One billion!

Tom never imagined that after integrating the Bluetoth Civilization's biotechnology, his own biotechnology would advance to such an extent.

He originally thought that an increase to 200 million would be quite good, but he didn't expect it to directly increase tenfold!

One billion clones would be under his consciousness link at all times, and each clone would be equivalent to a top scientist with knowledge of all disciplines. There would be no internal friction or communication costs between the one billion clones, allowing them to fully devote themselves to technological development...

How immense would his scientific research capabilities be?

Even the total population of Human Civilization back then reached around 40 billion, forty times his current number. But in terms of scientific research capability, it would be good if they had even one percent of his!

Not only in scientific research, but in industrial capability, he could also leave Human Civilization far behind.

Furthermore, not only Human Civilization, but even the Bluetoth Civilization at its peak, with a population of hundreds of billions, was far from comparable to him in terms of scientific research and industry.

"Good, this is very good."

At this moment, the threat of the Mechanical Disaster still hung over Tom's head like a sharp sword, ready to strike at any unknown time.

But now, with the maximum consciousness connection number increased to 1 billion, he would have sufficient scientific research and industrial capabilities to quickly digest and absorb the Bluetoth Civilization's technology, rapidly construct an interstellar fleet, and escape the solar system in the shortest possible time.

As for staying in the solar system to break through to Strong Nuclear Civilization, and engaging in a direct battle with and defeating that Mechanical Disaster, Tom had no such extravagant hopes.

Technological development becomes more difficult the further it progresses.

Especially for the unified strong nuclear force, a critical and fundamental physical theory that can serve as a dividing line between two major levels, the difficulty of this matter would inevitably exceed his imagination.

If he couldn't break through the level, facing the Mechanical Disaster, he would only be able to passively take a beating.

He had already struggled so much against the Bluetoth's warships, even with the opponent suffering from insufficient logistics, being exhausted from a long expedition, and experiencing widespread panic. He still had to rely on several centuries of preparation, abundant logistics, super-high efficiency, super-high industrial capability, and sufficient unmanned combat forces to barely achieve a stalemate.

Later, the opponent even exploited a loophole and occupied Venus. If he hadn't replenished water to Venus at the fastest speed, he might have been the one to lose in the end.

Under such circumstances, how could he possibly defeat the Mechanical Disaster?

Only by escaping could he have a glimmer of hope and preserve the future.

Now that the maximum consciousness connection number had suddenly surged to 1 billion, the top priority was, of course, to build more bases—food bases, living bases, industrial bases, etc.—to support these clones.

He also needed to build more clone production factories to produce enough clones for his use as quickly as possible.

With a maximum consciousness connection of 1 billion, the number of commonly used clones would need to reach 1.5 billion, and with backup clones, it would be 2 billion.

Adding another portion of clones in hibernation as a final backup, the total number of clones would reach 3 billion.

Currently, he only had 1.2 billion clones in total, so he still needed to produce another 1.8 billion.

This was also an extremely massive undertaking.

However, these matters were already second nature to Tom; he just needed to proceed step by step.

After assigning a portion of clones to handle these tasks, Tom did not devote too much attention to this aspect, but rather focused his primary energy on another matter.

**Researching controllable nuclear fusion technology!**

Both Tom's previous deductions and the current experimental verification obtained from the Bluetoth Civilization's spaceship proved one thing to Tom: controllable nuclear fusion was the foundation for interstellar travel.

The reason is simple: the maximum efficiency of mass conversion to energy in nuclear fission is only about 0.089%. According to the mass-energy equation, a 1 kg piece of uranium-235 can produce at most about \( 8 \times 10^{13} \) joules of energy.

Nuclear fusion, however, has a higher mass conversion efficiency.

There are also several different types of nuclear fusion, namely deuterium-tritium fusion, deuterium-deuterium fusion, deuterium-helium-3 fusion, proton-proton chain fusion, carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle fusion, and so on.

These types are relatively common. Besides these, in some massive stars, as well as in violent physical processes like neutron star collisions and supernova explosions, there is also fusion involving heavier elements, but those are unconventional and can be temporarily disregarded.

Among these common types of fusion, taking deuterium-tritium fusion, which is the easiest to achieve and has the lowest environmental requirements, as an example, its energy conversion efficiency is about 0.375%, which is **4.2 times** that of nuclear fission!

1 kg of deuterium-tritium can produce \( 3.36 \times 10^{14} \) joules of energy!

The proton-proton chain fusion and carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle fusion, which have higher environmental requirements and technical content and are more difficult to achieve, can even reach an energy conversion efficiency of about 0.7%, approximately **7.9 times** that of nuclear fission!

Tom also conceived a fusion mode with even higher fusion efficiency, which is to combine the first two steps of proton-proton chain fusion with deuterium-helium-3 fusion. In ideal circumstances, the energy conversion efficiency is even hoped to reach over 1%, which would be as high as **11.8 times** that of nuclear fission.

Of course, that would be a matter for the future; even the Bluetoth Civilization failed to achieve it. It would probably only be possible after unifying the strong nuclear force and becoming a Strong Nuclear Civilization. For now, he wouldn't think too much about it and would only focus on the simplest and easiest to achieve **deuterium-tritium fusion**, to first open the door to nuclear fusion.

Compared to nuclear fission, nuclear fusion not only produces more energy but also has more easily accessible fuel.

In the universe, elements with higher atomic numbers generally have lower average abundances.

Elements like uranium-235, uranium-233, thorium-232, neptunium-237, and americium-231, used for nuclear fission, are extremely rare in nature.

Plutonium-239 is even rarer, barely forming a tiny amount through bombardment by cosmic high-energy rays.

Mining nuclear fission fuel is extremely troublesome and difficult, and its output is severely limited.

But nuclear fusion is different.

Taking deuterium-tritium fusion as an example, although the content of deuterium is low, about one part in a hundred thousand in Jupiter's atmosphere, this also means that for every ton of Jupiter's atmosphere processed, about ten grams of deuterium can be collected, which is quite high in absolute terms.

And for a planet as large as Jupiter, deuterium resources can be considered virtually inexhaustible.

As for tritium, that's not important. Because in deuterium-tritium fusion, tritium can be self-replenishing and does not require additional external replenishment.

Once controllable nuclear fusion is mastered, and a more advanced energy supply system than nuclear fission is obtained, then numerous uranium ore and thorium ore mines will no longer need to operate, and a large number of uranium enrichment factories can also be shut down. If energy is needed, it can simply be extracted from Jupiter's atmosphere.

In terms of energy, he could almost consider himself completely free from restrictions.

Imagining a beautiful future, Tom, after the surge in his maximum consciousness connection number, invested **at least 100 million clones** into controllable nuclear fusion research.

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