Early morning.
A car was parked downstairs in the mathematics department building of Jin Ling University.
Han Mengqi thanked the driver who helped her take out her suitcase from the trunk. She then dragged her suitcase upstairs. However, just as she was about to open the door and walk into the office, she was grabbed by a hand from the side.
"Ji Mo?"
Han Mengqi asked in confusion as she looked at her junior brother who was holding her back.
"What's up?"
Ji Mo looked at the closed office door and spoke with a serious face.
"My master has been in there for two days, let's not disturb him."
"Two days?!" Han Mengqi was shocked. She asked with her eyes widened, "He, he stayed in the office for two days? What about food? He didn't even come out to eat? "
"He ate." Ji Mo said embarrassedly, "I went to the cafeteria to buy food for him … I just brought breakfast over. I plan on going to the library to study … Do you want to come?"
"Oh, at least he ate …" Han Mengqi breathed a sigh of relief. She then suddenly said, "Oh yeah, who allowed you to call me master?"
Ji Mo: "…?"
Han Mengqi realized that her reaction was a bit sudden. She coughed and explained, "What I mean is, this is a school, and you're still an undergraduate student. It's not good for other students to hear this."
Ji Mo felt like this made sense. He scratched the back of his head and said, "Ah … Sorry, I didn't think about it."
Han Mengqi nodded her head in satisfaction when she saw that her little junior brother knew his mistake and was willing to change.
"Being able to correct your mistakes is the best thing … Don't do this next time."
She placed her right hand on the doorknob, carefully pushed the door open, and walked in.
Han Mengqi closed the office door and looked at the bags under Lu Zhou's eyes. She felt a little distressed as she spoke.
"Master … I'm back."
Lu Zhou put down the pen in his hand and let out a sigh of relief. He put the thick stack of papers in his hand aside and smiled at Han Mengqi.
"Mengqi? You're back already? "
Han Mengqi nodded and said, "En."
"I just got off the plane."
"Why didn't you call me when you got off the plane? I could have asked Wang Peng to pick you up … By the way, why did you bring your suitcase? Didn't you go home?"
"I'll be back soon."
Seeing that she had something to say, Lu Zhou probably guessed what she wanted to ask, so he said with a smile.
"What do you think? How was your trip to North America? "
"Very smooth …" Han Mengqi nodded, then added in a low voice, "I also received an award."
It was okay to receive an award at the same time.
As expected of his disciple.
Hearing this familiar speech, Lu Zhou smiled embarrassedly.
"Oh? What award? "
"Young Scholar Progress Award …"
In fact, in addition to the award given to her by the International Union of Materials Research Societies, she also attended the White House dinner and met the president of the American Materials Science Society.
This series of dazzling operations made her, who had almost "no achievements" in the field of materials science except for the Young Scholar Progress Award, feel a little flattered.
In fact, the reason why she went to Jin Ling University after returning to China was not only to share the good news of her award with her master, but also to ask him a lot of questions.
However, she didn't expect to see such a worried look as soon as she entered the door …
"Master …"
"What's wrong?"
Han Mengqi said with a worried look, "I heard that you haven't slept for two days."
"Two days?" Lu Zhou was slightly stunned. He looked at the 500-page stack of papers on the table and frowned. He said, "It's been so long …"
Han Mengqi: "I think it's better for you to rest."
"It's fine, it's only been two days. It's not my record yet." Lu Zhou smiled and said, "I'll go rest after I answer an email."
"Email? Why don't you tell me the content, and I'll answer it for you. "
Lu Zhou yawned and waved his hand. He picked up the breakfast on the corner of the table.
"No, I'll write the email myself. This thing can't be explained in a short time. If I let you edit it, I'm afraid it'll be dark by the time you understand what I want to express. "
"What exactly is the problem …"
"ABC conjecture."
"… ABC conjecture?!" Han Mengqi was stunned when she heard Lu Zhou's concise answer. She was still a little unconvinced before, but now she said with a dumbfounded look, "Why did you … suddenly study this problem?"
If she remembered correctly, her master should be busy with the Mars landing project.
And he seemed to have said more than once that he wouldn't study pure mathematics in the next few years …
"Life is always full of surprises … I didn't expect it either." Lu Zhou coughed and said, "In short, because of some special reasons, I'm studying this now. Don't worry about it here. Hurry up and put down your luggage. Take a good rest and get over the jet lag before reporting back here. "
Han Mengqi, who was kicked out of the office by Lu Zhou, stood in the corridor outside the office with a dumbfounded look.
After hesitating for a while, she finally took out her phone, opened the address book, and dialed a number.
