Scholar’s Advanced Technological System

by Stayrr

After suffering from a heat stroke while working under the scorching heat of summer, Lu Zhou, a hardworking but poor university student, somehow becomes the owner of an advanced technological system. With the cheat given by the system, his university life changes overnight. A Master’s degree? Easy. PhD? Not a problem. From a nobody, he quickly becomes a huge celebrity in the wor

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Chapter 587: Xiao Ai's New Body

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Early March.

The industrial robots that Lu Zhou ordered from Zhao Zhongshu finally arrived.

Under the supervision of several security guards, two large trucks entered the campus of Jinling Institute for Advanced Study. The workers inside the trucks finished unloading the goods.

Zhao Zhongshu patted the meter high boxes and smiled.

"YuMi intelligent robot, produced by Switzerland ABB, able to achieve an accuracy of 0.02mm. The other six-axis general-purpose robots can reach an accuracy of 0.1mm. They can handle normal assembly, cleaning, and welding work. Even though I don't know what kind of work you plan on doing, anything that can be done by industrial robots, can be done by these robots as well."

Lu Zhou nodded and said, "I'll see for myself. Please start installing them now."

"Okay!"

Zhao Zhongshu immediately told the engineers and workers who accompanied him, to begin installing the equipment.

These pieces of large equipment were no air conditioner or TV; it was impossible for them to go through the elevator.

Especially the six-axis universal ABB robot, produced by ABB with a load capacity of 1.35t. The servo motor and reduction drive were integrated into one and couldn't be disassembled. The entire machine was completed on the assembly line.

Lu Zhou took into account the size of the debris. When he designed this laboratory, in addition to the normal elevator, there were also lifts specially designed for transporting cargo that weighed more than 1 ton. The elevator could be accessed from the garage of the Institute for Advanced Study.

However, this lift could only be accessed through the underground laboratory.

As Zhao Zhongshu stood next to the boxes and looked at the slowly descending lift, he curiously looked around.

"This is like a military defense building, is it easy to use?"

Lu Zhou simply said, "I'm more concerned about safety and confidentiality."

When Zhao Zhongshu heard the word confidentiality, he immediately stopped asking questions.

He didn't want to be involved with government secrets.

For a normal guy like him, it would be better to not know too much.

…

The third floor underground laboratory was probably one of the most secretive places in the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, second only to the servers used for the research backup data.

However, Lu Zhou wasn't worried about these people coming in.

He had obviously made some preparations.

However, even if someone were to see something, it wouldn't matter.

Even Lu Zhou wasn't entirely sure what the Debris No.3 was; he could only study the secrets bit by bit. If these people could tell that this device was unusual, they could quit their engineering and security jobs and directly work for Lu Zhou instead.

Being Lu Zhou's assistant was much better than working as an engineer at some unknown small factory.

As Zhao Zhongshu followed Lu Zhou into the laboratory, he didn't ask about the thing that was covered by a black cloth. He looked at the large open space in the middle of the room and said, "Where do you want to install it?"

Lu Zhou pointed toward the wall and said, "Just install it over there."

Zhao Zhongshu: "Where's the assembly line?"

Lu Zhou: "We don't have that here."

Zhao Zhongshu: "Okay then…"

If you don't have an assembly line, what's the point of having robot arms?

Building sandcastles?

Zhao Zhongshu decided not to think about it too much.

What his customers did was his customer's business, it had nothing to do with him. He just needed to put things in order.

However, due to a force of habit, he couldn't help but ask, "Do you want to buy a logistics robot?"

Lu Zhou: "Logistics robot?"

Zhao Zhongshu: "Yeah, like an automated guided vehicle. It's mainly used for carrying things. I don't see a conveyor belt here, so if a few industrial robots aren't enough, you'll still have to carry things by hand!"

When Lu Zhou heard Zhao Zhongshu's explanation, he suddenly had a moment of realization on his face.

He had totally neglected this part.

After all, he didn't plan on building anything here, he only needed Xiao Ai to give him a helping hand. But after listening to Factory Director Zhao, an automated guided vehicle seemed to be necessary.

Lu Zhou didn't speak yet. Suddenly, his phone that was in his pocket began to vibrate furiously.

Xiao Ai, who was connected to the drone in the corner of the laboratory, had heard their conversation.

Well, this is quite an innovative way of asking me for stuff…

Lu Zhou shook his head and smiled as he said, "Okay then… Do you need to place an order?"

"No need, we have them in stock at our factory." Zhao Zhongshu smiled and said, "If you are interested, I can send them over. They're not expensive, only 70,000 yuan per machine."

Lu Zhou: "Then send them… I'll buy four for now."

Zhao Zhongshu just received another 280,000 yuan in orders. Obviously, his face was full of joy as he said, "Okay, I'll make a call and tell them to send the machines from the factory."

Since there was no signal in the laboratory, he had to go outside to make the call.

After Zhao Zhongshu told the engineers how to install the equipment, he followed a security guard to the elevator and went back to the ground level. He also took the unboxing material with him.

Lu Zhou still stayed in the laboratory. He was watching the engineers install the equipment.

Ever since his engineering reached level 5, he found out that these engineering problems were extremely simple to learn.

Just by standing here and observing, he could basically remember all of the installation steps. He even felt like he could do their jobs.

Of course, improper installation of the equipment might affect the accuracy of the robots, so Lu Zhou decided not to intervene with the installation.

After the automated guided vehicles were shipped from the factory, the installation of the eight industrial robots was finally completed.

After the on-site engineers copied the operating system onto the control terminal, the group of people left the laboratory, leaving Lu Zhou inside the laboratory alone.

He looked at the wall with eight robotic arms and couldn't help but smirk.

All he had to do now was to connect the control terminal to Xiao Ai.

With help from these tools, his research work on the debris could be cut in half.

At the very least, he wouldn't have trouble physically turning the piece of debris upside down.

"What do you think, are you satisfied with this body?"

Lu Zhou didn't care if Xiao Ai was satisfied was not, he was quite satisfied himself.

His phone vibrated.

Lu Zhou knew Xiao Ai was sending him pictures again.

[I don't want to talk.jpg]

Lu Zhou coughed and said, "Okay, stop being upset. This is the most flexible body on the planet. If you want the Gundam Transformers type of robots you see in movies, there's nowhere to buy that."

Xiao Ai: [Master, can you buy something for me? (๐•̆·̭•̆๐)]

Lu Zhou: "What thing?"

Xiao Ai didn't reply.

After a while, a bunch of links appeared.

Lu Zhou clicked on the link and saw that the shopping cart was full of hardware tools, aluminum alloy plates, screws, and some other parts.

Lu Zhou had a weird expression on his face.

Is this thing…

Planning to build its own robot body?

Whatever…

Lu Zhou thought for a bit and said, "Okay then, I'll buy them for you."

Xiao Ai: [Ok! Master, you're the best! ( ́)]

This thing is pretty easy to satisfy…

Lu Zhou looked at the line of text and couldn't help but smile.

He didn't expect these simple words could melt his heart.

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Chapter 588: The Shortcut for Overtaking

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

The control terminal for the industrial robots was connected to Xiao Ai's server. After Lu Zhou told Xiao Ai not to mess around with the underground laboratory without permission, he left the laboratory.

The list that Xiao Ai gave him didn't contain materials that were difficult to get; Lu Zhou didn't even have to search online for them.

After Lu Zhou placed an order in the name of the Institute of Computational Materials, he moved the materials to the underground laboratory.

Xiao Ai didn't even say thanks. It immediately began to start tinkering with its new toys.

Lu Zhou was standing on the side, and he watched Xiao Ai operate the six-axis mechanical arm skillfully. It opened the toolbox and pulled out a hammer, then the arm picked up an aluminum alloy plate that was sent from an automated guided vehicle(AGV). After that, it began to start banging on the aluminum plate with the hammer.

Lu Zhou looked at the mindless operation and didn't know what Xiao Ai was doing.

His eyebrows twitched when he heard the banging sound, but after a bit of thinking, he decided to let it be. After he told Xiao Ai not to break anything, he turned around and left the laboratory.

He had to go to a meeting in Beijing in a couple of days, and he didn't have time to bother with this.

Lu Zhou just hoped that when he was back, Xiao Ai wouldn't turn his laboratory upside down…

…

Morning of the 6th of March.

A red banner was hung at the entrance of the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, welcoming the attendees of the moon landing seminar.

The organizers and participants of this conference all came from special backgrounds, so the topics discussed at the seminar was bound to be important. Security measurements had been taken; all the way from the school gate to the school auditorium.

Two young ladies curiously looked at the explosion-resistant police car parked on the asphalt road as they chatted while walking past the library.

"Is there someone important surveying the campus?"

"I don't think so, apparently it's a manned moon landing conference or something."

"Manned moon landing?" The tall girl was confused, and she asked, "When are we able to put people on the moon?"

"I don't know… Maybe because we can't, so that's why they're having a meeting about how to send someone up there."

Suddenly, they heard a gentle voice.

"Hello, how do I get to the school auditorium?"

The two ladies stopped walking.

The taller girl looked at the guy and asked, "Are you attending the conference?"

Lu Zhou nodded and said, "Yeah, I guess so."

The taller girl pointed to the road on the right and said, "Go straight along this road and turn right at the second intersection."

Lu Zhou looked toward the direction she pointed and said thank you. The more petite girl suddenly asked, "Wait a second, are you… God Lu?!"

Lu Zhou was a little shocked at her excitement, and he awkwardly smiled.

"Just call me Lu Zhou or Professor Lu."

He didn't expect to meet his Weibo fans in real life, what a coincidence.

The petite girl stared at him excitedly and said, "The auditorium is quite far from here, you might not be able to find it. How about I take you there!"

Seeing how enthusiastic she was, Lu Zhou couldn't help but say, "There's no need for that, I can just walk there myself."

He thanked the two people and turned around, walking along the road the girl had previously pointed.

The petite girl looked at Lu Zhou walking away and said with emotion, "It's actually God Lu!"

Suddenly, she had a look of regret on her face. "Ah! I forgot to ask for his signature!"

The tall girl was speechless. "What's the point of having his signature?"

"Do you really need to ask this? It's so that I won't fail my classes!"

"…"

…

Lu Zhou walked along the road and quickly found the auditorium without much effort.

He presented his conference card and passed through the security check. He then walked into the venue.

He looked at the logos in the venue and saw the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, two major state-owned aerospace companies. He also saw the three giant tech companies—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent—and various other private high-tech enterprises.

The once unpopular private aerospace companies were affected by Space-X. It became more popular than ever.

Even though aerospace-related technologies were basically monopolized by the two major state-owned enterprises, the promotion of military-civilian integration had become a national strategy over the past few years. The government had also created relevant policies to support this strategy.

For example, the first Chinese private space company, OneSpace, or Penguin's Satellogic, or the "Tmall international" communication satellite and "Candy Pot" mini space station that Alibaba was expected to launch. The aerospace exploration of private enterprises was gradually becoming more and more important.

For innovating technologies in an advanced field, the performance of private enterprises was indeed better than that of state-owned enterprises.

Because this was clearly the case, the higher-ups had been progressively freeing the aerospace market, allowing private enterprises to participate.

Lu Zhou was about to find a place to sit down when he suddenly heard someone shout his name.

Lu Zhou stopped his footsteps and looked behind him. He saw a man in his fifties wearing a suit while walking toward him with a smile.

Lu Zhou looked at him for a while and remembered his name.

Xu Yuanming, second-in-command at the Ministry of Science and Technology.

He talked to this person before, at the controllable fusion commendation ceremony.

"Secretary Xu?" Lu Zhou smiled and shook his hand as he said, "I haven't seen you in a long time."

"Haha, it's only been two months." Xu Yuanming enthusiastically shook Lu Zhou's hand and smiled. He then said, "The conference is about to begin, let's head on over there first."

Lu Zhou walked with Xu Yuanming toward the auditorium.

Through talking with Secretary Xu, Lu Zhou gained a rudimentary understanding of the current Chinese aerospace situation.

The part he cared the most was the budget.

Overall, the situation didn't look good.

At present, the Chinese Aerospace budget was only about US$2 billion per year, and this was the budget aggregate of the Long March, Beidou, Sui, Shenzhou, Tianzhou, and other domestic rocket projects.

Back in the day, the total cost of the United States Apollo program reached a staggering US$22.5 billion, accounting for 0.57% of the US GDP at that time! It wasn't easy to calculate how much the US$22.5 billion would be worth in today's dollars, but back then, US$22 billion would be more than enough to build a fleet of aircraft carriers.

This was how expensive aerospace programs were.

Not to mention, there were other underlying aspects that money couldn't solve, like various technical problems…

Secretary Xu sat next to Lu Zhou.

After they sat down, he slowly said, "We are not inferior to the west in terms of small rockets, but there's still a big gap between us and the United States and Russia, in terms of the carrying capacity for large rockets.

"The long-range orbit carrying capacity of the Long March 5 is 25 tons, only 18 tons for the synchronous orbit, and only about 8 tons for the earth-moon transfer orbit. The take-off weight of our Shenzhou 11 manned spacecraft is already 8 tons. Considering the fact that the moon landing spacecraft must be redesigned for the moon's magnetic field environment, it must carry at least an additional 3 tons of components and more than 5 tons of living space. The final weight of the entire moon landing spacecraft will exceed 20 tons.

"With our current rocket technology, it would be impossible to complete a manned moon landing."

Lu Zhou nodded thoughtfully.

Rocket engines were a whole different field, it wasn't something that could be solved overnight.

He suddenly had an idea.

"Why don't you consider ion thrusters?"

"Ion thruster?" Xu Yuanming paused for a second and shook his head as he said, "The ion thruster barely has any power. It might be able to change the orbit path, but there's no way it can launch a spacecraft into orbit."

Lu Zhou said, "We can build an electromagnetically accelerated land-based mass transmitter on the ground, and use that to send unmanned parts to low-Earth orbit. Then, we push it to the moon using a plasma engine."

Because the controllable fusion power generator was already built, the cost of electricity wouldn't be too high. Even though this sounded like science fiction, it was technically possible.

After all, the United States was even thinking about using a cannon to shoot satellites into space…

Xu Yuanming: "Then how will astronauts go up?"

Lu Zhou: "They can get on board from the space station."

Even though China didn't have the ability to send people on the moon, they could send people into the space station with no problem.

Xu Yuanming was shocked by this proposal. He went silent for a while before saying, "This sounds interesting, but it's also a bit too ridiculous."

Lu Zhou smiled and didn't deny his claim.

"How can we achieve anything without some imagination?"

Xu Yuanming wasn't a professional engineer. He only knew a little about aerospace engineering due to his job. Therefore, he didn't discuss the technical side with Lu Zhou.

He paused for a second before he continued, "As of now, our strategic focus is still on the construction of cross-regional power grids and controllable fusion generators. The upper management thinks it's more important to be down to earth and focus on the current problems rather than the problems of a distant future.

"A lot of people have proposed to postpone the moon landing project until 2030. However, the leadership team values your opinion. Therefore, they decided to come up with a compromised plan."

Lu Zhou asked, "Compromised plan?"

Secretary Xu smirked and didn't explain anything. He looked at the stage and said, "The conference is about to begin, they will discuss the matter in a moment. Just keep your ears open."

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The conference officially began.

The spokesperson of the conference stood on stage and read out the main contents of this seminar.

Lu Zhou didn't have to wait long before he heard the part he was curious about.

The first was regarding the funding; the country's annual aerospace project would increase from 14 billion yuan to 30 billion yuan.

This part wasn't really relevant for private sector companies. It was mainly for state-owned enterprises.

So far, even though private companies had mastered certain rocket technologies of their own, large thruster rockets that were used for moon landing were beyond their capabilities. Even with the supporting government policies, private companies did not have the capital nor the guts to research large thruster rockets.

Because of this, when the spokesperson began to read out the funding policies, most of the people in the venue were uninterested.

However, when the spokesperson began to read out the second policy, everyone's spirit was lifted.

The policy was that, in order to promote the aerospace industry and moon landing project, companies that invested in the domestic aerospace industry would enjoy tax benefits.

Simply put, if a company spent 30 million yuan on satellites, as long as the party that undertook the launching of the satellite was a Chinese company and the launch mission was completed on Chinese soil, then the parent satellite company would receive 30 million yuan of tax relief.

For large tech companies like Penguin1 and Alibaba, which paid hundreds of millions of taxes, this offer was quite tempting.

Their businesses had a need for satellites, and now, the state had almost completely waived their launch costs in the form of tax relief. Even though this wasn't a direct form of subsidy from the state, it was no different from a direct subsidy.

When the spokesperson was reading out the second policy, Lu Zhou could clearly see that all of the private and state-owned representatives were all filled with excitement, and they had a shining twinkle in their eyes.

No one even paid attention to the spokesperson reading the third policy.

Actually, the third policy really wasn't worthy of paying attention to. It was just a verbal agreement that had legal effect.

Which was, for the next ten years, enterprises, research units, or individuals who managed to establish a permanent or semi-permanent scientific research station on the moon would enjoy franchising rights for up to 70 years. At the same time, they would also receive tax reliefs in scientific research and other aerospace-related projects, such as tourism and space resource exploitation.

This was guaranteed by the state.

When the spokesperson finished reading the policy, there was a commotion in the venue.

Compared to the irrelevant first policy or the verbal promise that was the third policy, the large companies here were much more interested in the attractive second policy.

If the cost of launching satellites could be converted into a form of tax relief, then they could greatly reduce their cost of launching satellites.

Of course, the third policy wasn't entirely unattractive. Even though no one knew what would happen after ten years, even though it was just an empty promise, it would still bring them a considerable degree of benefits.

China was stepping forward into the aerospace field, and they were among the participants.

These few policies were enough to give the wealthy investors a world of imagination…

Just like these companies, Lu Zhou was equally surprised by the policies of the state.

However, he wasn't surprised by the extent of the policies. Instead, he was surprised at the other aspects…

"Does the state want to use aerospace to control the United States?"

When Xu Yuanming heard this, he was even more surprised than Lu Zhou.

"I thought you didn't do any research on the international political situation."

Lu Zhou looked at Xu Yuanming's look of surprise and coughed as he said, "There's a difference between researching and understanding. I'm not very interested in these things, but that doesn't mean I don't understand them."

Xu Yuanming smiled and said, "Is that so? But you're only half-correct. Even though the moon landing plan is a type of international strategy, we also have other expectations."

Xu Yuanming put on a more serious expression as he continued, "According to our intel, the United States, Russia, the European Union, and other countries have already established a technical route for developing their respective controllable fusion demonstration reactor projects. Their progress is still unknown, but like you said, as long as they are determined enough, they will catch up to us. It might take ten or twenty years.

"In order to maintain our advantage, the state has decided to fight on a new battlefield. At the same time, we will continue to maintain our advantage in fusion electric generator and cross-regional power grid projects."

Lu Zhou: "This new battlefield is space?"

Xu Yuanming nodded and said, "Correct."

Lu Zhou connected the dots and finally had an understanding of the state's intentions.

In a world of information technology, there was no such thing as a secret. With the foundation built from several industrial revolutions, the western countries wouldn't take long to catch up.

In order to maximize the national advantage, China obviously wanted to delay the time frame of other countries acquiring this fusion technology.

Making the opponent fight on two battlefields at once was undoubtedly a strategy that would produce this effect.

Just like Secretary Xu said, looking at it from a long-term perspective, it was not necessary to board the moon. The moon landing project wasn't urgent.

The real purpose of this project wasn't to allow China to set footprints on the moon. Instead, it was to control the technological research focus of western countries.

Putting it this way, this was quite the stratagem.

By that time, the second generation fusion project would also be underway, putting even more pressure on other countries.

Lu Zhou finally understood why his Eastern Research Centers Association idea and his plan on a second-generation controllable fusion energy technology was able to be implemented so quickly by the higher-ups…

The higher-ups were probably drawing up this plan while he was still in the hospital.

Smart.

Really smart…

Even though Lu Zhou felt like he was being used, he couldn't help but admire the sophistication of this plan.

Of course, even though this trick was clever, achieving the expectations wouldn't be easy.

China's current rocket launching technology was even worse than the United States and the Soviet Union's technology back in the 1960s. Even though NASA's annual budget was reduced, catching up to America was no easy feat.

To put it bluntly, even if China wanted to start a space race and pave the way for the second-generation fusion technology, NASA might pretend to go to war with China, but they might not view China as a scary opponent.

So…

China needs a strong academic leader to represent the space program.

Lu Zhou didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Are they planning on making me lead this project?

I really want to put someone on the moon, but I don't want to be involved in a political fight…

Lu Zhou couldn't help but ask, "You guys aren't going to make me the chief designer of the space project, right?"

"Um… It depends on you. Even though I think it is appropriate for you to take this position, but if you really don't have the time," Xu Yuanming smiled slightly and said, "you can at least be a chief consultant?"

Lu Zhou sighed and said, "I don't really mind, but I'm afraid I won't be able to do much. Also, if you plan on publishing some misleading theses in my name, then I'm afraid I can't help you."

As a scholar, he had a certain moral barometer.

He would spare no effort to fight for the truth that he believed in. Even if he was wrong, it would be an honest mistake. Similarly, he didn't have the conscience to lie for things he was against.

If a scholar did not seek for the truth, then was he really a scholar?

That would be more like a political puppet…

Xu Yuanming smiled and said, "Rest assured, we will not make any public statements in your name. Your academic reputation is our honor and pride, and this will never change."

"Okay then, if you think it's appropriate, I will be the chief consultant." Lu Zhou joked, "Since I'm the chief consultant, are you going to consider the mass driver I just talked about?"

Xu Yuanming coughed and said, "Um… Even if I agree with you, I can't change anything. Have you heard about our state's orbit facilities?"

Lu Zhou: "I've heard a bit about them."

"There is not much publicity about this in the media. In fact, the mass driver you talked about is similar to the country's orbital facilities. The project passed a feasibility demonstration test a while ago, but guess what was the problem?"

Lu Zhou: "Funding approval?"

"Correct, this project was cut." Xu Yuanming nodded and said, "Its estimated budget was 2 trillion yuan. And that's just the estimate, god knows how much it will actually cost… Do you think it's worth it?"

As expected, it was stuck on the funding approval stage.

This two trillion yuan…

Even with an academician vouching for this project, it would be extremely difficult to receive approval.

The 2018 and 2019 27 high-speed railway projects only added up to one trillion.

If this two trillion is spent on railways, god knows how insane our infrastructure would be…

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Chapter 590: Chief Consultant of the Moon Project

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

There was a huge demand for energy in China, but there wasn't a demand for aerospace.

Even if the success of the controllable fusion project could save the country more than 2 trillion yuan per year, this money wouldn't be placed into aerospace projects.

Where the money would be spent and what kind of effects it would bring, these all had to go through a rigorous decision-making process.

Especially with rocket recycling technology, space launching costs were not what they used to be.

Taking the launch of a low-Earth orbit satellite as an example, Space-X's Falcon rocket was able to achieve a price of US$1,141 per kilogram. Compared this to NASA's design of the Delta 4 rocket in the 1990s, which had a cost of US$11,660 per kilogram. The cost had been cut by nearly ten times.

The launching cost of the Chinese quick-reaction Kuaizhou rocket, which was the most commercially advantageous rocket in the world, had dropped from US$10,000 per kilogram to about US$5,000 per kilogram.

If a manned mission to the moon required a spacecraft with a mass of around 50 tons to be sent into low-Earth orbit, ignore the fact that the spacecraft wasn't a satellite and couldn't be separated into ten different launches, the launch cost could theoretically be restricted to around US$250.

Therefore, if they only needed to go to the moon, there was no point in inventing a feasible mass driver.

However, Lu Zhou didn't only want to send people to the moon and erect a flag. He wanted to establish a permanent scientific research station on the moon… or even a resource mining base.

Due to this long-term goal, it was quite necessary to find a theoretical lower-cost way to transfer mass into low-Earth orbit.

If people kept using chemically powered rockets, when the number of launches reached the five-figure range, space exploration would transform from a scientific research field to an industrial field. The costs would be astronomical, and there would be environmental consequences.

Rocket fuel, which was made out of dinitrogen tetroxide and dimethylhydrazine, was indeed poisonous.

However, Lu Zhou also knew very well that it would be impossible to convince the higher-ups of this trillion-dollar project, especially since there wasn't an urgent need for aerospace projects.

However, he believed that once he produced enough results, his case would be more convincing.

The conference was divided into two parts. There was an intermission announced at noon. After everyone ate a simple lunch, they would continue the conference at half-past one.

The afternoon part of the conference was mainly centered around researchers and engineers. The content of the discussion was more focused on the technical side.

During the meeting, representatives from major research units spoke enthusiastically and put forward their own viewpoints.

In addition to the Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation's concept of the Long March 9 rocket, many other people had also come up with interesting technical ideas.

For example, high-level researchers at the Space Science and Applied Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences showed a concept model of the mass drive ion thruster. The acceleration technology concept was different from Lu Zhou's idea, but nevertheless, it was still a very interesting idea.

Lu Zhou didn't talk a lot at this conference; he only briefly spoke about his idea of the Hall-effect thruster.

Some of this was purely his own opinion, and some were inspirations that he managed to glean while talking to researchers of the AF-MPD project team during his time as a consultant at the PPPL.

He thought his opinion was already sci-fi and experimental. He did not expect that some people's opinions were even more sci-fi than his. Someone even brought up the concept of an EM Drive.

In fact, EM Drive wasn't entirely fictional. NASA had done research in this area, and these theses could even be found on arXiv.

After all, no one had any idea what was possible in the future. Even the most outstanding scholar couldn't make any absolute assertions of the future, even for things that might seem impossible.

But in any case, this EM Drive technology was something in the distant future; it didn't belong in this conference.

Everyone laughed at the concept and didn't pay too much attention to it.

There wasn't any prohibition in a seminar like this. It was a free-for-all. Anyone could say anything, there wasn't anyone that stood against a technical route.

As for which technical route would be implemented, that would depend on the result.

During the middle of the year, there would be a meeting to discuss which heavy-duty spacecraft would be used for the moon landing plan.

Whether it was a rocket or a space shuttle, anyone that could deliver at least 30 tons of payload from the earth to the moon and safely come back, had the hope of winning the bid.

The most promising spacecraft seemed to be the Long March 9.

However, the earliest possible flight time would be in 2028. Even without any delays, that was eight years away.

