Tom was capable of building more proton decay detectors.

With each proton decay detector requiring approximately 110,000 clones for daily maintenance and research calculations, Tom could currently spare about 300 million clones for the construction and research of more proton decay detectors, after accounting for other research areas and the maintenance of the industrial system.

This meant approximately 2,700 proton decay detectors.

In this way, even if the proton's lifespan truly was 10^42 years, Tom could still genuinely detect this phenomenon by increasing the number of detectors.

However, Tom never forgot one point.

That was, he possessed industrial capabilities far exceeding those of an ordinary Electroweak Civilization.

At the same time, it was certain that a Strong Nuclear Civilization that had unified the Strong Nuclear Force truly existed in the universe.

This then led to a paradox: if the proton's lifespan was truly so high, even reaching 10^42 years, to the extent that thousands of super-large proton decay detectors were needed to detect proton decay…

How did those ordinary Electroweak Civilizations achieve breakthroughs?

Don't forget, even by exhausting all their civilization's power, an ordinary peak Electroweak Civilization could at most only support dozens of giant proton decay detectors.

It made no sense for an ordinary Electroweak Civilization to achieve a breakthrough with dozens of detectors, while he had already built a thousand and still couldn't break through!

This was unreasonable.

This could almost only mean one possibility: it wasn't that his industrial capability was insufficient, nor was it that the number of proton decay detectors was insufficient, but rather…

He had taken the wrong path.

Only this possibility could explain the current situation.

So, is my current theoretical framework wrong? Where did I go wrong?

As he reviewed the theoretical framework he had spent thousands of years researching and perfecting little by little, a hint of confusion arose in Tom's heart.

Do protons not decay at all? Or is the decay mode different from what I previously predicted?

The Strong Nuclear Force must be able to unify with the electroweak force, so what exactly is this unified mode?

Mistakes are not terrible; what is terrible is not knowing where the mistake lies, nor knowing the correct direction.

For the first time since expending great effort to temporarily repel the Mechanical Disaster fleet and fully dedicating himself to the cause of technological breakthrough, Tom truly felt the difficulty of this path.

While continuing to maintain the operation of thousands of proton decay detectors, Tom allocated a large amount of his brainpower to a new round of contemplation and deduction.

To prevent the problem of blind spots in thinking caused by having only his own mode of thought, Tom also ordered every Bluetoth scientist involved to put down their current tasks and all join the exploration of the new framework.

Time thus passed bit by bit, and in the blink of an eye, more than ten years had gone by.

Tom's exploration yielded nothing.

Although he proposed more than thirty new theoretical systems to explain existing phenomena, after further verification, all these theoretical systems were ultimately rejected, with none able to withstand experimental testing.

At this moment, even with Tom's composure, he couldn't help but feel a little anxious.

He truly couldn't help but be anxious.

These more than three hundred years were gained by him fighting with all his might, calculating every move, and even betting everything he possessed!

With only about 200 years left, the Mechanical Disaster fleet would return, and he was now stuck by this obstacle, unable to make any progress. How could Tom not be anxious?

Don't forget, the next time the Mechanical Disaster fleet arrives, they will have already recovered to their full strength. At the same time, having fallen for a trap once, all his countermeasures will be ineffective next time, and he will no longer be a match for the Mechanical Disaster fleet.

He wouldn't even be able to escape!

At this moment, Tom even felt a bit envious of those ordinary Electroweak Civilizations.

While their scientific research capabilities were low and their industrial strength weak, even only able to support the operation of dozens of detectors.

But they had time; they could take it slow, gradually 'grind,' and slowly improve through iterative optimization.

He, however, was running out of time!

Time rapidly slipped away as Tom dedicated himself to research and deduction, and in the blink of an eye, another ten years had passed.

At this moment, Magnetic Monopole Detector No. 559 suddenly reported a new situation to Tom.

The high-sensitivity magnetic field detection device showed that approximately 2 minutes prior, the arrangement pattern of superfluid helium-3 seemed to have been slightly disturbed.

Its pattern was extremely similar to the magnetic monopole influence predicted by Tom.

Tom's spirit was invigorated, and he instantly dedicated all his available clone brainpower to this area.

The clones working within that giant detector closely checked all the data generated by the detector in the past few minutes and distributed it to numerous other scientific research institutions.

This massive amount of data was at this moment divided into hundreds of millions of parts, and hundreds of millions of clones, like hungry beasts, each selected one hundred millionth, quickly reading and initially analyzing this data.

Another portion of clones controlled the supercomputer, inputting various data and commencing calculations.

In an instant, over a hundred million clone brains functioned like calculation terminals of a distributed supercomputer, each performing its current data processing work, and finally, under Tom's control, they converged. After collecting the reading and analysis results of each clone, they were fed back.

Hundreds of millions of brains functioned as one, truly acting as if guided by an arm, without any delay or communication cost.

Under these circumstances, in just a few days, Tom completed the interpretation and analysis of all data, completely eliminated interfering factors, and arrived at the final conclusion that filled Tom with unprecedented excitement and elation.

This is a magnetic monopole! There's no mistake!

The helium-3 produced by millions of Deuterium-Deuterium fusion nuclear power plants, and the construction, maintenance, daily research, and analysis by countless clones, finally yielded fruitful results at this moment!

Magnetic monopoles truly exist!

At this moment, Tom found answers to numerous scientific mysteries.

Tom was filled with emotion.

This magnetic monopole very likely originated in the early universe. It possesses a lifespan as long as a proton's and wanders through the universe at near light speed day in and day out.

Its interaction force with ordinary matter is extremely small, which gives it strong penetrability, similar to a neutrino.

It has thus wandered through the universe for tens of billions of years.

It may have witnessed the birth of the universe, the appearance and rapid demise of the first generation of stars, the birth of heavy elements, the condensation of countless stars into suns and then into galaxies, and countless epic events in the universe.

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