The phone rang twice before it was connected.
The familiar voice quickly came from the other end.
"Mengqi? Are you back already? I was just about to call you. "
"Yeah, I just got off the plane … Um, sister, you should come to Jin University quickly."
"Jin University? What happened to Jin University? "
"Brother-in-law, it seems that he hasn't slept for two days … I'm a little worried that he won't be able to take it. Anyway, if you don't have time to come over, at least give him a call."
"He hasn't slept for two days?! Are you at his place now? I'll be right there! "
Lu Zhou got up from her office chair and quickly hung up the phone.
Han Mengqi let out a sigh of relief and put her phone back in her pocket.
She looked back at the office and silently said in her heart.
Master, this is all I can help you with!
Please don't suddenly die …
…
It was impossible to suddenly die.
It was only two days without sleep.
If Lu Zhou remembered correctly, his highest record of staying up late was seven days in a row. Then, he had to sleep for two or three days in a row to make up for it.
That was when he was in Princeton. He was researching Goldbach's conjecture or the Navier – Stokes equation. Lu Zhou didn't remember. After all, staying up late was normal for him.
He only remembered the most powerful time. He felt like he was floating in the clouds, and he couldn't tell if he was in the sky or on the ground.
However, it was this feeling of extreme focus that allowed him to completely break through the bottleneck and reach a whole new realm. Although he also knew that he was only one step away from the "celestial realm" at that time …
"Sigh, I'm getting old … I'm not as energetic as when I was in my twenties."
After eating, Lu Zhou, who gradually felt a trace of sleepiness in his heart, took out a tube of energy medicine from the system space, unscrewed the cap, and slowly swallowed it.
A mint-like coolness spread along his throat to the front of his brain. After a shudder, he quickly felt that the fatigue that crawled all over his body completely faded from his body like a tide.
Lu Zhou picked up the stack of papers from the corner of the table, turned to the last few pages that he marked, turned on the computer, and began to edit the email.
If he was still a little uncertain about the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto before, now he was basically certain that this guy was most likely Shinichi Mochizuki. (Note 1)
This paper on the proof of the ABC conjecture was clearly the revised version of the paper published online by Shinichi Mochizuki.
Because it was an unpublished version, there was no abstract or title. Lu Zhou only realized that the paper looked familiar after he read about 20 pages. When he read more than 30 pages, he was sure that this was "Anabelian Geometry" and the legendary "Theory of the Universe" that only a few people understood.
In fact, the core idea of Shinichi Mochizuki's proof of the ABC conjecture was very simple. It was to transform this abstract problem into a more abstract elliptic curve, a special binary cubic equation.
This transformation process is not difficult to understand. All you need to do is intersect the same image for each ABC equation with the x-axis at a and b.
Connect it to the elliptic curve of the origin. After this transformation, proving the ABC conjecture was equivalent to proving that there was a certain inequality between the two values of this constructed elliptic curve.
This operation of transforming an algebraic problem into a geometric problem could change it from a simple number theory problem to a reexamination problem related to geometry, calculus, and other fields, thus allowing more mathematical tools to be used to solve the problem.
Just from this proof idea alone, this set of operations was actually very classic. Back then, Wiles used a similar method to prove the core part of Fermat's Last Theorem.
Unfortunately, even though the idea of the proof was commendable, when this idea was transformed into a 500-page long thesis, everything became unfriendly.
Many people even evaluated that it was more difficult to fully understand "Anabelian Geometry" and "Theory of the Universe" than to solve the ABC conjecture itself.
Professor Caligali, a famous number theorist, even said bluntly that this was a "complete disaster".
In Lu Zhou's memory, about a few years ago, Schulz and his partner once went to Beijing and had a face-to-face discussion on this issue with Shinichi Mochizuki, but the final result turned into a debate between the two sides.
Schulz complained that he was standing on a never-ending Escher Ladder, while Shinichi Mochizuki insisted that he "didn't understand anything at all" and "even got the basic definition wrong".
As for Lu Zhou …
His opinion was the same as Schulz's.
[I have read the paper.]
[Although it has been modified compared with the previous version, in my opinion, there are still big loopholes. Especially the part of inference 3.12, in order to figure out the relationship between the volume quantities of the set, it is necessary to at least establish a correlation between the measurement standards of the volume in each different space. However, in the mapping you gave, the "rulers" are locally compatible with each other …]
[… In summary.]
[Your proof is wrong.]
(Note 1: Shinichi Mochizuki denied this in an interview. This is just a well-known joke in the mathematics world. Don't take the plot seriously. Also, don't forget to give Professor Lu a heart gesture ~ ~ ~)
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