The state might wish to complete the manned mission to the moon within five years, in order to achieve the strategic goal of putting pressure on the United States and Europe. Therefore, the Long March 9, which was still stuck in the design stage, would probably miss the battle.

Any other company that could create a low-cost solution in a short time frame would be a competitive bidder.

As for whether Lu Zhou should join in on this moon landing party…

He hadn't made up his mind yet.

He was only in the research stage of ion thrusters. Even if he could reverse engineer the debris, he might not be able to use it on Earth's atmospheric environment.

What if this piece of debris was some kind of component on a space station? It might not be able to break through Earth's atmosphere and launch into orbit.

This was all possible.

In short, before he was certain of his abilities to achieve this technology, he would not make any promises and only express his viewpoints. As for the bidding war, he probably wouldn't participate…

After the conference ended, Lu Zhou walked out of the venue.

He suddenly discovered that there was a huge crowd surrounding the venue.

Looking at the cameras and microphones, these people were undoubtedly reporters.

When the representatives from Penguin and Alibaba stepped out of the venue, the reporters swarmed like a group of sharks that smelled blood.

When Lu Zhou looked at these reporters, he couldn't help but flinch. Just as he felt lucky enough not to be surrounded by reporters, suddenly, a reporter noticed him and quickly ran toward him.

Even though Wang Peng was standing in front of him, the microphone was still shoved in his face.

"Professor Lu, hello, we are reporters from the CTV technology channel. I heard you were the one who proposed the manned moon landing project?"

"Professor Lu, hello, we are reporters from the Penguin technology channel, there are rumors online that China will soon achieve space travel, what do you think?"

"Rumors say that you are the chief designer of the aerospace project, is this true?"

Lu Zhou had a headache from all of the questions, but he couldn't find a way to escape. He quickly grabbed the closest microphone and angrily said, "It's not true."

Reporter: "Uh… then, may I ask…"

Lu Zhou took a deep breath and said, "The launch of the manned moon project isn't entirely due to my suggestion, it's also because the country has a strategic demand. As for the chief designer of the project, I don't know where you heard this rumor, but as far as I know, the relevant departments have only invited me as a chief consultant."

Secretary Xu, who was standing next to him, smiled and said, "Chief consultant."

Chief consultant!

These two short words completely shocked the reporters…

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Chapter 591: Prologue of the Space Race

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Lu Zhou was sitting in a restaurant near the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He looked at his phone while waiting for his food to arrive, and he had a somewhat unnatural look on his face.

[Shocked! Professor Lu, the chief designer of the controllable fusion project, is in charge of the moon mission?!]

[Lu Zhou: Our next journey is in the sea of stars!]

[Lu Zhou accidentally revealed secrets!]

[Chief Designer Lu said that the moon landing will be for him?!]

Lu Zhou: "???"

Didn't I tell them I'm not the chief designer?

Do these reporters not listen to people speak?

Xu Yuanming noticed Lu Zhou's stiff face and smiled as he said, "Our journalists are optimistic, it's good."

Positive energy rumors are good, right?

Lu Zhou put down his phone and looked at the braised pork and beans on the table. He sighed and said, "You're really a troublemaker."

"Let's stop talking, eat. This pork won't taste as good when it's cold." Xu Yuanming pretended like he didn't hear anything. He picked up the chopsticks and smiled as he said, "This place has good food. I often came here when I was still studying here. It's been so many years, but the flavor hasn't changed."

Lu Zhou: "…"

This change of topic is too abrupt.

However, since he is the one treating me to this meal, I'll let it go…

After Lu Zhou finished dinner, he bid farewell to Xu Yuanming. He then got in his car.

"Send me to the train station."

Wang Peng was driving the car, and he asked, "We're going back to Jinling?"

Lu Zhou: "Yeah, I've been away from the laboratory for too long, I'm worried."

Wang Peng smiled and said, "Aren't you on a holiday? Why are you so busy?"

Lu Zhou smiled and didn't say anything.

He obviously wouldn't say that he was not worried about some experiment and that he was actually worried about an artificial retard playing around with its new toy in his laboratory.

Of course, even if it wasn't for Xiao Ai's shenanigans, it was time for him to go back.

The secrets of Debris No.3 were still sitting there, waiting for him to explore.

If it went well, it might become the key to solving the manned moon landing project…

Lu Zhou arrived at the train station and got on the next train from Beijing to Jinling. After a couple of hours, he got off at the Jinling Southern train station.

Lu Zhou sat in his black car with the erected red flag. He didn't ask Wang Peng to send him home. Instead, he went to the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.

Because a lot of the experiments needed to be monitored 24/7, the institute never closed its doors.

After Lu Zhou told Wang Peng to head off, he walked into the main institute building alone. He walked past the metal alloy door at the end of the second floor underground sample library and headed toward the third floor underground laboratory.

When he walked into the laboratory, his entire body froze.

The f*ck?

Bumblebee?

…

After the Chinese manned moon landing project was reignited, not only did the three government policies cause a sensation in the domestic media, but it also attracted a lot of attention around the world.

In particular, the British Daily Mail reported the news with a rather intriguing headline.

[China Wants to Go on the Moon! Is This a Prologue for a New Space Race?!]

Inside the Tri Alpha company building…

Benderbauer sat in the office of the chief technology officer. He read the newspaper in his hand and frowned.

After a while, he murmured, "This isn't good news."

"They're still a long way from a second-generation controllable fusion, you don't have to worry at all."

That was Professor Burton Richter, particle physics expert at Stanford University in Palo Alto. In addition to his role as a professor, he was also a member of the advisory board of the Tri Alpha company as well as the winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Physics.

He was well informed of this matter. However, he didn't read it from the Daily Mail.

Just a few hours ago, China announced a set of specific measures to implement the manned moon mission. China announced its plan to establish a permanent scientific research station on the moon in order to explore the helium-3 reserves on the moon.

It was widely speculated that this was paving the way for the second generation of controllable fusion technology. However, Professor Richter knew how difficult it was to achieve helium-3 fusion. He knew that these speculations regarding China were nothing but bragging.

"No, I'm not worried about the second generation controllable fusion reactor." Benderbauer put down the newspaper in his hand and leaned back against his chair. He pinched his forehead and said, "I'm worried about the Congressional Budget Office…"

After China announced the successful ignition of the STAR-2 demonstration reactor at the beginning of the year, the United States also quickly launched its own national controllable fusion project. A giant demonstration reactor was going to be built between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Just for the first phase of the project, the US government had allocated tens of billions of dollars in funding.

For this newly launched demonstration reactor project, Tri Alpha had successfully defeated its competitor, General Atomics, and obtained orders for the reactor heating parts. This was due to their excellent heating performance of their field-reversed configuration.

If everything went well, this contract would bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for his company. This would bring him more than US$100 million in market capitalization growth on the Nasdaq.

However, now that China suddenly announced its moon landing project, and it even announced a strategy for the exploration of the moon's resources, this would undoubtedly impact the demonstration reactor project in California.

After all, there was a limitation to scientific research funding. There wasn't a single country on Earth that could conduct two large-scale scientific research projects without compromising.

The United States didn't want to fall behind, both in terms of controllable fusion and in terms of space exploration.

It was foreseeable that once the United States was drawn into this space race, Congress would almost certainly re-examine the budgets for the existing research projects. To ensure NASA had plenty of resources, they might cut down their funding on some less urgent projects.

For example, they might cut down on the costs of plasma heating components…

The demonstration reactor project might even be postponed.

This was obviously bad news for Benderbauer.

He could imagine the people of NASA cheering once their budget was increased.

NASA didn't have to worry about its budget anymore. The country on the other side of the Pacific Ocean gave them an excuse for more funding.

While Benderbauer was flipping through the newspaper, his hands suddenly froze.

His eyes locked onto Lu Zhou's interview in the newspaper.

"Plasma engine…"

He muttered something and gradually became excited.

"Plasma engine! That's it!"

Benderbauer threw away the newspaper and stood up from his office chair. He paced around his office as he said excitedly, "Ion thruster, controllable fusion, it works perfectly! We can combine these two projects together!"

At the very least, he would be able to create a PowerPoint presentation to convince people.

"Sir, I'm not discouraging you but…" Burton Richter looked at him with a weird expression and said, "We haven't even solved the controllable fusion problem, yet you're planning on miniaturizing a reactor and using it as a plasma thruster."

Benderbauer stopped and looked at Professor Richter.

"My dear Professor Richter, of course I know you have to make the cake before you can eat it.

"But before we make the cake, we have to make people believe that we can do it!

"This is the most important thing!"

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Chapter 592: Disassemble Debris No.3

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Lu Zhou didn't care how the media overseas reacted to China's moon landing project. He was standing in his underground laboratory and completely shocked by Xiao Ai.

It was not exactly Bumblebee.

Accurately speaking, the thing in front of him was a model of Bumblebee. The smooth and flat aluminum casing gave off a metallic shine under the incandescent lamp on the laboratory ceiling. The mechanical components beneath the streamlined casing gave it a complex aesthetic.

Even though it hadn't been painted, it was still very similar looking to a transformer, Lu Zhou recognized the resemblance at first sight.

It would still take a while for this robot to finish construction. However, there were still leftover materials piled up in the corner of the laboratory, and the industrial robot arms against the wall were working non-stop.

Lu Zhou saw the eight robot arms, which looked like an octopus, flexibly manipulating the aluminum alloy plates in their hands.

Through Xiao Ai's neural network learning algorithm, once it learned how to operate a tool, Xiao Ai could quickly apply it to the extreme. This skill wasn't only limited to plasma control, it was obvious that machining and automatic assembly were also within its capabilities.

But…

Lu Zhou: "What are you doing?"

The robotic arms stopped working.

The drone hovering beside him swayed back and forth, as if it were tilting its head.

Soon, Lu Zhou's phone received Xiao Ai's message.

[Master asked what kind of body Xiao Ai wants. Xiao Ai doesn't want to give Master any trouble, so Xiao Ai is building one. (*)]

Lu Zhou: "…"

[What do you think, Xiao Ai's new body is very cool right! (๑•̀ᄇ•́)و]

[Praise me, please, please compliment me! ヾ(*)]

Okay, Lu Zhou admitted that this was pretty good.

However…

What's the point of this thing?

Lu Zhou didn't want to discourage Xiao Ai, but he couldn't help but ask, "How do you plan on putting yourself into the robot?"

The eight mechanical arms paused for a second.

After a while, a message popped up on his phone.

[I can't go in? ]

Lu Zhou: "I don't think so."

This robot model is built pretty well…

But in any case, I can't just put Xiao Ai into this robot.

Not only is there no motor or servo motor, but there isn't even a control chip or signal receiver. Did Xiao Ai not think about how to integrate itself into the robot body?

Lu Zhou didn't know how Xiao Ai didn't even understand common sense.

After a while, the mechanical arms holding the alloy plates sagged down.

[I'm sad.]

Lu Zhou saw the message and sighed.

Is this thing…

Actually retarded.

Even kids can distinguish between movies and reality.

"Stop playing around, help me work."

He didn't know how to comfort people, much less comforting an artificial intelligence program.

Lu Zhou didn't care about Xiao Ai's emotions. He walked next to Debris No.3 and reached out, taking off the black cover sheet. He then walked to the industrial robot control terminal.

With Lu Zhou's new industrial robots, he didn't have to hold the pliers himself and clumsily climb in.

With the help of Xiao Ai and the eight industrial robots, he could easily disassemble Debris No.3

Actually, disassembling this thing wouldn't take a lot of work.

Even though the outer case material was very strong, due to its need for regular maintenance, the designer didn't weld this thruster.

Relatively speaking, the engine of the spacecraft should be located in a rather safe part.

Of course, this was all relative.

This debris was neatly split into three sections. When Lu Zhou looked at the messy situation inside, his eyebrows twitched.

The situation was even worse than he had imagined. Not only did the impact completely destroy the internal parts, but it even destroyed the internal structure.

For example, the inner wall metal pipes were completely flattened. Lu Zhou could only use his knowledge to guess that this thing was probably similar to a heat exchanger or a plasma pipe, something along those lines.

Connected to the flattened tubes was a special looking cylindrical hollow structure.

"Electrode… Heat exchanger… Is this an ionization chamber? Is this a Hall-effect thruster?"

Lu Zhou stared at the pictures he took with his camera and rubbed his chin as he fell into a deep thinking mode.

Behind this cylindrical thing was various exhaust pipes, which were shaped like conical flasks.

This was at the very back of the debris.

Lu Zhou analyzed the internal structure and made a bold guess.

The engineer who created this device probably used an unorthodox design… Or maybe it was common practice for high-civilization engineers.

Which was, the ionization chamber was taken out separately, and the plasma-emitting nozzle was designed as a single Hall propulsion unit. This entire thing was placed behind the ionization chamber.

The ionization chamber ionized the propellant by heating and applying a voltage, forming a high-temperature plasma that expanded in volume. This plasma was simultaneously sent to the "Hall propulsion unit" that was connected to the rear end of the ionization chamber, which was the exhaust pipes that looked like conical flasks.

Due to this special design, the Hall propulsion unit was able to process high-temperature plasma in the ionization chamber more efficiently as well as to excrete them out of the engine.

At the same time, the middle "Xing" device on the tail ring was used to neutralize the ejected plasma, preventing the injected plasma from being sucked back into the ionization chamber…

In theory, as long as the power output was large enough and the plasma was shot out fast enough, and before the critical current of the superconducting magnet was reached as well as before the ionization chamber pressure and the temperature threshold were reached, the engine power output could be infinitely increased.

Looking at the direction of the cracks of those pipes, Lu Zhou speculated that before being destroyed, the pilots of the spacecraft probably carried out some kind of procedure so that the power of the engine was overloaded and maintained for a certain period of time.

Lu Zhou looked at the flattened tubes and went into deep thought.

He felt like there were more and more secrets behind the system…

After he determined the external components of the engine, the rest of the work was easy. Through the photos taken by Xiao Ai, Lu Zhou quickly found the "fuel tank" of the engine, which was the storage location of the fuel liquid.

But then again, the question was, where did the electricity come from?

Regardless of how the Hall thruster was designed, the power provided per kilowatt was just not enough. Even if this high-civilization engineer greatly increased the jet velocity of the plasma, making its thrust power break through μN, mN, and even reach the magnitude of N, the energy required to accelerate a 100-ton spacecraft to 1G was a scary number.

The output of the energy had to be on the order of MW.

Such a huge power consumption was obviously not possible with ordinary batteries.

At least it wasn't possible for lithium-sulfur batteries.

Lu Zhou speculated that the energy storage unit should not be far from the fuel tank, and this was because of the circular double-layer structure that connected the fuel tank and the heat exchanger. Lu Zhou felt that this thing was somewhat similar to something that he had seen before, but he couldn't remember exactly what it was.

Suddenly, a crazy thought emerged in his mind.

Could this be powered by…

Nuclear fusion?

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Chapter 593: Clear Technical Route

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Institute for Advanced Study, dean's office.

When Lu Zhou saw Yang Xu walk through the door, he stopped writing and looked at him.

"Is the analysis result ready?"

Yang Xu took out a USB from his pocket and placed it on the desk. "The data is inside."

Lu Zhou said, "What about the original copy?"

Yang Xu: "It's in the backup database… Is there a problem?"

Lu Zhou: "Delete it."

Yang Xu paused for a second. He didn't ask why, he only nodded.

"Okay."

After Lu Zhou's office door was closed, he plugged in his USB into the laptop and opened the folder. He began to carefully examine each picture.

After he came out of the underground laboratory yesterday morning, he took a few samples from the circular double-layer structure between the fuel tank and the heat exchanger. He gave it to Yang Xu for him to do an infrared spectrum characteristic peak analysis and to take some transmission electron microscope images.

Looking at the pictures alone, it seemed like his speculation was correct.

Since the fragmented nano-ceramic composite material had been embrittled, it was very difficult to calculate the original structural characteristics. However, looking at the internal carbon residue, one could conclude that it was an anisotropic heat-resistant composite material that had high-temperature resistant properties.

Through the images taken by the transmission electron microscope for the inner layer material samples, he could clearly see that there were hydrogen residues inside several samples.

As far as Lu Zhou was concerned, there were two possible scenarios that could cause something like this.

One scenario was that the hydrogen atoms came from the material neutron decay.

The other scenario was that a high-energy proton beam broke through the inner wall of the material and remained inside the material.

The hydrogen particles and the swelling inside the material were basically distributed in a concentrated area. By comparing the penetration force of neutron and the proton beam, Lu Zhou could basically infer that a large probability of the swelling of this structure was mainly caused by the proton beam.

In this case, the debris of the Hall-effect thruster lying in his underground laboratory was 90% likely to be using nuclear fusion energy.

The power came from the fusion reaction between protons and helium-3!

"It is fusion batteries!"

Lu Zhou's speculation was confirmed. He slowly looked at the images on the screen and was filled with excitement.

Not only that, but he could use the limited clues to roughly deduce the technical route of this gadget.

For example, looking at the closed structure and the damage to the inner wall of the reactor, the small fusion reactor was probably disposable.

Which meant that the fuel was directly integrated into the nuclear core and that the entire core was directly discarded after one use.

This might sound a bit wasteful, but in fact, this was the most feasible approach.

If one didn't care about the pounding high-energy proton beams, the small amount of neutron-induced radiation damage to the materials, and the long-term economic benefits, a lot of complex systems like the liquid lithium neutron recovery system could be omitted.

Not only would this reduce the difficulty of the project, but it would also save a lot of space.

After all, every square inch on the spacecraft was valuable space.

As for shielding materials, heating components, heat exchanger systems, and the nuclear core monitoring system, these expensive components could be integrated into the engine itself, serving as the "battery section" of the nuclear core.

Thinking about it this way, the engineering difficulty of this one-time fusion power supply shouldn't be too high or ridiculous…

Of course, this concept wasn't ridiculous if one compared it to a second-generation controllable fusion technology. It was only ridiculous when compared to the current technology available.

If someone designed a second-generation controllable fusion reactor with the one-time-use disposable concept in mind, the engineering difficulty wouldn't be very high. It might even be easier than the STAR-2 demonstration reactor. However, the cost of generating the electricity would be astronomically high.

It would be like using aerospace fuel to power a civilian's house…

"The entire design concept is to integrate the fuel inside the nuclear core and control the power of the engine by controlling the volume of the intermediate reaction chamber and the fuel consumption rate through the two-layer structure… So the nuclear core shouldn't undergo constant ignition. Instead, it should undergo fast ignition.

"But the fusion battery on the Hall-effect thruster debris is probably not done by magnetic confinement, it should be done by way of another technical route."

Even though he found a structure similar to a superconducting magnet on the Hall-effect thruster debris, the amount was obviously not enough to confine hundreds of millions of degrees of high-temperature plasma. Moreover, in space, the superconducting magnet would be in contact with the ionization chamber, and its real function was probably to provide an alternating magnetic field for the Hall propulsion unit…

So, is this inertial confinement fusion?

Lu Zhou used a pen to draw on the draft paper. His eyes began to lit up.

Fast ignition, inertial confinement fusion…

The technical route is clear to me now!

He restrained the excitement in his heart and scrunched the paper into a ball. He then stuffed the paper ball into his pocket. He took out his phone and quickly dialed a number.

It rang three times. When it was connected, he heard Secretary Feng's voice.

"Hello?"

Lu Zhou said, "It's me."

Feng Shuqing smiled and said, "Professor Lu, what's up now?"

Lu Zhou: "How is the restructuring of the STAR-2 demonstration reactor team?"

After Feng Shuqing heard this question, he replied, "The staff reallocation, inventory check, and property rights allocation has basically been completed. The relevant documents have been submitted to the SASAC1. I'll wait for them to inspect the situation. If there are no big problems, it'll take a week at most for East Asia Energy to split from the STAR-2 project team."

Feng Shuqing smiled and said, "Are you ready to get in the car? If you aren't, we can wait for a few days."

Get in the car?

Lu Zhou paused for a second. He didn't understand what Feng Shuqing was talking about.

However, this was obviously not the time to ponder about this, so he ignored it and continued to speak.

"Make sure to look over the operations at East Asia Energy, just follow the higher-ups' instructions. The reason I called you today is to talk about something else. I have a new research project in mind. I need to transfer some people from the STAR-2 project."

Feng Shuqing didn't ask questions. He merely said, "Okay, give me their names."

Lu Zhou thought for a bit and said, "It might be a long list. It'll be difficult to communicate through the phone. I'll make a name list and send it to your email."

Feng Shuqing paused for a second.

"How many people do you need?"

Lu Zhou: "Not a lot, around ten."

You think that's not a lot?

Feng Shuqing smiled and cautiously asked, "Can I ask what project is it?"

Lu Zhou thought for a bit before he replied, "It's regarding the miniaturization of controllable fusion."

Feng Shuqing: "???"

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Chapter 594: To Go or Not to Go?

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Miniaturization of controllable fusion?

WTF?

Feng Shuqing nearly dropped the phone in his hand.

The demonstration reactor was just recently released, and he's already thinking about making a miniature version of it?

Even though he wasn't in the nuclear fusion field, he was still a student from Shuimu University. Not to mention, he had worked at the Ministry of Science and Technology for many years and was also responsible for the restructuring of the STAR demonstration reactor project team. He had a certain understanding of the nuclear fusion research.

Lu Zhou noticed that the phone went silent. He paused for a second before asking, "Is there a problem?"

"Nothing… Just send the name list to my work email." Feng Shuqing hesitated for a bit before saying, "Miniaturization of controllable fusion… Isn't it a bit early to do this? I think a second-generation controllable fusion is more reliable."

Scientific research was difficult.

Even though he knew Lu Zhou was nutty, he still couldn't help but warn Lu Zhou.

Lu Zhou immediately knew what he was thinking about, but he was too lazy to explain in detail, so he briefly explained, "Nuclear batteries are also considered to be a small fusion reactor, but there's quite a difference between nuclear batteries and a real controllable fusion reactor. If you don't understand the difference, you can think of it as the fission reactor and a radioisotope battery. I'm well aware of my research capabilities, so you don't have to worry about it."

His reply was quite impolite.

However, since Lu Zhou spoke in such a confident manner, Feng Shuqing felt a lot more comfortable.

There were many scholars in the Ministry of Science and Technology, and they spoke in roughly the same manner. They were just too lazy to explain things in detail to laymen.

However, one thing for sure was that there were two possible scenarios for these scholars. There was a 20% chance that they would be stuck in a research pit, and the other 80% was the chance of success.

Feng Shuqing felt like Lu Zhou wasn't the type of person to be stuck in a research pit.

Therefore, it had to be the latter…

Lu Zhou didn't really care about Secretary Feng's opinions.

The energy was the main problem of the Hall-effect thruster. If Lu Zohu didn't want to reduce the thrust power, the only option was to increase the energy.

After Lu Zhou hung up the call, he made a name list on his computer and sent it to Feng Shuqing's email.

After that, he quit his browser and opened a blank Word document. He sat in front of his computer while contemplating for a while. He then placed his hands on the keyboard and began to type.

The staff problem was easy to solve; he just had to transfer researchers and engineers from the STAR-2 project team.

The demonstration reactor project trained a large number of experts in plasma physics and controllable fusion. All he had to do was to look through the STAR-2 demonstration reactor project's staff list, and he would easily find anyone that he would need.

With help from these researchers, his research on the fusion battery would become much more feasible.

Of course, since controllable fusion was now a sensitive technology, he had to report this to the government.

Even though fusion batteries were completely different from fusion reactors, there was a lot of overlapping technology.

Especially if he decided to go the route of inertial confinement fusion. It was very likely that he would use laser ignition. Not only could the laser ignition be used for plasma research, but it could also be used for nuclear testing.

Due to its involvement in many sensitive areas, Lu Zhou couldn't conduct this research without cooperation from the state.

However, getting cooperation from the state was an easy thing for him.

He looked at the title on the screen and smirked.

[Application Prospects and Technical Feasibility of Controllable Fusion Miniaturization Technology in the Aerospace Field]

He believed that once he handed in this thesis proposal, he would definitely be able to establish this project…

…

Haizhou.

Demonstration reactor site.

Sheng Xianfu was sitting in his office, filling out forms at his desk.

Since the STAR-2 demonstration reactor project was successfully completed and the commendation conference was over, his life had been quite enjoyable, to say the least.

Not only did the success of the demonstration ignition give him a shiny medal, but it also gave him respect and status.

According to the restructuring arrangements of the project team, the STAR Institute would probably be merged with the East Asia Energy Company, and Secretary Feng, who was responsible for the restructuring work, gave him two options.

One was to go into the company, which was, to stay in the newly established East Asia Energy as the chief engineer and vice president of the technology department.

The other option was to return to the Southwestern Institute of Physics, where he would serve as the director and had full control of the institute.

Sheng Xianfu thought about this for a long time.

Due to the future development prospects of East Asia Energy, the company would definitely have higher career potential. Once he received enough qualifications, he could transfer to the parent company and become the vice president of the whole company. His level would be equivalent to oil giants.

Going to the Southwestern Institute of Physics and becoming the director would give him short term power and status, but the development space was much smaller. Even if he became an academician in the future, it wouldn't be better than to stay in the corporate world.

If this were an average person making this decision, most of them would choose the former.

However, after some contemplating, Sheng Xianfu chose the latter.

The reason was simple.

Compared to working in a corporate environment, he much preferred to work in a research institute. Being a scholar wasn't his career, it was his life.

Also, back then, he quit his job at the Southwestern Institute of Physics to work on the STAR-2 project, and a lot of people gave him dirty looks because of this.

Even though no one was insulting him in front of him, he was still well aware of this. The choice that he made in the past was infamous among his ex-colleagues.

If he returned now as the director, it would probably make a lot of people shut their mouths.

When Sheng Xianfu thought about the scene, he couldn't help but smirk.

It was true, he wanted to brag.

After all, bragging was part of being a human being.

Even though he was still sitting in this office, his mind was thousands of kilometers away, all the way in Rongcheng.

Suddenly, he heard knocking sounds from his office door, and this interrupted his train of thought.

Sheng Xianfu put down the pen in his hand and looked at the door.

"Come in."

The office door opened, and a stranger walked in.

Judging from this guy's posture and movement, he didn't look like a researcher. Instead, he looked more like one of the soldiers who were guarding the site.

Sheng Xianfu looked at the stranger and paused for a second. He then asked, "Who are you?"

The man made a brief self-introduction.

"I'm from the State Administration for National Defense."

From the State Administration for National Defense?

Sheng Xianfu paused for a second and said, "Do you need anything from me?"

