162: Chapter 162 Times Have Changed!

He Mingde's lips twitched violently, and his withered Adam's apple bobbed up and down; for a moment, he didn't know how to respond to this.

In truth, he had vaguely guessed it long ago. From the moment Lin Yuan walked in with that canvas bag early this morning, he had a premonition that this young man's pace would be incredibly fast.

But "fast" was one thing, and "fast to this extent" was quite another.

Material preparation in one week.

Immediately after one week, assemble the equipment, and then proceed directly to ignition work?

If this timeline were presented to any nuclear physics research institution in the world, it would be dismissed as the ramblings of a psychiatric patient during an episode.

Yet, the person who said this so casually was Lin Yuan.

In the minds of the forty or fifty veteran experts present, the same thought was churning over and over:

Is this some kind of joke?!

However, the vast experimental hall was deathly silent; not a single person dared to speak up and ask that question.

Because the way Lin Yuan leaned against the back of his chair, his hands casually folded, made it look like he wasn't joking in the slightest.

Lin Yuan took in the complex expressions of the people in the hall and smiled lightly.

"You don't need to look at me like that, seniors. I am not joking with everyone."

"Since we have already announced to the public that we will achieve this within half a year, time itself is not something for us to slowly squander."

He leaned slightly forward, interlaced his fingers on the desktop, and though his voice was not loud, every word landed with absolute stability.

"Everyone, think carefully. Half a year sounds quite long."

"But if you strip away the rigid processes like material preparation, equipment assembly, and full-system joint testing..."

"Then the time actually left for us to conduct core experiments, run data, and optimize parameters is actually very tight."

"Therefore, every subsequent step must interlock seamlessly. Once the previous step ends, the next one must immediately follow, without any idle time in between."

Hearing this, the churning vibration in He Mingde's chest finally subsided a little.

That's right.

Half a year.

This deadline sounds long, but for a major project like Controlled Nuclear Fusion, when you break it down, the room for maneuver is actually pitifully small.

The veteran experts in the audience also gradually came back to their senses. The faces that had been somewhat dazed one by one gradually revealed an extremely profound sense of gravity and agreement.

Lin Yuan did not stop. He controlled the rhythm of the entire room and continued to press forward.

"So, I won't talk to you all about remote matters like subsequent commercial applications or grid-connected power generation right now."

He held up a slender finger, waved it slowly in mid-air, his gaze like a torch.

"Right now, our most core and only goal is one thing—Ignition!"

"Let's get the fire started first."

"Only after achieving the first ignition, allowing the energy gain factor Q value to exceed 1, and proving that the energy released by the fusion reaction is greater than the input energy, can everything else..."

"Things like steady-state operation, tritium self-sufficiency cycles, thermoelectric conversion efficiency, and the grand design of commercial reactors... have the qualifications and foundation to be discussed."

"Otherwise, if you can't ignite it, everything else is just self-deceiving castles in the air!"

As these resonant words fell, a sound of scattered yet uniform nodding echoed through the hall.

Zhou Changming rubbed his knees and muttered in a low voice:

"That is indeed the logic... If you don't ignite it, it's all damn nonsense..."

He Mingde also nodded slowly, his expression solemn.

Everyone understood this principle.

The ultimate goal of Controlled Nuclear Fusion is commercial power generation, but before that, you have to prove that this path is viable.

And the first ironclad proof of viability is ignition!

Let the fusion reaction run self-sufficiently, and output more energy than you put in.

Q > 1.

This is the iron threshold that has stood before all of humanity for decades.

The world's top laboratories, exhausting the hard work of generations, have yet to cross it.

What Lin Yuan is saying now is that after the materials are in place, he will immediately step on the gas and crash through this threshold directly!

To achieve this half-year goal, the logic is indeed sound.

But the problem is...

He Mingde folded his hands on the edge of the table, his thumbs unconsciously rubbing back and forth, but he still couldn't help but speak up.

"Academician Lin, we all agree with the logic of what you said."

He weighed his words, trying to make his questioning sound less abrupt.

"But after the material preparation is completed, plus equipment assembly, system joint testing... once these processes are finished, it will only be a matter of a few days."

"In other words, counting from today, we have less than two weeks in total to push for ignition."

He paused, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.

"Within two weeks, we have to pull the plasma confinement time from the current minute level to the level of steady-state self-sustaining operation..."

"At the same time, we have to push the plasma density from below the Greenwald limit to above the critical value that meets the ignition conditions..."

Speaking of this, He Mingde's voice involuntarily lowered a bit.

It wasn't that he didn't trust Lin Yuan; it was just that decades of professional experience had left too deep an imprint on his brain.

These two hurdles—confinement time and plasma density—had been gnawed at by the whole world for half a century without success.

Two weeks?

How could this be possible?!

The other veteran experts in the audience who worked on plasma physics were also tense-faced. Although they didn't speak, their hesitant and conflicted expressions were exactly the same as He Mingde's.

Lin Yuan saw everyone's reaction clearly.

He didn't rush to refute, but tilted his head, a look of intrigue spreading at the corners of his mouth.

"Dean He."

"And the seniors present here."

His gaze swept slowly over the faces filled with hesitation.

"I know exactly what everyone is muttering about in their hearts."

"The physical difficulty of these two hurdles—short confinement time and low density—is something I understand no less than anyone present."

Lin Yuan laid it out clearly, without any beating around the bush, his tone full of lucidity.

"If we follow the traditional old path, running machines for discharge round after round, adjusting parameters, running data, analyzing, and adjusting again... repeating the cycle."

"Never mind two weeks, two years wouldn't be enough."

As these words landed, the backs of He Mingde and the veteran experts in the audience actually relaxed a little.

At least Lin Yuan's perception of the engineering difficulty was not skewed; he wasn't just talking nonsense off the top of his head.

But before they could catch their breath completely.

Lin Yuan's right hand had already been raised, his finger pointing toward the row of brand-new server cabinets on the side of the hall that had just been assembled last night.

"But for me, old common sense is meant to be broken!"

"Everyone, the times have changed!"

He Mingde shuddered and looked in the direction of his finger.

Those rows of pitch-black server cabinets stood quietly against the side wall of the hall, the dense indicator lights on the cabinet surfaces flashing on and off, and the low sound of cooling fans running steadily.

He Mingde vaguely touched the edge of something, but it wasn't clear enough.

Lin Yuan withdrew his hand and slowly scanned the dozens of old faces in the audience.

"I think, after this specially deployed computing infrastructure was installed overnight yesterday..."

"None of you here have actually tried using it yet, right?"

The hall was quiet for two breaths.

Everyone looked at each other and shook their heads in unison.

Indeed, they hadn't.

They were chased back to sleep last night and swarmed into the hall this morning to wait for Lin Yuan; no one had the time to touch that equipment.

He Mingde opened his mouth, but in the end, he couldn't help but ask.

"Academician Lin, what do you mean by mentioning this...?"

Lin Yuan didn't answer directly.

He just folded his hands in front of his abdomen, raised his chin, and gestured slightly toward the direction of the cabinets.

"No hurry."

"Once everyone tries it out for yourselves, you will understand."