Hydrogen-7 23 Yoctoseconds
Vritra’s true power was fully realized in the vacuum of space. On the ground, it was nothing more than a stationary, oversized warship.
It scavenged the wreckage of Jatayu, extracting an A-Carbuncle from the power unit and swallowing it whole. Even on Planet Libya, the A-Carbuncle were considered a rare treasure.
「Heh… They must be trembling in fear. Those puny humans.」
Its form—what could be called its ship-body—was a super solid. Railguns, lasers—it devoured them all with its invincible body. There was no countermeasure against it. Humanity, having lost most of its advanced technology due to Sophia’s seal, had no means to resist.
「Space mines? Ha! They won’t even slow me down!」
Vritra made no attempt to evade the self-propelled mines ‘Hierophant’. Drawn in by Vritra’s gravitational field, the mines collided with its metallic hydrogen exterior and exploded upon impact—only to leave no more than a ripple. Not even a scratch. The flowing metallic hydrogen surface immediately reconstituted itself.
A larger mine seemed to be approaching. However, Vritra didn’t care. No matter what kind of explosive it carried, it would be impossible to damage—even less breach—his superfluid armor. The possible damage it could receive from the relative velocity was completely insignificant too.
Vritra writhed its serpentine body and accelerated. It was a speed far surpassing that of the Trireme Space Fleet.
「He’s coming after us.」
「Just as planned. Our attack has drastically increased our relative velocity. He’ll definitely enter the ‘Fool’s’ effective range.」
Asia’s Aimer rapidly transmitted command sequences to the accelerating ‘Fool’.
「Variable output width dial input complete. Initiating Schwarzschild radius configuration. Utilizing the computational power of three of my cores to enhance precision!」
Asia’s Aimer pushed her computational capacity to its limits, defining the control range.
Hearing her words, Kinugawa paled.
「Singularity the ‘Fool’—Schwarzschild radius configuration complete. Calculating in reverse to control the generation time. No room for fine adjustments. Maximum speed, full-speed ahead—time adjustment: fourteen minutes! Can we do it?」
「Absolutely.」
「This is Libra 2. No issues here.」
「This is Kushinada, this is going to be tough on the recently repaired Izumo, but we’re doing it.」
「Understood. Asia, all ships—maintain full speed!」
Asia’s Aimer, borrowing the power of Astraea, continued high-speed calculations. Even to the onlookers, it was clear just how intricate the process was. The strain on Aimer’s body must have been immense.
「Kou! Tell me about the ‘Fool’! You’re beginning to scare me! Wasn’t it just a decoy designed to look like a Panjandrum? I thought it was called the ‘Fool’ because it was just that—a joke!」
「I want to know too. The last thing we heard about the disguised structure of the ‘Fool’ was that it was going to be packed with fuel, and that was it, right?」
Wanting to understand the situation, Matty and Eri contacted Kou.
「It’s not a Panjandrum. And yes, it is a decoy.」
「Then why does Asia need to push her processing power to the absolute limit?! If it’s not a Panjandrum, then what the hell is it?!」
「That thing… its wheels—each one of them—is an independent circular collision-type accelerator. A particle accelerator. What looks like wheels are actually compact beamlines.」
「By minimizing synchrotron radiation, its efficiency is close to that of a linear accelerator. The 50-meter wheel components accelerate particles and then direct them to react with an ultra-high-energy-density chemical medium within the central axis. The ultra-high-speed rotation of the wheel structures is not just for show—it has a crucial role.」
「A particle accelerator?」
「A particle accelerator?!」
The unexpected revelation left the two speechless.
Then, Asia’s Aimer made a chilling announcement.
「In sixty seconds, Hydrogen-7 will be generated in both wheels and accelerated to 99.999% the speed of light. Inside Astraea, a virtual Bloch control space will be established. The accelerated particles will collide with the axion carbuncle at the core, utilizing the properties of neutron-rich nuclei to trigger a nuclear fission reaction and initiate QGP—quark-gluon plasma generation.」
「Hydrogen-7. Its half-life is only 23 yoctoseconds. Even light cannot pass through it before it disappears. In that fleeting moment, we will collide equal amounts of Hydrogen-7 at near-light speeds to induce photodisintegration. To control this process, a virtual Bloch space is required.」
Yoctosecond—in the 21st century, it was the smallest recognized unit of time.