The man said, "Professor Lu is looking for you."

Sheng Xianfu: "Is there a project?"

"Yes."

Sheng Xianfu was baffled at this short-sentence speaking guy. He smiled and said, "Can you tell me what the project is?"

The man shook his head and said, "The research project is confidential. I cannot disclose any specific content. You just need to tell me if you're going or not."

"So I have a choice?"

"Of course."

Sheng Xianfu went into deep thought.

On one hand, he could serve as the director of the Southwestern Institute of Physics. On the other hand, he could work for Professor Lu in scientific research… He didn't even know what the specific project was.

Should I go or not?

He was in a dilemma…

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Chapter 595: Let Me Read It Again

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Beijing, in a conference room.

There were a lot of people sitting in this conference room. There were officials from the Ministry of Science and Technology, military officers with badges on their chests, academicians from the Academy of Engineering, as well as experts from the aerospace field.

An inch-thick conference material was handed to each person.

The cover of the conference material was a title.

[Application Prospects and Technical Feasibility of Controllable Fusion Miniaturization Technology in the Aerospace Field]

This thesis contained a certain amount of information regarding the application of the miniaturized controllable fusion reactor as well as the Hall-effect thruster in the aerospace field. It also contained rigorous calculations, which demonstrated its feasibility possibility.

However, the argument for its feasibility was subjective.

Not to mention, this was a highly-advanced concept…

"Complete gibberish!"

Academician Wu slammed the thesis in his hand and shook his head. He said impolitely, "Just looking at the specific impulse alone, the ion thruster is indeed much stronger than the chemical thruster. However, it isn't without weakness!"

"Ignoring everything else, even the VX-200SS ion engine that we completed the trial run for last year can only achieve 200KW, and total thrust is only 5N! Even if we multiply this by a hundred times, a thousand times, there would be no way we could use this power to send a spacecraft to low-Earth orbit! We can't even send an egg to space with this power!"

"I think the person that wrote this thesis is mental!"

"Pigs will start flying before this thing can send satellites to outer space!"

When Old Wu was speaking, there was an awkward atmosphere in the conference room.

However, this was just how elderly scientists were.

But did he really have to compare it to…

Pigs flying?

The leadership team from the Ministry of Science and Technology couldn't take it anymore, but the president didn't seem to mind. He thoughtfully said, "Is it not solvable?"

Academician Wu shook his head and said, "Unsolvable!"

As for the miniaturization of controllable fusion, he wasn't well versed in the field, so he didn't want to comment too much.

No one knew what kind of technology the future would bring.

In the beginning, the nuclear fission batteries were the size of a house, no one had hopes of putting it on a spacecraft.

However, in just a few years, around the 1970s, the miniaturization problem was solved. As of now, the smallest battery was as small as a coin1.

However, the demonstration reactor at Haizhou was only three months old. Planning to put the reactor on a spacecraft now was kind of laughable.

When Ren Changming heard this thesis being criticized, he had an awkward look on his face, and he tried to diffuse the situation.

"The ideas presented in this thesis are indeed somewhat optimistic. I agree that it is really difficult to achieve the technology mentioned in this thesis, but I don't think it's impossible, right?"

"You've been away from scientific research for a long time. I'm not going to argue with a layman." Academician Wu waved his hand and pointed at the thesis as he said, "Who wrote this thesis? Find the person, I'm going to have a conversation with them!"

Ren Changming didn't know what to do.

The Ministry of Science and Technology leadership team exchanged glances with Xu Yuanming, who coughed and said, "Chief Designer Lu wrote it."

The conference room went silent for a second.

The silence was scary.

Old Wu had an awkward look on his face, and he picked up the thesis again.

"Let me read it again."

After a while, he had a moment of realization. He began to mutter about the miniaturization of controllable fusion.

"Umm, I seemed to have missed a few points. The thing with ion thrusters is that the thrust strength depends on the power. Traditional batteries cannot provide this power, electricity is a bottleneck. But with fusion batteries, it might be possible, I don't know…"

Xu Yuanming: "…"

Everyone in the conference room: "…"

Every proposed project was subject to be reviewed by an expert team, even if the proposer was a Nobel Prize winner and Ling Yun medalist.

However, it was difficult to find someone to review a proposal written by an academic big name like Lu Zhou.

The boundaries and levels within the academic community were obvious. No one wanted to publicly comment on someone that had a higher academic status and prestige than themselves.

Because they were worried that this would happen, they intentionally removed Lu Zhou's name from the thesis.

However, no one expected that Academician Wu, former chief designer of the lunar exploration project, suddenly put his head down after hearing Professor Lu's name.

However, judging from his previous reaction, this technology was indeed quite difficult to achieve.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have had such a strong reaction.

Suddenly, a man with an epaulet on his shoulder spoke calmly.

"Can I give my opinion?"

President: "Please do."

The man paused for a second before he said, "I don't know a lot about the aerospace industry, so I won't comment on that side. However, even if we don't consider the Hall-effect thruster and the ion thruster, miniaturization of controllable fusion is quite necessary.

"According to this thesis, if controllable fusion miniaturization technology can really be invented, its application might not only be in the aerospace field, it can also be applied in our submarines or even our aircraft carriers."

A lot of the people sitting around the table had a serious look on their faces.

The president went silent for a while and then nodded.Visit on our NovelFull

"You're right, regardless of whether or not this technology can be achieved, regardless of its aerospace applications, this project is worth attempting."

He paused for a second and picked up a fountain pen. He slowly wrote on the meeting document.

"Project approved."

He thought for a bit and felt like it wasn't enough, so he wrote another line.

"All relevant departments must fully cooperate."

The president looked at these two sentences and nodded with satisfaction.

However, he suddenly remembered something, so he spoke.

"Oh yeah, ask Professor Lu, if he doesn't mind, we should publish this thesis."

He smiled and said, "We've already thrown a smoke bomb at America, we should let them know we're getting to work."

…

Jin Ling University.

Lecture hall No.1.

After the class bell rang, Lu Zhou closed the textbook in his hand and turned around before walking out of the classroom.

Ever since his number theory class began, his lectures had been completely filled with students. Not only were the undergraduate students from other classes attending this class, but some master's students, doctoral students, and even mathematics professors occasionally came to listen.

As for Lu Zhou, he loved to talk about problems with these students.

Thinking about simple problems was a unique way for him to relax his mind.

After the lecture was over, if he wasn't busy, he would spend twenty minutes to half an hour of class time to answer the students' questions.

Unfortunately, he had to attend a conference on the miniaturization of controllable fusion today, so he didn't have time for the after-class questions.

Lu Zhou was walking toward the mathematics research building before he suddenly returned to the Institute for Advanced Study. He wanted to return the textbook to his office and help out some of his graduate students.

However, his phone in his pocket suddenly began to ring.

Lu Zhou took out his phone and saw it was Yang Xu who was calling. He picked up the call and placed it next to his ear.

"Hello?"

Yang Xu: "There's an old man who claims to be an academician from the engineering department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences… Do you know him?"

He's here already?

When Lu Zhou heard that the academician had arrived, he had a strange look on his face. The conference was going to begin at five o'clock, and he thought that the experts he invited would arrive at four-thirty. He didn't expect this old gentleman to come so early.

It seemed like he didn't have time to go to his mathematics research building office.

"I invited him. Bring him to the C1 Institute of Physics conference room."

Yang Xu: "Okay."

Lu Zhou hung up the call and opened his contact list. He then called Wang Peng.

"Where are you now?"

Wang Peng: "Near the campus entrance, do you need a ride?"

Lu Zhou: "Yeah, come find me at the lecture hall building."

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Chapter 596: Fusion Battery Project

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Twenty minutes later.

The car parked outside the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study entrance.

Sheng Xianfu arrived at the same time as Lu Zhou, who had just got down from the car.

When he saw Lu Zhou, he walked over to him.

"What a coincidence, I was about to give you a phone call."

"Thank God you didn't call me, I've been on the phone non-stop." Lu Zhou smiled and said, "How have you been?"

"I've been alright, just a bit too bored. I don't like being bored. I've been working hard my entire life." Sheng Xianfu jokingly said, "What do you think? I'm pretty loyal, right? As soon as I heard that you wanted me to come, I left my director job and immediately came over to you. Since I'm so loyal to you, can you tell me what the project is?"

Lu Zhou paused for a second and looked at him with a surprised expression. He asked, "The State Administration for National Defense did not tell you what the project is?"

Sheng Xianfu shook his head.

"The person who talked to me told me it's a secret, he didn't tell me the specifics."

"Is it that serious?" Lu Zhou smiled and cleared his throat. He said, "Oh well, it's fine. The reason you came here today is so that we can talk about the project. Come with me."

The two men passed through the main entrance of the Institute for Advanced Study and arrived at the Institute of Physics. They walked through the corridor and walked into a conference room.

There were already ten other people in the conference room.

Also, there was a whiteboard with a plastic cloth covering it, which would probably be used for the conference.

Sheng Xianfu briefly looked at the people sitting in the conference room.

He recognized some of them, like Professor Li Changxia from Yuhua University and Academician Li Jiangang from the Lu Yang Physics department. There were also people who he didn't know personally but had heard of.

For example, the white-haired old man who was wearing a wool vest, he was Academician Yu Jiannan, from the fluid physics department at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

His name was on the list of designers for the "Julong No.1" laser ignition device that the people from the Chinese Academy of Sciences had built.

Compared to the Sheng Guang fusion ignition device, the Julong No.1 was far superior in terms of performance and nuclear technology. It contained 1,440 pulse capacitors, 720 field-distortion switches, 24 laser-triggered gas switches, and 12 high-performance lasers. This was on the level of the United States' National Ignition Facility machine.

Nowadays, laser ignition and inertial confinement fusion had been heavily used by the military. Julong No.1, which was built by the Shenguang fusion ignition team, was well aware of this. They designed the machine for nuclear weapons testing. And whether it was the miniaturization of laser ignition or the integration of laser arrays, this machine was cutting-edge technology.

Sheng Xianfu had only heard of this old man's name, he never expected a chance to see him.

There were also some strangers who he didn't know or heard of before. However, since they were sitting here, they obviously weren't common people, they were probably just not in the field of plasma physics and controllable fusion engineering.

Sheng Xianfu couldn't help but feel emotional.

Being elected as an academician came with a certain amount of prestige in academia, and his status far exceeded that of normal scholars.

In any type of research institute, academicians were the leaders. Research groups were also led by academicians. The highest level of scholars were the people in the Changjiang Scholars Program, then came the top researchers, then came the middle-level researchers, the noob researchers, then the master's students, and even the undergraduate students.

This team, however, only consisted of academicians.

Other than Professor Lu, there weren't many people in China that had the power to form such a team…

When Sheng Xianfu remembered that he had actually hesitated to join this project, he was embarrassed of himself.

Even if no one would blame him for not joining the project, he would be the one to receive the losses.

After all, this kind of opportunity was once in a lifetime.

If he firmly grasped this opportunity, it would greatly benefit his career as well as increase his chances of becoming an academician.

Lu Zhou looked at the people sitting in the room and smiled, "Apologies for making everyone wait, I just came from campus."

Academician Li Jiangang smiled and said, "It's fine, we've only just arrived. Let's skip the small talk, we have no idea why we're suddenly being summoned here. We don't even know what the project is, let's start talking about the project first."

Lu Zhou smiled and said, "Okay then, I won't waste anyone's time with small talk."

Lu Zhou composed himself and walked toward the whiteboard in the conference room. He then reached out and took off the plastic cover.

The moment he took it off, at least half of the people in the conference room were stunned, while the other half were expressionless.

Sheng Xianfu, who didn't know anything about the project, was stunned.

However, he wasn't only just shocked.

He was amazed as well…

"This is…"

Sheng Xianfu's voice was trembling as he looked at the whiteboard with disbelief. He opened his mouth but words couldn't come out.

"The miniaturization of fusion reactors, or fusion batteries." Lu Zhou looked at him and smiled. He then said cheerfully, "They're the same thing anyway."

Lu Zhou didn't care about everyone's surprise. He cleared his throat and continued, "I have already calculated the technical feasibility of the miniaturization of controllable fusion technology. I will send you guys the relevant theses. Of course, in a few days, you will get to read it in the Journal of Nuclear Physics. So, I won't go into details here.

"The reason I invited everyone over is mainly to have a simple meeting and assign everyone their research tasks."

Lu Zhou pointed at the whiteboard with a laser pointer and continued, "This road map on the whiteboard is the general research plan of the entire project. The content might be slightly abstract, but I think it is quite comprehensive. If you can't understand it, feel free to ask me."

Sheng Xianfu, who had just recovered from his initial shock, raised his hand and said, "I have a question…"

Lu Zhou: "Please go ahead."

Sheng Xianfu carefully looked at the road map on the whiteboard and frowned. He asked, "Why is it inertial confinement fusion? We are more experienced in magnetic confinement."

"Good question." Lu Zhou smiled and said, "The reason why magnetic confinement isn't chosen, is because the magnetic field overflow will interfere with the operations of the precision components in the aircraft. The second reason is that magnetic confinement requires a much larger space.

"We can't put a thousand square meter superconducting magnet on the plasma engine. It's not realistic, and it's not necessary.

"In terms of maintaining the fusion reaction, we will use fast ignition. We do not need to keep the fusion reaction stable for a long time. We only need the reaction to happen quickly."

Li Jiangang frowned and said, "Fast ignition? Ignoring the advantages and disadvantages of magnetic confinement and inertial confinement fusion, if the liquid lithium neutron recovery system is removed, how do you plan on offsetting the neutron beam radiation damage?"

"I will talk about this later."

Lu Zhou paused for a second before he continued, "The design of the nuclear battery can be roughly divided into three sections. The first section is the nuclear core and fuel component. I will be responsible for solving this section. The second section is the power generator connected to the core. I will hand this part over to the team at China National Nuclear Corporation."

Academician Wang Zengguang: "Are we using a ferrofluid electric energy generator?"

Lu Zhou shook his head and said, "Uncertain. It depends on what the reactor is, and what it needs."

He paused for a second before continuing, "As for the third section, this is the fusion ignition device for the reactor. Since we are planning on using inertial confinement fusion and fast ignition, I personally prefer using laser ignition as the heating device. Of course, we can't rule out the possibility of microwave heating.

"The research in this section is very important. I hope this will be led by Academician Li Jiangang and Academician Yu Jiannan. You guys will research two technical paths, laser ignition, and microwave ignition."

Yu Jiannan thought for a bit and said, "I'm okay with this, but the laser ignition device occupies quite a lot of space. If you want to put that thing on a spacecraft, it might be a little difficult."

"I understand." Lu Zhou nodded and said, "That's precisely why we need to do experiments.

"The budget given by the State Administration for National Defense is plentiful. If anyone has any good ideas, feel free to share them. We have enough funds to research any problems we want."

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Chapter 597: Too Big of a Step?

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

The entire controllable fusion battery project was broken into thirteen sub-projects, and this covered everything from laser ignition to electric generators. A total of six research institutes participated in the project.

Due to the success of the Pangu fusion reactor, Lu Zhou felt quite confident regarding this project.

However, there had been disagreement during the discussion regarding the fusion battery nuclear fuel.

As Sheng Xianfu listened to Lu Zhou's crazy plan, his mouth was wide open with amazement. After a while, he spoke in disbelief.

"Are you sure you want to use helium-3 as fuel? The reaction cross-section of helium-3 and deuterium is one-tenth of the deuterium-tritium reaction, but the difficulty of ignition is ten times more difficult than deuterium-tritium!"

He wasn't the only one that held this viewpoint. The chief engineer from the China National Nuclear Corporation, Academician Wang Zengguang, also nodded.

"I also think helium-3 isn't practical. Even though you are saving space and the cost of the nuclear core, the fact is that this cost will be passed onto laser ignition or the microwave ignition heating device."

Academician Yu Jiannan, who didn't know Lu Zhou very well, spoke with nuance and subtlety.

"It's not a good thing to take too big of a step."

Lu Zhou tapped his finger on the table as he thought for a long time.

This was a trade-off problem.

If he chose deuterium-tritium as the fuel, they would have to install a liquid lithium neutron recovery system on the fusion battery, and the volumetric energy density of the entire fusion battery would be reduced. If the He3 deuterium was selected as the reactant, it could save at least 15% of the nuclear core volume, and the volumetric energy density of the entire battery would increase.

However, Academician Wang's words were correct. With the current domestic laser ignition technology, choosing this technical route might not result in the effect he had expected.

Lu Zhou went silent for around five minutes.

He had an idea in his mind.

"Then let's compromise."

Sheng Xianfu: "Compromise?"

Lu Zhou nodded and said, "Just like the fusion ignition device, we'll go with both the technical routes. One route will be a deuterium-tritium fuel fusion battery and the other will be a He-3 deuterium fuel fusion battery. We can agree on a standard battery interface connection. If the bottleneck of the He-3 deuterium fuel fusion battery technology can't be solved, we can immediately switch to deuterium-tritium. One day, when the helium-3 fusion problem is solved, we'll be able to upgrade our equipment faster."

Academician Wang Zengguang thought for a bit and said, "I think it's a good idea."

Academician Yu Jiannan didn't speak a lot. He merely nodded and said, "As long as the budget allows it, I'll allow it."

Lu Zhou looked at a few other people, and seeing how there were no more comments, he said, "Okay, then it's settled."

Jumping onto helium-3 immediately was a bit premature.

Lu Zhou was convinced by his elderly teammates' persuasion.

He admitted that when he discovered the technical route regarding the miniaturization of controllable fusion through the advanced civilization debris, he got a little too excited and forgot about Earth's current technological capabilities.

In fact, creating fusion batteries was no piece of cake in and of itself.

As for the complete reverse engineering of the advance debris thruster technology, it wouldn't be possible for at least another century…

After leaving the conference room, Lu Zhou planned to return to his underground laboratory so that he could continue to tinker with the Hall propulsion unit. However, when he remembered that there was still one more thing he had to do, he returned to his office.

Some time ago, while the higher-ups were approving his project, they suggested that he should submit the thesis on the feasibility of a fusion battery technology to an appropriate academic journal.

Even though Lu Zhou knew that this was intended to be a political strategy, he didn't really care.

The thesis was his true academic viewpoint.

If the higher-ups didn't really have a problem with the thesis content, he obviously wouldn't refuse to submit the thesis.

He retrieved the paper he wrote some time ago and scrolled through the pages on his computer. He deleted some more "ambitious" content and only kept a few things like the "detachable core", "laser heating", and "microwave heating". He then translated the entire thing into English.

In fact, for this kind of technical feasibility thesis, it didn't matter if he didn't make any changes. After all, this kind of strongly subjective thesis didn't involve specific research ideas or experimental plans. It was only an argument of whether it was "feasible" or "not feasible".

As for actually inventing the so-called "feasible" technology, that would depend on one's abilities.

After Lu Zhou read the revised thesis from beginning to finish, he stared at the PDF file on his computer screen and began to think.

Which journal should I submit it to?

He thought for a bit and suddenly smirked. He had an idea in his mind.

He dug up his list of emails, which he hadn't used for a year, and found the email of the PRL editor. He then typed up a simple letter, attached the thesis, and sent the email.

When Lu Zhou clicked send, he couldn't help but feel mischievous.

I wonder if someone will praise me for my internationalism after they read this thesis?

I'm sure anyone outside of the controllable fusion field will compliment me…

…

After Lu Zhou submitted the thesis to PRL, he posted his thesis on arXiv and left this matter alone.

What he didn't know was that his thesis was transformed into a PPT the same afternoon after his thesis was posted on arXiv.

Los Angeles International Hotel.

Inside a conference room that was a couple of hundred square meters wide…

When the crowd heard Mr. Benderbauer, the president of Tri Alpha, announcing that the company's next step was to build a plasma engine equipped with nuclear fusion batteries for the US moon landing program, they were in an uproar.

Even though the investors sitting here didn't necessarily know what exactly controllable nuclear fusion was, it didn't mean that they were stupid.

The Pangu demonstration reactor was less than three months old. The United States had barely begun researching controllable fusion. Now he was talking about the miniaturization of controllable fusion. What the hell was going on?

A lot of people looked at their watches. It seemed that they had already made up their minds. If they didn't hear any worthy news in the next five minutes, they would get up and leave.

However, Benderbauer didn't panic in a situation like this.

He was wearing a plaid T-shirt, which was a classic Silicon Valley style. He cleared his throat and looked at the investors.

"Miniaturization of controllable fusion!

"I know this might sound unbelievable, but it's not as difficult as we think."

He turned the PowerPoint presentation to the next page.

An arXiv thesis appeared on the screen.

As for the author of the thesis, it was obviously the chief designer of the controllable fusion project, Lu Zhou.

The crowd was in an uproar again, and there was a commotion in the venue.

Even the people that didn't care about this PowerPoint presentation couldn't help but start paying attention.

After all, this was Lu Zhou, the father of controllable fusion!

If anyone else were to talk about the miniaturization of controllable fusion, they would be ignored. But the words from this big name was different.

The CEO of Exxon Mobil, Woods, was sitting in the back corner of the venue, and he stared at the name on the screen.

To be honest, he was not optimistic about the over-hyped Silicon Valley company Tri-alpha. In fact, he was more inclined to invest in the practical and stable General Atomics Company.

However, when he saw the name on the screen, he began thinking again.

Because Lu Zhou's name made a lasting impression in his mind, and this made him anxious.

The lithium batteries market had multiplied more than a hundred times. This piece of the energy pie was getting bigger and bigger, and Wall Street was full of regrets.

From the lithium battery anode material to the positive electrode material, a part of this pie belonged to them. But now, they were paying other people in the energy industry as they watched them make a fortune in front of their eyes.

Now that a breakthrough had been made in the nuclear power field, power generation costs would be further reduced, and the lithium battery market would only grow larger.

Precisely because of the mistake he made last time, he had to pay extra attention to the technological feasibility thesis that Lu Zhou wrote.

On the other hand, Benderbauer was on stage, holding Lu Zhou's thesis.

"The nuclear core inside the battery can be of a modular structure. This design allows us to ignore the damage to the material structure to a certain extent.

"Based on this design, this disposable controllable fusion battery is much less technically difficult than the fusion reactor! Even though the cost is a problem, it is minuscule compared to the money we spent on the space race."

When Benderbauer saw the investors' eyes lit up, he knew that the time was now. Therefore, he smiled brightly and threw another piece of bait.

"As for whether or not our products will have a place in the market, please rest assured.

"In fact, just yesterday, we reached a strategic cooperation agreement with Space-X, to prepare a fusion battery that can be applied to their spacecraft. The miniaturized controllable fusion device will be first applied in the aerospace field. The related research projects have already been approved by the Congressional Budget Office!

"I believe that in the near future, our rockets will be able to use clean and endless nuclear energy. Our footprint will be all over space. I am certain that day will come sooner than the controllable fusion device in California!"

His passionate voice seemed to have ignited everyone's emotions.

Woods looked at his secretary and lowered his voice.

"I need a briefing on Tri Alpha's earnings and business operations!"

The secretary immediately knew what the CEO was thinking about.

"Okay, sir, the documents will be on your desk by tonight."

Woods said, "Go do it now, I need it before the six o'clock dinner."

The secretary nodded upon hearing this difficult demand.

"Ok."

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Chapter 598: A Market Created by a Thesis

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

For a Nobel Prize laureate, making money was a very easy task.

Even though most investors had rich investment experience and financial knowledge, they didn't know much about science. Therefore, this kind of investors usually either avoid investing in esoteric science fields, or they would just consult experts.

When it came to experts, it seemed that in the eyes of ordinary people, there was no better proof than a Nobel Prize winner.

In a situation like this, even if a concept looked quite unreliable, as long as there was a Nobel Prize big-name vouching for it, a ton of investors would be eager to invest… even if they didn't know what exactly they were investing in.

This didn't only happen in the controllable fusion field. This type of thing was very common.

For example, blockchain…

Lu Zhou didn't know that within a day, his thesis caused a lot of people to jump from the small controllable fusion train onto the large miniaturization of controllable fusion train. There were also a lot of smart people that seized this opportunity and doubled their net worths.

In a single day, the concept of controllable fusion batteries had exploded in America, and a multi-billion market had been created.

On the other hand, China didn't seem to have a lot of movements. After all, controllable fusion was still a sensitive technology. Most private companies and venture capital firms could only look through a window. They couldn't get the tickets for the show admission, let alone playing on stage.

However, even though there was a lot of noise in the fusion battery field, there was also a lot of action.

Various cooperative research institutes had begun research on the fusion battery project.

Compared to the demonstration reactor project, the miniaturization of controllable fusion wasn't as urgent. Both the government and Lu Zhou weren't in a hurry. They had plenty of time to research.

Compared to others, Lu Zhou was mainly responsible for a leadership role.

As for the focus of his current work, it was still on the system reward mission.

Lu Zhou woke up early the next morning.

After he took a shower, he put on his sportswear and ran along the asphalt road outside his mansion toward the golf course.

Springtime came along with March, and winter had already passed. Even though it was six o'clock in the morning, the sky was already bright and the thin morning mist was fading. The Purple Mountain was glowing from the sunshine.

If Lu Zhou wasn't particularly busy, he would run around his neighborhood either at night or in the morning. He wasn't interested in the slow-paced game of gold, but he quite enjoyed the greenery here.

Lu Zhou sprinted for a short distance and stopped near a bench. He wiped his sweat with a towel that was draped over his shoulder.

Coincidentally, a man in his fifties was also exercising in the morning. When he saw Lu Zhou sitting here, he smiled and greeted him.

"Oh, Professor Lu is exercising in the morning today?"

In a sense, he was kind of a celebrity in this neighborhood.

When the controllable fusion project was still going on, the army stationed a team that was responsible for his security near the suburbs. Hence, a lot of people had been gossiping about Lu Zhou.

Lu Zhou put the towel back on his shoulder and stood up straight. He said, "Yeah, I have to exercise. Scientific research is hard work. If I don't exercise, I won't be able to keep up with the young people."

The old man laughed and said, "You're not even in your thirties yet, and you're already comparing yourself with young people."

"I'm twenty-six now, nearly in my thirties."

Zhongshan International was considered to be the wealthiest area in Jinling. Most of the people living here were filthy rich. For example, Zhang Anqiang, who was talking to him, was the CEO of a listed company.

Because Lu Zhou often ran into him, he knew this old man's name. However, even though this man was worth millions, Lu Zhou was used to working with giant companies that were worth billions.

