The indomitable water droplet
The scientific name of the water droplet is "Strong Interaction Cosmic Detector", in "Three-Body Problem", it is an invincible existence. During the Doomsday War, it used the most primitive impact method to destroy almost all the battleships of the solar system fleet within thirty minutes.
In order to let readers understand how hard a water droplet is, Da Liu wrote: "A water droplet is not as fragile as a tear, on the contrary, it is a hundred times stronger than the strongest material in the solar system. All the material in this world is in front of it. It is as fragile as a piece of paper, it can pass through the earth like a bullet through cheese, and the surface is not damaged in the slightest.”
In addition to being hard, water droplets have another feature - its surface temperature is absolute zero. This means that the molecules that make it up are not vibrating, and they are firmly bonded to each other, like nails.
The only force that can make molecules so obedient is the strong interaction force.
The strong interaction force is a short-range force, which originally only acts between nucleons. In order to make water droplets, the force range of and must be increased, so that it can act on the scale of atomic like electromagnetic force. This is what the
Trisolarans do - "they created a force field inside the water droplet, which can cancel the electromagnetic force between atoms and cause the strong interaction force to overflow."
The so-called "overflow" , which means that after the electromagnetic force disappears, the interaction between atoms is taken over by the strong interaction force, which becomes the nail that nails the atoms. Therefore, the force field inside the water droplet is the key to the key. The
force is produced by the exchange of gluons between nucleons.Therefore, the magical technology of Trisolaran can be understood in this way - there are two ants, they can only exchange pheromone in a space the size of ping pong ball ; but under the action of that mysterious force field, The exchange of pheromones has expanded to the entire bird's nest!
The "Blue Space" entered the water droplet through four-dimensional space debris, dismantling its force field generating device. After that, the strong force on the surface of the water droplet disappears, and it immediately becomes an ordinary piece of metal, neither smooth nor hard.
So here comes the question: Can human destroy water droplets if there is no four-dimensional space? Let's put this issue
for a while, let's take a look at another frequently discussed issue.
" Rupert's Tears "
A classmate had an idea: I heard that there is a glass ball with a long tail that is also very "iron headed", and its appearance is almost the same as a water drop. When Da Liu wrote about water droplets, did the inspiration come from it?
The glass ball mentioned by this classmate has a very romantic name - "Tears of Rupert".
"Rupert's Tears" has been a bit of a hit lately, partly because of its magical properties and partly because of the name. In fact, its English name is Rupert's Drop, named after Prince Rupert of Batavia. In 1660, the prince gave five "Tears of Rupert" to the King of England, Charles II, and they became world-famous.
"Tear of Rupert" has a very hard head. When hit by a bullet, the bullet was smashed into pieces but it was unharmed; it was crushed with a hydraulic press, and it took twenty tons of pressure to crush it.
is a bit like water droplets.
But the slender tail of "Rupert's Tears" is so fragile that it can be broken with a single pinch of fingers. Not only that, but the crack spreads through its body at five times the speed of sound, making it look like it burst open in an instant.
The classmate continued to spread: So, can the method of destroying "Rupert's Tears" be used to destroy water droplets? For example, wouldn't it be easier to try to attack the most vulnerable part of the droplet - that same spiky tail?
This needs to be analyzed from the structure of the material.
The hardness of the head of "Rupert's Tears" has nothing to do with the strong interaction force, and it is still the electromagnetic force between the glass molecules that works.
People observed the formation of "Rupert's Tears" with crossed polarized light: after the molten glass dropped into the water, its outermost layer first solidified , but at this moment its interior was still hot liquid. These liquid glasses begin to shrink in volume as they cool and shrink by pulling on the solidified shell. At this time, the shell and the interior are subjected to huge stress in opposite directions. When the entire droplet has completely solidified, such stress exists between each of its molecules. The molecules seemed to be quiet, but they were all held tightly by their partners, and they were in an unstable balance. Once this balance is broken, its entire body is immediately engulfed by the ubiquitous stress release, and that is when it is wiped out.
And this balance is very easy to break. Because the slender tail of "Rupert's Tears" does not have much strength, but it is an indispensable part of the overall stress balance, and this life gate is the fuse of the huge energy in its body.
Assuming that the intermolecular electromagnetic force of the glass is a rubber band, then the head of "Rupert's Tears" is stretched by a special cooling process. Its hardness comes from this kind of tension, and the tragicness when it bursts also comes from this kind of tension - the stretched rubber band stores more energy than when it is relaxed.
But say a thousand words and ten thousand, this rubber band is always just a rubber band, no matter how tight it is, it is not an iron chain.
Compared with the strong interaction force, the electromagnetic force is almost the difference between a rubber band and an iron chain. So even its hardest head is completely vulnerable to water droplets.
Trisolarans can create sophons because they have mastered the essence of "dimension"; Trisolarans have created water droplets because they have mastered the essence of "hardness".
So, what is the so-called "hardness"?
The essence of hardness
Hardness, a term in physics, refers to the local resistance of a material to the pressure of a hard object into its surface.
In short, you can be cut, scratched, hammered, crushed by me - and I am intact, which means I am tougher than you.
In fact, the vast majority of hardness tests are still "scratch method" and "press-in method".
hardness tester presses an extremely hard alloy ball or a diamond cone into the surface of the material with a certain force, and calculates the hardness of the material according to the depth or width of the material plastic deformation .
Knock on the blackboard - "plastic deformation", is a deformation that can no longer return to its original shape after the material is pressed in, in other words, it is a "destructive deformation". The hardness of any material being tested must be softer than a sphere or a diamond, so that it "destroys" itself first.