It represents 10⁻²⁴ seconds.
「I don’t fully understand the principles behind it either, but I’ve heard that antimatter is actually easier to maintain. But Hydrogen-7? That’s on an entirely different level.」
「It’s true that by the 21st century, scientists had managed to store antimatter for a few seconds. But Hydrogen-7? Its existence was only barely confirmed.」
Kinukawa had finally understood the true nature of the ‘Fool’.
「You’re creating QGP? Are you planning to birth a whole universe? …So that’s why it’s called the ‘Fool’—because it’s Number Zero. The cause of death for so many Development Engineers. The beginning of the journey.」
QGP— Quark-Gluon Plasma—was a substance theorized to have existed in the aftermath of the Big Bang. In their era, experiments were already being conducted to generate micro black holes from QGP.
「That’s exactly right.」
Kou admitted.
Meanwhile, Vritra continued its relentless pursuit of the three space vessels. But their speed was unexpectedly high. Based on Vritra’s calculations, if they maintained this velocity, their ships would either overheat beyond tolerance or outright explode.
「Did they truly see me as such a threat? Or is this merely an act of desperation, driven by fear?」
A massive space mine hurtled toward Vritra. Its purpose was unclear, but it had a wheel-like structure affixed with rockets, spinning at extreme speeds. Even more concerning—it had withstood a charged particle cannon blast. That alone indicated its remarkable durability.
The mine was being drawn toward its body. Vritra prepared its antimatter cannon next, the massive space mine wouldn’t be able to endure it.
「They must be confident in its power. Very well.」
From what could be considered Vitra’s mouth, it took aim with one of its positron beam cannons, a type of antimatter weapon.
「Tch! It keeps shifting around so erratically! What is the point of that wheel’s rotation?!」
The mine’s unpredictable trajectory irritated him. Even Vritra—capable of understanding most physical constructs—could not grasp the significance of a wheel spinning at extreme speeds in space.
Vritra waited for the perfect moment, a brief instant when it would adjust its trajectory—then fired its charged particle cannon.
「It… withstood that? A mine?!」
The ‘Fool’ had taken a direct hit—and endured.
With an almost single-minded determination, it continued its hypersonic rotation, relentlessly closing the distance with Vritra.
「It’s equipped with an A-Carbuncle? What are they—」
AN:
This chapter had to be heavily revised because a conversational AI told me that the original method I had come up with to create a black hole wouldn’t work. Originally, I planned to use the AI to calculate the Schwarzschild radius, but it told me outright: ‘Your method won’t create a black hole’. After several back-and-forth discussions, we settled on a new approach—using Hydrogen-7 for nuclear fission, leading to photodisintegration, which then forms a black hole.
Three years ago, I never would have imagined using this kind of verification method.
Technology evolves at an alarming rate…
TN:
The Schwarzschild radius is the radius of a spherical event horizon beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape the gravitational pull of a black hole. It is derived from Karl Schwarzschild’s solution to Einstein’s field equations for a non-rotating, uncharged black hole. For example, the Schwarzschild radius of the Earth is about 9 mm (if Earth were compressed to a ball this size, it would become a black hole), and the Schwarzschild radius of the Sun is about 3 km.
Hidrogen-7 is an exotic and highly unstable isotope of hydrogen with one proton and six neutrons, It has an extremely short half-life before decaying on tritium and three free neutrons. It is not naturally occurring and can only be produced in high-energy nuclear reactions, such as those in particle accelerators or possibly during high-energy astrophysical events.
The author said that he changed his original method to create a black hole for this one because the original was not feasible, but this one is not really feasible either. The most you could get with this method is an ultra-high energy radiation burst. Yes, there are some theories that at ultra-high energies, extreme-density photodisintegration or fission reactions might momentarily reach conditions for a microscopic black hole. However, the energy released would likely be too dispersed to create a black hole, and even if it produces a micro black hole, it would collapse instantly due to Hawking radiation,
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