Sheng Xianfu was stunned.
When he submitted the thesis, he was even prepared to be ridiculed.
However, he didn't expect his bold idea to be recognized by Lu Zhou.
"Cold nuclear fusion isn't a joke. In fact, many things that can't be done are not because it's wrong, but because we don't know enough about the universe."
Lu Zhou stood up from his desk and walked to the solar system map hanging in the corner of the office wall. His eyes fell on the flame that had been burning for billions of years.
"Just like how we still can't fully understand the source of the power of a star."
In a sense, the fusion reaction inside a star was also a form of cold nuclear fusion, but it didn't look like the "cold" that people understood.
For nuclear fusion to be achieved, the two protons must have enough energy to overcome the Coulomb potential barrier, so that the distance between the nuclei was less than 10 ^ -14 meters. In order to achieve this distance, the thermal kinetic energy of a single nucleus must reach at least the MeV energy level.
However, in fact, the average thermal kinetic energy of the nucleus inside a star was only at the KeV energy level.
A very intuitive comparison of orders of magnitude proved that thermal kinetic energy alone couldn't overcome the Coulomb potential barrier to achieve nuclear fusion. Even if the role of gravity was taken into account, the fusion reaction inside a star was, strictly speaking, unscientific.
From the perspective of classical mechanics, it was difficult to explain this "unscientific" phenomenon.
Therefore, a concept from quantum mechanics had to be introduced.
Which was the quantum tunneling effect.
Even though this concept might sound a bit obscure, in fact, as long as one understood the wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle, it wasn't difficult to understand its meaning.
In quantum mechanics, all research objects were in an uncertain state, and the range of uncertainty satisfied a relationship.
Take a small ball commonly seen in classical mechanics as an example. A small ball was placed in front of a mountain. According to the concept of classical mechanics, only when the speed of the small ball was fast enough could it cross the mountain. If its speed wasn't fast enough, it might run out of kinetic energy halfway up the mountain, and it would eventually roll back to where it came from.
However, in quantum mechanics, even if the speed of the small ball wasn't very fast, when it rolled toward the mountain, it still had a certain probability of passing through.
If the mountain was replaced with a barrier and the ball was replaced with an atom, this would be the reason why fusion reactions could occur in stars.
Although the energy of the atomic nucleus was far less than the potential of the Coulomb potential barrier, due to the existence of the quantum tunneling effect, protons could still pass through the Coulomb potential barrier and enter the arms of another proton. It was also because of this probabilistic combustion that stars could burn stably for billions of years, instead of exploding in an instant and exhausting all their fuel.
"Cold nuclear fusion is actually feasible, or to put it in a more academic way, before the macroscopic conditions for fusion are met, it is theoretically possible to make a fusion reaction occur. It's just that we haven't found a suitable method yet, and we haven't advanced the theory to the point where we can completely reveal the mysteries."
"If we want to solve the miniaturization of controllable fusion, we have to start from the essence. We have to understand what the strong interaction is and use a certain model to unify it with the electromagnetic interaction." Lu Zhou handed the thesis back to Sheng Xianfu. He paused for a second and said, "If we can use a certain model to unify the strong interaction and the electromagnetic interaction, our research project will be a lot smoother.
"Actually, I haven't given up on the miniaturization of controllable fusion.
"It's just that it seems like I'm the only one who can do theoretical work."
…
Lu Zhou had made some progress on the general solution of the Yang-Mills equations, but he still couldn't solve a few key problems. However, he wasn't in a hurry. He still had a report coming up, and after the report, he would have enough time to slowly think about this problem.
Time quickly passed by, and soon, it was May.
With the completion of his computational materials science and number theory courses, Lu Zhou was now only waiting for his students to publish their theses. Then, he could receive the system mission reward.
What was interesting was that he found out that this reward mission was more relaxed than the previous missions. There wasn't even a set time to receive the reward. In theory, if he didn't want to complete the mission, he could even wait for his students to increase their impact factors to the sky before submitting the mission.
However, there was no point in dragging this on.
Compared to 1,000 experience points and 10 general points per impact factor, even if he increased the impact factor by a thousand, it would only be 100,000 general points.
However, this was obviously impossible.
Lu Zhou made up his mind. He would publish as many theses as he could before June. If he couldn't make it in time, then forget about it. He had been resting for the past six months, so it was better for him to start the next mission.
Three days before the report began, Professor Klaus von Klitzing from Germany arrived in Jinling early. He bumped into Lu Zhou, who had just finished his last computational materials class, at the mathematics building of the new Jin Ling University campus.
"Long time no see." Professor Klitzing gave Lu Zhou a warm hug and said, "I didn't expect that in less than two years, your name would give the old guys at the Nobel Prize committee a headache again."
Lu Zhou smiled and said, "Maybe."
"It's not maybe. Regardless of whether they will consider a scholar who just won the Nobel Prize, I will still nominate you." Professor Klitzing suddenly smiled and said, "Speaking of which, before I came to China, Professor Keriber asked me to tell you something."
"Oh, what?"
"He said that you are a terrifying opponent." Professor Klitzing shrugged and said, "He said that the thing he regrets the most in his life is showing off his laboratory to you. Thanks to you, he's being pressured by the Ministry of Economics and Technology. The bureaucrats in the technology department saw that you guys were able to solve this problem, so they think controllable nuclear fusion is actually a very simple thing … Apparently, the last time they had a meeting, the engineer of the Wendelstein 7-X laboratory almost got into a fight with the secretary of the technology department. "
Lu Zhou awkwardly coughed.
"Um … I'm sorry. If he thinks it's unfair, I'll give him a tour of the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study. "
"Haha, I'm just kidding." Klitzing smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "He doesn't hate you, in fact … he's quite grateful to you. After all, without your plasma turbulence model, stellarator research would still be in a marginalized state. Not to mention, if his laboratory was the first to complete controllable fusion, I think he would probably make the same choice. "
Lu Zhou made a helpless expression and said, "I hope my research won't cause him trouble."
"Of course not. Also, maybe we will have opportunities to cooperate in the future. "Klitzing smiled and said," Several major ITER member states have already reached an agreement with China to exchange many controversial issues and industrial technologies. The duration should be about five years. The contents of the agreement will be gradually implemented. "
After hearing Klitzing's words, Lu Zhou nodded.
Five years was a pretty good buffer period.
Because they weren't sure if this problem could be solved in a short period of time, other countries obviously didn't want to use their chips to exchange. China also didn't want other countries to master controllable fusion technology too early and lose its dominant position in the field.
Of course, there was one thing that everyone agreed on. Everyone knew that it was impossible to keep this a secret forever.
Especially for a civilian technology like controllable fusion, which was destined to be used on a large scale, unless they kept it in the palm of their hands or completely shut it off from the rest of the world. Otherwise, when the controllable fusion power station and cross-regional power grid projects were rolled out, there was a high chance that the technology would be lost.
The strategy of popularizing controllable fusion power stations in three years and supplying more than 80% of the country's electricity consumption was to use controllable fusion technology to exchange political and technical benefits with other countries in five years.
And these five years were enough for a lot of things to happen …
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
