Tom gazed at the dim star in the sky, his heart heavy with dread.

As long as he could still see it, it meant the Mechanical Disaster fleet's acceleration was still ongoing. This meant the shorter the expected time for the Mechanical Disaster fleet's return, the slimmer his hope of breaking through.

At this moment, it was estimated that the Mechanical Disaster fleet's speed had already approached the upper limit he could accept.

Just as Tom's heart gradually began to despair—even starting to plan for a restart and to preserve as many clones as possible to retain the technology he had developed over the years—he suddenly saw that the dim star had disappeared.

What's going on? It disappeared?

Tom, somewhat disbelieving, mobilized more Deep Space telescopes to point in that direction for detailed detection, but still failed to see anything. A surge of ecstasy welled up in his heart.

It was empty there, occupied only by the vastness and profoundness of the universe. Even with his most advanced Deep Space detection methods, he could no longer detect any light.

It really… really disappeared?

Did the acceleration really stop?

At this stage, the Mechanical Disaster fleet's speed was only 9.4% of light speed!

Calculating at this speed, the time it would take for them to reach a new solar system, complete material collection and self-recovery, and then arrive at the Pegasus V342 star system, would extend to at least 305 years. This already exceeded the time he estimated he needed to break through to the Strong Nuclear level!

He had a great chance to complete the breakthrough from electroweak to the Strong Nuclear level within this period, and also complete the initial fleet construction work after the breakthrough!

Although even if he broke through, he would only be at the early Strong Nuclear stage. He might not even have time to convert the technological breakthrough into combat power, making it impossible to directly confront the Mechanical Disaster fleet. But so what?

If I can't beat them, I can always run, right?

Even if he still couldn't escape—which was highly probable—he could at least delay for a bit longer.

What Tom was desperately pursuing was not to defeat or annihilate the Mechanical Disaster fleet, nor even to truly escape from their pursuit.

That was unrealistic.

After so many years of painstaking effort, all-out exertion, meticulous planning, and utilizing every advantage of timing, terrain, and human relations, what Tom sought was merely to delay for a little more time!

As long as his fleet's speed could be a bit faster, Tom had hope of completing subsequent "applied" physics breakthroughs during his escape, truly transforming the basic physics breakthroughs into tangible combat power.

Only then could he have the possibility of truly confronting this Mechanical Disaster fleet head-on.

At this moment, although he had unprecedentedly forced back the Strong Nuclear Mechanical Disaster at the electroweak level, it was still only the first step in Tom's entire plan.

In the future, he didn't know how many more challenges he would have to overcome.

But at least, this first step had been successfully taken. Since that was the case, why think so much? Regardless of the future, let's focus all efforts on the present!

"Finally, I can finally eliminate all external interference and fully devote myself to basic physics research."

Recalling the difficulties of the past, Tom cherished this opportunity immensely.

This opportunity truly did not come easily… Every minute, every second, was so precious, making Tom feel that even a slight waste was a huge sin.

"From this moment on, no one can stop me from researching basic physics, no one can stop me!"

Tom's heart was filled with excitement.

At this moment, the first large-scale scientific apparatus truly designed to impact the Unified Strong Nuclear Force had been completed.

It was a massive water tank, with a total volume of over 100 million cubic meters, built tens of thousands of meters deep underground on a dwarf planet.

It was a neutrino telescope.

Tom's primary task at this stage was to verify whether proton decay truly existed, and thereby verify whether his Grand Unified Model was correct. Only by establishing this foundation could subsequent work proceed.

And verifying proton decay, while seemingly unrelated to a neutrino telescope, was actually closely linked.

When this large-scale scientific apparatus, the neutrino telescope, was originally developed, it was specifically for verifying proton decay. However, proton decay research had made slow progress, and this set of equipment happened to show unique superiority in the field of neutrino research, so it gradually shifted towards the neutrino field.

The mode of neutrino telescope research on neutrinos is to use extremely deep external barriers to exclude external interference as much as possible, allowing only neutrinos to enter the pure water inside the detector.

Once a neutrino collides with a microscopic particle that makes up a water molecule, its secondary particles will move faster than light in water, triggering Cherenkov radiation in a superluminal state, and thus the signal will be captured.

The mode of detecting proton decay is similar.

Protons have an extremely long lifespan, and the probability of decay is extremely low.

Based on the preliminary research data Tom currently possessed, he believed that the lower limit of a proton's lifespan was approximately 10^36 years, or one trillion trillion trillion years.

This is the lower limit, meaning a proton's lifespan is at least this long.

This number far exceeds the current age of the universe, which is approximately 13.8 billion years.

Assuming the proton's lifespan is precisely this lower limit, then the probability of a single proton decaying from the beginning of the universe until now is only about one in 7.25 quintillion quintillion.

If Tom were to observe a single proton to see if it would decay, he would not see it even if he waited until the end of time and the universe.

So how does one detect proton decay?

The method Tom adopted was to increase the number of protons to increase the probability of observing proton decay.

If the probability of one proton decaying in one year is one in 10^36, what about ten thousand protons?

The probability of one of those protons decaying within a year would obviously increase to ten thousand in 10^36.

What if Tom had 10^36 protons?

Then, within a year, the probability of at least one proton decaying would approach 100%.

The proton decay detector—or neutrino detector, as they are essentially the same thing—that Tom had built currently held 120 million tons of pure water.

One water molecule contains ten protons, so 120 million tons of water contain approximately 4 times 10^37 protons.

This number is 40 times the lower limit of the proton's expected lifespan.

That is, if the proton's lifespan happens to be this number, the proton decay detector Tom built would be able to detect approximately 40 proton decay events per year, averaging about one detection every 9 days.

Even if the proton's expected lifespan were to increase tenfold to 10^37 years, this proton decay detector would still be able to detect one event within 90 days.

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