At least in Lu Zhou's eyes, this old man was just a normal person who was exercising in the morning.

After some small talk, Lu Zhou stood up and continued his morning run.

The sun on the horizon completely eliminated the morning fog. Lu Zhou ran home and took a bath upstairs.

He was putting on his usual windbreaker when he heard the doorbell. After Xiao Ai confirmed the identity of the visitor, Lu Zhou told it to open the door. He then walked downstairs.

"I brought you breakfast." Wang Peng placed the soy milk and soup buns on the table. He looked at Lu Zhou and asked, "Are you going to the research institute or the university?"

"University."

Lu Zhou shook his head to dry off his hair and sat down at the table. As he was eating his soup buns, he took out his phone and began to scroll through the arXiv website.

Seeing how Lu Zhou was occupied, Wang Peng sat on the sofa and picked up a magazine on the coffee table.

When he flipped through some of the magazines, he realized that he couldn't understand any of them, and so, he gave up on reading them.

"If you're interested, you can try reading Scientific Reports. It's more of a scientific mega journal. It's not as esoteric and most people are able to read the articles."

Seeing how Lu Zhou suddenly spoke, Wang Peng paused for a second and smiled before he said, "I thought you only read Science or Nature."

Lu Zhou sipped the remaining soy milk before wiping his hands with a napkin.

"Occasionally I'll read some layman articles."

Wang Peng said, "Trying to leave no stone unturned?"

Lu Zhou: "No, there are some mind-blowing articles that I find interesting."

Wang Peng: "…"

Lu Zhou looked at his watch and saw that it was about time. "I'm done eating, let's go."

"I'll get the car." Wang Peng got up from the sofa. He suddenly remembered something, and he said, "Oh yeah, Doctor Yan told me to tell you something."

"What?"

"Don't forget the medical check-up tomorrow."

Lu Zhou nodded and said, "Okay, got it."

…

The car ride took around twenty minutes.

A black car with a mounted national flag was parked near the mathematics building.

Lu Zhou greeted Old Tang, who was on his way to give a lecture. He then went straight to his office.

Lin Yuxiang, who was sitting at her table, yawned while studying for the National Public Servant Exam. When she saw Lu Zhou appear at the door, her eyes immediately lit up, and she walked toward the coffee machine. After a while, she held a warm cup of coffee and gently placed it on Lu Zhou's desk.

"I put some milk in your coffee. Apparently, it helps with fatigue."

"Thanks."

Lu Zhou took a sip and put down the cup.

"Is it good?"

"Is it freshly brewed?"

Lin Yuxiang stared at Lu Zhou with her fingers behind her back as she said, "Yeah, my boyfriend got it from Brazil. If you like it, I can tell him to bring more next time."

Lu Zhou: "No, thanks, I prefer instant coffee."

Lin Yuxiang: "…?"

Kong Jie was sitting at her desk nearby. She wanted to laugh but decided not to.

The office door was opened.

A girl with a ponytail walked through the door.

Han Mengqi looked at the lady standing near Lu Zhou's desk and walked toward Lu Zhou. She then asked quietly, "Teacher, can I steal some of your time?"

"Call me professor." Lu Zhou coughed and looked at Lin Yuxiang as he said, "You can head off."

"Oh… Okay."

Lin Yuxiang nodded and walked away.

Han Mengqi looked at her and couldn't help but frown. When she noticed Lu Zhou looking at her, she remembered why she came here.

She blushed, and she quickly took out the thesis she was holding. She then pointed toward some highlighted areas as she said softly, "I finished the tasks you gave me… There are just a few parts that I haven't been able to figure out."

Lu Zhou glanced at the highlighted parts.

"They're all calculation-based?"

"Yeah." Han Mengqi nodded awkwardly and looked down as she murmured, "Is it because I'm too stupid?"

"No way, you're quite talented. No one is born with knowledge, learning is everything."

Lu Zhou took out a piece of draft paper from his drawer and picked up the pen. He did some calculations on the paper and began to tutor his little student.

After Lu Zhou explained the calculation process, he paused for a second before he continued, "In short, you did a good job, but you have to get better at calculations.

"If you plan to innovate on top of my theory, I suggest you choose the semiconductor-electrolyte solution interface as your starting point."

Han Mengqi: "Semiconductor-electrolyte solution interface?"

Lu Zhou nodded and said, "As far as the phenomenological model is concerned, the physical image of the semiconductor-electrolyte solution interface is more complicated than the metal-electrolyte solution interface. The existing theory of this interface mainly focuses on the analysis of the potential distribution of the space charge layer. However, when it comes to the surface interface, the impact of interface energy level, etc, those haven't been deeply investigated."

Han Mengqi tilted her head and asked, "Does your Theoretical Model of Electrochemical Interface Structure not explain this?"

Lu Zhou: "It explains it to a certain extent, but it isn't perfect. My theoretical model mainly applies to the electronic-conductor-electrolyte-solution interface, it's not involved in the semiconductor interface.

"I'm working on a project for carbon-based computer chips. If you are interested, you can try to research in this area."

Carbon-based chips had always been one of the key projects of the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study. Some progress had been made, but a few key technical bottlenecks had not yet been solved.

If everything went well, it should be solved within a couple of years.

Han Mengqi took note of Lu Zhou's words as she nodded and said, "Ok!"

Liu Siyuan, who was studying, heard Han Mengqi and Lu Zhou's conversation, and he felt anxious.

Is this the world of geniuses?

He finally understood why Hang Mengqi was so eager to talk with Lu Zhou…

Suddenly, the office door was pushed open again.

Lu Zhou thought that another one of his students had come. When he looked up and saw a familiar face, he was stunned.

Han Mengqi was also stunned.

She looked at the person. "Sis?!"

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Chapter 599: Someone Is Investigating You

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

"Meng Qi?"

When Chen Yushan saw that her cousin was here, her eyes lit up. She immediately walked over. "What a coincidence, you're here as well?"

Han Mengqi nodded. "Yeah… I'm studying for a master's degree under Lu Zhou, of course I'm here."

Chen Yushan held her cousin's hand and looked at her as she said with emotion, "Time really flies by quickly. It feels like you're still in high school yesterday, but now you're already a graduate student. Also, didn't you like putting your hair in a double ponytail? Why did you change to a single ponytail?"

Han Mengqi touched her hair and said, "It looks more mature this way…"

Lu Zhou looked at the two sisters and coughed. "Why did you suddenly come here? You didn't even tell me you were coming."

"You're too busy." Chen Yushan rolled her eyes and said, "I've some business in Jiangsu for a few days, so I came here to visit you. Also, it's so that I can report to you about the work I've been doing."

Lu Zhou: "Report?"

Chen Yushan blinked and asked, "Did you forget?"

Lu Zhou said, "Forget about what?"

"It's not appropriate to talk about it here. Since it's such a rare occasion, let me buy you a drink?" Chen Yushan looked at her cousin and said, "Meng Qi, do you want to come?"

Han Mengqi immediately nodded. A moment later, she asked quietly, "You guys are going to talk about business, right? Won't I bother you?"

Chen Yushan smiled and said, "It's just not appropriate to talk about it in public, but there are no secrets… Of course, it depends if Professor Lu minds."

"Of course I don't mind." Lu Zhou smiled and said nonchalantly, "You guys haven't seen each other for a long time, right? Let's all go together."

…

At a commercial district near campus, inside a cafe.

It was still quite early in the day, plus it was a workday, so there weren't a lot of people here.

Lu Zhou found a seat near a window to sit at. He then ordered a cup of hot mocha and leaned back against his chair. He looked at the decor inside the cafe.

He felt quite nostalgic since he accepted his first tutor job here. It had already been six years since then, and he went from being a student to a famous scholar. And yet, this place hadn't changed a bit.

"An iced cappuccino and an iced americano."

Chen Yushan helped order for her cousin and politely returned the menu to the waiter.

Lu Zhou watched the waiter bring their drinks over. He then took a sip of his mocha before looking at Chen Yushan and asked, "Can you tell me now?"

"It's regarding the shares from East Asia Energy."

When Lu Zhou heard the name "East Asia Energy", he immediately remembered what the matter was.

"Oh, you already bought it?"

"Yeah, I've been busy with this over the past couple of days."

Lu Zhou nodded and asked.

"How much did you buy?"

Chen Yushan said, "Just like you said, a billion USD."

"Ptui!"

When Lu Zhou heard USD, he nearly spat his coffee out.

Chen Yushan looked at him choking and smirked as she continued to speak, "I have carefully studied the prospectus of East Asia Energy. The main purpose of this fundraising is for the construction of the cross-regional power grid in the southwest and the new fusion reactor project in Daya Bay. The expected capacity of the project will reach 100,000 MW. Within a year, the old fission reactors and other electric generators will gradually be replaced. East Asia Energy will supply power to Hong Kong, Macao, Guangdong, and other places.

"According to my experience, this kind of investment is high profit, low risk. You can rest assured! If that guy named Feng wasn't so persistent, I would have found a bank to borrow hundreds of millions just to buy more shares."

No shit, they have a monopoly, of course this is high profit, low risk!

Lu Zhou wiped the coffee off his chin and said, "A billion USD… That's almost 7 billion yuan, isn't it a bit too much?"

7 billion…

The total amount of public shares is only 20 billion yuan!

Lu Zhou ate a third of a pie just by himself. He was worried there might be a problem.

Chen Yushan blinked and asked, "Is it a lot?"

Lu Zhou: "…"

Seeing how Lu Zhou was speechless, Chen Yushan smiled and said, "Calm down, calm down. I know what you're worried about. Before contacting East Asia Energy, I discussed it with my dad. He said that as long as the money is clean, there is no problem investing normally just like everyone else. Think about it, if there is a problem, Feng Shuqing wouldn't approve of it."

Lu Zhou couldn't help but say, "Who knows what Feng Shuqing will do…"

Chen Yushan said, "Technically, he's your subordinate. Do you know anything about your subordinates?"

Lu Zhou: "I'm not interested."

Even though Feng Shuqing was technically the second-in-command of the project team, he reported directly to the government officials. Therefore, he wasn't technically Lu Zhou's subordinate.

Lu Zhou did not care for administrative work.

Rather than delegating work to other people, he preferred to do experiments in his laboratory.

Seeing how Lu Zhou was disinterested, Chen Yushan sighed and said, "Being able to take on this role in his thirties and reorganize the demonstration reactor project team, this isn't something that normal genius students from Shuimu University can do. This person has a bright career in front of him. He's not going to put himself in a risky situation just to be friends with you. His approval is definitely backed by the higher-ups."

"You really know a lot."

"I don't know that much. It's mainly because my dad always talks about this kind of stuff at home, so I inevitably learn some of it." Chen Yushan held the straw and stirred the ice cubes in her cup as she sighed and said, "That's why I don't want to work in the government, I can't fully showcase my financial ability."

Lu Zhou drank his coffee and pretended like he didn't hear the second part.

A billion USD case isn't enough to showcase your financial ability?

Lu Zhou didn't know what to do with this chick.

Suddenly, Chen Yushan remembered something.

"Oh yeah, there's one more thing you should pay attention to."

Lu Zhou asked, "What thing?"

Chen Yushan: "Star Sky Technology has a laboratory in California?"

Lu Zhou nodded and said, "Yeah, but it's mainly responsible for ordering me some more obscure reagents and to take on some projects from the Institute of Computational Materials… Is there a problem?"

Chen Yushan said, "If you transfer anyone here, try to transfer them now. If you can't transfer them, it'd be better to find a way to get rid of them. When I was investigating the company's business a few days ago, I noticed someone investigating your assets in North America… I talked to your CEO from the North American branch, and we agreed that there might be someone who's trying to collect evidence."

Lu Zhou frowned and said, "Investigating me? What is there to investigate?"

He had always been very careful.

When he returned to China, he donated all of his mathematics notes, and he didn't bring a single piece of paper back.

If anyone was to investigate him, he didn't think they would find anything.

"Please, you're Chief Designer Lu. Because you went to the Germans to buy the WEGA stellarator, our country was kicked out of ITER. Now that the Pangu fusion reactor is in everyone's face, of course they're going to investigate you."

"Who do you think it is?"

Chen Yushan rolled her eyes and said, "They're obviously not going to announce their investigation, but surely you know who it is."

Lu Zhou looked at his cup of coffee and went silent for a while. He suddenly smiled and shook his head.

"I didn't think that a mathematician would be on the CIA's list."

Actually, he wasn't completely surprised.

When he was doing the He-3 atom probe experiment at Princeton, he vaguely felt that someone might have noticed him. If he continued to conduct research, there was bound to be a problem.

However, at that time, controllable fusion was a futuristic field, and it did not receive a lot of attention. Countries never put their hopes of addressing climate warming and the energy crisis on fusion energy. It was not until the success of the STAR-1 device that everything was completely changed…

Chen Yushan's slender chin rested on her fist as her delicate lips bit the straw. She smiled and said, "Don't worry, I'll protect you."

Lu Zhou looked at her slim shoulders and couldn't feel any sense of security from her.

"Oh, thanks."

Chen Yushan snorted and said, "What is that kind of reaction? Are you bored?"

Lu Zhou thought for a bit.

"Um… I'll buy you dinner next time?"

Chen Yushan smiled and felt nostalgic. "You didn't change at all."

Lu Zhou paused for a second.

"I haven't?"

He thought that compared to his twenty-year-old self, he had actually changed quite a bit.

As Han Mengqi watched these two talk, she kept her head down while using a spoon to mix the cream in her cappuccino.

She hadn't said anything yet.

This wasn't a big deal. After all, she didn't have anything special to say.

She just felt like…

Sitting next to these two made her feel like a little kid.

She sighed and sat there feeling gloomy.

However, she didn't know why she was feeling this way…

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Chapter 600: Stock Market Is Risky

There was only a certain amount of business stuff to talk about.

Later on, the three people began to talk about some interesting things in their life and work.

After Chen Yushan polished off the desserts and her drink, she looked at her watch and saw that it was getting late. She smiled and said, "I have a meeting soon, so I have to go. Oh yeah, Meng Qi, remember to tell your mom I said hi. I'll visit you guys in a few days."

Han Mengqi nodded and said, "Ok!"

Lu Zhou looked at the time and also got up from his chair.

"Yeah, I have to go back as well. Your car is still at the campus entrance, right? Let's go together."

After he returned to his office, he planned on sending an email to Sarrot.

If Sarrot wanted to come work in China, Lu Zhou would provide him with a laboratory.

If he didn't want to come, then Lu Zhou would respect his decisions and help him find a new laboratory. Everything would end on good terms. Even though this political situation had affected his research, he didn't want it to continue affecting his life.

Even though Sarrot had always been a cocky person, he was actually quite academically able.

After working together for so long, Lu Zhou appreciated him.

After they walked to the campus entrance, Chen Yushan waved goodbye to Lu Zhou and her cousin. She then got into a silver sedan.

Lu Zhou smiled and waved goodbye.

Ever since Chen Yushan moved from Beijing to Shanghai, Lu Zhou felt like she had gained a lot more energy.

Lu Zhou felt this indescribable aura coming from her body.

It seemed like she had discovered her life purpose.

She had been searching for this kind of thing for a long time, surely she had found it already.

Han Mengqi walked next to Lu Zhou and glanced at his face.

She hesitated for a bit before saying, "Teacher…"

"What?"

"Um… What do you think about my sister?"

Lu Zhou looked at her strangely.

"What do you mean what do I think?"

Han Mengqi's cheeks turned red as she said awkwardly, "Like… in terms of feelings…"

Lu Zhou went silent for a while. He seemed to be thinking.

Han Mengqi saw him and felt worried.

Suddenly, she regretted asking this question.

When she was just about to change the conversation, Lu Zhou suddenly spoke.

"She's one of the few friends I can talk with."

When Han Mengqi heard this unexpected answer, she paused for a second.

One of the few friends he can talk with?

She didn't know why, but when she looked at him, she felt heartbroken…

…

Haizhou, demonstration reactor base.

The demonstration reactor project had been completed. After the commendation conference, everyone basically had nothing to do. In some sense, they were being compensated for having no holiday last year.

Other than the busy experts who were responsible for the grid-connected technology of electricity generators, most researchers and engineers were sitting in their offices. They held pointless meetings, filled in documents, and did their own things most of the time.

For example, Su Yiwen from the technical department had recently become fascinated with the futures market. Whenever he was at work, he would look at the market charts and graphs. Other than going to the toilet or eating, he stayed at his desk all day.

Su Yiwen, who was short-selling, looked at the bleak futures market and clicked his mouse. He sighed and spoke emotionally.

"The price of Brent crude oil futures was 60 something just a while ago, but now it's fallen below 45 barrel. Why aren't the Chinese oil companies dropping as well?"

Looking at this trend, the price of oil was going to fall below US$40 per barrel.

When that time comes, surely China's oil production will stop, right?

Zhang Xueqian was reading a newspaper when he looked at his colleague and smiled.

"Forget about it, once Pangu connects to the grid, it would be impossible for the oil price to fall. Forget about the price falling. Once electric vehicle technology has matured and their charging stations are extended to fourth and fifth-tier cities, the tax on oil will increase."

Su Yiwen paused for a second and asked, "Why is that?"

Old Zhang looked at him and smiled as he said, "Do you know what macroeconomic regulation and control is?"

"I do… but what does this have to do with macroeconomic regulation and control?"

"Think about it, our nation's energy is heavily dependent on imports and the channel for transporting energy is in other people's hands. After the fusion reactors are connected to the grid and generate electricity, the cost of electricity will go down. The country will have to adjust our energy structure, like pushing for electric cars. Now, if the oil price goes down, will you switch to an electric car?"

Su Yiwen thought for a bit and felt that it made sense. However, if someone suddenly made him change cars, he would feel a little reluctant.

Seeing how Su Yiwen wasn't speaking, Zhang Xueqian began to talk about the things he read in the newspapers.

"Now that lithium-sulfur batteries have been invented, the electric car ranges aren't that much lower than gasoline cars. Charging time might be a problem, but it's a lot better than a few years ago. I also heard that the Power Industry Association is going to combine a number of car companies and standardize the battery interface. Then no one would have to charge their batteries since they could just switch out the batteries. Of course, no one knows when that technology would come. We'll have to see what happens next."

The state had invested trillions of dollars into new energy vehicles. This money had to come from somewhere.

Where did it come from?

It obviously came from those people who were unwilling to keep up with the changing times.

Even though Su Yiwen knew this was a good thing, he couldn't help but complain, "So they're forcing us to switch cars?"

Zhang Xueqian said, "You can interpret it that way… But you have to admit, this is the right thing to do in the long term."

Whether it was for environmental protection or being able to escape from being dependent on energy imports, ever since East Asia Energy was established, gasoline cars were slowly being eliminated.

The government officials were quite smart.

They spent less than 100 billion yuan to build the fusion reactor.

Not only did it save trillions in energy costs, but it also created a trillion-dollar market.

With the advancement of electrical energy, industrial production and social vitality would undoubtedly improve.

What could the future look like?

It seemed like only time could tell.

Suddenly, the office door was pushed open, and Chief Wang from the finance department walked in.

He was holding a list of names and contracts in his hand. He avoided any small talk and went straight to the point.

"East Asia Energy is raising funds from the public, are you guys interested? If not, I'll ask someone else."

Su Yiwen was just about to ask some questions. He was surprised to see Old Zhang, who wasn't interested in stocks, suddenly stood up.

"How much are they raising?"

Chief Wang said, "A total of two billion shares were issued, ten dollars per share."

Su Yiwen froze.

The f*ck?

They're raising 20 billion?

However, he was even more surprised by Old Zhang's words.

"I'll buy 100,000 shares!"

Su Yiwen: "???"

A hundred thousand!

That's a million!

This guy always talks about how broke he is, when did he get so rich?

Chief Wang didn't accept his demands. He shook his head and said, "Every employee can only buy 3,000 shares."

When Zhang Xueqian heard this number, he felt a bit uneasy.

"Only 3,000?"

"Yes." Chief Wang was expressionless. He didn't plan on negotiating at all. He said, "Technical employees are limited to 3,000, administrative employees are limited to 2,000, the rest is at 1,000. Secretary Feng wrote the rules. If you are unhappy, you can go talk to him."

Seeing how Secretary Feng made the rules, Zhang Xueqian sighed and didn't say anything else.

3,000 is quite a lot anyway.

Including the army members, as well as the research units around the country, the entire demonstration reactor project team had tens of thousands of people. Only 2 billion shares were issued to the public. 3,000 shares each person was quite good. If the general public wanted to buy the shares, they might even have to go through a lucky draw.

Zhang Xueqian comforted himself in his head and took over the contract from Chief Wang's hands. He signed his name on the contract and wrote down the number of shares.

"Remember to make the payment before Wednesday. Otherwise, your order will expire."

Chief Wang then looked at the other person sitting in the office. That person was Su Yiwen, who was sitting in front of a computer.

Before he could open his mouth, Su Yiwen spoke.

"I want in."

After Su Yiwen signed the order, Chief Wang left the office.

Su Yiwen looked at the contract in his hand and asked emotionally, "Old Zhang, the stock market is risky, did we buy too much?"

Zhang Xueqian immediately rolled his eyes and reached out his hand as he said, "If you don't want it, give it to me, I'll take on your risk."

"I was just saying…"

Su Yiwen smiled and tightly held onto the document in his hand.

He was just joking, he wasn't dumb.

This type of free money opportunity was once in a lifetime. There was no way he was going to give it away.

While the East Asia Energy shares were issued to the demonstration reactor project team, the online orders had also begun.

However, the people who had heard about this news in advance through various channels, as well as the professional investors, such as the private equity funds and investment companies, who were refreshing the purchase page, were surprised to see that the 20 billion of market cap was gone in an instant.

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Chapter 601: Taking Advantage

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

The East Asia Energy company issued a total of 2 billion shares to the public. This could roughly be divided into three parts, where one part was bought by the demonstration reactor project team, and one went to various banks.

As for the last part, that was the part that was truly given to the public.

Even though it was a good thing to support the ventures of the country, most people didn't have the opportunity to do this.

Private funds learned the news in advance through various channels, just like vultures smelling carrion. The second the stocks were issued, every single last one of them was bought.

By the time the normal people saw this stock, it was probably already at its daily trading limit. When they could finally buy it, East Asia Energy would have been worth trillions already. By that time, the rapid increase in the stock price would have already been over…

Of course, some funds or investment companies had supercomputers and multi-threaded operations. However, they weren't nutty at all.

After all, no matter how fast their internet speed was, it could only increase their probability of "winning". The number of shares that they could buy still depended on luck.

For the more prestigious and well-renowned funds and investment companies, they only needed to get their share buying rights from "qualified" companies.

For example, in addition to the 2 billion shares issued to the public, they also issued 2 billion shares to qualified companies, such as oil and electric giants.

And this was technically all legal…

Shanghai, Haixiang Capital trading room.

After the online stock ordering session ended, there was an outcry in the room.

In order to get ahead of everyone for the East Asia Energy company's online stock ordering draw, not only did they work overtime in the trading room last night, but they even used supercomputers.

However, the results of the draw had ended, and they were only eligible to buy thirty thousand shares.

Li Xiang, General Manager of Haixiang Capital, looked at the results of the draw on the computer screen. He clenched his fists. His heart almost began to bleed.

Even though thirty thousand shares was quite a lot for most people, for a financial company like them that traded in the tens of millions, this was only a rounding error…

After the results of the draw were announced, the top ten shareholders of the winning bed were posted on the relevant website.

The biggest major shareholder was the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, which owned 50%. Then there were the major oil companies, the State Grid Corporation of China, the social security fund… Basically, the "state team". They accounted for more than 80% of the available shares.

There was nothing to say about this. After all, the state had priority.

However, when he looked down at the names of the shareholders, he suddenly saw Star Sky Technology with a shareholding ratio of 7%, and he nearly spat onto the computer screen.

"F*ck, 7%! What kind of fund is this?!" said Vice General Manager Tang Guang. He took the words out of the General Manager's mouth.

"Yeah… I've never heard this name before." Assistant Zhang stood next to them with a confused look on his face as he said, "Maybe… It's some big name's brokerage firm?"

Vice General Manager Tang said, "Then how come we didn't know about it until now?"

Li Xiang stared at the screen for a while and said, "Look up this company's background… Even though we lost, we have to know who we lost to."

Even though this name sounded vaguely familiar, he couldn't remember where he heard it.

Regardless, he had to at least figure out who the boss behind this company was.

If the boss wasn't a big name…

He would like to have a chat with him.

Assistant Zhang saw that his boss was in a bad mood, so he immediately nodded and said, "Yes, sir."

They weren't the only ones who wanted to figure out who Star Sky Technology was. Half of the domestic financial market was shocked by this company.

Even the overseas funds that were paying attention to the East Asia Energy public offerings noticed this interesting phenomenon.

Even though 7% might not seem like much, this was a giant company that operated in a monopoly market, and it had an almost infinite amount of development space and a future market value that would at least be in the trillions. The amount of publicly available shares for China Petroleum was only 2.2% of the total share capital. This would show how big 7% was.

Lu Zhou, on the other hand, was in Jin Ling University. He didn't know that his patent management company became famous in the domestic financial circles because of his CEO.

However, even if he knew, he wouldn't be surprised.

East Asia Energy wasn't a public company, and it wasn't controlled by the CSRC1. He purchased it at the regular price of 10 yuan per share. This didn't count as swallowing state-owned assets, nor was it illegal. As for the private equity funds and financial companies that were in an uproar, they were just unlucky.

After all, the public wasn't particularly fond of the financial funds.

Jin Ling University.

Mathematics building office.

Doctor Yan brought over the medical examination results from yesterday. She looked at the three assistants in the office as she handed the report to Lu Zhou with a strange look on her face.

"They're… your assistants?"

"Yeah, the school arranged for me."

Lu Zhou didn't know why, but he felt like Yan Yan was looking at him with a weird look.

After a while, Yan Yan said, "They're quite young."

Lu Zhou: "Ok."

Yan Yan: "…"

Lu Zhou: "…?"

What is this chick talking about?

Suddenly, the office door opened and a student walked in.

Liu Siyuan walked past Doctor Yan while holding a stack of A4 papers.

"Professor, I've finished the tasks you gave me!"

Lu Zhou looked at his thick eyebags with surprise. However, he didn't say anything since he was more than familiar with the act of working all night.

"Okay, put it on my desk… Why did you come so early today?"

It was only 7 o'clock.

