Chapter 438: Thank You Letter From Max Planck Inst.i.tute?
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
[h.e.l.lo, dear Professor Lu, I am Professor Keriber from the Wendelstein 7-X laboratory. We met around this time last year, I don’t know if you remember our encounter.
[There is only one reason why I am writing you this letter. On behalf of the Max Planck Inst.i.tute for Plasma Physics, the entire controllable nuclear fusion field, and ITER, I would like to thank you.
[Actually, last month, we completed the installation of a water-cooled divertor. However, the results were not as optimal as we had hoped.
[Coincidentally, we received a thesis review letter from PRX. Using the mathematical model you provided, we redesigned the control computer’s design and scheme. Then, a miracle happened!
[You have no idea how shocked we were. The amount of stable plasma orbiting the track increased by 50%!
[I am sure, that if we continue to change the control scheme and change the orbit electric control sensitivity, this number will grow even larger. There is still a lot of potential in your mathematical model. However, due to technological constraints, we are not able to realize that potential.
[As for the calculations for the changes, we will do a report in the next IAEA-Demo meeting. If you are interested, I can get you an invitation. Of course, if you are not able to attend, you can still look at the thesis on the IAEA website.
[All in all, I have to thank you. Also, I’m sure a lot of people also have to thank you…]
Lu Zhou had a weird expression on his face after reading the letter.
What a coincidence.
The reviewer happened to be Professor Keriber?
But I guess this makes sense, the controllable nuclear fusion field is small. Plus the Wendelstein 7-X laboratory is one of the few laboratories that have a stellarator. I can’t think of a better reviewer than Keriber.
I heard running the stellarator isn’t cheap, it’s burning money on the millisecond scale.
Then I guess this might be the most expensive thesis review in PRX history…
Suddenly, Jimmy walked over.
“What’s wrong, Professor?”
“Nothing,” Lu Zhou said as he shook his head and put away his phone. He said, “I have to go, I have some matters to attend to. This is your last university compet.i.tion, make sure you do your best.”
“That’s for sure!” Jimmy smiled brightly and said in a joking tone, “I plan on getting a trophy before I graduate.”
The drone club continued to practice. After Lu Zhou said goodbye to the club members, he returned to his office at the Inst.i.tute for Advanced Study.
When he arrived at his office, Vera walked in holding a stack of doc.u.ments.
The little girl’s eyes lit up when she saw Lu Zhou. She began to report to him.
“Professor, this is the CV for next year’s spring cohort. I’ve printed them for you.”
Lu Zhou nodded and said, “Thanks, put them on my table.”
Speaking of which, there were only a couple of months left in the year.
Normally, he would be drinking coffee while carefully picking out a few excellent CVs from the pile. Then he’d find an afternoon to conduct some interviews before he finally decided on which “lucky” students would receive his precious offer.
However, he didn’t plan on recruiting any new students this year.
First of all, he was too busy.
Second of all, after he finished with his current students, it would be time for him to return to China.
Vera asked awkwardly, “Do you want me to sort them out for you?”
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “No need, I’ll do it myself.”
“Okay then.”
Vera nodded and walked to her desk. She returned back to minding her own business.
Wei Wen was sitting nearby. When he saw Lu Zhou didn’t even touch the pile of CVs, he suddenly asked, “You’re not recruiting new students?”
Lu Zhou said, “Nope, I’m too busy.”
Wei Wen nodded thoughtfully and didn’t say anything.
I guess I have to hurry up and finish my graduation thesis…
Wei Wen shook away these thoughts and focused his attention on work.
…
The new thesis on PRX caused a sensation in the plasma physics world.
Actually, it wasn’t just the plasma physics field. Due to the content of the thesis, it also caused a sensation in applied mathematics, fluid mechanics, and even weather fields.
Before this thesis, turbulence was a well known unsolvable chaotic system.
And plasma turbulence was one of the most complicated turbulence problems.
Many scholars in the related fields were surprised by Lu Zhou’s thesis.
Because this was too unexpected.
If Lu Zhou didn’t solve the Navier–Stokes equation of the Millennium Prize Problem, or if he wasn’t a famous scholar with a good reputation, most people would’ve thought this was an April Fool’s joke.
The thesis contained a large amount of complicated mathematical methods. For people that didn’t have a background in differential geometry and partial differential equation, understanding Lu Zhou’s thesis would be extremely difficult. Even for people that did have a background in mathematics, they would have to read Lu Zhou’s L Manifold thesis that was published in Annual Mathematics first.
For the people that did bother to read and understand the thesis, they were immediately shocked by the mathematical methods used.
This was just like half a century ago when Robert Kraichnan used the quantum field theory to research a turbulence pulsating energy that satisfied the Navier-Stokes equations. This was the only self-consistent momentum-based conversation theory to date, the DIA theory, thus inventing the modern “turbulence a.n.a.lysis theory”.
Lu Zhou’s work was in some sense, similar to his, or even a level above his.
Because no one had ever thought one could tackle turbulence in this way!
Two weeks after the thesis publication, the thesis caused a commotion in the academic community.
In the latest Physical Review Letters, well-known plasma physicist Professor Dieter Hoffman, former dean of the nuclear physics department at the Darmstadt University of Technology, was invited to write a commentary on Lu Zhou’s thesis. He portrayed his shocking views on the industry.
“… His mathematical model idea is very unique, but his theoretical tools used are nothing new. After all, the L Manifold tool was already published a couple of months ago in Annual Mathematics, which was later used to solve the Navier–Stokes equations.
“Normally, applying mathematics into physics is a physicist’s job. After a reliable tool is born, testing its reliability is only a matter of time.
“If this thesis didn’t exist, a similar thesis would have come out in five to ten years time. Everything that followed would have also happened in five to ten years.
“He alone made ten years worth of progress in this field.”