented that: in the history of science, the multiverse theory was undoubtedly the most daring and ambitious theory that had been proposed currently.

This was not only in quantum mechanics but also at the forefront of today’s scientific community. The unified theory, M-theory, which claimed to be able to completely unify quantum mechanics and general relativity, also predicted the existence of parallel universes.

Of course, it was almost impossible to prove all this with the current level of technology.

Today, modern science was still using “black hole” photos to confirm Einstein’s vision. In other words, no matter how great a physicist was, it would take a hundred years to verify their conjecture.

After all, whether it was superstring theory or M-theory, these frontiers where physicists congregated could only be verified in the subatomic field.

Therefore, although M-theory had achieved many results and although Witten was considered to be on par with Newton in terms of capability, there was no way for his theory to be verified during his lifetime. It could only be regarded by the world as the quintessence of idealistic science, doubted and questioned by countless people.

Many people often said that physics had not made any progress for many years, but was this the case?

No, cutting-edge physics had been advancing all this while from special relativity to general relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, superstring theory, and up until the current M-theory...

Cutting-edge physics was constantly being renewed but no one knew whether these new theories would be the next theory of relativity that would change the course of the world a hundred years later or a useless piece of waste paper...