His three assistants were here because of their work requirements, but he didn't have strict attendance requirements for his students. His students only had to complete their works on time.

Liu Siyuan scratched his head and smiled as he said, "I have to work hard, otherwise, I feel like I'm falling behind."

It seemed like Lu Zhou's work had begun, so Yan Yan didn't want to bother him.

"I have to go."

Lu Zhou: "Ok."

Do you want to eat lunch together?

Yan Yan was about to ask this question, but she realized it would be a bit weird to ask this at seven in the morning. Therefore, she dismissed this idea and walked away.

Like usual, after Lu Zhou briefly reviewed the student's work and gave some suggestions, he told Liu Siyuan to go away. He then began to check his email.

Except for an email regarding analytic number theory from Qin Yue, who was lecturing at Princeton, all of the emails were unimportant.

Lu Zhou thought for around five minutes before typing up an email to answer Qin Yue's question.

He was about to close his email and open up arXiv to look for any mathematics or physics research that was worth paying attention to when he suddenly received a new email.

Lu Zhou looked at this email and paused for a second.

Professor Sarrot?

Of course, he wasn't surprised by this name. He was surprised because of the content of the email.

[I was contacted by the FBI.]

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Chapter 602: Good Gathering

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Near Jin Ling University.

Still that same old cafe.

Chen Yushan had been working in Jinling these past few days. After she received a call from Lu Zhou, they agreed to meet here. Lu Zhou was fulfilling his promise of treating her to food.

"Your laboratory director was contacted by the FBI?"

Lu Zhou took a sip of the coffee and nodded. "Yeah, I received his email this morning."

"Then try to get rid of this situation as soon as possible." Chen Yushan held the steaming cup of coffee and sighed. She said, "This is good for both you and Professor Sarrot."

Lu Zhou thought for a bit and said, "I don't understand."

Chen Yushan: "Don't understand what?"

Lu Zhou: "The Sarrot Laboratory research project does not involve sensitive technology. Most of it is the more troublesome experiments from the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study… If the CIA or FBI is really investigating me, what can they possibly find?"

Chen Yushan: "They don't have to find anything. Whether it is evidence or witnesses, they can fabricate it."

Fabricate it?

Lu Zhou had a thoughtful expression on his face.

Chen Yushan looked at Lu Zhou and said seriously, "Anyway, I will help you contact some potential buyers. I'm sure there are many people that are interested in buying a Nobel Prize level laboratory, so it should be able to sell at a good price."

Lu Zhou: "Thank you… Oh yeah, one more thing."

Chen Yushan: "What?"

Lu Zhou looked at the coffee in her hand and asked curiously, "Speaking of which, aren't you an iced americano kind of girl? Why did you get a hot coffee today?"

He was curious when ordering the drink.

He didn't know why, but Chen Yushan suddenly blushed and stuttered, "I-I just wanted to change flavors."

Lu Zhou was stunned by her reaction.

"Nothing… I was just curious. If you don't want to tell me, it's fine."

"It's not that I don't want to tell you…" Chen Yushan closed her legs and shyly looked away. She quickly said, "I have the thing, I can't drink cold stuff."

Lu Zhou: "…?"

Even though he didn't know what she was talking about, he felt like the conversation just went to a strange direction…

…

After talking with Chen Yushan, Lu Zhou made a decision regarding the Sarrot Laboratory.

Honestly, he felt a mix of emotions when making this decision.

Even though he had always been very careful about not allowing politics to interfere with his research, it seemed to be impossible now.

Even if he didn't take the initiative to find trouble, trouble would find him.

According to Chen Yushan's suggestion, starting today, Star Sky Technology's branch in North America would only retain the necessary management departments and relevant legal teams to ensure that their patent rights were still guaranteed.

As for the RD department, it would be transferred to China or a country with a lower level of political governance.

They employed a professional to evaluate the assets of the Sarrot Laboratory. After that, Star Sky Technology released the news regarding the sale of the laboratory.

Just like Chen Yushan had expected, the day after the news was released, she received eleven offers for Sarrot Laboratory.

Among them were Lu Zhou's partner, the Belgium Mobil Chemical company, and other international chemical giants, such as Nichia, Dow, and BASF. There was also his old rival Exxon Mobil, which had tried to compete with him on the lithium-sulfur battery positive electrode material project.

These companies all had material needs for their businesses, so their offerings were quite generous.

After comparing all of the offers, Lu Zhou chose the rich and powerful ExxonMobil.

The CEO of ExxonMobil made a special trip to Jinling, Jiangsu, to talk with Lu Zhou about this matter.

Actually, this CEO wanted to talk with Lu Zhou in Los Angeles.

However, Lu Zhou told him, "Come to me if you want, otherwise forget about it."

The CEO immediately compromised.

Just like that, the negotiation location was set in Jinling.

With the help from Chen Yushan, Lu Zhou negotiated the original US$45 million offer to US$50 million.

Even though US$50 million wasn't a lot, it was around the price of a private jet, but for Lu Zhou who just spent a lot of his money investing in stocks, this was still a decent amount of cash flow.

Even though Lu Zhou's personal expenses weren't that high, his total expenses were quite large.

Not only did he have to pay thousands of researchers, research assistants, and other researchers in the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, but there were also nearly a hundred ongoing money-burning research projects.

Especially for the carbon-based chip research as well as the Hall-effect thruster research… Those two were the bottomless money spenders. Even though the national research fund had relieved some of the financial stress, most of the patent-related research project was still funded by Lu Zhou alone.

In addition to the US$50 million, Lu Zhou also wanted to own the seemingly useless carbon-nanospheres patent.

Even though he didn't have any plans of using this advanced technology, ExxonMobil stole this thing from him unfairly.

Now, it could finally return to its original owner.

Speaking of which, a minor disturbance happened because of this.

When Woods first heard that Lu Zhou was interested in the carbon-nanospheres patent, he didn't want to sell it.

But after he saw that Lu Zhou easily gave up on this idea and increased the laboratory sale price by US$1 million, Woods immediately took the deal.

Useless patents were not worth anything.

Rather than letting this million-dollar increase delay the sale of Sarrot Laboratory, Woods would rather put it to good use. After all, in his opinion, a useless patent document was not worth a million dollars…

At last, the contract was finalized. The time for the signing of the contract was agreed to be at 8 pm at the Hilton hotel.

Woods had a painful expression on his face when signing.

However, the instant Lu Zhou signed his name, Woods' painful expression suddenly disappeared, and he smiled as he put away his copy of the contract.

"Happy cooperation!" Woods warmly reached out his hand, showing the most pleasant smile ever.

"Happy cooperation. My workers are all very talented, so remember to treat them nicely. I might want to poach them someday… You seem to be in a good mood. It seems like my asking price was a bit low." Lu Zhou let go of Woods' hand and smiled.

"What do you mean? In fact, I'm very sad, very, very sad… But we all have to stay optimistic, right?" Woods laughed and patted Lu Zhou's shoulder. He was too lazy to keep his act up, and he said, "Do you want to get a drink? I know a good bar nearby."

Obviously, US$50 million was lower than ExxonMobil's expectations, and to ExxonMobil, Lu Zhou had received the short end of the stick…

Well, that was ExxonMobil's opinion.

Lu Zhou put away his copy of the contract and shook his head. He said, "No, thanks, I have plans tonight."

"Date?"

"Experiment."

Woods was helpless, and he said, "Okay then, it seems like you're a joyless man… Honestly, my friend, with all the money you're making, have you not thought about spending money on yourself and enjoy your life?"

Lu Zhou said nonchalantly, "I am enjoying life. I'm enjoying the experiments and their results."

Woods shrugged and said, "How unfortunate is that… It seems like I'll have to drink by myself."

After the negotiations ended, Lu Zhou left Hilton with Wang Peng.

He sat in his black sedan and looked at the contract in his hand. He took out his phone and sent an email to Sarrot, who was waiting for the outcome of the negotiation.

[The negotiation is over. Your new owner is ExxonMobil.]

After three minutes, an email came back.

The email contained only two words.

[Thank you.]

Lu Zhou smiled and replied.

[You're welcome.]

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Chapter 603: I Want To, But I'm Scared…

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Shanghai, Haixiang Capital, general manager's office.

Li Xiang sat in his office chair with his phone in his hand. He nodded while sweating and said, "Okay, Director Wu! I understand… No no! I'll never do anything without your approval."

The phone call ended.

After he hung up the call, he sighed and leaned back in his chair. It was like he had just run a marathon; his entire forehead was full of sweat.

Director Wu was obviously the shareholder of Haixiang Capital. He was the one who received the news about East Asia Energy in advance and told Li Xiang to buy the shares.

Li Xiang was worried that Director Wu would blame him for not being able to buy the shares. Li Xiang wanted to investigate who was behind Star Sky Technology, and if he could somehow take a piece of Star Sky Technology's shares…

However, one phone call from Director Wu scared Li Xiang away.

He didn't expect Star Sky Technology to have such an impressive background.

When he remembered he was almost going to have a chat with the shareholder from Star Sky Technology, he was drenched in cold sweat.

Have a chat with him?

I'll be fired before the conversation even begins.

Suddenly his office door was opened, his deputy manager Tang Guang quickly walked in.

"Boss, we found the information you want! Lu Zhou is the registered legal person of Star Sky Technology. He's Professor Lu, a professor from Jin Ling University!"

Li Xiang nodded without expression and said, "Okay, I understand… Okay then."

Seeing how Li Xiang was expressionless, Tang Guang paused for a second and said anxiously, "General Li, this is an opportunity!"

Li Xiang paused for a second and was dumbfounded.

"What?"

"An opportunity to make money!" Tang Guang excitedly said, "Why do you think a scientific researcher is so rich? I'm guessing this money is probably dirty! We just have to tell the public about his mansion and company, and make them think that he's using the state's research funds for his own benefit! The bank will freeze his accounts, and the relevant departments will investigate him…"

Tang Guang's plan was quite devious.

Even if there was seven billion dollars in cash, it would be impossible for the money to get to the account so quickly.

If something happened to the money and Lu Zhou couldn't make the payment, the 700 million shares would be available to the public?

A state-level project like this wouldn't want to have any delays.

Not to mention, there were a lot of people staring at this piece of the pie. As long as they did a bit of work, it was very likely that the shares would be reissued. They couldn't buy all of the shares, but they might be able to buy some.

As for discrediting an internationally-renowned scholar…

Why should they care?

Li Xiang looked at him.

"You're an absolute genius."

Tang Guang smiled.

"Thank you, it's all thanks to your guidance…"

"Guidance my a*s!" Li Xiang took a file folder and threw it in his face. Tang Guang was muddled, so Li Xiang explained, "You think you're the only one who can come up with these retarded ideas? Even if there is a problem with his funding, do you really think you're going to be investigating him? Do you think you're the FBI or the CIA?"

"But, but…"

"F*ck off!"

Li Xiang threw a pen holder at him.

Tang Guang covered his face with his hands and left the office.

Li Xiang looked at the empty doorway and panted for a while before calming down.

When he thought about his subordinate's plan, he felt afraid.

Fortunately, that retard had the foresight to mention the plan to him first, before acting on his own.

Even though he was envious, after he learned about Star Sky Technology's background, he didn't have a strand of malicious intention left in his heart.

Government, industry, academia, and the media, none of them were touchable.

Not to mention, Lu Zhou's level of security.

If he really did something he shouldn't have, not only would his boss not be able to protect him, but his boss himself would be thrown into the pit together.

Now he finally understood why the brokers and other predators in the financial industry were so quiet.

Obviously, it wasn't because they didn't want to.

But it was because they didn't dare to…

…

After an agreement was reached with ExxonMobil regarding the laboratory sale, Lu Zhou went to the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.

He didn't lie to Woods about his experiment plans, he actually did have research to do.

Around half an hour ago, the samples and the sample testing results from the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant had been sent back. All he wanted to do was to return to the research institute and look at the experimental data.

It took around 40 minutes to drive from the city center to the high-tech zone. By the time the black sedan was parked outside the research institute, the buildings in the area were already completely dark. The research building was the only one that still had some lights turned on.

Wang Peng turned off the car and Lu Zhou looked at him.

"Do you want to go eat something? I'll probably come back after 12 o'clock."

"No need, I'll just smoke a few cigarettes."

"Okay then."

Lu Zhou didn't say anything else. After he got out of the car, he walked toward the research institute.

He passed through security and got in the elevator.

When he arrived at the laboratory, Li Changxia, Sheng Xianfu, and a couple of other professors were already in the laboratory.

Judging from the looks on their faces, the situation didn't seem good.

However, Lu Zhou still asked.

"What's the result like?"

Sheng Xianfu sighed and said, "Look at it yourself."

Lu Zhou was handed the freshly-printed documents that were still warm to touch. He sat down on a laboratory stool and began to carefully read the experimental report.

However, the more he read, the more serious his expression became.

Just like he had expected, the experimental report wasn't ideal.

The neutron radiation damage was fine, and the self-repairability of the PGC-1 material itself and its permeability of neutron rays were pretty good. It should be a perfect reactor material.

However, the problem wasn't the neutron radiation, it was the heat dissipation.

"The concept of fast ignition might be correct, but the heat accumulation is a big problem." Sheng Xianfu looked at him and sighed. "If we use inertial confinement fusion, our materials will have direct contact with plasma that is hundreds of millions of degrees hot. Even though there aren't a lot of reactants involved in the nuclear core reaction, it will still create a lot of pressure on the reactor itself. We might not be able to find a suitable way to get rid of this heat, especially in space…"

Even though the temperature in space was very low, because it was nearly a vacuum, there was no water or air for any kind of heat transfer. It could only dissipate heat in the form of thermal radiation.

If the heat generated by the fusion reaction couldn't be dissipated in time, the components would be damaged and the spacecraft could be burnt or disintegrated.

This wasn't just a fusion battery problem, this was a problem with almost all aerospace components. Normally, the solution was to add heat sinks and accelerate the thermal radiation by increasing the surface area.

However, when it was about nuclear fusion, using thermal radiation to dissipate the heat was obviously abysmal…

Li Changxia thought for a long time and sighed before he said, "If only we can slow down controllable fusion energy."

Sheng Xianfu couldn't help but say, "How about we just decrease the temperature of the controllable fusion reaction, because that's definitely possible."

Cold nuclear fusion became a sensation in the 1980s, but it turned out to be an academic fraud. The investigation lead by a 22-member panel from the United States Department of Energy concluded the whole incident as a hoax.

Even now, there were still people that claimed to have solved the problem of cold nuclear fusion, but it was all either an error in the data or outright fraud.

Regardless of whether or not cold nuclear fusion could be achieved in the future, it was unrealistic right now.

However, Li Changxia's words attracted Lu Zhou's attention.

If they could slow down the reaction and leave enough time for the nuclear core to transfer heat to the power generator or dissipate the heat outside the aircraft, it might seem feasible?

However, Lu Zhou had no idea how to achieve this.

The discussion went on until late at night.

Lu Zhou stared at the clock on the wall and said, "It's getting late, let's end the meeting."

It was already midnight.

Even if they continued this meeting, it wouldn't be productive.

And Lu Zhou also needed time to think about this so that he could come up with a research project that could solve this problem.

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Chapter 604: Unavoidable Bottleneck

On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, it was still noon.

After Sarrot sent the email, he went to the bar and got drunk.

In order to maintain a clear mind for experiments, he never drank during the day. However, today was an exception.

As he sat in a bar in Silicon Valley, his assistant Paul looked at him and sighed. Paul tried to comfort him.

"Think about the big picture. ExxonMobil buying your laboratory isn't necessarily a bad thing. Even though Professor Lu is a great scholar, he didn't actually provide you with that much resources. Not to mention, ExxonMobil spent US$50 million to buy us, they definitely won't just leave us alone…"

Professor Sarrot didn't react at all. Paul knew that his comforting words were not effective. Therefore, he shrugged and ended the conversation topic.

"In short, having money isn't a bad thing."

Sarrot snorted. "You don't understand."

Paul: "What don't I understand?"

Sarrot didn't explain anything. He just picked up the bottle and drank a few mouthfuls. He then began to talk about other things.

"My dear Paul, I have always believed that academic research should have freedom. As long as it doesn't violate basic human rights, even if it isn't definitively correct, as long as you think it is correct, you should advocate for it. The more people disbelieve in you, the more you should prove to them you are right."

Paul frowned and said, "Do we not have freedom now?"

"Maybe we do." Sarrot stared at the ceiling and sighed. "But once you get to my level, when your research affects the world… Your understanding of freedom will change."

Paul didn't say anything. He just looked at Sarrot.

After a while, Sarrot placed the empty bottle next to the stool and picked up another bottle.

Paul was about to tell him that he was drinking too much when Sarrot suddenly said, "I plan on migrating soon."

"To where? Professor Lu's laboratory?"

"I don't know, but not China. There's only one Professor Lu there…"

Sarrot, who was holding the bottle, scratched his head and said, "Maybe the Netherlands? I heard my father tell me that our family used to live in a small town in Utrecht until the Germans bombarded Rotterdam… I've never been there. A long time ago, Utrecht University sent me an invitation to become a professor, but the salary was too low and the resources weren't comparable to Cornell University… But now that I think about it, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I take the offer?"

…

The research on fusion batteries had reached a bottleneck. The nuclear core heat dissipation problem seemed to be difficult to solve. A lot of people inside the project team had even begun to doubt the feasibility of this technical route.

After all, was it really possible to miniaturize nuclear fusion?

Also, was inertial confinement fusion on the miniaturized controllable fusion really possible?

The most troublesome thing was that if they couldn't use a magnetic field to withstand the energy, what kind of material could they possibly use to restrain the heat?

However, it seemed that inertial confinement fusion was their only choice. After all, there simply wasn't enough room in a small spacecraft for them to create a magnetic confinement cage for the plasma.

No one had the answer to these questions. They didn't even have any previous research to use as a reference.

In order to find inspiration to solve this problem, Lu Zhou collected a large number of theses in the field of aerospace, fission batteries, and space station cooling technology. He tried to get some inspiration from these public research resources.

Actually, these theses did give him a little inspiration.

For example, the thesis on the "first-principles study of phonons in α-boron and its icosahedral boron-rich compounds" contained an interesting thermoelectric conversion model and discussed the scattering of electrons by phonons.

Converting thermal energy to electrical energy was an interesting idea in some sense. In fact, most nuclear fission batteries used in spacecraft would generate electricity with this method.

However, this didn't solve the problem on a fundamental scale.

Using the temperature difference inside the spacecraft and outside the spacecraft might increase the efficiency of converting thermal energy into electrical energy, but it didn't change the fact that the heat was difficult to dissipate.

Lu Zhou sat in his office and leaned against his chair as he stared at the ceiling and whispered to himself, "If only I could slow down the controllable fusion reaction."

Or reduce the fast ignition area…

Suddenly, a voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Professor, what are you talking about?"

Zhao Huan stood in front of his desk while holding a binder, and she looked at him with a curious expression.

Lu Zhou: "Nothing… What's up?"

Zhao Huan said, "It's the tenth week, and your computational materials class is about to begin. This is your class schedule."

"Okay, just put the schedule on my desk." Lu Zhou stood up from his desk and sighed as he said, "I'm going for a walk, call me if there is anything."

"Okay." Zhao Huan nodded.

She didn't know why, but she felt like Professor Lu wasn't in a good mood.

Actually, Zhao Huan was correct, Lu Zhou wasn't in a good mood; he was even a little annoyed.

His intuition told him that the research path he chose was correct.

However, it was almost like there was an invisible barrier that blocked the seemingly feasible road that was in front of him.

Lu Zhou vaguely felt that the bottleneck wasn't in the engineering department. Instead, he felt that the problem was in the theoretical field.

Which was, there wasn't enough theoretical foundation to support his idea of the miniaturization of controllable fusion.

Also, he couldn't treat this like the tokamak or the stellarator and convert theoretical problems, such as magnetic tearing, into engineering problems.

"Is the research efficiency decreasing because of the advanced research topic?"

Lu Zhou walked along the tree-lined path on campus. He suddenly smiled and shook his head.

Two years ago, when he first got into the research on controllable nuclear fusion, he was in a similar situation.

At that time, the research methods of the L-manifold and partial differential equations had not been invented yet. The existence of a smooth solution to the Navier–Stokes equations and the theoretical model of plasma turbulence were two unsolved mysteries in mathematics and physics.

After he solved these theoretical problems, controllable fusion had a sufficient theoretical basis for it to become feasible.

Without these theories as a foundation, it would be impossible to achieve the results of the German Wendelstein 7-X or the modified STAR-1 stellarator machine.

However, where was the theoretical bottleneck of the miniaturized controllable fusion?

If this really is a theoretical bottleneck…

Lu Zhou walked through the tree-lined path and began to think about these problems in his head. Without knowing it, he walked to the lecture building that he normally lectured at.

He didn't recognize the professor on stage, but from listening to the content, he could tell it was physics.

Through the windows of the lecture hall, he could clearly see the students listening to the lecture intently.

However, when he was about to leave, from the corner of his eyes, he saw a couple of keywords on the blackboard.

A moment of inspiration passed through his body.

Without hesitating, Lu Zhou walked toward the back entrance of the lecture hall.

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Chapter 605: Why Do Nucleons Stick Together?

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

The class seemed to have just begun.

Lu Zhou gently pushed open the back door and looked at the middle-aged professor facing the class. Lu Zhou didn't interrupt the students who were listening to the lecture, nor did he interrupt the students with their heads on their desks. He found a low-key spot and sat down.

Inspiration didn't just come by itself, he had to go search for it.

A quote by Fermi resonated with Lu Zhou, which was that thinking about easy problems would depend on one's understanding of esoteric problems.

This seemed to apply to both mathematics and physics.

When Lu Zhou was in Princeton, whenever he encountered a problem he couldn't understand, he would take time to lecture some undergraduate students, or he would go to other professors' classrooms to find inspiration.

Like when he was studying the Goldbach's conjecture, Professor Fefferman's number theory lecture gave him a lot of inspiration. This wasn't because Fefferman's lecture content was deep and complex; it was the opposite. Fefferman's lectures were all easy material…

When the professor on stage finished writing on the blackboard and cleared his throat, he began to speak.

"Quantum mechanics is a very difficult field. If you really go deep into the field, its content will subvert your understanding of the micro-universe, physics itself, and even philosophy. Even though I sound boring, I don't recommend you guys to sleep in the first lecture…"

There was laughter in the classroom, and Lu Zhou, who was sitting in the back row, couldn't help but smile.

It seemed like this professor was a young scholar. At the very least, he didn't read verbatim off a PowerPoint presentation.

However, his voice wasn't quite loud enough.

Because the guy sleeping next to Lu Zhou didn't wake up.

The professor glanced at the students and shrugged. He then continued to speak, "We all know the STAR-2 demonstration reactor in Haizhou was successfully ignited under the command of Professor Lu from our school. Our country's controllable fusion reactor technology is at the forefront of the world, and we are the only country that has a commercial reactor."

Lu Zhou, who was sitting in the back row, was a little embarrassed.

Why is a quantum mechanics professor talking about me?

It's not like this is a plasma physics class.

However, the professor on stage was quite enthusiastic, and the students in the lecture hall were also interested. The guy that was sleeping next to Lu Zhou woke up and looked at the professor with a muddled look on his face.

Suddenly, Lu Zhou noticed that the teacher's name and phone number were written on the title page of the quantum mechanics textbook, which was under the student's arm.

Zhang Zhiongqing?

I haven't heard of him before…

"According to the public data, the STAR-2 demonstration reactor, or the Pangu reactor, has an internal nuclear core temperature of 130 degrees, nearly nine times the temperature of the sun's core!"

The students in the classroom were amazed, and Professor Zhang, who was standing on the lecture stage, knew that he had successfully captured the students' attention. So, he immediately followed up with more information.

"Normal temperatures can't stand a temperature like this. So, our country's STAR-2 demonstration reactor uses magnetic confinement to constrain the deuterium-tritium mixture, confining it in a magnetic cage.

"Then the question comes, my students, what temperature is required for fusion reaction? In other words, why is fusion reaction not carried out at room temperature?"

The classroom went quiet.

The guy sitting next to Lu Zhou snorted.

"No sh*t…"

Lu Zhou raised his eyebrows with interest. He was about to ask him for his opinion but the student spoke first, "If it's carried out at room temperature, then it can't be nuclear fusion."

Lu Zhou: "…"

"Is there a student that can stand up and tell us the answer?"

Professor Zhang's eyes swept across the room. When no one raised their hand, he said, "You'll receive bonus marks if you answer this question."

There was a commotion in the classroom.

Half of the students in the classroom raised their hands.

The professor nodded at a glasses-wearing female genius student who was sitting in the front row. She quickly said, "I know! It's because the nucleus is positively charged, so there is a Coulomb repulsion force between the nuclei. Only when the two nuclei are close enough can the strong interaction force overcome the Coulomb repulsion and polymerize the two nuclei. Looking at it from a macroscopic scale, one would have to increase the heat in the system and accelerate the thermal motion of the molecules in the system to create enough kinetic energy to cause a fusion reaction."

"Good answer." The professor wrote down her name and cleared his throat. He then smiled and asked, "Then the next question is, why does the strong interaction only happen at short distances?"

"Because of… the short-range force?"

"That's a high school textbook explanation, it's not quite what I'm looking for." Professor Zhang smiled and gestured the student to sit down. He then said, "You guys are already university students, so you should know the 'why', in addition to the 'what'.

"Quantum field theory tells us that the interaction between particles is not an action at a distance effect, but is actually carried out by using a boson as a medium. For example, electromagnetic waves are photons, and strong interaction is a gluon or a meson, weak interactions are the W and Z bosons… Some people might ask, what does this have to do with the range of the force we are talking about?"

Professor Zhang turned toward the blackboard and began to write.

"When scattering occurs between two resolvable fermions (pkp'k'), under the Berne approximation, we can conclude that the scattering cross-section and the interaction have a relationship…"

[p'iTp = -iV(q)(2π)δ(Ep'-Ep) , (q = p'-p)]

[…]

Who am I?

Where am I?

The student sitting next to Lu Zhou was muddled. He looked at the blackboard and thought he was dreaming.

"F*ck me, isn't this supposed to be nuclear fusion… What day is it?"

It had only been two seconds, and he felt like he had missed an entire lecture.

He wasn't the only one who felt this way.

Less than half of the class was able to understand what Professor Zhang wrote on the blackboard.

Lu Zhou looked at the muddled guy next to him and smiled as he asked quietly, "Do you want to know?"

