The controversy regarding the 750 GeV characteristic peak and the news of the Brookhaven National Laboratory withdrawal caused quite a stir in the international academic community. However, Lu Zhou totally ignored the controversy and continued to complete his daily tasks as usual.
There was no nuclear fusion reactor on the moon, nor was there a way to install a fusion reactor on the moon. The Pangu nuclear fusion reactor could heat an entire lake of water in a few hours. The heat exhaust port had to be replaced to prevent the accumulation of excessive heat. The absence of an atmosphere on the moon made things more troubleso.
Also, there was a high power demand on the moon. Even though the collider consud a significant amount of power, it was only turned on for minutes at a ti. Currently, the collider was powered by solar energy, which was stored in the form of chemical energy. It took three days just to charge enough for three minutes of experintation ti.
However, there was a problem with this. The moon’s daily cycle was 27.3 days, half of which was night, so the day ti was only around 13 days, which was enough to fully charge the collider 4 tis.
In other words, there were only 4 experint opportunities a month. Each experint opportunity was extrely critical and important.
At the ILHCRC headquarters.
After Luo Wenxuan gave Lu Zhou the latest experintal data, he spoke.
“It’s going to be dark soon, we’ll be able to do one more experint this month.”
Lu Zhou looked at the docunt and frowned.
He suddenly gently sighed and placed the docunt on the table.
“If only we could run a few more tests and collect more data, our chances of success will be higher.”
Luo Wenxuan: “We can... Last ti, during a eting, soone suggested to that a set of solar power arrays and a power storage facility can be built next to the collider. We’ll be able to increase the experint frequency by 1.5-2 tis.”
Lu Zhou: “How much will it cost?”
Luo Wenxuan awkwardly said, “A conservative estimate is around one billion USD.”
A billion USD...
Lu Zhou heard this number and couldn’t help but cringe.
Even he would have a hard ti spending so much money at once.
The ILHCRC had a fixed budget of approximately two to three billion USD per year, which was split among all countries. This was quite plentiful compared to CERN’s budget of one billion a year.
However, spending almost half of the budget at the beginning of the year was quite risky.
After all, for such a huge research institute like the ILHCRC, the collider wasn’t the only thing they needed to spend money on.
Not to ntion that adding a solar array would double the maintenance costs. Even though increasing the number of experints per month sounded tempting, adding solar arrays was only a temporary solution.
The 750 GeV experint proposal was already risky enough; they didn’t want to add any more risk.
Lu Zhou tapped his index finger on the table. After contemplating for a while, he shook his head and spoke.
“Not a good idea. The collider pipeline has to undergo maintenance after each experint. Increasing the experint frequency will increase the maintenance cost...”
Not to ntion this would also decrease the lifespan of the collider.
The high-energy particles caused permanent radiation damage to the collider material. The higher the energy level of the collision experint, the greater the damage and maintenance cost.
The Lunar Hadron Collider wasn’t the only collider that had this problem; high-energy collision experints all over the world were cursed by the radiation damages.
“Money is still the problem. Once the collider is turned on, we’ll be burning through cash...” Luo Wenxuan sighed and said, “If only we can make money on the moon.”
Lu Zhou smiled when he heard this. He shook his head.
Make money on the moon?
He wasn’t the only one that had this idea. Many people, including Chen Yushan, had suggested this idea to him.
Obviously, it was difficult to profit from the moon at this stage. He would have to complete his “Control of Earth and Moon” mission chain first before he could make money off the moon.
Lu Zhou: “Don’t worry about money. Money can’t solve all of our problems. Also, New Year is in a few days. When the last experint finishes, we should all go ho for the holidays.”
Luo Wenxuan sighed and spoke.
“Okay then.”
...
The last experint in January 2024 ended with “sparks” flying across a pipeline 360,000 kiloters away.
The long night cycle began as the collider entered maintenance mode, preparing for next month’s experint.
Although the experint was over, Lu Zhou wasn’t relieved at all.
Over the past few weeks, he had been attending etings from various ILHCRC research groups, listening to data presentations by the heads of departnts. He would also et with experts at the ILHCRC to discuss the collected experintal data and form new experint plans.
The huge amount of data made it impossible for him to carefully examine each data segnt in detail. He had to rely on his mathematics and physics intuition to connect the dots.
He still rembered seven years ago, when he listened to CERN’s experintal data reports as an intern.
But now, he had gone from an intern to an academic leader, soone that led the future of physics research.
He felt quite nostalgic.
But now was not the ti to get sentintal.
The amount of work made Lu Zhou wish he could clone himself so that he could attend etings and work in his office at the sa ti.
Eleven o’clock in the morning.
Inside the conference room.
As Lu Zhou looked at the experintal data, his eyebrows furrowed.
The results from the last experint were not ideal. Judging from the data collected by several detectors, even though there was a 750 GeV characteristic peak, the confidence level was below three sigmas.
Lu Zhou was looking at a Dalitz plot when he suddenly noticed a series of green dots hovering below 125 GeV.
“It wasn’t a total failure, at least the data we collected in the low-energy range is consistent with the results from CERN. Even though the 750 GeV characteristic peak seems to be weak, the experint data tells us that this is unlikely just a random occurrence.”
The people at the conference table looked at each other.
It sounded like Lu Zhou was trying to convince him that the situation “wasn’t too bad”.
After contemplating for a while, Witten spoke.
“Then what do you think this is?”
“I can only make a guess...” Lu Zhou paused for a second and said, “The matter that makes up the elentary particles is sothing we can’t directly observe or understand. For example... look at the clock on the wall.”
Everyone turned toward the clock.
Lu Zhou paused for a second before speaking.
“Look at the swinging pendulum... When it’s swinging to the sides, it’s blocked by the clock case, so we can’t see it. We can only see it when it’s near the center.”
Witten pinched his chin with a look of interest on his face.
“That’s an interesting analogy... So what you’re saying is, we just need more ti, and the treasure will appear in front of our eyes?”
Lu Zhou said in an ambiguous way, “Sort of... Maybe we can only observe it at a certain ti.”
Frank Wilczek twisted the pen in his hand and spoke.
“How do you plan on verifying this conjecture?”
Even if it could only be observed under certain conditions, that conclusion didn’t help anyone. They were trying to find a thod of observation; they weren’t trying to find any excuses.
Lu Zhou shrugged and said, “Well, just like any conjecture, verifying it requires ti, this includes the ti crystal theory... Of course, I will design an experint to solve this problem. I’ll try to implent the experint next month.”
Witten paused for a second and said, “But it’s almost Chinese New Year, are you sure?”
“It’s fine, don’t worry about .” Lu Zhou tapped on the conference table with his pen, looked around the room, and said, “This eting is over.”
The eting ended.
Lu Zhou left the conference room and returned to his chairman office.
He asked his assistant to bring him a sandwich and a cup of coffee. He took out the eting notes he had written a mont ago and began reading.
“Where is the problem...”
As Lu Zhou pondered, he gradually started to accumulate so ideas and clues in his mind. His intuition told him that these clues were exactly what he needed.
However, these clues were too vague. Even after thinking for a long ti, he wasn’t able to find an answer.
Suddenly, a string of text suddenly appeared on the lower right corner of his laptop, and this interrupted his train of thought.
Xiao Ai: [Master! Good news! (✿゚▽゚ )]
Lu Zhou looked at the computer and said, “... What news?”
Xiao Ai: [Master, the experint was successful! (๑•̀ᄇ•́)و]
Experint?
Lu Zhou was shocked, and he quickly realized what was going on.
Xiao Ai isn’t talking about the physics experint.
It’s talking about another experint.
The experint on the Void mory...
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