Chapter 1290: Straighten s.p.a.ce-Time
At the ILHCRC headquarters.
In an office with whiteboards.
Professor Wei Hong faced one of the whiteboards, which was almost full of writing. He was holding a marker in his hand. He pondered for a long time.
He then suddenly broke the silence.
“Aha!”
Professor Dobrik, who was standing next to him, asked quickly, “What?”
Just now, with Luo Wenxuan, the three people were discussing the problem of “possible causes of the gravitational field disturbance by the Z particles.” Wei Hong gave a possibility from a mathematical point of view on the whiteboard.
However, while the other two were listening carefully, he suddenly stopped talking. He stood there for a long time, as if his thoughts were stuck by something.
Professor Dobrik thought he had discovered an amazing idea, so he quickly looked at him.
Professor Wei Hong pondered for about two minutes. He molded the ideas in his mind into simple and understandable language before speaking.
“The essence of gravity is the bending of the object’s own s.p.a.ce-time. The Z particles moving from high to low dimensions do not interfere with the gravitational field itself, but they change the curvature of s.p.a.ce-time relative to the gravitational field.”
He picked up a pen and drew two parallel circles on the whiteboard, connecting the upper and lower ends of the circles with two arcs.
“This is the curvature in s.p.a.ce-time. a.s.sume that the curvature is x. a.s.suming that the two lines are the lines of the gravitational field in conventional s.p.a.ce-time, when the Z particle oscillates at both ends, the value of x changes and is reduced to infinitely close to zero. These two arcs can also be infinitely straightened, approaching a straight line—”
As Luo Wenxuan watched the two clean straight lines drawn by Professor Wei Hong between the two arcs, he had a look of surprise on his face.
“I understand what you mean, but it sounds… a bit weird. In other words, we only need two lunar hadron colliders to create a portal at the other end of the galaxy?”
Wei Hong shook his head.
“This a.n.a.logy is not quite accurate. Technically, it is more like a highway between two undulating peaks.”
According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, matter and time (s.p.a.ce-time) would bend due to the existence of matter. In the cla.s.sical universe where the matter was ubiquitous, the universe was directly observable.
In this curved universe, a straight line traveled from A to B. But in fact, in a high-dimensional universe, it traveled in a curved line.
If Wei Hong’s conjecture was correct, this meant that they might “straighten” the curly s.p.a.ce-time in some way and directly follow a true “straight line” through the curly universe, to go where they wanted to go.
Using Mars as an example, the closest distance between Mars and Earth was 55 million kilometers, and it would take 182 seconds to travel this distance at the speed of light.
However, if the curved s.p.a.ce-time between the two was “straightened”, this distance could be shortened to 5.5 million or even 550,000 kilometers.
Therefore, even if humans didn’t have a method to surpa.s.s the speed of light, they could still actually break through the limit of the speed of light and travel through the universe in a very short amount of time.
Luo Wenxuan was shocked by the broad prospects unfolding behind this theory. He was stunned for a long time before he gradually revealed a serious expression.
“Is there a way to prove it?” he asked.
“It’s difficult.” Wei Hong looked at the calculations on the whiteboard with a solemn expression. He gradually showed a bitter smile as he said, “Actually, it is very difficult. This involves many complex sub-problems, and also, it is related to the most complex problem: high-dimensional differential manifolds and algebraic geometry. It’s no exaggeration to say that if this problem is abstracted into a mathematical problem, its difficulty is on the level of the Poincaré conjecture!”
Luo Wenxuan and Professor Dobrik looked at each other.
Even for the latter, who was not proficient at mathematics, he was aware of the seven Millennium Prize Problems.
Poincaré conjecture was the crown of differential geometry, and it took nearly a century of hard work by three generations of mathematicians to remove it from the top of the mountain.
If the difficulty of solving this problem was more difficult than Poincaré conjecture…
Then they would have almost no chance of succeeding.
“If we can prove this conclusion, our names will go down in history,” Professor Dobrik said.
Luo Wenxuan smiled and said, “It’s more than just history… We’ll be on the same level as Einstein.”
This was the portal to the edge of the galaxy!
