651 I Have Questions
University of Oxford, lecture hall.
The venue was fully seated.
The scholars sitting in the venue either chatted with each other or flipped through the thesis print-out and report summary…
The noisy venue was like music for Brian Caro’s ears. In half an hour, he would become one of the greatest mathematical physicists of this century. He would place down the last piece of the Yang-Mills equations puzzle and win a million USD in prize money… Or at least a third of the prize money.
For a scholar working in the theoretical field, this prize money was quite substantial.
Of course, his motivation for solving this problem wasn’t the prize money. In his opinion, money and honor were bonuses.
So why did he try and solve this problem?
Because pus.h.i.+ng civilization forward was a pleasant thing in and of itself.
There was still fifteen minutes until the report. Most of the partic.i.p.ants had already arrived. The ones that still hadn’t arrived, probably wouldn’t end up coming. The security guard standing at the entrance of the lecture hall opened the doors and allowed some of the people, who didn’t receive the invitation letters, into the venue.
Professor Brian was wearing a black suit. He stood at the venue hallway and looked at his watch. He looked at the venue entrance and seemed a little disappointed.
A waiter wearing a black suit and a bow-tie walked over.
Professor Brian looked at the waiter and immediately asked, “Is Professor Lu here?”
The waiter paused for a second and shook his head. “No.”
Professor Brian was even more disappointed now.
However, it was what it was.
Even though it was unfortunate that Professor Lu couldn’t come, there were a lot of other big names who were attending this report. Regardless of whether or not Professor Lu was here, his report would continue.
Fifteen minutes pa.s.sed by, the report officially began.
Brian walked on stage and began to show his PowerPoint presentation. He started to talk about his main thesis ideas, as well as some of the methods he used to prove the Yang-Mills existence and ma.s.s gap.
Luo Wenxuan was in the crowd. He took a deep breath and opened his laptop that was placed on his knees.
On his laptop screen were some of the problems he discovered while researching Professor Brian’s thesis. It would be great if his questions could be answered during Professor Brian’s report, but if not, he would ask them during the Q&A session.
On the other hand, Peter G.o.ddard and Edward Witten were sitting together.
Both of them were big names in the mathematical physics world, and their main area of expertise was string theory. When they heard that Professor Brian from the University of Oxford claimed to have solved the Yang-Mills existence and ma.s.s gap, these people immediately left CERN and took a flight to the UK.
As G.o.ddard listened to Professor Brian’s talk, he sighed.
“If only Professor Lu was here.”
He was the dean of the Princeton Inst.i.tute for Advanced Study. When he received Lu Zhou’s resignation letter, he tried to convince Lu Zhou to stay. Unfortunately, he didn’t succeed. Every time he thought about Lu Zhou, he would feel a little regretful.
“He has his own matters to attend to.” Witten smiled and closed his laptop. He said, “Also, regardless of whether he is physically here or not, I believe that he won’t miss this report.”
G.o.ddard: “What do you think about Professor Brian’s thesis?”
Witten thought for a bit and said, “I need to take some time to think about it. After all, he has modified it at least a dozen times after he released the preprint. I saw the final version just a week ago. I think his proof idea is worthy of recognition, but I feel like something is wrong. If the Mathematical Physics journal wants to invite me as a reviewer, I’ll express my opinions in the review process… What do you think?”
Before the report began, Professor Brian stated that his finalized thesis would be submitted to Mathematical Physics. If everything went according to plan, Mathematical Physics would organize at least five people to conduct a rigorous review of this thesis.
Witten was a top mathematical physicist who had won the Fields Medal before, so Mathematical Physics obviously wouldn’t forget about him.
Of course, this was true for Peter G.o.ddard as well.
G.o.ddard went silent for a while. He then responded, “I feel the same way. His proof might be flawed… Also, I view this problem in a different way?”
Witten raised his eyebrows. “Oh really?”
G.o.ddard used a pen to draw four points on his notebook as he said, “Set a four-dimensional gauge field with SU(N) or SO(N) and SP(N) as the norm group. This might be equivalent to the 1/n chord coupling constant in string theory… If this is the case, both the ma.s.s gap and the quark confinement can be perfectly explained.”
Witten raised his eyebrows as he said, “From the perspective of string theory?”
G.o.ddard nodded at him and said, “Yes.”
Witten smiled and said, “Your opinion is interesting. Maybe we can go for a cup of coffee after the report finishes.”
G.o.ddard smiled and said, “Haha, only if you’re paying.”
In the midst of talking about a new proof idea, these two didn’t realize that in the back of their minds, they had no hope for this report anymore.
Two hours pa.s.sed by, the report came to an end.
After Professor Brian finished his PowerPoint presentation, the lecture hall erupted in applause. It was time for the Q&A session.
Professor Brian made adequate preparations beforehand and answered all of the questions that were raised by scholars.
Soon, there wasn’t anyone asking questions.
Professor Brian was about to announce the end of the report when someone raised their hand.
“Wait a second.”
Professor Brian looked at the lonely hand in the crowd and frowned. However, he quickly smiled cheerfully.
“Yes?”
Luo Wenxuan took a deep breath and closed his laptop. He then stood up.
Witten was sitting on the other side of the lecture hall, and he suddenly had a look of surprise on his face.
G.o.ddard looked at him and said, “You know him?”
Witten looked at Luo Wenxuan, who was standing up, and said, “Of course, he was my student.”
Even though Luo Wenxuan had attended more than two dozen reports, being stared at by so many scholars still gave him a lot of pressure.
He calmed himself down and then looked at Professor Brian.
“I have a question.”
Brian: “Go ahead.”
Luo Wenxuan: “On page 11, line 15, I noticed that you defined the constant amount of motion in the torus Euclidean s.p.a.cetime… Is that correct?”
Brian lifted his chin and said, “Of course, we use the Euclidean s.p.a.cetime to formalize the lattice point, this is crucial to the entire theorem argument.”
“Like you said, this is important, but…” Luo Wenxuan took a deep breath before asking, “But how do you plan on proving that the grid step size is zero?”