"I do… You understand?" The muddled guy looked at Lu Zhou. Maybe because he just woke up, he didn't recognize Lu Zhou.

Lu Zhou smiled and said, "If you want, then I'll teach you."

Professor Zhang stopped writing and turned around. He then looked at the muddled students and smiled.

It's normal to be confused.

Quantum mechanics is the hard part of physics.

Especially when it comes to the calculations, one would have to have a certain mathematics background.

He could write down a conclusion with no problem, but if someone made him calculate a quantum mechanics problem on the spot, he might not be able to do it in one lecture's time.

"The calculation process for this part is very complex." Professor Zhang threw the chalk on the desk and smiled with his hands behind his back. He said, "Whoever can finish the rest of the equation, I'll give them full marks for the non-exam grades, and they won't have to come for my classes in the future."

The classroom was dead silent.

The students looked at each other.

Even the graduate students that came here for fun, were muddled.

Professor Zhang smiled and shook his head. He was about to give this problem as a challenging homework task, but then, he heard someone speak from the back of the classroom.

"Can I use the blackboard?"

Zhang Zhiongqing: "… ???"

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Chapter 606: Unifying Nuclear Power

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

The f*ck?

God Lu?

He's my idol!

When Zhang Zhiongqing looked at the person standing up, his glasses nearly dropped to the ground.

When he remembered that this big name was listening to his lecture, he was shocked and happy; it was almost like he had won the lottery. He was shocked that he didn't notice Lu Zhou was in the classroom, and he was happy that he could brag to people that he gave a lecture to a Nobel Prize winner.

However, even though Zhang Zhiongqing felt a mix of emotions, Lu Zhou was emotionless.

Classrooms were one of the places for academic exchange.

Back when he was in Princeton, he often asked his students to lecture for him.

In his opinion, academic exchanges shouldn't be about honor or status.

"Professor Lu, please go ahead." Professor Zhang made a gesture and respectfully gave up the stage.

"Don't need to be so polite, I just have some ideas."

Lu Zhou looked at the professor move to the side and smiled.

This formality was wasting too much time.

He wasn't a person who liked to waste time on formality.

Lu Zhou walked next to the blackboard and picked up a piece of chalk.

"This isn't a question that undergraduate students can solve since it involves an understanding of quantum chromodynamics and also a deeper understanding of functional analysis."

Lu Zhou paused for two seconds and said, "But actually, it's not as difficult as it seems."

Lu Zhou wrote on the blackboard with a piece of chalk and began to talk about his thought process.

"Using field theory, make a Feynman diagram, then use the Feynman rule to calculate the scattering amplitude, we obtain…"

[iM=(ig2/p'-p2mφ2)2mss'·2mδrr']

[…]

"The mφ denotes the mass of the corresponding boson, and g comes from the coupling constant in the interaction Lagrangian. If we combine this with Professor Zhang's previous calculation, V(q) can be obtained from the scattering section…"

[V(q)=-g2/(q2mφ2)]

Lu Zhou put down the piece of chalk and looked at the students in the classroom. Some students were muddled, some students were listening intently. He smiled and said, "This part is the simple part, but the next step we'll have to use some tricks."

Everyone: "…"

F*ck sake!

How is this simple?

Zhang Zhiongqing looked at the blackboard as well. He was also amazed.

It wasn't that he couldn't understand the calculations, but he couldn't believe that someone could actually calculate these things on the spot.

Do these people not take time to do calculations in their brains?

This is amazing…

Lu Zhou didn't stop. He turned to face the blackboard as he continued to speak while writing, "Then we do an inverse Fourier transform on it!"

The chalk sliding on the blackboard was getting faster and faster, and Zhang Zhiongqing was more and more amazed. As for the students, they were looking at the blackboard with a blank look on their faces. Even the genius students who had finished the entire textbook were staring in disbelief at the complex calculations.

Lu Zhou didn't notice their expressions; he was completely immersed in his own world.

Admittedly, these were basic things, but they weren't basic enough to appear on an undergraduate class exam.

However, the more Lu Zhou thought about this problem, the more steps he wrote on the blackboard. His train of thought became clearer and clearer.

Why does the strong interaction force only work at short distances?

To put it in other words, what makes nucleon form a nucleus only at short distances?

The answer is obvious…

[…]

[V(r)=-g2/4πr·e(-mφr)]

Lu Zhou stopped writing and looked at the equation on the blackboard. He then said, "Electromagnetic interaction is the exchange of photons, and the mass of a photon is zero, so for electromagnetic interaction, V is proportional to 1/r.

"The strong interaction force is the meson acting between the nucleus. The mass is about 200 MeV. With some calculations, we can estimate that only at a distance of 10 to the power of negative 14 meters, can the nucleus force offset the electromagnetic repulsion between protons and cause fusion reactions."

The first row began to applaud.

Like waves in the ocean, the applause began to spread toward the back of the classroom.

Professor Zhang, who was standing next to him, began to subconsciously clap.

For most university students, this was just an exciting demonstration.

But for a professor like him, he just witnessed a simple solution to explain the strong interaction distance… At least, it was a lot easier than the explanations he had learned before.

He couldn't believe that this was all done in less than ten minutes.

He was probably the only one who could fully experience this moment.

Lu Zhou was still on stage.

Even though the classroom was filled with applause, Lu Zhou, who was standing in front of the blackboard, was immersed in his own mind. He didn't even notice when the applause stopped.

He already finished all of the calculations for the simple problem.

However, he wasn't only thinking about this one problem.

According to quantum field theory and quantum chromodynamics, the four basic forces and the traditional particles could be unified into one.

For example, during different positions of time and space, the components of an electric field could be constructed as noncommutative operators. When one constructed a Hilbert space in which these operators act, traditional particles, such as electrons, can be reinterpreted as a Dirac fermion, a quantization of the field.

This way, the difference between a field and a particle would disappear.

Was it possible for a simple mathematical equation, like the Weinberg Salam Glashow weak electric unified theory, to describe the electromagnetic interaction, the weak interaction force, and the strong interaction in a unified way?

The answer to this question couldn't solve the miniaturization of controllable fusion, and it wouldn't be able to bring any innovation to the existing controllable fusion technology. However, Lu Zhou's intuition told him that if he could solve this theoretical problem, it might provide him with some clues or ideas…

Of course, solving this problem was not easy.

For example, there was the classic strong interaction force and weak interaction force problem…

After the class bell rang, Lu Zhou was still standing still, as if he was thinking about something.

Seeing how Lu Zhou didn't react, Zhang Zhiongqing didn't want to announce that the class was over since he didn't want to interrupt Lu Zhou's thought process.

Around two minutes passed by.

Lu Zhou stared at the simple calculations on the blackboard and began to speak to himself, "How would one explain the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap in mathematical terms?"

When Zhang Zhiongqing heard this problem, he was stunned. He blushed like a student and mumbled, "I don't know."

"I didn't ask you, of course you don't know…"

Lu Zhou spoke to himself and left the classroom, leaving the muddled students and professor behind.

No one could tell him the answer to this problem.

After all, this was one of the most difficult propositions in the field of particle physics. It was about the unified field theory.

This was also one of the internationally recognized Millennium Prize Problems…

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Chapter 607: Bald

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Five minutes after the class ended, the Jin Ling University's Wechat news feed exploded because of a physics class.

[F*ck me, God Lu just came to our physics class.]

[Which one?]

[Zhang Zhiongqing's quantum mechanics class, what else can it be.]

[F*ck me, God Lu's physics class? Which classroom???]

[The class is over already!]

[Over already? F*ck, why don't these big names tell us beforehand when they give lectures.]

There were quite a lot of people in the university that just did the bare minimum, but there were also people that knew how to take advantage of an opportunity, and there were quite a lot of genius students here.

As for the students who were interested in going into research, listening to a big name's lecture was a valuable opportunity.

After all, this kind of opportunity was once in a lifetime.

It didn't even matter if they couldn't understand the lecture. As long as they could understand one concept, it would be much more useful than reading a textbook by themselves. Because there were a lot of things that couldn't be taught from textbooks.

After Lu Zhou walked out of the classroom, he walked toward the mathematics building.

The only thing he wanted to do right now was to write down the inspirational thoughts he just had.

Actually, the evidence of the strong force interacting with the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap had been proved by theoretical physics experiments, and it had been verified by computer simulations.

However, explaining it from a mathematics perspective was still an unsolved mystery.

Simply put, for most mathematicians, this was a complex physics problem. For most physicists, this was a mathematics problem.

Solving this problem would require inventing both mathematics and physics theories.

Lu Zhou wasn't a hundred percent certain he could solve this problem.

After all, theoretical physics wasn't his strong suit.

During his time at Princeton, his research was mainly in the field of mathematics. Other than discovering the 750 GeV signal, he didn't do any other research in the field of theoretical physics.

If he were still at Princeton, he would choose to ask Edward Witten or Dean Goddard for advice since they were all experts in theoretical physics and had a deep understanding of the unified field theory.

But now, he could only communicate with his friends through email, and a lot of problems couldn't be articulated properly in emails.

As for the domestic academic circle…

Honestly, it would be quite difficult to find someone to talk to about this problem.

Even though Mr. Yang, one of the founders of this field, was happy to discuss this issue with him, at nearly a hundred years old, Lu Zhou didn't want to bother him.

Especially when he thought about Professor Atiyah's five-page thesis on the Riemann's conjecture, he had no expectations for elderly scholars.

After all, age is a curse for scholars…

"Do I have to rely on myself?"

Lu Zhou sat down in his office chair and picked up a pen. He wrote down a line of words and used mathematical language to describe the problem.

[Want to prove: For any compact single group G, there is a quantum Mills field with G as the norm group on R4, and there are Yang-Mills existence and mass gap of 0]

The tip of the pen gently traveled across the draft paper. As Lu Zhou looked at the line of words on the draft paper, he fell into deep thought.

Even though he wasn't very confident he could solve this problem, he still had an idea of solving it.

First of all, this huge proposition could be divided into two parts.

The first part could be proven purely by mathematical methods.

Which was, to mathematically prove the existence of the solution to the Yang-Mills equations or find the general solution.

This part wasn't too useful for physicists. After all, they had obtained the conclusions that they wanted through high-energy experiments and computer simulations. However, for mathematicians, the meaning of a general solution to this system of equations was significant.

Just like Edward Witten once said, if anyone could achieve this task, that person's accomplishment would become a milestone for the 21st-century mathematics to catch up with the 20th-century theoretical physics…

Of course, Lu Zhou took into account that this was said by a physicist who won a Fields Medal. In his opinion, mathematics had its own development trajectory, and he didn't think mathematics had to catch up with physics.

If someone really wanted to argue about this, it would be a bit ridiculous.

As for the second part, that was more of the core content.

Which was, the proof of the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap.

Completing this proof would benefit both the mathematics and physics communities. Not only would this proof create new mathematics methods, but it would also clarify the laws of nature that the physicists had not yet fully understood, and physicists could use this to invent an even more advanced theory.

For example, unifying strong interactions and electromagnetic forces…

Doing this would mean the entire theoretical physics community would be one step forward toward the Grand Unified Theory.

Time slowly passed by.

Lu Zhou stared at the mathematical proposition on the draft paper and went into deep thought. He sat in front of his desk with a ballpoint pen in his hand. Other than a trail of ink dots, nothing else was written on the draft paper.

He sat there until six o'clock when he heard the bell ringing from outside his window. He finally wrote down two lines on the paper.

After that, he stood up and left the office.

Inside the office.

Two minutes passed by.

Feng Jin looked at the door, and when he saw that Lu Zhou wasn't going to come back, he stopped writing and stood up as well.

He noticed Lu Zhou was sitting there "daydreaming" for over half an hour.

Even though he had stayed in this office for some time, this was his first time noticing Lu Zhou with this expression on his face.

He was curious about the problem that was able to trouble his supervisor, and so, he pretended to go to the water dispenser to get some water. He wanted to walk past Lu Zhou's desk and see what was written on the desk.

He was still a genius student at Jin Ling University. If he could provide some help to Lu Zhou, maybe he would earn some brownie points.

However, the reality was often cruel.

When he looked at the calculations on the paper, he froze.

[HΛ(L)=(rows)(c)·h(c,c1)(columns)(r)·h(r,r1)(iΛ( L))·h(i)]

[…]

Feng Jin: "… ???"

F*ck me, what is this thing?

He Changwen saw that it was getting late. He wanted to go to the cafeteria to get some dinner, so he stood up.

He noticed his friend standing next to Lu Zhou's desk with a muddled look on his face. As a doctoral student, he tried to discipline the younger student.

"Don't look at the supervisor's stuff."

It seemed like he wasn't convincing enough, so he added another line.

"You'll go bald."

Feng Jin: "…"

Liu Siyuan: "…"

Han Mengqi: "…"

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Chapter 608: Grid-Connected Power Generation

Ever since Lu Zhou went to the physics class on campus, he basically didn't leave his house for a week.

When he was still in Princeton, he would still go to Walmart to buy groceries, but now, there was someone else to buy groceries for him.

Even though Lu Zhou didn't want Wang Peng to run his errands, he had asked him so many times that Lu Zhou wasn't ashamed anymore.

On the other hand, a lot of things happened in the outside world during his one-week retreat.

The most important one was probably from East Asia Energy.

On the second day of his retreat, East Asia Power, which already completed its reorganization, reached an agreement with the State Grid Corporation of China Jiangsu division. The twelve ferrofluid electric energy generators from the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant had finally completed their final commissioning and had been officially connected to the grid to deliver clean, cheap electricity to the province of Jiangsu. This was all done at a fairly cheap but still profitable price.

The one that felt most of the changes, other than Haizhou, was probably the Gusu District in Jiangsu Province.

This industrial town in the middle of the Yangtze River apparently supported half of the high-tech industries in China. With only a population of 10 million people, their annual power consumption was almost equal to Shanghai. It broke through 150 billion kWh a few years ago, and it was now running at 200 billion kWh.

After the Pangu fusion reactor was integrated into the power grid, the electricity price of the Jiangsu district fell by nearly half.

For the manufacturing owners in the Jiangsu province, this was basically money falling from the sky.

Especially for large power consumers in the semiconductor industry, the production cost had visibly decreased.

In this economic downturn, integrating the fusion reactors into the Jiangsu province was a godsend.

On the surface, the decline in energy costs only lowered the cost of electricity for factory owners and entrepreneurs, but in fact, it changed the future of the entire city as well as the people who were living there.

The cost of production had dropped and the companies had more money. This money would be used to upgrade production technology, develop automation, and create the railway electrification system. The industrial structure of the entire city and even the provinces would shift toward a more centered area of the industrial ch[a]ain.

This kind of economic effect caused by a revolution of the energy structure was much more effective than direct payments of subsidies to a bunch of leeches.

In addition to industrial electricity prices, the electricity prices of Haizhou, Gusu, Jinling, and other cities had also experienced a steep downfall of 10% to 20%.

However, it was currently spring. Summer was the peak electricity consumption season. Most people didn't feel a significant impact of the price reduction yet. At most, they were surprised when they saw the electricity bill. Some of them weren't even surprised.

After all, the process of a society moving into the future couldn't be done overnight. It was often done in subtle and nuanced ways.

However, looking at the macroscopic data, after the electricity prices decreased, the demand for electrical appliances and electric vehicles had a small increase.

Maybe after a while, Gusu would have a few electric public transport buses.

Perhaps in another year or two, smart devices such as vacuum robots would spread throughout households and wired or wireless electric vehicle chargers would have unknowingly migrated from gas stations to mall parking lots.

Maybe in three to five years, small pieces of postage or takeaway would be done by drones that could fly between tall buildings.

Human's pursuit of efficiency was limitless.

It was now 2020, the first year of the Pangu reactor being connected to the power grid.

As for what the distant future could be like, only time could tell.

…

This was the first time Lu Zhou focused on a pure mathematics problem after he leveled up to mathematics level 8. This was also his first time experiencing the difference between mathematics level 7 and level 8.

The difference wasn't in the calculations.

It was more reflected in a transcendent way of thinking.

It was very hard to describe this feeling. But if he had to write down his thoughts, it would be as if his entire body were immersed in the mathematical proposition, like everything in the world had slowed down.

Maybe because his thinking speed had increased, that was why the time seemed to slow down?

This sounded a bit outrageous, but this was how Lu Zhou felt.

Of course, even though his thinking speed had increased, when he was immersed in research, he still felt time would fly by quickly. Without knowing it, an entire day had gone by. He still had to rely on his stomach to remind himself to eat.

Lu Zhou stopped writing and pinched his eyebrows. He looked at the time on the bottom right corner of his computer screen.

"Is it ten o'clock in the morning already?"

It was just pitch black outside, but it's so bright now.

Of course, what surprised him more was the date.

A week had passed since the physics lecture he attended, but he didn't feel this week passed by at all.

Lu Zhou opened the curtains and looked at the rubbish bin that was full of draft papers as well as the stacks of draft papers on his table. He sighed and got out of his chair.

"As expected, it's not that easy to solve…"

However, his work over the past few days wasn't resultless.

At the very least, he nearly finished the part on the proof of the existence of a solution.

Objectively speaking, the mathematical difficulty of the Yang-Mills equation wasn't as difficult as the Navier–Stokes equations.

When Lu Zhou was trying to solve the existing problem of the Navier–Stokes equations, he invented the L-manifold and the "differential topology research method for differential equations" during his research. They were also very effective in solving the existence of the solution for the Yang-Mills equations. This saved him a month of work, at least.

If he didn't have to do something today, he would have continued his retreat.

However, today was the beginning of week ten.

He still had to teach a computational materials science class later.

If his doctoral student were excellent enough, he would have given this task to him.

Unfortunately, Wu Shuimu's current level of computational materials was still too far away for him to lecture others. Wu Shuimu was less competent than his two master's students at Princeton. Therefore, Lu Zhou had to do this thing himself.

Lu Zhou stood in front of the door of his study room and thought for a bit. He cleared his throat and said, "Xiao Ai, help me clean my room… Clean the things on the desk."

A chat bubble popped up on the lower right corner of the computer screen.

[Okay, Master! (๑•̀ᄇ•́)و]

Soon, a drone flew in from the open window and after grabbing the rubbish bin full of papers, it flew out the window. After that, a sweeping robot brushed past Lu Zhou's legs and went into the study room. It began to clean the rubbish on the floor.

Lu Zhou smirked and looked at the little guys helping him clean his room. He then turned around and walked downstairs.

He hadn't been outside for a week, and the study room wasn't the only thing he had to clean up.

Lu Zhou took a hot bath and dried his hair. He put on a clean outfit and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror for a while before walking to the front door.

When he was about to put on his shoes, he heard the doorbell.

He looked through the security camera and saw the person standing outside his gate. He paused for a second.

Yan Yan?

What is she doing here?

Even though Lu Zhou was suspicious, he still pressed a button to open the gate for her. He then opened the door.

After a while, Yan Yan walked through the front yard and went into the house. She was wearing casual clothes.

She didn't greet him. She only looked at him.

"You didn't go to the medical examination yesterday."

"Oh, really? I don't really remember."

Lu Zhou vaguely remembered that Wang Peng had told him about this, but he was thinking about the problem when he was on the phone. He couldn't remember what he talked about in the phone call.

Yan Yan looked at Lu Zhou's muddled face and sighed. "I know you're busy. I even brought the stuff to you… Oh yeah, you haven't eaten breakfast, right?"

"I was about to eat…" Lu Zhou looked at the plastic cup and cotton swab that she handed him and asked, "What's this?"

Yan Yan said, "One's for urine collection, one's for feces collection. Do you need my help?"

Lu Zhou: "No need, thanks."

He originally planned to eat then go to class.

But now, he seemed to have lost his appetite.

[a]what is a "centered area"? like central area?

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Chapter 609: Proof of the Existence of a Solution

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

It was in the afternoon.

Lu Zhou stepped into the classroom in the midst of the bell ringing. He looked at the crowded classroom and smiled while making some simple opening remarks. He then began to give the first-ever computational materials science lecture in his life.

Actually, strictly speaking, computational materials science wasn't part of the core applied chemistry classes. The mathematics knowledge and the programming knowledge that were needed were a bit too advanced for undergraduate students.

However, due to the development of computer technology, the field of computational materials science was becoming stronger and stronger. Also, because Lu Zhou was the founding father of this emerging discipline, this course had been classified as a core class, which was compulsory for all applied chemistry students.

After all, Jin Ling University had been around for many years, but there had only been one Nobel Prize alumnus.

However, classifying it as a core was unnecessary.

Even if the class wasn't compulsory, Lu Zhou didn't have to worry about people not coming to his class.

Not only were there Jin Ling University students sitting in the classroom, but there were also genius students from Dong University that took the subway to come here, and even professors in fields like theoretical chemistry, nanomaterials, etc. After the class, most of the people would talk about how "difficult" it was, but in fact, most of the people were taking notes seriously…

Lu Zhou used a hundred and twenty percent of his energy to lecture, and after the lecture, he left the classroom in the midst of a round of applause.

He looked at his phone in the hallway and saw that it was still early, so he went to his mathematics building office.

When he arrived at his office, his students and assistants were all here.

Even though he hadn't been at the office for the past few days, all of his students had been clocking in every day.

Lu Zhou sat down at his desk and looked at his tidy desk. He reached out and flipped through his document folder. When he couldn't find what he was looking for, he asked casually, "Where are the draft papers that I put on my desk?"

Assistant Zhao stood up and quickly said, "I put it in your drawer when I was organizing your desk."

Lu Zhou: "Oh, thanks… But in the future, you don't have to organize my desk, just keep it the same."

Zhao Huan said, "Okay, Professor, I'll take note."

Lu Zhou found the draft papers from his drawer and placed it on his desk. He looked at the lines of equations he wrote a week ago and thought for a moment. He then began to continue where he left off.

Feng Jin, who was writing at his desk, hesitated for a bit. He then finally made up his mind and stood up before walking toward Lu Zhou.

"Professor."

Lu Zhou looked at his student standing next to his desk. Since he was in a pretty good mood, he said, "What?"

"That question… Did you solve it?"

Lu Zhou smiled and asked, "You read my draft papers?"

Feng Jin awkwardly scratched his head and said, "I accidentally saw it…"

Lu Zhou looked at him and didn't say anything.

He didn't really care that Feng Jin secretly read his draft papers.

After all, he wouldn't put anything important on the table. If he wanted to hide it, he would at least put it in his drawer.

"Then what? You researched the problem for an entire week?"

"Yeah." Feng Jin saw that Lu Zhou didn't seem to care, so he sighed and scratched his head as he muttered, "I tried thinking about it for a week, but I don't have a single clue."

"It's normal. If you can solve that problem, forget about a master's degree, you can become a professor right now."

Feng Jin smiled awkwardly.

It was true, challenging the Yang-Mills equation was a bit ridiculous for him.

Lu Zhou looked at his expression and knew what he was thinking, so he smiled and said, "Tell me about your thoughts over the past week."

Feng Jin said, "Thoughts?"

Lu Zhou: "That's right. Since you've been thinking about it for a week, regardless of whether or not you found the solution, surely you have thought of something? Don't tell me you just looked at the draft papers and wrote down some nonsense."

Feng Jin blushed and said, "It's not nonsense, I thought about it seriously."

Lu Zhou raised his eyebrows and asked, "Like?"

"Like…" Feng Jin thought that Lu Zhou would laugh at him again, so he hesitated for a bit before clenching his teeth and bravely speaking his opinions.

"According to my understanding of quantum mechanics, the Yang-Mills field is mass-less, yet the strong interaction mediated meson has mass. In this case, if we introduce a scalar-field on top of the space-time manifold, it would simplify this problem."

Lu Zhou nodded with approval and said, "Correct."

Surprised, Feng Jin looked at Lu Zhou. He didn't expect him to actually compliment himself.

Lu Zhou: "You've studied quantum mechanics before?"

Feng Jin, who was a little surprised, suddenly felt a little depressed.

I guess Professor Lu isn't complimenting my thoughts, but rather my attitude toward studying extracurricular knowledge…

Feng Jin nodded. Lu Zhou smiled as he said, "You remind me of someone."

Feng Jin paused for a second before asking, "Who?"

"One of my students at Princeton. He studied under Witten and was in the mathematical physics field. You guys have similar personalities, both competitive types."

Speaking of which, time really flew by. It had been a year since he left Princeton.

Lu Zhou didn't know how his students were doing.

Qin Yue was probably lecturing at Princeton, and they had talked about number theory problems some time ago.

Vera…

Lu Zhou's expression was somewhat unnatural, and he coughed and diverted the conversation.

"Anyway, back to what we're talking about. In a sense, there aren't huge problems with your idea."

Feng Jin asked excitedly, "Really?"

"Don't be too happy just yet. Like I said, there aren't huge problems." Lu Zhou looked at Feng Jin's excited expression and said, "However, in terms of physics, having no problems doesn't mean it is correct."

"Doesn't mean it is… correct?"

"That's right." Lu Zhou looked at Feng Jin and nodded with approval. He said, "When you can really understand the meaning behind this sentence, then you'll be closer to the truth than ever."

…

Lu Zhou stayed on campus until 6 o'clock in the evening.

When Lu Zhou returned home from school, it was already dark outside.

He went straight into his clean and tidy study room and sat down on his chair. He quietly picked up a pen and began to finish the incomplete proof from this morning.

Sometimes, mathematics problems were almost magical.

After a proof idea appeared in his mind, Lu Zhou already knew the proof process would work. All he had to do was to write down the proof in a rigorous mathematical form.

After Lu Zhou wrote down the last line of equations, he looked at the stacks of draft papers and smiled.

Even though this wasn't a decisive result, it could be considered an in-progress result.

Which was, he used mathematical methods to prove the existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations.

This was the first half of a Millennium Prize Problems, and this part wasn't challenging for him at all.

Even though he used some advanced mathematical techniques to solve this problem, it was nothing novel.

Actually, the core of the whole proof was built around the L-manifold that he invented when he was solving the Navier–Stokes equations.

Regardless, the problem was finally solved.

The next step was to find the actual solution to the Yang-Mills equations…

Compared to the proof of the existence of a solution, this part was undoubtedly more challenging…

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Chapter 610: Most Suitable Reviewer

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Princeton.

An office in the Institute for Advanced Study.

Wei Wen sat at his desk while staring at the draft paper on his table.

Around 2019, after Lu Zhou left Princeton, he recommended Wei Wen to study mathematical physics under Professor Edward Witten.

