The Science Fiction World of Xueba

Luan Jingtong frowned, what kind of project is it that needs 1.5 million research funds.

There is no doubt about Pang Xuelin's achievements in mathematics, but the project he mentioned requires the participation of professors from the Department of Chemical Engineering, so Luan Jingtong hesitated.

But thinking of where Pang Xuelin went last night, Luan Jingtong gritted his teeth and said, "Okay, Teacher Pang, the school has covered all the 1.5 million expenses."

Pang Xuelin laughed and said, "Principal Luan, please re-draft the contract. Besides, don't worry, the one and a half million yuan will definitely not be spent in vain."

Luan Jingtong smiled helplessly, now what Pang Xuelin said was useless, he would only believe it when he saw the results.

Then, Luan Jingtong chatted with Pang Xuelin and the others for a while, and then left with Li Zhiguo.

Only Pang Xuelin, Edward Witten, Zhu Fengzhang, and Yang Quan were left in the living room.

Pang Xuelin turned his gaze to Zhu Fengzhang and Yang Quan, and asked, "Doctor Yang, Xiao Zhu, have you arranged where you live?"

Yang Quan pursed his lips and said, "Professor Pang, I'm from Beijing. My home is on Zhichun Road. I just ride a bicycle to and from get off work every day."

Zhu Fengzhang said: "Professor Pang, I will stay here with you. If you want to go out, you can call me at any time."

Pang Xuelin nodded and said: "Okay, then I will trouble you next. How about this, let's have dinner together at home in the evening, so that everyone can get acquainted."

Zhu Fengzhang and Yang Quan looked at each other and nodded.

Then Pang Xuelin said the same thing to Witten again.

Witten can do nothing.

He came to China alone with Pang Xuelin. Although the school assigned him a full-time assistant, he would not come here until tomorrow. Anyway, he had nothing to do today, so he was just eating at Pang Xuelin's place.

In the evening, everyone decided to eat mutton in the old Beijing copper pot. Yang Quan volunteered to prepare the ingredients and the copper pot. Zhu Fengzhang was sent by Yang Quan to buy vegetables.

Pang Xuelin went upstairs to have a look. There were also three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a small terrace upstairs.

All rooms are cleaned, furniture and bedding are brand new,

Ready to move in with your bags.

When Yang Quan cleaned the kitchen, he also found a can of West Lake Longjing New Tea and a complete set of tea sets that had not been opened.

Pang Xuelin made a pot of tea and came to the terrace with Witten, chatting while drinking tea.

After more than a month of communication, the two have long been like old friends who have known each other for many years.

In the previous few worlds, Pang Xuelin put his main energy in the fields of mathematics, chemistry and carbon-based materials. He knew the general aspects of physics, but he didn't study the frontier theories in depth.

During this month, Pang Xuelin explained the relevant theories of Ponzi geometry to Witten, and Witten popularized the relevant knowledge of theoretical physics and string theory to Pang Xuelin, and both of them benefited a lot.

"Pang, sometimes I wonder, is the work we are doing meaningful? Even if we really use mathematical means to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics and construct a new grand unified theory. We can describe the From the crazy dance of quarks in the subatomic world to the elegant waltz of spinning binary stars in space, it is possible to reason from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the magnificent vortex of the galaxy, but it is probably impossible to see the ultimate theory confirmed in my lifetime. Now Many people have said that those of us who engage in theoretical physics are typical representatives of utopian science. Sometimes I think they are right. If the theory cannot be proven, no matter how beautiful the physical theory is, it will fall into the realm of metaphysics..."

Witten said with some emotion.

Pang Xuelin was slightly taken aback. Although he was a mathematician, he had heard such exclamations more than once in the real world.

In the field of theoretical physics, this is not an individual's point of view, but the consensus of many physicists: theoretical physics has begun to enter into utopianism, and the "Holy Grail of Science" is getting farther and farther away from human beings. Research on physics, which pushes physics forward, has reached a dead end.

There is a lot of evidence for this.

In the past 60 years, there has been no consensus on a great physical theory.

In the past 60 years, no great physicist has been regarded as a "lighthouse".

In the past 60 years, no exciting new theory has been tested.

...

Even if he and Witten get the M-theory, whether this theory can be verified in the future is also a question.

After all, according to the results calculated by superstring theory, the energy level of the Grand Unified Theory is currently predicted to be 10^24eV, while the collision of the Large Hadron Collider produces 10^13eV. The 11 orders of magnitude in between are called by physicists For the "Great Desert".

If a conventional linear accelerator is used, it would take 7 light-years to reach 10^24eV. Using a coda accelerator requires 4.7 billion kilometers, which is about the same length as the circumsolar accelerator in Trisolaris. To reach the quantum gravitational level, it may take hundreds of thousands of light-years to use a conventional accelerator, which is the legendary accelerator around the Milky Way. It is basically impossible to create an accelerator that can break the "big desert" with the current capabilities of human beings. of.

Even the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 in the real world is only based on the theory discovered by Yang Zhenning and his student Mills in 1954.

The Yang-Mills field has been able to unlock the secrets of all nuclear matter and explain any experimental data on subatomic particles.

When explaining the interaction between electrons and light, its accuracy reaches one millionth, and it is known as the most accurate theory ever!

This theory is so precise that it has been dubbed the "Standard Model" by the scientific community.

But since then, any new idea proposed by the theoretical physics community has never had any method of verification.

This is also the reason why later Mr. Yang Zhenning said that the high-energy physics "feast is over" and openly opposed China's construction of a large collider.

On the surface, Yang Zhenning opposes China's construction of a collider, but in fact he has lost confidence in "fundamental particle research", which is the most cutting-edge field of physics and the hope of the ultimate theory of physics.

A top physicist no longer trusts the most cutting-edge physics research direction, perhaps this is the tragedy of physics.

Pang Xuelin smiled, he did not have such emotion as Witten.

On the one hand, his main research field is still in mathematics, and he does not have a deep understanding of this issue. On the other hand, whether it is the magical system he carries on his body, or the worlds he has experienced, all indicate that The grand unified theory that human beings try to expect is far from the end of physics.

"Professor Witten, we don't have to be so pessimistic at all. Before Einstein discovered the theory of relativity, physicists thought that Newtonian mechanics was the end of physics. Before Riemann proposed Riemannian geometry, Euclidean geometry dominated the mathematics world for two whole years." Thousands of years. Maybe the new theory we are trying to find is not necessarily correct, but we are walking for the future of mankind. The progress of science, the progress of civilization, always advance through trial and error, and find the truth The geniuses of the world are heroes of mankind, but those scientists who have been submerged in the long river of history and explored their lives on the wrong path are also heroes. What we need to do is to find the most likely path under the existing conditions. Road, as for whether this road is right or wrong, then leave it to future generations to judge!"

Edward Witten laughed, raised his teacup and said, "Pang, you are right. Let's drink to those scientific elites who are on the wrong path and drowned in the long river of history!"

"cheers!"