So, what happens when you use this hardness tester to test the hardness of water droplets?
is very simple, it will not be water droplets that are destroyed, but small balls or diamonds. Because the core element that determines "destruction or destruction" is the size of the intermolecular force between the respective molecules.
The strength of the strong interaction force is 100 times that of the electromagnetic force! Da Liu's sentence "it is a hundred times stronger than the strongest material in the solar system" is really not written casually.
Any material on Earth relies on electromagnetic forces to maintain its shape and hardness, and they are indeed like "cheese hitting a bullet" when faced with water droplets created by strong interaction forces.
Someone said: We have a super die forging hydraulic press of 80,000 tons, and the force of 80,000 tons will always deform the water droplets, right?
I'm sorry, 80,000 tons of tofu brains, poured on a 100kg iron pan, will it damage the iron pot in the slightest?
So, if we attack the slender tail of the water droplet, even if we can't break it, can we "bend" it? Maybe "bending" will make it lose some of its functions?
Sorry, this also requires your "hardness" to be sufficient. You can mobilize overwhelming force, but "hardness" is the foothold of this "force". Without the blessing of hardness, no matter how strong the force is, in the end it will still be like countless eggs encountering a stone, and you will be the first to crack.
In the final analysis, hardness is the root of the damage to the other party.
And the essence of hardness is the type and size of the intermolecular force between the two materials.
The " weapon " that can destroy water droplets
Is there really nothing that humans can do to water droplets in three-dimensional space?
Don't worry, there must be a way, but...
We already know that the reason why water droplets are indestructible is that their molecules are ruled by force. But the strong system is not indestructible. In fact, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion are the reactions that take place between nucleons. This process produces mass loss and energy release, and is described by the mass-energy formula E=mc². The amount of released energy is related to a physical quantity called " binding energy ".
Binding energy is an energy measure of interactions between particles. We said before that if ordinary matter molecules are connected by rubber bands, then the strong force connecting nucleons is equivalent to an iron chain. The energy required to break a rubber band is called chemical binding energy, and the energy required to break an iron chain is the nuclear binding energy.
Now, let's assume that the water droplet is composed of iron atoms with iron nuclei neatly arranged on its surface. We reasonably speculate that it is easier to cut the chain between the two iron cores than to break the iron cores directly, and we might as well take the latter as the standard.
Can humans create a source of energy that shatters iron cores? Or, even in theory, is there a means of destroying iron-core materials (let's ignore weapons such as two-way foil causality)?
Then, flip through the weapon spectrum.
Weapon 1: High-energy particle accelerator.
The iron nucleus has a total of 56 nucleons, and the sum energy is 481.6MeV①.In the collider of CERN , humans have been able to accelerate the proton to 0.999999991 times the speed of light, and the corresponding energy is 7000GeV② (1GeV=1000MeV)! It is conceivable that as long as the water droplet stays still, it will be bombarded into a sieve by the high-energy proton beam in the human accelerator in an instant (if a proton bombards an iron nucleus, the energy of the proton only needs 1/7000 to be effective) .
Weapon two: high pressure. The average binding energy of
iron nuclei is the highest (average binding energy=summary sum energy/nucleon number), which means that it must absorb energy whether it is fusion or fission, so there is generally a stable iron core in the center of the star, It is the end product of stellar fusion. But the stellar evolution is not limited to the fusion stage. Once the supernova erupts, what is left in the end is often the neutron star (or black hole). At this point, its iron core no longer exists, and each electron is pressed into the proton by gravity. This kind of high pressure formed by the huge gravitational force can of course tear up the strong film of the water droplet effortlessly. Unfortunately, such a high pressure cannot be created by human beings.
weapon three: miniature black hole .
In "Three-body 3", humans use the circum-solar accelerator to create a miniature black hole and shoot it into Io before it evaporates. After the latter's matter is fully inhaled, the black hole becomes a stable existence . If humans have the ability to develop a miniature black hole into a weapon, they can drive it to attack the water droplet, or hide it on the inevitable route of the water droplet and wait for the rabbit. The water droplet is bound to be sucked in when it comes into contact with the miniature black hole, and even if it is too short to suck in all of it, it will definitely destroy the part it hits.After that, the atoms in that part will disappear, and the water droplets under the control of the force will collapse due to the imbalance of force.
weapon four: antimatter .
Normal matter is composed of positively charged nuclei and negatively charged electrons. Antimatter is the opposite. Its extranuclear electrons are positrons, while the nucleus is negatively charged. Matter and antimatter will annihilate when they meet, and all of their mass will be converted into energy at this point. At present, humans have the ability to initially create antimatter in the laboratory. Once these antimatter are weaponized (in "Three Body 3", Vader did create antimatter weapon ), they will be the most effective threat to water droplets . No matter how hard the water droplet is, it is only composed of positive matter. Once it can't dodge, it will be wiped out under the hail of antimatter bullets.
Weapon Five: Paradoxical.
In "Three-Body Problem 3", humans have been able to make strongly interacting materials (SIM) in small quantities in the laboratory: "Just give them another ten years, and strong interacting materials can be mass-produced. Although the advancement of water droplets The system is still far beyond the technical capabilities of human beings, but it is possible to use SIMs to make conventional missiles, with the advantage of numbers, it is possible to destroy water droplets once hit; or to use SIMs to build defensive barriers, even if water droplets dare to attack such barriers, it becomes A one-off cannonball." With the spear of the child and the shield of the attacking child, this is the most direct weapon. The
weapon spectrum may not be finished yet, but it is certain that there are ways to destroy water droplets, but they basically only exist in theory at present. Since
is only a theory, then we don't need to be afraid of the three-body person's hearing about brainstorming . Even if they do hear it, they will probably only say one sentence: "Ah this... the Lord doesn't care!"
