Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Lu Zhou stopped walking and looked at the person who asked the question.
“Who are you?”
“Mihir Benderbauer, chairman and chief technology officer of Tri Alpha.” Benderbauer reached out his right hand to Lu Zhou and said with a smile, “It’s nice meeting you here.”
Tri Alpha?
Lu Zhou raised his eyebrows.
He had obviously heard of Tri Alpha, one of the biggest companies in the controllable nuclear fusion field.
It was a privately owned commercial controllable nuclear fusion company. The parent organization behind this company was Google, the company with a “clean energy complex”.
In order to speed up the experimental progress of Tri Alpha’s C2-U machine, Google utilized its advantage in software engineering and tailored a specific “Optometrist Algorithm” for them. This algorithm used a stochastic perturbation method combined with the human choice to generate the plasma required for the nuclear fusion experiment in a much efficient manner.
Google wasn’t the only nutty one; Tri Alpha itself was also very competitive. The company independently developed a “field-reversed configuration (FRC)” machine. The outside of this machine looked like a long cylinder with several small cylindrical chambers inside the cylinder. This machine could increase the plasma temperature much more efficiently than conventional microwave heating.
There was no doubt that the Optometrist Algorithm and the field-reversed configuration machine were considered advanced technologies in the controllable fusion field.
However, Lu Zhou always felt like they had put their attention and focus on weird places.
After all, neither an advanced human-computer interaction algorithm nor a faster way to increase plasma temperature was a difficult bottleneck in the controllable nuclear fusion field.
Lu Zhou shook his right hand and said, “It’s nice meeting you too… Do you want something from me?”
Benderbauer smiled and said, “Can we talk in private?”
Lu Zhou looked at Professor Li Changxia and gave his suitcase to him.
“Sorry to bother you.”
Professor Li Changxia smiled and said, “It’s fine, I’ll head upstairs first.”
Lu Zhou: “Okay, I’ll be there in a sec.”
Lu Zhou followed Benderbauer and walked to a cafe next to the hotel.
After they found a quiet place to sit down, Benderbauer picked up a menu.
“Do you want anything?”
“A mocha is good.”
“One mocha and one black coffee, please.”
“Okay, sir.” The waiter quickly wrote down their order on a notepad and left while taking the menus with him.
The coffee soon arrived at their table.
Lu Zhou looked at the coffee on the table and leaned back against his chair. He then asked, “Now, can you tell me what you plan on talking about with me?”
Benderbauer placed his interlocked fingers on the table and looked at Lu Zhou with interest. “I heard you’re interested in nuclear fusion research?”
Lu Zhou nodded and said, “Yeah, it’s a very challenging and meaningful research project.”
Benderbauer: “Can I ask if it’s spiritually meaningful or financially meaningful?”
Lu Zhou: “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I just said.” Benderbauer took a sip of coffee, the bitterness made him pucker his face. He dropped two sugar cubes into his cup and looked at Lu Zhou as he said, “If it’s the latter, why don’t you consider working with me?”
“Oh yeah?”
“Whether it’s a billion or two billion USD, that’s other people’s money. It’s not yours. If we join forces, we can expand our company and then go public. 10 billion, or 100 billion, it’s all possible.
“What do you think about my proposal? Mr. Genius Professor Lu, youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history,” Benderbauer had a smile on his face as he said, “I can promise you, you will have at least 5% equity, and its value will far exceed your imagination.”
Is he…
Trying to get me on his side?
Lu Zhou smiled and shook his head when he heard this request. He put down his cup of coffee.
“I originally thought you were planning on talking about the FRC device.
“Thanks for your coffee, but also no thanks. I can’t help you.”
Benderbauer obviously didn’t expect Lu Zhou to refuse so swiftly, so he paused for a second.
He saw Lu Zhou stand up and couldn’t help but ask, “… Why?”
Lu Zhou shook his head and said, “There’s an old saying in Chinese, those who have different beliefs shouldn’t work together.”
Benderbauer was astonished. He looked at Lu Zhou and asked in disbelief, “Don’t tell me… You’re actually planning on achieving nuclear fusion?”
Lu Zhou: “Why don’t you ask the researchers in your company this question? I’m sure they’ll give you a more reliable and rigorous response from a professional’s perspective.”
