Chapter 619 Something Only I Can Do

Sheng Xianfu was stunned.

When handing in the paper, he even prepared to be satirized.

However, he didn't expect that his wild idea would be recognized by Lu Zhou.

"Cold nuclear fusion is not a proposition to make fun of. In fact, many things that cannot be done are not because it is wrong, but because we don't know enough about the universe."

Standing up from his desk, Lu Zhou walked to the solar system map hanging on the corner of the office wall, and his eyes fell on the flame that had been burning for billions of years.

"Just like we still can't fully understand the source of star power."

In a sense, the fusion reaction that occurs inside a star is also a form of cold nuclear fusion, but it doesn't look as "cold" as people can understand.

If nuclear fusion is to be realized, two protons must have enough energy to overcome the Coulomb potential barrier, making the distance between the atomic nuclei less than 10^-14 meters. To achieve this distance, the thermokinetic energy of a single atomic nucleus must reach at least the energy level of MeV.

However, in fact, the average thermokinetic energy of atomic nuclei in stars only reaches the energy level of KeV.

A very intuitive order of magnitude comparison can prove that thermal kinetic energy alone cannot overcome the Coulomb potential barrier to promote nuclear fusion. Even considering the effect of gravity, the fusion reaction inside a star is strictly unscientific.

From the perspective of classical mechanics, it is difficult to explain this "unscientific" phenomenon.

Therefore, a concept in quantum mechanics has to be introduced.

That is, the quantum tunneling effect.

Although this concept may sound a bit obscure, in fact, as long as you understand the wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle, it is not difficult to understand its connotation.

In quantum mechanics, all research objects are in an uncertain state, and its definite range satisfies a relationship.

Take a common small ball in classical mechanics as an example. A small ball is placed in front of a high mountain. According to the concept of classical mechanics, only when the speed of the small ball is large enough can the high mountain be crossed. If its speed is not enough, it may run out of kinetic energy when it reaches the halfway up the mountain, and eventually roll where it came from.

However, in quantum mechanics, even if the speed of the ball may not be very high, when rolling towards the mountain, it still has a certain probability of being able to pass through.

If the mountain is replaced by a potential barrier, and the ball is replaced by atoms, it is the reason why fusion reactions can occur in stars.

Although the energy of the nucleus is much smaller than the potential of the Coulomb potential barrier, due to the existence of the quantum tunneling effect, the proton can still pass through the Coulomb potential barrier and fall into the embrace of another proton. It is precisely because of this probabilistic burning that stars can burn steadily for billions of years, instead of exploding in an instant and exhausting all their fuel.

"Cold nuclear fusion is actually feasible, or to put it another way, it is theoretically possible to make fusion reactions happen when the macroscopic conditions of fusion are not reached, but we have not yet Finding a suitable method has not advanced the theory enough to fully reveal the mystery."

"To solve the miniaturization problem of controllable fusion, we must start from the essence, understand what the strong interaction is, and use a definite model to unify it with electromagnetic interaction," said Lu Zhou, holding the The paper was returned to Sheng Xianfu. After a pause, he continued, "If we can use a definite model to unify the strong interaction and electromagnetic interaction, our project will go much smoother."

"In fact, I have not given up on research on the miniaturization of controlled fusion."

"It's just because, at present, it seems that only I can do theoretical work."

...

Regarding the general solution of the Yang-Mills equation, Lu Zhou has made some progress, but several key difficulties still cannot be solved. But he is not in a hurry, there is a report meeting to be held soon, and after the report meeting is over, he still has enough time to think about this issue slowly.

In this way, time passed day by day, and soon it was May.

With the completion of the two courses of Computational Materials Science and Number Theory, Lu Zhou is now only waiting for the papers published by a few students to be published before he can receive the system task reward.

What's more interesting is that he found that this reward mission is more Buddhist than the previous missions, and there is no time limit for receiving the reward. Theoretically, if he doesn't want to finish it, he can even pull a few students to get the total number of impact factors up to the sky before handing in the task.

However, it seems meaningless to continue dragging like this.

Compared with a little impact factor of only 1000 free experience points and 10 points, even if it is thousands of points, it is only 100,000.

However, this is clearly impossible.

Lu Zhou has already made up his mind to publish as many papers as he can before June. It's okay if he can't make it in time, he has almost had a rest in the past six months, it's better to start the next task earlier.

Three days before the start of the report, Professor Claus von Klitzing from Germany arrived in Jinling ahead of schedule. He met Lu Zhou who was returning from the last class of computing materials in the laboratory building of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences on the new campus of Jinda University. .

"Long time no see." After giving Lu Zhou a warm hug, Professor Klitzing smiled and said, "I didn't expect it to be less than two years, and your name has to be given to the old fellows of the Nobel Prize selection committee." I have a headache."

Lu Zhou smiled: "Maybe."

"No maybe, anyway, no matter whether they will consider a scholar who has just won the Nobel Prize, I will nominate you." Having said this, Professor Klitzing suddenly smiled and continued, "Speaking of which, this time Before Huaguo, Professor Kleber asked me to bring you a word."

"Uh, what words?"

"He said you were a terrible opponent," Professor Klitzing said with a smile, shrugging his shoulders. "He said that the most regrettable thing in his life is to show off his laboratory to you. Thanks to you, he is now being The technology department is overwhelmed. The bureaucrats in the technology department saw that you solved this problem with your fingers, and thought that controllable nuclear fusion is actually a very simple matter... It is said that they had a meeting last time, Spiral Stone 7- The engineer from the X lab almost got into a fight with the secretary of the technical department."

Hearing this sentence, Lu Zhou coughed lightly in embarrassment.

"This...I'm sorry. If he thinks it's unfair, I'll show him around the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study in the future."

"Haha, I was just joking," Klitzing smiled and patted him on the shoulder, "He doesn't hate you, and even... thank you very much. After all, without your plasma turbulence model, the simulation star The research on the device is probably still in a marginalized state. What's more, if his laboratory is the first to complete controllable fusion, I think he will probably make the same choice."

Lu Zhou made a helpless expression, "I hope my research won't cause him any trouble."

"How could it be? Besides, maybe we will have the opportunity to cooperate in the future," Klitsin smiled, and continued, "Several major ITER member states have reached an agreement with Huaguo. Make an exchange on the Internet. About five years, the content of the agreement will be gradually implemented. "

After hearing Klitzing's words, Lu Zhou nodded.

Five years is a good buffer period.

Because it is uncertain whether this problem can be solved in the short term, other countries are naturally unwilling to exchange their own chips prematurely, and Huaguo also does not want controllable fusion technology to be used by others prematurely. Mastery, and lose the dominant position in the field.

Of course, everyone has reached a consensus on one point. Everyone knows that it is impossible to keep secrets forever.

Especially for civilian technologies like controllable fusion, which are destined to be used on a large scale, unless they are kept in the palm of their hands or completely closed to the country, there will be too many problems when the controllable fusion power station and cross-regional power grid projects are rolled out. Too many possibilities will lead to technology loss.

Cooperating with the strategic plan of popularizing controllable fusion power stations in three years and supplying more than 80% of the country's electricity consumption, using controllable fusion technology to exchange political, technical and other interests with other countries in a five-year period is the choice to maximize the benefits.

And these five years are enough for many things to happen...