Wilson Ohanian was a physics professor at Stanford University, mainly engaged in research in the field of high-energy physics. As a former winner of the Oliver Buckley Prize, he was one of the best among the young physicists who had emerged in recent years.
Although he was bathed in the envious eyes of his peers, only Ohanian himself knew how difficult the path he had chosen was.
Limited by backward technical means, they were still verifying whether the conjectures of the last century were correct, and the exploration of the future had hardly begun.
Fortunately, the Chinese, who had suddenly become rich in recent years, had generously built an ILHCRC larger than CERN on a crater on the moon. This allowed the development of high-energy physics to return to the fast track.
For example, the Zhou (Z) particle.
This particle, which had fallen from the high-dimensional world into people's sight since the end of last year, directly broadened the research of high-energy physics to the invisible world.
Lu Zhou, who discovered this particle, also won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics because of this groundbreaking discovery. He became a candidate for the most outstanding physicist of the century.
Ohanian saw the broad prospects behind this direction at a glance. He immediately changed the direction of his research and entered the research of the Z particle. He made quite good progress in the research of the "dimensional change explanation of the Z particle".
If everything went well, the next Dirac Prize was already in his bag.
However …
The accident had obviously happened.
"This is bullsh * t …
"Hyperspace channel? Spacetime curvature change?
"Does this mean that I can get to the other side of the Milky Way as long as I make a hole in the ground?"
Ohanian crumpled the paper in his hand and threw it into the wastebasket. He was not stingy with his contempt. He criticized the theories of "hyperspace channel" and "spacetime curvature change" as worthless.
In fact, his contempt was not groundless.
In general relativity, if the topology of space changed in a bounded area, then there would be a closed timelike curve in the spacetime range where this change occurred.
The so-called timelike curve was the trajectory of a mass object in spacetime that could be physically realized.
The popular interpretation of this sentence was that changing the topology of space was prohibited by general relativity!
This was not a conjecture, but a theorem proved by Stephen Hawking.
In fact, a long time ago, when he saw the disturbance of the gravitational field when the Z particle fell from a high dimension to a low dimension, Ohanian had a similar idea.
However, this vague idea was quickly denied by him.
Whether it was to prove or refute this point of view, it required a huge amount of computing power. Even some mathematicians who specialized in topology and algebraic geometry would find it difficult.
He confirmed this with a mathematics professor at Stanford University.
In contrast, he was more inclined to the other explanation.
That was, when the Z particle moved from a higher dimension to a lower dimension, there was a mass loss, and this dimensional sense of mass loss eventually led to the reduction of gravity observed in classical space-time.
And where did this part of gravity go?
He thought it might be a compliment.
However, this paper undoubtedly overturned all of his research, and it also made the Dirac Physics Prize, which he thought was almost within his reach …
The assistant in the office looked at Professor Ohanian, who was angry. He stood trembling next to him, not daring to speak.
After Professor Ohanian's anger seemed to have subsided a little, the assistant gulped and spoke in a low voice.
"But the author of this paper is Professor Lu …"
The air in the office froze for a moment.
Even Professor Ohanian's fingers, which were reaching for the coffee cup, froze.
"What did you say?"
"The paper was written by Professor Lu … He posted it on arXiv. I printed all the papers that were worth reading according to your request."
The corners of Professor Ohanian's mouth twitched fiercely. He maintained a stiff expression on his face and asked, "Did you kill his corresponding author?"
This kind of thing happened often. Not all supervisors had the time to correct every paper written by their students.
This kind of thing happened all the time. Not all supervisors had the time to correct every single thesis written by their students. This kind of thing happened all the time. Not all supervisors had the time to correct every paper written by their students.
It was a very helpful thing to have the name of a big shot as the corresponding author. At least it could prevent the review editor from throwing the paper into the trash can, and the attitude of the scholar who graded the paper during the peer review would be relatively gentle.
Similarly, just having the name of the corresponding author didn't mean that Professor Lu had participated in this paper. It was possible that he hadn't even read this paper.
After all, the paper on arXiv was not published, it was just a preprint …
"He's the only author …" While Ohanian was thinking, the words that came out of his trembling assistant's mouth completely shattered his imagination. He said, "Only his name is on the paper."
There was a long silence in the office.
After at least ten minutes, Ohanian suddenly sighed. He stood up with his hands on the armrest and walked to the wastepaper basket.
He picked up the crumpled paper from the wastepaper basket and took it back to the desk. Ohanian patiently sat down again and read the entire 20-page paper from beginning to end.
After about half an hour, he muttered in a low voice, "Okay then … I can't be too sure.
"Alright … I can't be too certain. Although it sounds a little ridiculous, it might not be completely wrong."
Dumbfounded, he stared at his grumpy boss. It only took him half an hour to change his attitude completely. The assistant standing in the office almost wondered if the person sitting here was the real Professor Ohanian. The person who once argued with the dean over an academic point of view and even scolded the other party.
The assistant gulped and spoke with a trembling voice.
"Professor."
Professor Ohanian snorted and replied without looking up.
"What?"
Assistant: "If he's right … What does this mean?"
"What does it mean? Haha, what does it mean … "
Professor Ohanian grinned as if he had gone crazy. He stared at the paper motionlessly, as if his eyes were glued to it.
"It means that the space-time view of general relativity will be subverted, and our understanding of classical space-time will be refreshed … Actually, this is nothing. Anyway, there are more than one or two patches on the building of physics.
"But the most important thing is …"
Professor Ohanian didn't continue to speak for a long time. The young assistant finally couldn't help but continue to ask.
"What is the most important thing?"
Professor Ohanian spoke without hesitation.
"The most important thing is that this means that traveling in light years will no longer be an unreliable dream.
"All the science fiction movies you saw in the past, whether it's Hollywood or elsewhere.
"At least half of them might have a chance to become real."
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