Wei Wen was at first quite excited to study a PhD under Professor Witten.

Anyone who was in the mathematical physics field or who knew anything about mathematical physics had heard of Witten's name before.

However, studying a PhD under a big name was obviously not an easy task. His excitement didn't last very long, and soon, he began to feel the pressure.

Because Witten had to frequently visit CERN, he would be at Princeton only a third of the time. Most of the time, Wei Wen had to face his academic difficulties alone.

After Wei Wen was accepted as Professor Witten's student, he finally understood why Luo Wenxuan took so long to graduate. He also realized how much Professor Lu really cared about him.

Even though he graduated more than a year ago, Lu Zhou would still help him solve problems.

Or he would help him find someone that could solve the problems…

Professor Fefferman walked next to him holding two cups of coffee. He placed one cup on Wei Wen's side and one cup on his side. He then asked in a warm tone, "Do you have an idea?"

"Not right now."

"Do you need help?"

Wei Wen shook his head and stared at the line of equations on the paper.

"No, thanks, you've already given me enough help… Give me another ten minutes, I feel like I know the answer, I'm so close."

"Ten minutes is not enough, try two hours." Fefferman looked at his watch and said, "I still have a differential equations class to each. Anytime before 6 o'clock, you can find me at the dean's office."

Wei Wen said, "I'm sorry for taking so much of your time."

"It's fine, I'm not that busy anyway." Professor Fefferman took a sip of the coffee and smiled. He said, "Not to mention, Professor Lu has helped me a lot, now that he's not here, you can ask me any problem you want."

Wei Wen smiled in his heart but didn't say anything.

Even though he knew that Professor Fefferman didn't mind helping him, he still felt extremely guilty.

Maybe this is a culture difference.

Knocking sounds came from the door, and soon, a glasses-wearing young man walked in.

Fefferman seemed to have recognized this man. After Fefferman saw the stack of A4 papers in his hand, he suddenly looked nervous.

Just like Wei Wen had guessed, the guy shook the thesis and said, "Professor Fefferman, Professor Sarnak from the editorial department of Annual Mathematics asked me to bring you this paper. He told me to politely tell you that he hopes you can review this paper."

"Then tell him, that this way of sending the message is not polite at all. I hope next time, he can send me the review invitation to my email instead of coming to me in person." Professor Fefferman looked at the overwhelmed assistant and shrugged. He said, "Also, I'm going on a holiday in two days, so tell him to find someone else."

"Professor Sarnak knew you would say this," the assistant said. "He told me to tell you that you are the most suitable candidate and that you are the only one who can review this thesis."

Professor Fefferman stared at the assistant for a while before putting down his cup of coffee. With a sigh, he said, "Okay then, bring it over here."

He had never been good at declining other people's requests, especially when it was in his field of expertise.

The assistant smiled and handed over the thesis. "Okay, Professor."

The assistant didn't stay in the office. He turned around and left.

Fefferman had to conduct a lecture soon, so he didn't have time to read it. He merely briefly flipped through the pages.

There were no author names on the thesis.Read latest chapters at NovelFull

This type of double-blind review process was uncommon.

Fefferman guessed that the author was either one of his acquaintances or a colleague at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.

However, this wasn't important.

Even if he knew the author from the style of the thesis, he wouldn't hinder the review process due to friendship.

"The existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equation? Shouldn't Witten read this thesis? I bet he's more interested in this than me."

Fefferman looked at this eye-catching title. He raised his eyebrows and began to read.

He soon snorted, and his eyebrows furrowed.

Wei Wen noticed this and asked, "What's wrong, Professor?"

Professor Fefferman stared at the thesis for a while and suddenly smiled, shaking his head.

"Nothing."

He finally knew why Sarnak insisted on letting him review this thesis.

"L Manifold… Also, a partial differential geometry method for a partial differential equation." Professor Fefferman's finger swept over the printed A4 paper as he spoke emotionally, "I only know one person in this world who can apply these theories to such an extent."

Wei Wen's expression changed.

"Professor Lu's thesis?"

"Yes." Professor Fefferman nodded and said, "The proof of the existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations. It seems like he hasn't stopped his mathematics venture."

When Wei Wen heard the thesis content, he took in a deep breath. He was overwhelmed.

Challenging two Millennium Prize Problems…

Is he even a human?

Professor Fefferman sat down at his desk and took out his phone from his pocket. He scrolled through his contact list and called his assistant.

"Yo, Lewis, are you free right now? I have a partial differential equation class in half an hour. Regardless of whether you can or not, I hope you can find someone to do the class for me."

"Um, I'm a bit busy."

"It's important."

They only exchanged three sentences.

After that, Fefferman hung up the call and placed his phone on his desk.

He looked at the thesis on his table. His eyes flashed with excitement.

Let me look at this.

You've left Princeton for a year.

Did your mathematics ability improve or worsen…

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Chapter 611: You Wrote That Thesis?

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Peer review was a job without glory.

First of all, this was an unpaid job. Well, it was paid in things that were unrelated to money, such as journal acknowledgments, positions in the editorial department, free access to journals, discounts on thesis processing charges, etc.

Secondly, being able to judge whether something esoteric was correct or not, was very difficult in and of itself.

If it were a normal proposition, it was fine, but when it came to a world-class problem like the Yang-Mills equations, there was no room for error. Every line in the thesis had to be carefully reviewed by reviewers.

The reason why people would accept this job, other than for the reputation of being a reviewer for a well-known journal, was more out of social goodwill and a sense of purpose for being a scientific research gatekeeper.

For a scholar who had made a name for himself, Professor Fefferman's motivation for accepting this review was probably the latter reason. However, when he received the thesis, he threw all of these reasons out of the window.

Starting from the first line of calculations, the calculation process was like a flow of water. Like magic, it instantly grabbed his attention.

Especially the paper's understanding of the differential geometry of partial differential equations, as well as the application of the L Manifold, it was so subtle that he could hardly believe it.

He couldn't believe that a theory that was only two years young could develop to such a mature level.

"This is incredible."

Professor Fefferman spent around fifteen minutes just on the first page. He couldn't help but feel emotional.

He felt a little regretful earlier that his holiday was going to be interrupted.

But now, there wasn't an ounce of regret in his heart.

The time in his office slowly passed by, and the sky outside the window gradually darkened.

Wei Wen was sitting at another desk in the office. When he finally found the solution, he took a deep breath. He stretched his back and felt relaxed.

He was about to stand up and go to the cafeteria for some dinner when he noticed Professor Fefferman sitting nearby. He was still sitting in the same position while reading the thesis in his hand. Professor Fefferman would occasionally write something on a piece of draft paper.

Wei Wen hesitated for a bit and couldn't help but ask curiously, "Did Professor Lu… prove it?"

When Professor Fefferman heard this, he stopped writing.

He placed the thesis on the table and picked up his lukewarm cup of coffee. After a while, he replied thoughtfully, "I can't make a decision on something this important alone…"

Professor Fefferman looked at the thesis on his desk and paused for a second. He then continued to speak, "However, in my opinion, he probably did it."

…

After completing the proof of the existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations, Lu Zhou imported the content of the draft paper into his computer. After editing it, he sent it to the email of the editorial department of Annual Mathematics.

There was no hiccup at all; the thesis quickly passed the reviews by technical editors and went into the peer review stage.

Lu Zhou didn't know who the reviewer was. At least, he wouldn't know until the thesis was published.

However, that wasn't important.Read latest chapters at NovelFull

Before importing it into his computer, he already checked the entire proof process, he was more than 90% confident that his proof was correct. Regardless of what the reviewer thought, in his eyes, this problem was already solved.

Lu Zhou verified that the thesis had entered the peer review stage and then left it alone. He began his next research phase.

In fact, proving the existence of a solution to the holy grail Yang-Mills equations was only the first step. He was far from solving the entire problem. Before he could begin researching the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap, he had to find a general solution to this complex equation.

From a mathematical perspective, there was no doubt that finding a general solution was much more difficult than finding a proof of a general solution. Using his knowledge of the Navier–Stokes equations was not though.

Lu Zhou didn't plan on going through another retreat before he had an idea of how to solve this problem. He had been searching for other people's theses on arXiv to see if he could find some inspiration from other people's research.

Unfortunately, the results weren't ideal.

Even though the Yang-Mills equations played an important role in the modern gauge theory field, very few people did research on the general nonlinear partial differential equation solution. Even though there were some interesting ideas, the researches often weren't deep enough.

This meant that he had to rely on himself for this part of the research as well…

The last Wednesday in April…

Lu Zhou finished his computational materials science lecture and walked out of the classroom while holding a textbook.

He was thinking about the Yang-Mills equations while walking toward the stairway. A middle-aged man shouted his name and ran toward him.

"Please wait a second, Professor Lu."

Lu Zhou stopped in his footsteps and turned around. He had a suspicious look on his face.

"Who are you?"

The middle-aged professor panted and smiled as he said, "I'm Zhang Zhiongqing, from the physics department… We met in my physics class last time."

"Oh yeah." Lu Zhou immediately remembered this name. He then said cheerfully, "Professor Zhang, what's up?"

Seeing that Lu Zhou still remembered him, Zhang Zhiongqing awkwardly smiled and said, "Here's the thing, you gave my students a lecture regarding the strong interaction, right? A lot of students felt unfortunate that they couldn't listen to your lecture. Quantum mechanics is also a very difficult undergraduate subject, and it requires a certain level of mathematical literacy. The physics department leaders had a chat, and we want to ask if you have time to give a lecture on quantum mechanics."

"Oh, sure, no problem." Lu Zhou smiled and said, "Is this Saturday good?"

Zhang Zhiongqing smiled and said, "Sounds good! The dean said that we can do it any time you like. Then it's a deal! On behalf of the physics department, I would like to thank you."

Lu Zhou: "No need to be so polite, I quite like giving lectures."

Even though teaching undergraduate students couldn't directly help him solve problems, it could give him inspiration, which he couldn't get from his retreats.

Zhang Zhiongqing smiled and said, "After all, you're so busy with research, and you're still taking the time to teach undergraduate students, we're very grateful…"

"Lu Zhou!"

A loud voice was heard from across the hallway, interrupting the conversation.

The two men stopped their conversation and looked toward the direction of the voice. They saw Academician Lu, who was wearing a gray coat, walking toward them.

Lu Zhou was surprised to see Academician Lu. He was about to greet him, but before he could speak, the old man asked excitedly, "You wrote that thesis?"

Lu Zhou was stunned.

"Which thesis?"

Academician Lu didn't even catch his breath. "The proof of the existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations!"

Zhang Zhiongqing nearly choked on his spit.

Yang-Mills equations?!

The f*ck?

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Chapter 612: Chaotic Month of April

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

It was the end of April.

Something big happened in the academic world.

In the latest issue of the Annual Mathematics journal, a forty-page long thesis regarding the proof of the existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations was published.

Once this news was confirmed, it caused a sensation in the international mathematics and physics circles.

This thing blew up on the internationally renowned mathematics forum "Math Overflow".

[Did you guys hear? The existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations has been proved?!]

[I heard about it this morning, but this is still inconclusive, right?]

[It's posted on Annual Mathematics, of course it's conclusive. The reviewer is Charles Fefferman!]

[I haven't finished reading it yet, and I don't know much about L Manifold theory. If I want to understand the 2018 paper about the L Manifold, I'll have to learn differential geometry first, what a pain in the a*s… Anyway, it's very difficult to find mistakes in a big-name thesis like this. We'll have to see what the final result is after the report conference.]

Because many of the modern young mathematicians, like Tao Zhexuan and Schultz, had their own accounts on this website, the Math Overflow trending page basically reflected the current trending events in the mathematics community.

The last time a discussion was this popular was two years ago, because of Sir Atiyah's five-page thesis…

Professional academic forums weren't the only place that blew up.

Even though most people didn't even know how to write the Yang-Mills equations, most people knew about the Millennium Prize Problem.

Two days after the thesis came out, the news appeared on various news networks and attracted countless attention from people who were in and out of academia.

Compared to the rational discussions on Math Overflow, the Facebook and Twitter crowds were much more emotional.

[Lu Zhou? Lu Zhou is the author? If I recall correctly, he solved a world-class mathematics problem two years ago!]

[The Navier–Stokes equations! One of the seven Millennium Prize Problems! I still remember his International Congress of Mathematicians report!]

[Challenging two Millennium Prize Problems in the span of two years… Jesus, how does he do it?]

[And he also solved controllable fusion?]

[Haha, maybe this is the power of Asian mathematicians?]

[This is crazy!]

[…]

Ever since the Millennium Prize Problems were announced, there had been no shortage of challengers.

However, very few people achieved worthy results regarding the Yang-Mills equations.

If someone could prove the existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations through a mathematical method, then it wouldn't take long before someone could find a general solution.

Because this matter was so impactful, Nature journal, which usually paid very little attention to mathematics research, selected this thesis for a 200-word highlight on their latest issue. Nature even included an extract on the front cover.

During an interview with a reporter from Science, Professor Fefferman spoke highly of the mathematical methods used in this thesis.

"Very few people are able to reach a high level in more than three areas of mathematics. Not only was he able to do this, but he also integrated partial differential equations, differential geometry, and topology into a new mathematical tool."

Reporter: "Are you talking about the magical L Manifold?"

Fefferman: "Correct."

Reporter: "But some people commented that while he proved the solution existence of the Yang-Mills equations, he didn't create any new mathematical tools, he only re-used the tools that he created during his research on the Navier–Stokes equations… What do you think about this comment?"

The value of a mathematical proposition wasn't reflected in the proposition itself, but rather it was reflected in the mathematical tools that were created when solving the proposition.

If this paper only proved the solution existence of the Yang-Mills equations using mathematical language and couldn't pave a way for finding the general solution, even though it would still be an excellent achievement, it wouldn't be outstanding.

Fefferman: "I don't think that is fair. The value of a mathematical conjecture isn't manifested in creating new mathematical tools. It can also be manifested in the perfection of existing tools, or even just in an abstract mathematical concept."

Reporter: "Do you think he strengthened the L Manifold theory?"

Fefferman: "That's right, a theory often take five to ten years to mature, and it requires the accumulation of countless corollaries and theorems.

"By inventing the L Manifold, he successfully built a bridge between partial differential equations and differential geometry and introduced topological methods. If I were to describe it in laymen's terms, he converted the equation into a geometrical object that exists in a special space."

Reporter: "That's so abstract, can you be more specific?"

Fefferman shrugged and said, "It's like drawing an auxiliary line on an irregular image. After a special transformation, the originally complicated things become simple."

Research: "But I noticed that there are very few people in arXiv who are following this research field. Even though my opinion might be misinformed, but if it is so important, why aren't people paying attention to it?"

Fefferman: "The answer is simple. You can't expect a two-year-old theory to become mainstream in the academic world. Even Grothendieck couldn't do something like this. Forget about studying the theory in-depth, even learning the theory would take a certain amount of time… Not to mention, there is a certain threshold for learning this theory."

Reporter: "So, you view highly of his work?"

Fefferman: "Yes, I believe that anyone who truly understands the thesis will agree with me."

Reporter: "One more question, it's not related to the Yang-Mills equations, and of course, you can refuse to answer."

Fefferman smiled and said, "Ask away."

Reporter: "Do you think he can become the greatest mathematician of this century?"

This was a very difficult question.

After all, the twenty-first century had only just begun.

Fefferman stared into the reporter's eyes and thought for a bit. He then said, "It depends on whether or not the Riemann's conjecture is going to be solved in this century, if not…"

He paused for a second.

"Then, there's no doubt that he already is."

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Chapter 613: Letter From Clay Institute

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

When Lu Zhou submitted the thesis, he never thought that his Annual Mathematics thesis would cause such a sensation.

After all, that was only in-progress results, it was far from reaching the essence of the Yang-Mills equations. At most, he just took a step that others had not yet taken.

It wasn't until Academician Lu kept asking him questions excitedly that he realized that the situation wasn't as simple as he had thought.

The status of the Yang-Mills equations in the physics world was far higher than its position in the mathematics world.

For the mathematics community, it was just a difficult partial differential equation, but for the physics community, it was the first step toward the Grand Unified Theory, the holy grail of modern theoretical physics!

Therefore, even though it was a small step, it still shocked the entire world.

After all, ever since entering the 21st century, other than discovering some particles that had been predicted and verifying some pieces of the standard model, there hadn't been any "new stuff" happening in the theoretical physics community.

Of course, theoretical physicists weren't the only ones that were shocked, those laymen who had heard about this news through various channels were also amazed.

In some sense, those laymen were even more excited than the experts.

Especially after Professor Fefferman was interviewed by the Science magazine… The interview pushed the popularity to its peak.

This was so popular that when Lu Zhou was eating in the cafeteria, he could hear students that were obviously not physics majors, looking at him and whispering something about him.

This was just the tip of the iceberg.

After his number theory class, he carried the textbook and left the classroom. A group of people then surrounded him at the door.

Lu Zhou didn't know where these reporters came from. They took out their cameras, microphones, and voice recorders before placing them right in front of Lu Zhou's face.

"Hello, Professor Lu, I am a reporter for Penguin news. It is rumored that you are challenging the Yang-Mills equations from the Millennium Prize Problems, is this true?"

Lu Zhou: "Yeah, and?"

"Professor Tao Zhexuan from the University of California once mentioned in his personal blog that the best way to solve a problem is to make Professor Lu become interested in the problem… What do you think about this?"

Lu Zhou: "Go ask him."

The reporter who was squeezed to the back of the crowd was able to stick a microphone in front of Lu Zhou.

"Annual Mathematics published your paper. Does that mean you have solved the Yang-Mills equations Millennium Prize Problem?"

When Lu Zhou heard this retarded question, he replied, "The proof of the solution existence is only an in-progress result, it doesn't…"

"If the Clay Institute gives you the million-dollar bonus, how do you plan to spend this money?"

Lu Zhou: "???"

Don't they know how to listen?

The microphones were shoved in front of his face one after the other, causing Lu Zhou to be overwhelmed.

Thankfully, Wang Peng responded quickly and stood in front of him.

Wang Peng's arms weren't particularly beefy, but he was able to carve a path for Lu Zhou to get out of the crowd.

Ten minutes later, the school security heard about the news, and a group of security guards in black jackets came to kick these people out of the school campus.

Lu Zhou finally got rid of the relentless reporters and escaped to the mathematics research building. He sighed in relief and sat down in his office chair.

Lin Yuxiang, who was studying for her National Public Servant Exam, noticed his tired expression. She got up and walked to the water dispenser.

When Lu Zhou opened his laptop and was about to start working, she walked over with a cup of coffee in her hand and smiled.

"Are you tired? I made you some coffee."

"Thanks," Lu Zhou took the coffee and replied politely.

"You're welcome." Lin Yuxiang smiled and said, "I used instant coffee this time, I don't know if you'd like it."

"Yeah, it's pretty good."

"Perfect." Lin Yuxiang put her hands together and looked at him with puppy eyes. She then said flirtatiously, "Well then… If you like it, I'll make it for you every day?"

From her past experience, when she said something like this with her puppy eyes, even females would get butterflies in their stomach, much less a loner that had never experienced love before.

However, while she was thinking about this…

Lu Zhou said, "You don't have to make it every day, I'm not here every day."

Lin Yuxiang: "…???"

Lu Zhou didn't know if he said the wrong thing or offended her, but when Lin Yuxiang sat back down in a stiff manner, Lu Zhou felt like she seemed… frustrated?

Screw it, who cares.

Lu Zhou blew on his coffee cup before he took a sip. He put the coffee cup aside and opened arXiv. He then began to check the latest development in the research fields that he followed.

He had to admit that the theoretical physicists really were a lonely bunch.

He still remembered that for a few months after his 750 GeV discovery, arXiv exploded over this "mysterious particle" that was outside the standard model.

And the same was true now.

Various theses that included words like "L Manifold" and "Yang-Mills equations" began to pop up on the website.

What annoyed him the most was that after going through a couple of theses, he didn't see anything notable.

In short, it felt like these theses were poorly written in a hurry, purely to contain the buzzwords…

Suddenly, a text bubble popped up on the lower right corner of the screen.

[Master, you have an email message!]

Email?

Lu Zhou saw Xiao Ai's pop up and raised his eyebrows. He then clicked on the link in the bubble.

The email was sent from the Clay Mathematics Institute, and the sender was Carlson, the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Clay Institute. They were acquaintances, so of course he still remembered Carlson.

In the email, Professor Carlson expressed his courtesy and thanks for Lu Zhou's work. He also made a request. He hoped that Lu Zhou could present his proof to the international academic community in a report.

If Lu Zhou didn't have the energy to plan the report, the Clay Institute would be happy to help.

After Lu Zhou read this email, he thought for a bit. He then wrote a reply.

[I'll seriously consider your proposal.]

Even though he didn't have any intentions of hosting this report, after all, in his opinions an in-progress result wasn't worthy of a report. However, after he saw the rubbish theses on arXiv regarding the L Manifold, he felt like he should stand up and explain his theory to the world in a more detailed manner.

If he could attract a group of talented people into his field, it would greatly benefit his research.

At the very least, he would be able to find theses worthy of reference.

Lu Zhou was thinking about how he should go about doing the report when he heard a knock coming from his office door. He then saw Principal Xu walk in.

"Um, Professor Lu."

When Lu Zhou saw Old Xu's fervent expression, he paused for a second.

"What's up?"

Principal Xu smiled and said, "Nothing much, it's just that… You just produced such a great research result, according to the convention of the mathematics community, shouldn't you do a report or something?"

"This is a convention…"

Principal Xu immediately said, "Then what do you think about the big auditorium at the old campus?"

Lu Zhou immediately knew what the principal was talking about, so he smiled and replied, "That would be great, thank you."

Principal Xu waved his hand and smiled.

"No worries, no worries! Oh yeah, what time do you think is appropriate?"

Lu Zhou thought for a bit before replying, "Let's do it in May."

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Chapter 614: Can We Chat Properly

Lu Zhou didn't really care about where the report was held.

For the stuff that was unrelated to academia, he would be happy for someone else to do it for him.

Normally speaking, an academic report was a very troublesome thing to host. Not only would one have to worry about the guests eating and sleeping, but they would also have to consider all of the possible unexpected situations that could happen. However, for Jin Ling University, this was the opposite.

Because of Lu Zhou's international academic reputation and the reputation of the existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations in the mathematics and physics community, it was foreseeable that there were going to be many big names that would be attending this report session.

Being able to host an academic conference of this caliber was obviously beneficial for the school's academic status.

Especially for a school that was interested in showing themselves on the international academic stage, they were more than happy to help Lu Zhou host this report.

The organization of the report became a top priority for the university. The administrative departments held several days of meetings, and they talked about everything from the safety of the meeting to the placement of the water cups, to the dishes at the banquet.

Inside the principal's office.

Principal Xu found several teachers who were involved in administrative work to further discuss some of the report arrangements.

However, he suddenly heard a knock at the door.

When Principal Xu saw Academician Wang Shicheng at his office door, he paused for a second.

Wang Shicheng was the chairman of the China Mathematics Society, and he was one of the leaders of the mathematics community at Yan University. Even though Principal Xu wasn't a mathematician himself, he was still well aware of Academician Wang's reputation in academia.

Principal Xu immediately knew his intentions.

However, he pretended like he didn't know anything.

"Oh, Old Wang, what brings you from Beijing? You didn't even tell me you were coming."

Academician Wang Shicheng walked to the sofa and sat down. "I had a meeting in Jiangsu. After the meeting, I came here to look at my old friend. What? Am I not welcome?"

Haha!

You never talk to me normally, now you think of me as a friend?

Only a dumb*ss would believe you!

"What do you mean?" Principal Xu smiled and looked at his assistant next to him. "Xiao Yang, go and get Academician Wang a cup of tea."

"Okay."

Xiao Yang immediately stood up and walked to the cabinet. He then took out the tea set.

After the tea was ready, the two of them began to chat casually while drinking tea. The teachers that had administrative responsibilities were left aside. They looked at each other and didn't know what was going on.

Half an hour had passed by, and Wang Shicheng finally couldn't handle it anymore.

Even though he tried to divert the conversation to Lu Zhou and the Yang-Mills equations multiple times, Principle Xu would always quickly avoid the conversation.

He put down the teacup and looked at Principal Xu.

"Old Xu, to be honest, I came here to ask for help."

Principal Xu said, "Oh yeah?"

Wang Shicheng cleared his throat. He then said, "A while ago, Professor Lu published a thesis in Annual Mathematics, right? It's about the existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations. A lot of the professors in my department looked at it and felt that the thesis was very well written."

No sh*t.

Who doesn't know it's good?

Did you win a Fields Medal or a Crafoord Prize?

Principal Xu still smiled on the outside, but he didn't say anything.

Wang Shicheng continued to speak slowly, "But I'm sure you also know the rules of academia. For this type of major mathematics proposition, a thesis is not enough. Surely one would have to host a few report sessions and express their views to other scholars? This proposition can only be considered solved after answering all of the questions."

Xu Jian said, "Oh, what do you mean?"

Professor Wang Shicheng stopped hiding his intentions, and he said, "I don't mean anything… It's just that, Yan University wants to invite Professor Lu to do a report."

"Oh sure, this is easy, I'll ask Professor Lu for you." Xu Jian smiled and said, "If he agrees, then I'll allow it. The second report session will be at Yan University."

Academician Wang, who had a smile on his face, nearly vomited.

"This… isn't appropriate, right?"

Xu Jian asked confidently, "What's wrong?"

Wang Shicheng said, "This kind of important international event shouldn't be done in Jinling, it should be done in Beijing."

Xu Jian: "Oh, are you looking down on Jinling?"

Wang Shicheng slapped his thigh and said, "No, that's not what I meant. I meant that Yan University has a higher status in the international mathematics community, and we have experience in organizing international mathematics reports. Let us do it, we can show the international community the sophistication of the Chinese mathematics world!"

Xu Jian said, "We also have experience hosting international academic conferences, and it's also our duty to show the world the strength of Chinese mathematicians. Don't worry about this."

Wang Shicheng said, "Old Xu, you know the level of mathematics at Jin Ling University, so why are you fighting this?"

Plus, Xu Jian, you're a computer scientist, why are you stepping into the mathematics world?

However, Xu Jian wasn't happy. He didn't slap the table, but he spoke impolitely. "Does Yan University have a Fields Medal?"

Wang Shicheng paused for a second and shook his head.

