It had been quite some time since he'd found those Arc Reactors at Ivan's.
Qingshui had also been studying these Arc Reactors for a long time.
Yet, even now, he hadn't been able to crack the technology for manufacturing Arc Reactors based on the samples he had on hand.
This was purely a technological gap.
Qingshui's current expertise in mechanical physics was actually quite advanced. While still far behind a genius like Tony Stark, who was ahead of his time, the knowledge and technology he'd acquired through various channels were definitely superior to most scientists.
In recent months, Qingshui had absorbed most of Norman Osborn's research achievements from before his death. With the entire Osborn technological foundation as support, he still couldn't replicate the Arc Reactor.
Aside from Ivan, who had a family legacy with his father assisting the elder Stark in developing the Arc Reactor, there were hardly any others in the entire Marvel Universe who could decipher this little gadget Tony Stark had made in a cave out of dismantled missiles.
But he wasn't without gains.
He had roughly figured out most of the Arc Reactor's operating principles. Even if the related technology couldn't implement these principles, the byproducts developed during this process were valuable enough.
Under normal circumstances, achieving nuclear fusion requires extremely stringent conditions.
Natural nuclear fusion, like that in the sun, occurs naturally in high-temperature, high-pressure environments.
Since high-pressure conditions like those on the sun cannot be replicated on Earth, artificially created nuclear fusion primarily relies on absolute high temperatures—a typical example being the hydrogen bomb, which is detonated by the high temperature generated during an atomic bomb explosion.
Another example is the tokamak device, where the internal temperature reaches 100-150 million degrees Celsius. Its principle is to heat the internal plasma to this point through inductive current, high-energy particle injection, and radiofrequency heating achieved by specific frequencies of electromagnetic waves, and then control this plasma with a magnetic field.
In short, whether it's high temperature or high pressure, both aim to provide enough energy to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between atomic nuclei, known as the Coulomb barrier.
However, the elder Stark had ingeniously developed a black technology within black technologies back in the last century.
Quantum Tunneling Effect Amplification.
In classical physics, if a particle lacks sufficient energy to cross a barrier, it will be reflected. However, this is not the case in the microscopic world.
At the microscopic scale, particles exhibit wave-like properties, and their wave function decays exponentially within the barrier region but never completely reaches zero. Therefore, there's a certain probability for a particle to "tunnel" through the barrier and appear on the other side.
This is the quantum tunneling effect.
Howard Stark integrated various methods to amplify the quantum tunneling effect, allowing particles to more easily pass through the Coulomb barrier and achieve nuclear fusion.
For example, using muon-catalyzed fusion, or using ultra-strong laser fields to instantly reduce the barrier width.
These were all quite advanced technologies.
But the most advanced, and most important, the one that sounded most outlandish, was the elder Stark's research into using metal lattices to shrink the barrier.
By chemically filling hydrogen atoms into the metal lattice, it helps the hydrogen atoms approach the distance required for nuclear reaction, reduces the reaction barrier between hydrogen atoms, and greatly amplifies the quantum tunneling effect of hydrogen and its isotopes, to the point where cold nuclear fusion can easily occur at room temperature, and is extremely safe.
The elder Stark researched many metal materials, even Vibranium, and finally concluded that palladium metal's lattice was the most suitable.
This itself was also an excellent hydrogen storage material.
This also answered one of Qingshui's confusions.
That is, why the Arc Reactor had an absurdly high power output but such a short battery life.
Because its cold nuclear fusion occurred through hydrogen atoms and their isotopes filled in palladium metal, and the number of hydrogen atoms was greatly limited.
Of course, the elder Stark also proposed a solution for this, hypothesizing the existence of a palladium isotope, but due to the limitations of his era, he left it for future generations to create.
Tony Stark, building on this, added many more things. Not only did he create this palladium isotope, but he also successfully miniaturized the reactor.
However, despite understanding the principle, Qingshui couldn't figure out how to properly fill hydrogen atoms into the metal lattice of palladium metal.
He had tried everything, from the simplest high-temperature and high-pressure treatment to electrochemical filling.
He could fill a small amount of hydrogen atoms, but within a single unit cell, the density of hydrogen atoms wasn't high, completely failing to achieve the desired effect.
But this didn't mean he gained nothing.
A hint from Tony Stark allowed Ivan to increase the rotational speed of the energy output system, creating a highly efficient small energy conversion system.
As a supporting technology for the Arc Reactor, Qingshui could directly apply it to his own armor and puppets, reducing Chakra consumption, boosting attacks, increasing flight speed, and greatly improving energy utilization efficiency.
"Watos, put these away and return them to their original place. Seal the No. 17 palladium-hydrogen combination plan."
Qingshui rubbed his eyes tiredly and stretched.
"OK, Sir."
A cold, synthesized electronic voice sounded from the speaker above Qingshui's head.
Watos, as in W.A.T.O.S.
It was the result of Qingshui's reverse engineering of Lex Luthor's LexOS, with the help of Cisco and Victor.
As an AI, Watos was still in a relatively primitive state. Even though Qingshui fed it a large amount of training data and provided an entire room of servers for its computing power, it would occasionally act up, misinterpreting Qingshui's intentions and becoming an artificial idiot.
But for the most part, Watos was quite useful. At least in the field of scientific research, it could provide some assistance to Qingshui.
"Sir, you have a missed call from Mr. Mencken thirty minutes ago. You instructed me to decline it at the time."
"Mencken? Call him back. And tell Jorge to bring me a coffee, please."
Qingshui yawned tiredly and sat back in his chair.
The prolonged, high-intensity mental activity had exhausted him.
"Yes, Sir."
Within seconds, the sound of a call connecting came from the speaker above Qingshui's head.
"Watos, you finally picked up."
Mencken's voice sounded even more exhausted.
"What is it?"
"Connors's Regeneration Serum has succeeded, but a lot of people are after it. Thanks to Connors, I've already rooted out over a dozen spies hidden within the company."
"Are the people behind those spies troublesome?"
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