Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones-Chapter 388: Ballast

Time passed quietly, and Tom was always working on this project with all his might.

However, the progress of this project was not smooth. For a complex binary system like a red giant-white dwarf, its matter movement is too chaotic, and its complexity is almost millions of times that of the Earth’s atmospheric movement.

It is already so difficult to make weather forecasts for Earth based on atmospheric movement, and it is almost impossible to predict the gas movement, magnetic field changes, and other phenomena of a star in such a chaotic state.

Even though Tom had launched tens of thousands of scientific research satellites specifically to collect stellar data, he could only barely make short-term "weather" forecasts within 48 hours. If the time was a little longer, the prediction accuracy would rapidly decrease.

This led to Tom’s industrial spacecraft, Gravity Life, Electromagnetic Life, and others, constantly being threatened by the stellar "weather."

Sudden magnetic field changes, matter ejections, and radiation bursts often occurred, catching Tom off guard and causing him to lose a large number of spacecraft.

Even the Gravity Life and Electromagnetic Life suffered some casualties as a result.

But this was not what Tom was most worried about. What worried him most was still the white dwarf.

At this stage, there was still some time before the supernova was detonated, so there was no need to worry for now. But another kind of explosion, the nova explosion, was something Tom had to constantly pay attention to.

For this, he even resorted to suicidal detection, by launching a probe spacecraft to the white dwarf every hour, constantly monitoring the state of the white dwarf enveloped within the accretion disk.

These probe spacecraft were specially designed to have extremely high resistance to external environmental influences. But even so, after passing through the thick accretion disk, under the violent radiation and gravity of the white dwarf, they could only conduct effective detection for no more than 3 seconds before crashing heavily onto the white dwarf and being completely assimilated by it.

Time quietly passed amidst this carefulness, constant casualties, and Tom’s full dedication.

Decades later, something unexpected happened to Tom.

He never imagined that the nova explosion he had always worried about did not occur. Instead, another equally violent phenomenon rapidly brewed, expected to erupt within a maximum of two days.

Thermal pulse!

When a medium-mass star like G76 enters the end of its life and expands extremely, it develops a layered structure internally.

The outermost layer is the convective envelope, rich in elements such as hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. This layer rapidly dissipates with the stellar wind.

Inside is the hydrogen shell, and further inside is the helium shell, all the way to the innermost carbon-oxygen degenerate core.

This phenomenon, known as a thermal pulse, occurs in the helium shell close to the core.

Due to changes within the star, sometimes these helium elements are accidentally ignited and enter a fusion state. Also, due to the extremely high temperature and pressure inside, this helium fusion enters an uncontrolled chain reaction state, thereby releasing a large amount of energy.

On the outside of the star, this manifests as the star expanding more violently, with matter ejection, radiation bursts, and magnetic field activity also becoming more intense.

According to Tom’s estimation, if the total of 1 billion spacecraft he had deployed around the star could not find shelter in advance, they would likely be completely destroyed by this thermal pulse eruption.

But... this thermal pulse, from the first signs to the calculated full eruption, only had a short two-day window. It was too fast, leaving Tom no time to respond.

In a hurry, Tom could only order the Electromagnetic Life and Gravity beings to immediately evacuate and quickly retreat to the large planets G76, which were further away from the star and also served as Tom’s industrial base, for shelter. As for the spacecraft originally scattered in the outer atmosphere of the star, they simply could not be bothered with.

The thermal pulse finally erupted after 45 hours. In an instant, the star’s brightness increased again, and violent radiation poured down like a torrential rain. Tom’s spacecraft, like tiny insects, were swept away in an instant.

A billion spacecraft of all sizes and types were completely annihilated.

"Alas... if I hadn’t stirred up this star so much over the years, perhaps this thermal pulse wouldn’t have erupted so quickly. It’s a case of reaping what I sow."

Tom sighed softly.

Although the losses were heavy at this moment, Tom did not feel much regret in his heart.

The reason was simple: Tom had long made ample preparations for various unexpected eruptions in the star-white dwarf binary system.

He had already built all the spacecraft, industrial machinery, and other necessities for the second supernova project and stored them in the planetary base, precisely to prepare for a situation like today!

After patiently waiting for a few months, when the peak of the thermal pulse eruption passed and the star regained some calm and a workable environment, Tom did not hesitate. He immediately took control of billions of clones, who in turn operated Primal, and Primal directly controlled over a billion spacecraft, along with the Gravity Life and Electromagnetic Life, to once again head towards the star.

The colossal supernova project began anew, and the star bridge, which had originally shrunk a bit, once again grew thicker at this moment.

Amidst various minor incidents, Tom persevered for another hundred years.

At this moment, the supernova project had completed over 80%.

A mass equivalent to tens of thousands of Earths had been injected by Tom onto that white dwarf.

Even if Tom were to withdraw all engineering forces now, relying solely on natural accretion, this white dwarf would still reach the Chandrasekhar Limit within 20 pm 10 years, and then violently erupt as a supernova.

With Tom’s current technological level, he could only achieve this level of accuracy for supernova eruption predictions at most.

And at this moment, there were still over 40 years remaining until the time given by the Red Star Alliance.

So... it was time to evacuate, no, escape from this solar system in advance.

But before that, there was one more thing to do.

The orientation of the white dwarf’s north and south poles still had a deviation of about one-thousandth from Tom’s predetermined direction.

Tom had already formulated an engineering plan to adjust these deviations: he only needed to send some high-speed spacecraft with sufficient mass to impact the white dwarf’s accretion disk at a predetermined speed and angle, stirring it up. Subsequently, the white dwarf’s angle adjustment would be completed automatically through the changes in these accretion disks.

In this process, the most important factor was the mass of the spacecraft.

Each spacecraft controlled to impact the accretion disk had to have a mass of over 10 million tons. However, there were no requirements for what contributed to this mass.

Soil, sand, rocks, water ice, and so on, it didn’t matter; all could be used.

Then this task became very simple for Tom, even incredibly simple compared to the grand projects before.

He only needed to mobilize 10 heavy transport ships, load them with any ballast, as long as they reached the predetermined mass, and then crash them directly.

But Tom did not intend to use conventional matter as ballast.