Whoever could find this portal would be the founding father of the interstellar age.
Even if it only provided a theoretical way of navigation between star systems, it would still be significant. If someone in the distant future achieved long-distance navigation using their theories, then they would receive more honor than Newton and Einstein combined.
Professor Wei Hong also sighed softly.
“It’s unfortunate, but this theory is not something ordinary people can complete… At least it is beyond the scope of my ability.”
“What about Professor Witten?”
“If he were in his thirties, maybe he could, but now… It’s basically impossible.” Wei Hong continued after a pause, “So far, the most promising person to solve this problem is Professor Lu.”
Luo Wenxuan saw the way the two looked at him.
“What are you looking at me for?”
Professor Wei Hong said, “You have the best relations.h.i.+p with Professor Lu… We have a higher success chance if you ask him for help.”
Dobrik nodded quickly in agreement.
“I think so too.”
The experience of being detained at Jinling Airport was scarring.
“Even if I want to, there’s no way. I am his friend… But he is in a retreat. It is almost impossible to contact him.”
Luo Wenxuan’s face couldn’t help but show a helpless expression.
To be honest, he wondered if he was Lu Zhou’s friend or Lu Zhou’s student.
Professor Dobrik didn’t want to give up, and he tried one last time.
“But… How will you know if you don’t try?”
“Even if we do manage to contact him, he is unlikely to invest a lot of time on a theory that is unlikely to be applied… Unless it is really worth it.”
Luo Wenxuan shrugged and continued, “So, for us, the only way now is to write our conjecture in a paper and publish it. If it arouses his interest, this problem might be solved. If not… I think it is not worth wasting too much time on it.”
This was the best solution.
From what Luo Wenxuan knew about Lu Zhou, even though he would hardly reply to messages when he was in a retreat, he would not completely isolate himself from academia.
He would still read the latest research papers.
If Lu Zhou didn’t respond…
Then it meant that Lu Zhou didn’t think this research project was worthy of his time.
If this was the case, then Luo Wenxuan felt that they might as well give up.
After all, exceeding the speed of light sounded a bit ridiculous. To be honest, he was doubtful even now. After all, there were more reliable explanations.
“This is our only choice…”
After a moment of silence, Professor Wei Hong nodded. Although he didn’t like to wait for something uncertain, there seemed to be no better choice.
“… I will use as much mathematics as possible to describe this conjecture in a more formal manner.”
Luo Wenxuan looked at him and nodded.
“Then I’ll have to thank you in advance.”
The three were preparing to return to the previous discussion.
However, the phone in Luo Wenxuan’s pocket suddenly rang.
“Wait a minute… I have to answer this.”
As the Secretary-General of the ILHCRC, he always had to answer a large number of work calls every day.
Even though he wanted to leave these calls aside, considering that Lu Zhou was a “hands-off” kind of chairman, he could only bite the bullet and take on Lu Zhou’s work.
There was no contact name, but Luo Wenxuan still answered the call.
Wei Hong and Dobrik did not bother him. They stopped discussing the topic and waited for their teammate to return.
However, instead of Luo Wenxuan’s footsteps, they heard a strange cry from the distance. That voice probably belonged to Professor Luo Wenxuan, but it was very high pitched—
Almost like his voice was traveling through curved s.p.a.ce-time.
Dobrik looked at Wei Hong and asked, “What is he saying?”
“I don’t know…”
Wei Hong glanced at the direction Luo Wenxuan was in with a bewildered look. Just when Wei Hong hesitated whether to go outside the room and see what happened, he saw Luo Wenxuan walk in with a dazed look on his face.
Professor Dobrik quickly got up and asked, “What happened?”
Wei Hong stood up too.
“Who was on the phone?’
“Lu Zhou…”
Luo Wenxuan gulped. He said, “Just now… we were discussing whether oscillating Z particles can bend s.p.a.ce-time, right?”
“Yeah… Why?!”
Professor Wei Hong suddenly realized what was going on. Luo Wenxuan nodded and spoke.
“Yeah.
“He proved it.
“Just a few minutes ago.
“A mathematical proof…”