“I don’t talk about this problem with them, it’s meaningless. Their answer is always the same.” Benderbauer shook his head and said, “Anyone betting on ten years in the future is a genius, anyone betting on twenty years is a dumb*ss.”
Lu Zhou smiled and replied, “What a coincidence, my answer is the same.”
1st of July.
The International Controllable Nuclear Fusion Conference officially began.
On the first day of the conference, Dian Cili and Fei Jingti ate their breakfast and came to the lecture hall yawning. They walked into the first conference seminar and found a seat in the back row.
Their supervisor, Professor Yu Jinsong, couldn’t come due to some urgent matters. Therefore, before they got here, Professor Yu Jinsong assigned them some special tasks. Not only did he specify which seminars they had to attend, but he also asked them to make detailed notes about the seminar.
Therefore, they couldn’t just goof off at the conference as usual.
The seminar report soon began.
The person on stage was Professor Botham from the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. His report was on a plasma interaction experiment discovery.
The pair took out their notebooks. Regardless of whether or not they understood the seminar, they still felt like they should take notes of the important parts.
When the seminar was halfway done, Fei Jingti’s eyelids were feeling heavy, and he suddenly lowered his voice as he said to his friend, “Over the past six months of reading theses, I discovered something very interesting.”
Dian Cili: “What?”
Fei Jingti: “If you explain a very easy concept using academic terminology, you can confuse anyone.”
Dian Cili: “Like what?”
Fei Jingti: “Just like so-called ‘trivial’ content we find in theses. Maybe the author of the thesis only meant that the laboratory person who was responsible for checking the thesis thought it’s ‘trivial’. Or sentences like ‘according to our statistically-based predictions’, which basically means, ‘we just made an estimate, don’t take it seriously’.”
Dian Cili: “Can you give a more specific example?”
Fei Jingti: “A more specific example? Like the thesis you’re holding right now, look at the last few lines. ‘We hope our research can motivate scholars to explore more deeply into this field…’”
Dian Cili was curious. “What does that mean?”
Fei Jingti: “It means that I’m done, whoever else wants to do it, can continue doing it. I’m not doing it.”
“Pfft…”
Dian Cili huffed out a quiet laugh and slammed his forehead on the table.
Fei Jingti was muddled, and he glanced at him.
Does this guy really find it that funny?
Professor Botham was standing on stage with his back turned against the blackboard, which was full of calculations. He spoke in a warm and slow voice.
“… We used a high-order harmonic XUV generated by a high-intensity laser and plasma interaction to measure the structure of plasma with a high image resolution.
“As shown in the PowerPoint, we received a very interesting data set from the observations and derived a series of conclusions based on these results.
“This involved a multi-scale analysis of non-linear growth and compressed turbulence… It’s not an easy task to solve. Fortunately, we have produced in-progress results.”
There was a commotion in the audience as the scholars and experts whispered to one another.
“… If the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy really solved this problem, then it will provide a theoretical basis for solving the magnetic surface tearing problem in the tokamak.”
“I can’t believe it… Do you think their data is reliable?”
“I don’t know, I’ll have to do my own research.”
Professor Botham was satisfied with the chatting going on around him, and a smug smile appeared on his face.
Just like he had expected, their research results were amazing enough to surprise people.
It was soon the Q&A session.
Professor Botham looked at the first person with their hand raised and nodded.
“Sir, do you have a question?”
Lu Zhou stood up and looked at the calculations on the blackboard. He then opened his mouth and spoke.
“If my guess is correct, you used a differential geometry method to solve the nonlinear equations.”
Professor Botham adjusted his glasses and looked at the Chinese scholar. He then frowned and said, “That’s correct, is there a problem?”
Lu Zhou sighed and said, “Integrating the L Manifold to solve the nonlinear topology transformation like this is incorrect. Your method is wrong, you can’t use the L Manifold like this.”
Botham wasn’t angry at the fact that he was being questioned. Instead, he laughed.
He then replied in a sarcastic tone, “I don’t know how you came to this conclusion. But in my opinion, it is nonsense. There are no problems in my calculations, I know exactly how to use the L Manifold. I don’t need you to teach me.”
The scholars caused a ruckus in the lecture hall.
Lu Zhou looked at the crowd in the venue and coughed.
“I’m the one who created the L Manifold.”