After a while, Lu Zhou typed a line of words and asked.
[What if we can't find it?]
The old man typed very fast. In less than five minutes, he replied to Lu Zhou's question.
[Of course, what you said is possible. If we can't find what we need at an energy level below TeV, we can only declare the bankruptcy of the minimal supersymmetric standard model. Then, we can look for what we're looking for in a higher energy zone. Proving that our previous work is wrong is also an important discovery. Although it may not be what we want to see … I think you can actually have more confidence in our theory. The new world is right in front of us. I can even smell the fragrance of spices.]
In the end, the old man even joked with him in a relaxed tone.
However, Lu Zhou wasn't so optimistic. He couldn't laugh at all.
Maybe it was because he had never experienced the feeling of studying in the maze of the quantum world for decades. Therefore, he didn't develop the humor that a theoretical physicist must have when facing unsolved mysteries.
Not being able to understand a problem didn't make him depressed.
However, if he couldn't see the end of a research project and couldn't see the future, it would be difficult for him not to feel annoyed.
Yes, this was the feeling that this research project gave him.
Even if there was a Nobel Prize winner in the team, they couldn't draw a reliable path for him with certainty. There were countless methods in front of them, and all they could do was compare the possibilities.
It wasn't like the mathematics problems that he researched, where wrong was wrong and right was right. It might take time to review the manuscript, but in the end, it would definitely put an end to his efforts.
What made Lu Zhou feel annoyed wasn't just the predicament of his research project, but the predicament of the entire theoretical physics community.
The development of theory and experiments were far apart. This building wasn't even built on rigorous experimental data. Instead, it was built on things that hadn't been tested in experiments, and couldn't even be tested for decades.
The "standard model" that theoretical physics relied on was probably such an "unreliable" thing. Making conjectures based on proven theories and limited phenomena, then using countless conjectures to construct a model.
In the 1960s, the supersymmetric wheel was proposed, and in the 1980s, string theory emerged. However, it was only a few years ago that the God particle was found in the laboratory. The theoretical physics community hurriedly announced that they had entered the "post-standard model" era. However, before they could celebrate for two years, the neutrino oscillation in Daya Bay almost caused the standard model to collapse.
Lu Zhou could understand why Mr. Frank was so obsessed with supersymmetry and why he was so eager to find supersymmetric particles.
This obsession was definitely not because of something as superficial as the bet, but because if the supersymmetry theory was not established, the loopholes in the standard model could not be filled, and string theory based on supersymmetry would collapse …
If these things happened, there would definitely be a lot of people asking them a painful question — "What on earth have you been doing for the past half a century?"
If only theoretical physics were like the news.
Today they discovered this, tomorrow they overthrew that, and the day after tomorrow they discovered this. Every day was a new page …
But in fact, any attentive person would notice that almost all theoretical physicists would add the word "maybe" when they publicly described a new idea.
As for the dark matter speculation, Lu Zhou didn't know if his speculation was correct or not.
Both theories had the possibility of being established, but the conclusions were completely different. If he had conclusive evidence that could refute the other party's theory, he would not hesitate to use it to convince Mr. Frank. Unfortunately, he didn't.
He could only wait for the experiment to verify it.
After hesitating for a bit, Lu Zhou's hands on the keyboard finally moved. He typed a line of words.
Click, send.
[Maybe you're right, but I'm more inclined to think that we didn't discover a new continent, but rather an island of ice.]
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Professor Frank was sitting in the passenger seat, waiting for a reply. He suddenly laughed out loud, scaring the PhD student sitting next to him.
The PhD student quickly slowed down the car. He looked at the computer and asked, "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," said Frank as he shook his head. He closed the lid of his laptop and said, "The Chinese guy I told you about is quite humorous."
…
Although Lu Zhou made a joke, he wasn't in a good mood.
He stared at the documents on the computer for a long time. He then looked at the stack of A4 papers next to him. He grabbed his hair with both hands, and his face was full of frustration.
Fighting on two fronts seemed to be a wrong choice. On one side was number theory, and on the other side was functional analysis and group theory. Each problem gave him a headache.
And this was not the most uncomfortable thing. The most uncomfortable thing was that Mr. Frank introduced extra dimensions outside of the symmetric field. It really lacked mathematical beauty. According to his point of view, he could solve this problem from the perspective of dark matter. Many problems that could not be explained mathematically could be avoided.
From the perspective of dark matter, every Z/PZ generator could be mapped to a function such as exp (2pi · i/p), and the Pontryagin duality problem could be properly solved … Probably?
In short, his mathematical intuition told him that this possibility was as large as perfecting this theory!
Lu Zhou leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. The symbols kept lingering in his brain, and he even forgot about eating.
Group theory …
Group theory …
If only this group theory was as simple as number theory … Even though number theory wasn't that simple either.
Wait a minute, group theory?!
Lu Zhou's eyes lit up, and he suddenly had a flash of inspiration.
This flash of inspiration did not illuminate the 750 GeV characteristic peak. Instead, it illuminated the Polignac's conjecture.
Lu Zhou sat up from his chair and spun the pen in his hand. His brain was spinning fast.
Group theory was a very powerful tool. Not only was it the Hilbert space in functional analysis one of the two major theoretical tools of quantum mechanics, but it was also very effective in number theory, especially when studying infinite prime numbers.
For example, any teacher of basic number theory would mention a classic example in their first or second class – Fermat's little theorem.
There were many ways to prove this theorem, and the most concise method was using group theory.
As for how concise it was, it only needed three lines of standard font to do it.
That is, if α and p are mutually prime, then by Euler's theorem, α ^ φ (p) ≡ 1 (mod p), but φ (p) = p-1, so α ^ (p-1) ≡ 1 (mod p). Multiplying both sides by α, we can conclude that when α is a natural number and p is a prime number, we have α ^ p ≡ α (mod p).
Isn't it simple?
In fact, Fermat's little theorem was only a special case of Euler's theorem.
However, Euler's theorem could still be solved using group theory, and the entire proof process would take less than half a page.
While Lu Zhou was thinking about how to prove Polignac's conjecture, he was thinking about how to extend the K = 1 form to infinite natural numbers. He did not consider using other mathematical methods …
In fact, many theses on arXiv were doing the same thing. They were trying to improve his method and then solve Polignac's conjecture.
However, even Lu Zhou did not expect that he would be inspired by an unrelated physics topic.
The way to save the princess who was trapped in the castle by the dragon was not to enchant the sword that had once killed a little dragon, but to remove the longbow on his back.
The ballpoint pen between his fingers spun faster and faster. Finally, it flew out with a whoosh and hit the desk lamp with a "pa" sound.
Lu Zhou did not pick it up. He suddenly let out a long sigh and laid on the table.
"I've overlooked it … This train of thought might actually work!"
As soon as inspiration came, his train of thought was unstoppable!
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