Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Wilson Ohanian was a physics professor at Stanford University, and he was mainly involved in particle physics research. As the former winner of the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize, he was regarded as one of the outstanding young physicists that had emerged in recent years.
Even though he was bathed in the envious gaze from his peers, only Ohanian himself knew how difficult the road he had chosen was.
Because of technology limitations, they still couldn’t verify if the conjectures from the last century were correct. The exploration of the future had hardly begun.
Fortunately, the Chinese, who had suddenly become rich in recent years, had generously built a collider larger than CERN on the moon. This had fast tracked the development of particle physics.
For example, the Z particle.
This particle was discovered in the high-dimensional world at the end of last year. It had broadened the research of particle physics to the invisible world.
Lu Zhou, who discovered this particle, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2023 because of this groundbreaking discovery. He became a candidate for the most outstanding physicist of the century.
Ohanian saw the broad prospects behind this research area at a glance. He immediately changed his research area and began researching the Z particle. He achieved quite good results for the research on the “dimensional change of the Z particle”.
If everything went well, he would win the next Dirac Medal.
However…
Something didn’t go well.
“This is bull crap…
“Hyperspace channel? The curvature of spacetime?
“According to this, I only need to dig a hole in the ground to get to the other side of the galaxy?”
Ohanian cursed and threw the paper in his hand into the trash can. He didn’t hesitate to express his contempt for the theory of “hyperspace channel” and “spacetime curvature change”.
In fact, his contempt was not without reason.
In general relativity, if the topological structure of space changed in a bounded area, then a closed time curve in the spacetime range would exist where this change occurred.
The time curve was the physical trajectory of a mass object in spacetime.
A popular explanation for this was that changing the topology of space was forbidden by general relativity!
This was not a just conjecture, it was a theorem proven by Stephen Hawking.
In fact, Ohanian had a similar idea a long time ago when he saw the disturbance of the gravitational field when the Z particle fell from a high dimension to a low dimension.
However, this idea was quickly denied by himself.
Because if he wanted to prove or disprove this idea, he would need a huge amount of calculation to support it. Even mathematicians who specialized in topology and algebraic geometry would find it difficult.
He verified this with a mathematics professor at Stanford University.
Therefore, he preferred believing in another explanation.
Which was that, when the Z particle moved from a high dimension to a low dimension, a loss of mass would occur. This loss of mass in dimensionality would eventually lead to a decrease in the gravitation observed in classical spacetime.
And where did this part of gravity go?
He thought it could be an extra dimension.
However, this paper completely went against his research. It seemed like the Dirac Medal was out of his reach…
The office assistant stood tremblingly beside him, afraid to speak to the angry professor.
After the professor seemed to have calmed down a little, the assistant gulped and whispered, “But the author of this paper is Professor Lu…”
The air in the office froze.
Professor Ohanian, who was reaching for his coffee cup, froze.
“What did you say?”
“The paper was written by Professor Lu… He posted it on arXiv. I followed your instructions and printed out all the papers worth seeing in this research area.”
The corners of his mouth twitched. With a stiff expression on his face, Professor Ohanian asked, “Is he the corresponding author?”
This happened from time to time. Not all supervisors had the time to correct every paper their students wrote. For academic leaders like Lu Zhou, maybe he didn’t even remember how many students he had.
It was helpful to put the name of a great scholar as the corresponding author. It could prevent the reviewing editor from throwing the paper into the trash can, and the attitude of the scholars who peer-reviewed the paper would also be more cautious.
If Professor Lu was only the corresponding author, it didn’t mean he had participated in the research. Perhaps he hadn’t even read this paper.
After all, the papers listed on arXiv weren’t published; they were just preprints…
“He is the only author…” The words that came from his assistant’s mouth completely shattered Ohanian’s hopes. He said, “His name is the only name…”
There was a long silence in the office.
After a minute went by, Ohanian suddenly sighed. He stood up with his hands on the armrest and walked to the trash can.
He picked up the crumpled pages from the trash can and took them back to the desk. After he spread them out, Ohanian sat down patiently and read the entire 20-page paper from beginning to end.
After about half an hour, he muttered, “Well… I can’t be too sure, even though it sounds ridiculous, it’s not necessarily completely wrong.”
The assistant looked at his grumpy boss in amazement. It took only half an hour for Ohanian to completely change his attitude. The assistant standing in the office almost doubted whether the person sitting here was the real Ohanian. The Ohanian he knew used to berate others for having a different academic point of view.
The assistant gulped and said, “Professor.”
Professor Ohanian replied without looking up, “What?”
Assistant: “If he is correct… What does it mean?”
“What does it mean? Haha, what does it mean…”
As if he was going crazy, Professor Ohanian grinned and stared at the paper motionlessly.
“It means that the spacetime view of general relativity will be subverted. Our understanding of classical spacetime will change… In fact, that’s not all.
“The most important thing is…”
Professor Ohanian was halfway through a sentence. He stopped speaking for a long time. The young assistant, who was holding his breath, couldn’t help but ask, “The most important thing is?”
Professor Ohanian spoke with confidence and certainty.
“The most important thing is that this means of traveling faster than the speed of light might be possible.
“The science fiction movies you’ve seen, whether it’s Hollywood or elsewhere…
“At least half of the technology in the movies could become real.”