United Kingdom.
Inside a house on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
An old man was sitting in front of a wooden desk by the window, facing a slightly old computer. He was typing on the keyboard with his index finger, concentrating on editing an email.
There was a newspaper on the corner of the table. It was dated two weeks ago.
The printed news was about the Brookhaven National Laboratory's temporary withdrawal from the ILHCRC, which caused a heated discussion some time ago.
It was an investment of tens of billions of US dollars, and more than dozens of countries had participated in the scientific research project. Yet, such a big problem had just occurred. This matter not only caused an uproar in the physics community, but it also caused a lot of discussion outside the physics community.
The old man wrote in the email with mixed feelings.
[… Physics should be an open-minded discipline. It is precisely because of the respect for all viewpoints that we have been able to achieve the prosperity we have today. I can't evaluate whether Lu Zhou's choice is right for the time being, but even if he is wrong, this is just academic immaturity. He shouldn't respond in such an irrational way.
[… To sum up, withdrawing from the experiment at this time is definitely not a rational choice. Whether it's for the Brookhaven National Laboratory or the long-established unity of the physics community, this will be a huge blow … I don't know if there are political considerations behind this, but regardless of the purpose, they shouldn't have used the trust that we've built over the past hundred years as a bet. "
[I hope you can reconsider this matter. Maybe it's not enough time.]
[— Peter Higgs]
Peter Higgs.
Emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics. The reason for winning the prize was because of the well-known Higgs particle.
Forget about most physicists, even people who didn't know much about physics would know this name.
The old man frowned as he typed the name on the signature. He raised his head and looked at the dark clouds outside the window that seemed like they could fall at any time.
Ever since he retired, his body had become more and more sensitive to the weather. Everything else had become insignificant, especially his sense of time. Especially his sense of time. Even though he would look at the calendar every morning, he would always forget what day it was and what he had to do.
Just like the newspaper next to him.
By the time he saw it, it had been almost two weeks.
When he hurriedly contacted his friends and searched for relevant information on the Internet, he finally understood the whole story. His mood was as heavy as the terrible weather outside the window.
Then, he did the only thing he hadn't put off until tomorrow since his retirement.
To write to his old friend, Professor Brovitch, who occupied an important position at the Brookhaven Scientific Society.
Regardless of whether the 750 GeV characteristic peak was worth a whole year of research, regardless of whether Lu Zhou, as the chairman of the board, was trying to overthrow the board of directors, academia itself shouldn't have a predetermined position.
This reminded him of sixty years ago.
He remembered that he had written a short paper and published it in CERN's journal "Physics Communications".
After that paper was written, he wrote another paper and submitted it to Physics Letters. He described a theoretical model that he envisioned, which was now known as the "Higgs mechanism". However, the editor rejected it for being ridiculous.
This paper was finally published in "Physics Letters".
If it weren't for his persistence, people might not have been able to explain how the elementary particles carrying the weak interaction obtained mass.
He looked at the email and pondered for a long time.
He looked at the second last line and hesitated for a moment. He deleted the word from the email and made the wording of the email as euphemistic as possible. He then clicked the send button.
"… I hope it will be of some use."
Regardless of whether or not his old friend would listen to him, he had to do something within his ability.
Mumbling to himself, he held onto the armrest of the chair and struggled to stand up from the chair. He walked shakily to the window.
Dark clouds were gathering outside the window. It was morning, but it felt like the sky was about to turn dark. His neighbor across the street had already closed the window and put away the flower pots in the yard. It seemed like a heavy rain could fall at any time.
"I feel like something big is going to happen today."
Muttering to himself, the old man reached out and pulled the curtain of the bed.
Academic intuition was a very metaphysical thing.
Perhaps even he himself did not expect that his casual words would actually come true …
…
February 2nd.
Today was definitely a significant day for the international physics community.
Three days had passed since the end of the lunar night period. The energy storage facilities supporting the collider should have been charged, and the ILHCRC would soon conduct the next collision experiment.
This experiment had not yet begun, but it had received widespread attention from the physics community.
There was no other reason.
Because not long ago, Lu Zhou uploaded a hyperspace theory on the arXiv website, and the elementary particles that made up atoms included a particle that existed in hyperspace.
Under normal circumstances, this kind of particle is quite stable and will hardly give itself away. Only in high-energy physics experiments where the collisions could reach a certain level would these special particles appear in the conventional three-dimensional space-time in an extremely unstable form for a short period of time.
When this theory was published, it immediately set off a wave of controversy in the physics community.
Professor François Engler, who once won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics with Professor Peter Higgs, said this to the media in an interview.
"This theory may sound even more amazing than superstring theory … Although hyperspace theory is not an avant-garde view, M-theory has made a prediction similar to 'the complete universe should have eleven hyperspace dimensions'. However, this is only a guess after all. Compared to his theory, I'm actually more curious about how he proves it.
"I mean, with the current physics experimental methods, the objects we can observe are only in the dimension we are in, or things lower than this dimension.
"I'll give you the most popular particle example. If we are just paper people living on a piece of white paper, a small ball is parallel to the paper we are on and moving vertically. Assuming that the light source is absolutely perpendicular to the paper, what we can see on the paper is just a static point projected on the paper.
"If there really is such a particle that exists in a higher dimension, what we can see is at most its projection in three-dimensional space, let alone analyze its complete trajectory.
"So, what kind of experiment is he going to use to prove that this theory is almost impossible to prove? Even if it is logically self-consistent. "
Creatures in the two-dimensional world could never know everything about the three-dimensional world, and creatures in the three-dimensional world were equally confused about the four-dimensional world.
Regardless of whether Professor François Engler could imagine what kind of experiment Lu Zhou would use to prove his conclusion, a new round of ILHCRC experiments was about to begin. At this time, he only expressed his curiosity in his heart. He did not express his negative views as clearly as Professor Whittle.
After all, from the perspective of a physicist, he was still very happy to see Lu Zhou solve this problem.
If he could prove that the fundamental particles that made up the universe were indeed hidden in a high-dimensional world, many of the problems faced by the physics community today would be solved.
The waiting process was so long.
Everyone was looking forward to the ILHCRC updating the experimental data. It was finally 12 o 'clock in the morning, Beijing time. The latest experimental data was synchronized to the official database.
As the news spread, universities around the world that cooperated with the ILHCRC obtained first-hand information and began to process the original data.
Even though the Brookhaven National Laboratory had announced that they were temporarily withdrawing from this project, they still downloaded the data shamelessly.
And the results of the experiment were unexpectedly shocking.
The entire physics community was amazed by the results of this experiment. A report hosted by Lu Zhou had begun at the headquarters of the ILHCRC …
Lamp pen
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