In countless mines, numerous large-scale mining equipment roared day and night, and explosions were continuous.

Massive amounts of rock were crushed and entered subsequent processing procedures. These initially processed minerals then arrived at the smelter, where, under the high temperature of nuclear fusion reactors, they gradually separated from impurities and, according to Tom's desired form, finally transformed into special alloy blocks, which were then processed by numerous foundries into various components.

On numerous Space Elevators, countless shuttles roared day and night, either rocketing into the starry sky or plummeting from it with dozens of Gs of acceleration.

In space, countless asteroids revolved chaotically under the dominance of Pegasus V342. Layers of sky nets opened, blocking all potential threats from space that could affect the construction.

Countless large, medium, and small transport spacecraft shuttled through space, either skillfully dodging small celestial bodies, directly shattering them, or simply plowing through them, transporting the various facilities and materials painstakingly produced by Tom to the thousands of target planets.

Large machinery roared and bellowed, drilling into the planet's underground like a giant dragon. Endless rocks were excavated and piled up beside the construction site, like mountains.

Numerous clones and general-purpose robots worked like ants, either in control rooms or on the front lines, constructing facilities so vast in scale that they seemed impossible for humans to build.

High-precision spliced steel plates were assembled like building blocks under special welding to construct huge water storage tanks. The ultra-pure water factories specially prepared for each proton decay detector continuously improved their purity with the supply of large quantities of water ice collected on-site or transported from outside.

The ultra-pure water used by the detector could not be transported from outside. The reason was simple: during transportation, atoms or molecules of other substances would mix in.

They could only be manufactured on-site and then injected into the water tanks through special means to ensure no contamination.

Even so, they still needed regular purification because the molecules and atoms constituting the tank would also diffuse into the water.

This massive construction consumed the full energy of over 300 million of Tom's clones and approximately 5 million Bluetoth scientists and engineers.

At this stage, the total population of the Bluetoth species reached approximately 1.5 billion. Based on Tom's ruling philosophy of "Science First," meaning that only scientists would gain status and honor and receive awards from Tom, and that in all other fields, no matter how great the contribution, Tom would not give much reward, the 1.5 billion Bluetoth collectively produced approximately 12 million qualified scientific researchers, far exceeding ordinary civilizations.

At the same time, Tom did not conceal from the Bluetoth the previous stage of confrontation with the Mechanical Disaster.

The Bluetoth also truly felt how perilous that period was.

Once their side was defeated, both their master and themselves would become slaves of the Mechanical Disaster.

Their side almost walked a tightrope, barely managing to secure this precious period of development.

How could the Bluetoth not exert their utmost effort?

Although their scientific research capabilities were weak and their numbers small, making it difficult to provide much assistance to their master's technological development, they could at least fill gaps and eliminate blind spots in their master's scientific research system.

Thus, Tom led the charge, with the Bluetoth scientists following behind to fill gaps and rectify omissions, and the scientific research forces of both sides were organically combined in this way.

When the massive proton decay detector was finally completed after decades of effort, Tom left approximately 120 million clones for daily research and maintenance of the detector's normal operation, then turned to invest a large amount of scientific research power into another extremely important construction.

The magnetic monopole detection device!

Magnetic monopoles are another type of particle predicted by Tom's current Grand Unified Theory framework.

Unlike normal magnets with north and south poles, a magnetic monopole carries only one magnetic charge, meaning it has only a "south pole" or a "north pole."

Tom did not know whether magnetic monopoles truly existed. But at least at this moment, the theoretical framework predicted the existence of such particles.

If the existence of magnetic monopoles could be verified, then Tom's Grand Unified Theory framework would have received an extremely important verification, and many contents of the framework could be supplemented.

The status of this detection is equivalent to that of proton decay detection; both are equally important and indispensable.

Because these two detections will verify two aspects of the Grand Unified Theory framework.

In Tom's theory, magnetic monopoles were extremely numerous in the early universe, but by now, due to the continuous expansion of the universe, their density has continuously decreased, and their number per unit volume has become extremely rare.

At the same time, the lifespan of magnetic monopoles is extremely long, even comparable to that of protons.

Therefore, a device for detecting magnetic monopoles must have two characteristics: first, it must be large enough.

Because only if it is large enough will it be more likely to react with the extremely rare magnetic monopoles existing in interstellar space.

The probability of a magnetic monopole hitting a planet will always be higher than hitting a spacecraft.

The second is that it must be able to interact with magnetic monopoles. Because only through interaction can phenomena sufficient to be observed be generated, and thus seen by Tom.

In this detection field, Tom decided to use a new type of detector.

This detector is primarily based on the helium isotope, helium-3.

At extremely low temperatures, helium-3 enters a superfluid state. When placed under a magnetic field, superfluid helium-3 forms quantized vortex lines.

If a magnetic monopole were to penetrate a detector primarily composed of superfluid helium-3, its magnetic field would interact with the helium-3, causing a tiny fluctuation in the helium-3 magnetic field.

At that time, by observing this magnetic field fluctuation, Tom would be able to confirm whether a magnetic monopole truly penetrated the detector and what its properties were.

Like the proton decay detector, the magnetic monopole detector is also extremely sensitive to interference. However, it cannot eliminate interference by shielding with thick rock layers, so it can only find a solution in resolution accuracy.

Therefore, to achieve sufficient accuracy, Tom could only make the magnetic monopole detector extremely large as well.

In Tom's plan, the first-generation magnetic monopole detector would have a total volume comparable to a heavy transport spacecraft, a total mass of over 10 million tons, and its longest dimension would even exceed one kilometer.

Within such a massive detector, Tom injected millions of tons of helium-3 and began attempts to capture magnetic monopoles.

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