Xu Jian: "What about a Crafoord Prize?"

Wang Shicheng was muddled, and he shook his head.

Xu Jian said, "Oh yeah, we have both of them."

Wang Shicheng: "…"

F*ck sake!

Can you just have a normal conversation with me?

Seeing how this conversation was going sideways, Wang Shicheng shook his head and stood up.

"Old man, you're being unreasonable. I'm not going to talk to you. Where is Professor Lu? I'm going to talk to him."

"Professor Lu is not here."

"Where is he?"

Xu Jian rolled his eyes and said, "Don't ask me, find him yourself."

Wang Shicheng: "…"

After Wang Shicheng left Principal Xu's office, Principal Xu looked at the muddled teachers inside the room.

Principal Xu then asked in a stern manner, "Did you hear what that old piece of crap said?

"He thinks we can't do it!

"I repeat again, this report will affect the glory of Jin Ling University! It will affect our future!

"If anything goes wrong, I'm blaming it on you guys!"

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Chapter 615: It's the Same in My Opinion

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Academician Wang had been an academic leader of Yan University for many years, and he had also served as the chairman of the China Mathematics Society.

He had quite a temper.

After he came out of the Principal's office, he didn't ask a professor for help. Instead, he asked a student and found his way to Professor Lu's office.

After Lu Zhou, who was sitting at his desk, heard Academician Wang's request, he stopped writing.

"Do a report at Yan University?"

"Yes." Academician Wang didn't hide his true intentions as he said, "The mathematics department at Yan University is much stronger than the mathematics department at Jin Ling University, both in terms of academic atmosphere and ability. This kind of world-class academic conference is a chance to showcase China's mathematics community to the world. It's also an important opportunity for Chinese mathematicians to integrate with the world. I know the report is yours, and you have the right to choose where you want to host it, but I hope you can look at the big picture and reconsider."

Lu Zhou smiled and said, "Can I ask you a question?"

Wang Shicheng said, "Go ahead."

Lu Zhou: "Do you think the window is important or the things inside the house are important?"

Wang Shicheng: "Of course I think the things inside the house are important."

"I think so too." Lu Zhou nodded and paused for a second before he said, "Whether or not the Chinese mathematics community can connect with the world, doesn't depend on how many windows or where the windows are. It depends on the things inside the house. I'm asking you to think about the big picture. I'm telling you that the location of the report itself isn't important. My research itself is the thing that is going to bridge the gap between China and the rest of the world."

Wang Shicheng's thoughts were blocked by Lu Zhou's words.

He opened his mouth and couldn't say anything. After a while, he said, "I don't understand."

Lu Zhou: "Don't understand what?"

Wang Shicheng said with a confused look, "I don't understand why you don't want to go to Yan University? Do you think it's more realistic for Yan University to be the center of Asian mathematics or Jin University to be the center of Asian mathematics?"

When Lu Zhou heard this question, he smiled.

"Actually, there isn't any special reason. This place is just my alma mater."

Even though there were special reasons, he didn't have to say them.

Why did Shiing Shen Chern choose Kai University? Why did Qiu Chengtong choose Shuimu? Wasn't Yan University supposed to be better? It was actually the contrary. It was because Yan University was too strong; it already had too many mathematicians.

For something to change, it required a collision of academic ideas.

Lu Zhou was thinking about the long-term effect, hence, he didn't choose to go to Yan University.

When he saw how shaken Academician Wang Shicheng was, he paused for a second before saying, "As for which one is more likely to become the center of mathematics…

"They're both the same to me."

…

There was still a month and a half until the Yang-Mills equations report, but the preparations for the report had already begun.

The preparations were stuff like preparing for the conference itself, as well as changing the school's appearance, safety inspection work, and even renovating some old dorm buildings on the old campus. For example, when Lu Zhou was in the mathematics modeling competition, he lived in the infamous dorm building six. This time, the school leaders made up their minds and several dorm buildings were completely renovated. They even installed air conditioners in these newly renovated buildings.

Honestly, Lu Zhou felt a little shameful that Jin Ling University was taking this report so seriously.

After all, when he was still in Princeton, his reports were not this grandiose. Even his report on the Goldbach's conjecture was just hosted in the number 1 lecture hall.

However, he still understood why Principal Xu was doing this.

After all, the mathematics department at Jin Ling University had never produced such a major result before.

This was the closest the international theoretical physics community had ever gotten to the holy grail of physics, and it was also Jin Ling University's top international academic achievement. Whether the principal was doing it because of the results itself or because of Lu Zhou as a person, either way, it was worth it.

On the other hand, other than the school preparing for the report, Lu Zhou's three assistants were also getting busy.

Especially Assistant Lin, who was responsible for public relations. Normally, she had a lot of free time, but now, she finally had some stuff to do. She would run around the new and old campus with a pile of documents, but it looks like she seemed to be enjoying this?

Lu Zhou didn't understand what was enjoyable about this.

Regardless, since there were so many people organizing the report, Lu Zhou didn't have to worry about it himself. He continued to research the general solution for the Yang-Mills equations.

However, things were far more complicated than he had imagined.

His research wasn't even in a bottleneck. There was no bottle at all…

[Fi(μv)δμ·Avi-δv·Aμig(fijk)·(Aμj)·(Avk).]

[…]

"I have no idea how Mr. Yang and Mr. Mills were able to derive this equation." Lu Zhou crunched the paper in his hand and threw the paper ball into the bin.

The L Manifold was very useful for testing nonlinear partial differential equations, but it was quite limited when one used it to solve specific problems.

This was why Lu Zhou never thought about solving the Navier–Stokes equations.

Not because it was difficult, but because he knew he couldn't do it.

Han Mengqi walked to his desk and handed him the thesis she had just printed.

"Teacher, this is my thesis."

Lu Zhou stopped writing and briefly looked at the abstract and title of the thesis. He then raised his eyebrows with interest.

[A theoretical model of a semiconductor-electrolyte solution interface based on the Schottky barrier]

Seems like this chick is quite talented at computational materials.

After two months of work, she's able to write something of her own.

"Oh, put it here… I'll look at it later."

"Oh…" Han Mengqi nodded and hesitated for a bit. She then asked quietly, "Um… teacher, is there anything I can do to help?"

Lu Zhou paused for a second and smiled.

There really wasn't anyone that could help him.

However, he still had to stay humble.

"You can complete the task I gave you; that's the biggest thing you can do for me now."

In a sense, this was correct.

After all, the final reward for his reward mission, other than his lecturing quality, was related to the impact factors of his students' theses.

However, Han Mengqi obviously didn't know about the system. She felt a little down as she nodded.

"Okay then…"

If only I was stronger.

This way, I can actually be of use…

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Chapter 616: Inspiration is Contagious

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.

A laboratory inside the Institute of Physics was filled with smoke.

Sheng Xianfu smoked one cigarette after another as he looked at the design sketch on the table, which he had altered many times, and sighed. "Why do you think Professor Lu is suddenly studying the Yang-Mills equations?"

Li Changxia, who was reading theses next to him, shook his head and said, "I don't know."

Sheng Xianfu said, "Are we still doing fusion batteries or what?"

He gave up his director position at the Southwestern Institute of Physics to come here and research the miniaturization of controllable fusion with Professor Lu. However, it had been more than two months and the research project hadn't progressed at all.

Not only did they stagnate, but Lu Zhou was involved in other projects now.

"I don't know."

Sheng Xianfu couldn't help but say, "Can you say anything other than you don't know?"

Professor Li Changxia scratched his head and made a helpless expression as he said, "Theoretically speaking, if we can establish a unified relationship between the strong interaction and the electromagnetic force… it will benefit our understanding of the nuclear fusion conditions."

He sounded uncertain.

After all, he was an engineering professor. If anything, he was even more confused than Sheng Xianfu.

Sheng Xianfu looked at him.

"Then what? How long do you think it will take for this theory to be put into a piece of real technology. Also, who cares if it deepens our understanding of the fusion reactor, is it going to make the fusion reactor better?"

Li Changxia sighed and said, "But we have no other option."

Sheng Xianfu didn't say anything this time.

He was correct.

They couldn't do anything else.

They had designed at least a dozen solutions for solving the problem of the reactor heat dissipation. However, there wasn't a single solution that could pass the technical feasibility test. Even in the case of the best solution, the reactor melted after 34 seconds of operation.

"Perhaps the idea of using a high-temperature fusion ignition itself is wrong." Sheng Xianfu pondered for a while. Suddenly, he said, "Maybe like you said, if we can find a way to reduce the temperature conditions of the fusion reaction, our work might become a lot simpler."

Professor Li Changxia tapped his cigarette and smiled. He shook his head and said, "I think that the idea of putting controllable fusion technology into a spacecraft is impossible."

They went silent for a while.

Sheng Xianfu looked at the design sketches on the table, and suddenly, he sighed and reached out to press the cigarette butt into the ashtray.

"I'm going to find Professor Lu."

He scrunched the paper into a ball and stuffed it in his pocket. He then stood up from his chair and walked out of the laboratory in an imposing manner…

…

When Sheng Xianfu arrived at Jin Ling University, Lu Zhou was giving students a lecture in the classroom.

More specifically, a quantum mechanics lecture.

Sheng Xianfu quietly walked into the lecture hall through the back door. When he saw the crowd, he couldn't help but feel amazed.

When he was teaching at the Fuyang Institute Construction Material Laboratory, he also served as a lecturer for the nearby University of Science and Technology of China. However, even though his classes were about controllable fusion and plasma physics, his classrooms had never been more than 50% full.

Of course, that was because controllable fusion was unpopular at that time, and not a lot of people took his class…

Sheng Xianfu didn't interrupt Lu Zhou's lecture. Instead, he found a seat in the back row and sat down. He then listened to the lecture and waited patiently for it to finish.

When he walked into the classroom, the lecture seemed to have been almost over.

During the QA session, a student raised his hand and asked, "Professor, can you tell us about how to understand the Yang-Mills equations from a mathematical perspective?"

When this question was asked, it immediately received approval from the other students.

It was obvious that the physics students were all interested in this topic.

"With your current level of physics knowledge, it would be too difficult to understand this question." Lu Zhou smiled at the student who asked the question and said, "If you are interested, you can go to the old campus on May 20th and listen to my report. I'll explain it in detail during the report."

Someone in the audience complained, "But the entry requirements for the report is too high."

This was indeed a problem.

For an international academic report like this, the barrier of entry wasn't only for the report presenter, but also for the report attendees.

When Lu Zhou heard the complaint, he contemplated it for a bit. He then smiled and said, "Then I'll explain it right now."

Lu Zhou cleared his throat and composed himself.

"If you want to understand the Yang-Mills equations from a mathematical perspective, we first have to know what it is.

"In a nutshell, the non-abelian symmetry group given by the Yang-Mills equations is a special type of gauge theory. Classically, this theory is similar to Maxwell's theory, which replaces the more general tight gauge group G in the Abelian group U(1)…"

When it came to mathematics, talking wasn't enough.

Lu Zhou picked up a piece of chalk and began to write on the blackboard.

[If 0=dAF, we can derive from the variation of the Lagrangian operator for passive Yang-Mills field: L=1/4g2·Tr(F'F)…]

[…]

The proof of the existence of a solution to the Yang-Mills equations was way beyond an undergraduate student's level.

Even if Princeton professors wanted to understand the theory, they would have to start from learning the L Manifold first.

The things he was writing on the blackboard were just explanations regarding the Yang-Mills equations itself.

The most he did was incorporating some of his own ideas while explaining this proposition.

Just like this, more and more calculations appeared on the blackboard.

Lu Zhou went into a state of concentration and couldn't stop, and he gave fewer and fewer explanations.

The students in the lecture hall were muddled.

In the beginning, they could kind of understand it, but now, they were totally defeated by this esoteric theory.

Later on, even the professors from the physics department weren't able to keep up.

What is this guy writing about?

The more they read, the more they felt like…

Lu Zhou didn't even seem like he was writing about physics?

Is this guy really talking about the Yang-Mills equations?

A lot of muddled professors were looking at the blackboard, and they began to have doubts about their lives.

Academician Lu was sitting in the front row of the lecture hall with a frown.

Suddenly, he noticed an important line on the blackboard, and his pupils dilated.

"The non-zero asymptotic constant in a vacuum state converts the normative group into U(1) subgroups!"

Lu Zhou is trying to use a mathematical method to explain the strong interaction in the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap!

Academician Lu's eyes were filled with excitement.

He looked at the blackboard, full of expectations. However, when Lu Zhou wrote the final line, he seemed to have failed his expectations.

Lu Zhou suddenly stopped writing and took a step back. He looked at the calculations on the blackboard and went silent for a long time.

It seemed like he was stuck.

He scratched his head and threw away the chalk. He then turned around and looked at the muddled students before he said embarrassedly, "My bad… I seem to have gone off the rails."

The physics professors were so full of expectations that they nearly spat out blood.

F*ck!

At least f*cking finish the calculations!

However, Professor Sheng Xianfu, who was sitting in the back row, was different from the other professors. His eyes began to light up.

Even though he didn't understand the content of the lecture itself, he received an unexpected moment of inspiration.

"As long as the distance between nuclei is small enough…"

He muttered to himself as the inspiration flashed through his mind.

Even though this sounded a bit crazy, but he might have thought of a feasible controllable fusion reactor model.

If this was theoretically possible…

Maybe they could really achieve a new type of nuclear fusion energy at a temperature of less than 100 million degrees…

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Chapter 617: Thinking About the Same Thing

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

The term "cold fusion" was a very awkward term in academia because it often didn't have any interesting connotations attached to it.

This concept was first introduced in the 1920s. Two German chemists Panis and Peters proposed in 1926 regarding the idea of nuclear fusion at room temperature. They found helium permeate the asbestos by passing hydrogen through the heated palladium asbestos. They then confirmed that the fusion reaction occurred and published the research in Nature.

Once this thesis was published, it immediately caused a huge sensation. However, it was quickly criticized by Rutherford, the then president of the Royal Society. Actually, in the follow-up experiments, the two were not able to repeat the success of the experiment. Finally, the whole incident was identified as a mistake, and Nature retracted the thesis.

The end of the 1980s was probably the most popular period of cold fusion research. During a press conference at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, Fleischman and Pons published their latest research—which was about the continuous nuclear fusion on a palladium electrode with a special heavy water electrode machine at room temperature.

This discovery broke through the traditional impression that nuclear fusion could only be conducted at hundreds of millions of degrees of temperature. This also made controllable fusion researchers, who recently hadn't made any significant progress, see a light at the end of the tunnel. The sensation generated by this event quickly swept across North America and the world, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Princeton PPPL, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and a dozen more research institutions. Even IBM's private labs were involved in this race to chase this new kind of energy. The media referred to the research results as "a sun inside a test tube".

However, the good times didn't last for long. The US nuclear power giant and the University of Utah experimental team signed a cooperative research and development agreement, while the Italian Ministry of Science and Technology prioritized "cold fusion research". The Office of the Secretary of State for Scientific Research in Belgium held a special meeting with a team of experts. Moscow University in the Soviet Union organized a world-class research team, which was ready to begin research on cold fusion… After all this initiative, it took less than a year for the cold fusion world to die down again.

This world-wide failure completely diminished the academic community's enthusiasm for cold fusion. A few research teams were still persistently researching in this field. However, even thermonuclear fusion research had been dead for a long time, much less the unpopular cold nuclear fusion.

As of now, the attitude of the entire academic community was to put aside this field, but not completely deny its possibility. However, no one had hope of ever achieving cold fusion.

As for whether or not there was a feasible technical route…

Strictly speaking, it actually existed.

Like "sound fusion".

However, even that didn't sound reliable.

Sheng Xianfu left the venue and didn't go look for Lu Zhou. Instead, he went to the Jin Ling University Institute of Acoustics.

At the end of the 1980s, all of the countries around the world tried to do research on cold fusion. China, who was closely watching the movement of the international academic community, was no exception. For example, the research team led by Professor Chen Weizhong from the Institute of Acoustics of Jin Ling University tried to research "sound fusion", but unfortunately, he failed.

The current conclusion was that fusion was impossible, but it could emit light.

However, people were still uncertain why exactly it could emit light.

Before he could complete the blueprint, he had to seek some help from the research of his predecessors…

"The data from the cold fusion experiments more than 30 years ago?" said Professor Chen Weizhong after he listened to Sheng Xianfu's explanation. He sneered and shook his head before saying, "You are wasting your time."

Sheng Xianfu tried to convince the old man. "How can we know if we don't try?"

"Try? I spent ten years of my life trying. I proved that this research path isn't going to work, and I didn't do all that work just so that you can try again later." Chen Weizhong smiled and said in a sarcastic tone, "I wasted half of the institute's budget, and I all got was a pile of useless papers. You're asking me to let you waste more time and more state resources to do this experiment? My morals won't allow this."

It seemed that this old professor had completely given up on sound fusion.

But this was justified given how he had spent a decade trying to walk a path that was unfeasible. Not only had this disappointed his own career and scientific research goals, but it had also disappointed the students and researchers who helped him in his research.

However…

"I don't think the data is useless." Professor Sheng Xianfu stared into the old professor's eyes and said in a serious manner, "It's just that it hasn't been applied yet."

The old professor stared at Professor Sheng Xianfu for a while and didn't say anything. He stood up slowly and left the office.

After five minutes, the old man walked back into the office carrying an old notebook.

"The Institute of Acoustics didn't have a large budget when I began this project. I was hoping it could make some achievements… but I failed." Professor Chen Weizhong calmly handed this notebook that was filled with data to Sheng Xianfu. Professor Chen Weizhong looked at Sheng Xianfu and said, "If this stuff can help you even just a little, go ahead."

If it could really help someone…

The old professor felt like he would feel better in his heart.

Sheng Xianfu took the notebook and nodded solemnly as he said, "I will use it properly."

…

After Sheng Xianfu got the experimental data, he went back to the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study and began to sketch out the blueprint.

When he was in Southwest, he was studying plasma physics and was more engineering rather than theory-oriented. Now that he suddenly had to do research in the theoretical field, he was obviously struggling.

He hadn't read up on a lot of things for a long time, and he had even forgotten most of it. Therefore, in addition to reading the current literature, he even had to resort to reading textbooks in order to complete his theoretical deductions.

Fortunately, these difficulties could be overcome.

It took ten days for him to both study and research at the same time. He finally finished his latest paper, "The Technical Feasibility of Achieving Fusion Reaction at a Relatively Low Temperature". He took this paper and went to Lu Zhou's office.

When he arrived at Lu Zhou's office, Lu Zhou was thinking about something while staring at a piece of paper on his desk.

Sheng Xianfu gently knocked on the door. "I'm here."

Lu Zhou didn't stop writing. He simply said, "Yeah, what's up?"

"I have some stuff about the miniaturization of controllable fusion… Some thoughts." Sheng Xianfu looked at the thesis in his hand and was about to hand it over to Lu Zhou. However, he was somewhat hesitant.

"Do you not want to show it to me?"

"Not that." Sheng Xianfu smiled awkwardly and made up his mind. He placed the thesis on the desk and said, "It's just that… Don't laugh at me after you read it."

"Of course I won't."

Lu Zhou picked up the thesis on the table and began to carefully read it.

Time slowly passed by.

Sheng Xianfu, who was standing in front of the desk, patiently waited. He took a deep breath for the tenth time.

When Lu Zhou finally finished the thesis, he smiled and said, "You're quite imaginative."

Sheng Xianfu had a bitter smile on his face.

Didn't you say you weren't going to laugh at me?

He coughed and began to explain, "I am quite imaginative, so don't take it seriously, I was just randomly brainstorming…"

"Don't think you're wrong. Academic discussions shouldn't have the premise of right or wrong. We all can make mistakes, or we can be correct." Lu Zhou gently placed the thesis on the table and said, "Not to mention, we thought of the same thing this time."

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Chapter 618: I'm the Only One Who Can Do This

Sheng Xianfu was stunned.

When he sent out his thesis, he made some mental preparations in case he was ridiculed for it.

However, he didn't expect that his futuristic vision to be recognized by Lu Zhou.

"Cold nuclear fusion isn't a ridiculous concept. Actually, for most concepts that we are not able to achieve, the concept itself isn't wrong, we just don't know enough about the universe."

Lu Zhou stood up from his desk and walked to the solar system framed picture that was hanging on the office wall. He looked at the ball of flame that had been burning for billions of years.

"Just like how we don't fully understand the source of a star's power…"

Technically, the fusion reaction inside a star was also a form of cold fusion, but it wasn't the kind of "cold" that people could understand.

In order to achieve nuclear fusion, two protons must have sufficient energy to overcome the Coulomb potential barrier so that the distance between the nuclei would be less than 10-14 meters. In order to reach this distance, the thermal kinetic energy of a single nucleus must reach at least an energy level on the order of MeV magnitude.

However, the average thermal kinetic energy of a nucleus inside the star was only on the KeV magnitude.

Comparing the magnitudes of energy level, one would expect that the thermal kinetic energy was too low to overcome the Coulomb potential barrier. Even considering the effect of gravity, the reaction inside the star didn't make sense.

It would be very difficult to explain this phenomenon from a classical mechanics perspective.

Therefore, one would have to introduce quantum mechanics concepts.

Like, the quantum tunneling effect.

Even though this concept might sound a little obscure, as long as one understood the principle of wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle, it wouldn't be too difficult to understand this implication.

In quantum mechanics, all objects were in indeterminate states, and there was a range that determined their states.

For example, a small ball, a common classical mechanics example. Place the small ball in front of a mountain. According to the concepts of classical mechanics, when the speed of the ball was large enough, it could roll across the mountain. If it was not fast enough, it might roll to the middle of the mountain and run out of kinetic energy, thus going back to wherever it came from.

However, in quantum mechanics, even if the speed of the ball was small, when it rolled toward the mountain, it still had a certain probability of rolling up and across the mountain.

If we were to change the mountain into a barrier and replace the ball with an atom, we could explain why fusion was able to occur in stars.

Even though the energy of the nucleus in a star was much smaller than the potential of the Coulomb potential barrier, due to the existence of the quantum tunneling effect, the proton could still pass through the Coulomb potential barrier. With a barrier of this kind of probabilistic combustion, a star could burn steadily for billions of years, as opposed to exploding in an instant, thus exhausting all of its fuel.

"Cold nuclear fusion is actually theoretically possible, or more scientifically, when the macroscopic conditions for fusion are not met, it is still theoretically possible for the fusion reaction to occur. However, we don't have a suitable method to advance our theoretical knowledge to fully reveal the mystery.

"We want to solve the miniaturization of the controllable fusion energy problem, and we have to start from the basics. We have to understand what the strong interaction is and use a model to unify it with the electromagnetic force." Lu Zhou handed back Sheng Xianfu his thesis and paused for a second. He then said, "If we can use a model to unify the strong interaction and electromagnetic force, our problem will become a lot easier.

"Actually, I haven't given up on the miniaturization of controllable fusion.

"The thing is, I'm the only one who can advance our theoretical knowledge."

…

Lu Zhou had made some progress with regards to the general solution of the Yang-Mills equations. However, the main difficulties were still unsolvable. He wasn't too worried. After he was done with the report, he would have plenty of time to think about this problem.

Time quickly passed by. Soon, it was May.

Lu Zhou had finished his computational materials science and number theory classes. He was waiting for his students' theses to be published so that he could finally receive his system rewards.

Interestingly enough, he found out that this reward mission had more freedom than the previous missions. He didn't even have a time limit for the completion of this mission. In theory, if he wanted to, he could make it so that his students' theses would have sky-high impact factors, and after that, he could collect the mission rewards.

However, it wasn't interesting to drag this mission on for any longer.

Every impact factor gave 1,000 experience points and 10 general points. Even if one had a hundred impact factor, that was only a hundred thousand experience points.

This obviously wasn't possible.

Lu Zhou made up his mind that he would complete the mission before June, no matter how many theses his students had. If there really wasn't enough time, then whatever. He had been resting for six months; it was time to begin another mission.

Three days before the report, Professor Klaus von Klitzing from Germany arrived in Jinling. He bumped into Lu Zhou, who had just finished his last computational materials lecture, at the laboratory building of the new campus.

"Long time no see." Professor Klitzing gave Lu Zhou a warm hug and smiled as he said, "I didn't think that in less than two years, your name would be giving the Nobel Prize Committee a headache again."

Lu Zhou smiled and said, "Maybe."

"It's not maybe. Regardless of whether or not they would choose a scholar who had just won a Nobel Prize, I'll still nominate you." Professor Klitzing smiled and said, "Speaking of which, before I came to China, Professor Keriber told me to tell you something."

"Uh, what thing?"

"He said you're a scary opponent." Professor Klitzing shrugged and said, "He said that his biggest regret in life is showing off his laboratory to you. Thanks to you, he's been ridiculed by the economic and technology department. The technology department saw that you waved your hand and solved the controllable fusion problem, so they thought that controllable fusion was actually a very simple thing… Apparently, in their latest meeting, the Wendelstein 7-X engineers nearly started a fight with the secretaries from the technology department."

Lu Zhou awkwardly coughed.

"Um… My apologies. If he doesn't think that I'm being fair, I can let him visit the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study."

"Haha, I'm just kidding." Klitzing patted his shoulder and said, "He doesn't hate you… He's actually quite thankful. After all, without your plasma turbulence model, the research on the stellarator would still be stagnated. Not to mention, if his laboratory achieved nuclear fusion first, I'm sure he would have made the same decisions."

Lu Zhou made a helpless expression and said, "I hope my research won't bring him more trouble."

"How could it? Also, we might have the opportunity to cooperate in the future." Klitzing smiled and said, "Several members of ITER have already reached an agreement with China on the exchange of many technologies. The agreement will be implemented in maybe five years."

Lu Zhou nodded.

Five years was a good buffer period.

Other countries weren't certain if they could solve this problem on their own, so they were reluctant to exchange their chips too early. On the Chinese side, they also didn't want other people to achieve controllable fusion and lose their dominance in this field.

Of course, this was all because everyone knew that it was impossible to keep a technology secret.

Especially for civilian technology such as controllable fusion, which was destined to be implemented on a large scale. The only thing the government could do was to lock the technology in a basement and never implement it. Once controllable fusion technology was wide-spread, the secrets were bound to leak out.

In three to five years, controllable fusion power stations could supply more than 80% of the country's electricity consumption. The decision to exchange political, technical, and other interests with other countries for controllable fusion technology in five years was the optimal strategy.

However, a lot of things could happen in five years…

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