Chapter 826: CERN
Lu Zhou asked a.s.sistant Zhao to make him another cup of coffee. He spent the next hour quietly listening to Luo Wenxuan’s experience at CERN over the past two months.
“The design of the lunar hadron collider is mainly done by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Inst.i.tute of High Energy Physics and the Inst.i.tute of s.p.a.ce Engineering. However, the Chinese research inst.i.tutes don’t have any experience on hadron colliders, so we contacted CERN…”
Theoretical research fields had very little confidentiality. Whenever CERN had too much data on their hands, they would often hand the data to other research inst.i.tutes around the world. This was how the Internet was born. Even though there was some compet.i.tiveness when it came to groundbreaking research results, research inst.i.tutes often came to an agreement.
After the Europeans heard that China planned on building a lunar hadron collider, they were even more enthusiastic than the Chinese themselves. They sent their best LHCb and ALICE detector engineers to Beijing. Then they gave the Chinese Academy of Sciences Inst.i.tute of High Energy Physics ten research visitor spots.
Of course, this wasn’t all free.
The reason why CERN was so eager to help was that they hoped to cooperate with China in particle physics research. After the lunar hadron collider was built, more than half of the world’s high energy physics experiments would be conducted in s.p.a.ce. Hypotheses that weren’t verifiable before could now be tested in s.p.a.ce.
Out of all of the scholars from the Inst.i.tute of High Energy Physics, Luo Wenxuan worked at CERN for the longest. Naturally, he was selected as the leader of the Chinese research visitor group.
After spending two months at CERN, he had a lot to say.
“Edward Witten hasn’t been there for a long time. I’ve asked the people in charge at CERN. Apparently, he left his CERN office and mainly works at Princeton now.
“It’s not just Witten, a lot of other knowledgeable old professors are gone too. I walked around the lecture buildings and didn’t recognize any of the professors.”
Luo Wenxuan looked at the vapor rising from the coffee cup, and he sighed with a hint of sadness.
He wanted to see his old friends at CERN, but most of them were gone. They were either too old to keep working, went into another industry, or went to another research inst.i.tute.
“That’s how CERN is like, people in the theoretical physics field will work there at least once in their life, but no one knows where they could end up,” Lu Zhou said. He grabbed his coffee cup and said, “It’s just like theoretical physics itself, new things come in and old things leave.”
“Let’s not talk about this sad topic.” Luo Wenxuan smiled and shook his head. He said, “Speaking of which, I found something interesting over the past two months.”
Lu Zhou said, “What?”
Luo Wenxuan: “Do you remember? The big names at CERN like to learn French as a hobby.”
Lu Zhou smiled and nodded.
“I recall something like that.”
CERN was a place of the brightest minds in the world. Whenever someone placed a group of smart people together, there would always be compet.i.tion.
They obviously couldn’t compete in mathematics or physics. After all, they were all at the top of their fields. Also, it wasn’t like they could compare their research results against one another; it would be like comparing apples with oranges.
However, if someone could learn a language in a month or even a week or two, that would undoubtedly prove someone’s intelligence above others.
This might sound unbelievable, but the big names in physics who worked at CERN could often go from being totally clueless about French to being able to converse in French in just a couple weeks.
Not to mention that half of CERN’s facilities were located in France. Therefore learning French and holding lectures in French was one of their favorite “hobbies”.
When Lu Zhou first visited CERN, he didn’t partic.i.p.ate in this unique hobby. He heard about it from the other professors who worked there.
For example, Frank Wilczek once bragged to Lu Zhou that he was able to learn French in two weeks…
“It seems like the situation has changed.” Luo Wenxuan smiled and said, “Learning French is out of style now. It seems like, the new way of bragging about one’s intelligence is to learn Chinese.”
“Learn Chinese?”
“That’s right.” Luo Wenxuan smiled and said, “Apparently, the official language of the Moon Palace is Chinese and that the Moon Palace research results posted online are also in Chinese. As you know, translating theoretical physics in Google is an absolute disaster. This forced many scholars to start learning Chinese.”
“… How unfortunate.”
Lu Zhou smiled and awkwardly rubbed his nose.
It seemed like this was his fault.
Even though there was no strict rule that the Moon Palace-produced theses had to be in Chinese, the observational data published and the experimental results published on the Moon Palace website were all in Chinese.
This made life much more difficult for international scholars…
However, China was the one that built the Moon Palace, so they had the right to publish in their native language.
In some sense, this was a power move.
English was a necessary skill for scientific researchers to master. However, improving the influence of one’s native tongue in the academic world was also a scholar’s responsibility.
If everything went well, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Moon Palace would set up an independent journal to only publish research results from the Moon Palace.
By then, not only would the research data be in Chinese, even the journals would be in Chinese as well.
“Speaking of which, even though I didn’t see my own friends at CERN, I saw your friend.”
Lu Zhou: “Mine?”
“Professor Frank Wilczek.” Luo Wenxuan shrugged and smiled. He said, “He told me to ask you; how’s your research on the 750 GeV signal going? CERN did another experiment and didn’t even find a 1 sigma signal.”
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Tell him next time, that after the lunar hadron collider is complete, I’ll give him an answer…”
Luo Wenxuan smiled and said, “Oh, really now? I’m looking forward to it then.”