Ever since Lu Zhou went to the physics class on campus, he basically didn’t leave his house for a week.
When he was still in Princeton, he would still go to Walmart to buy groceries, but now, there was someone else to buy groceries for him.
Even though Lu Zhou didn’t want Wang Peng to run his errands, he had asked him so many times that Lu Zhou wasn’t ashamed anymore.
On the other hand, a lot of things happened in the outside world during his one-week retreat.
The most important one was probably from East Asia Energy.
On the second day of his retreat, East Asia Power, which already completed its reorganization, reached an agreement with the State Grid Corporation of China Jiangsu division. The twelve ferrofluid electric energy generators from the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant had finally completed their final commissioning and had been officially connected to the grid to deliver clean, cheap electricity to the province of Jiangsu. This was all done at a fairly cheap but still profitable price.
The one that felt most of the changes, other than Haizhou, was probably the Gusu District in Jiangsu Province.
This industrial town in the middle of the Yangtze River apparently supported half of the high-tech industries in China. With only a population of 10 million people, their annual power consumption was almost equal to Shanghai. It broke through 150 billion kWh a few years ago, and it was now running at 200 billion kWh.
After the Pangu fusion reactor was integrated into the power grid, the electricity price of the Jiangsu district fell by nearly half.
For the manufacturing owners in the Jiangsu province, this was basically money falling from the sky.
Especially for large power consumers in the semiconductor industry, the production cost had visibly decreased.
In this economic downturn, integrating the fusion reactors into the Jiangsu province was a godsend.
On the surface, the decline in energy costs only lowered the cost of electricity for factory owners and entrepreneurs, but in fact, it changed the future of the entire city as well as the people who were living there.
The cost of production had dropped and the companies had more money. This money would be used to upgrade production technology, develop automation, and create the railway electrification system. The industrial structure of the entire city and even the provinces would shift toward a more centered area of the industrial ch[a]ain.
This kind of economic effect caused by a revolution of the energy structure was much more effective than direct payments of subsidies to a bunch of leeches.
In addition to industrial electricity prices, the electricity prices of Haizhou, Gusu, Jinling, and other cities had also experienced a steep downfall of 10% to 20%.
However, it was currently spring. Summer was the peak electricity consumption season. Most people didn’t feel a significant impact of the price reduction yet. At most, they were surprised when they saw the electricity bill. Some of them weren’t even surprised.
After all, the process of a society moving into the future couldn’t be done overnight. It was often done in subtle and nuanced ways.
However, looking at the macroscopic data, after the electricity prices decreased, the demand for electrical appliances and electric vehicles had a small increase.
Maybe after a while, Gusu would have a few electric public transport buses.
Perhaps in another year or two, smart devices such as vacuum robots would spread throughout households and wired or wireless electric vehicle chargers would have unknowingly migrated from gas stations to mall parking lots.
Maybe in three to five years, small pieces of postage or takeaway would be done by drones that could fly between tall buildings.
Human’s pursuit of efficiency was limitless.
It was now 2020, the first year of the Pangu reactor being connected to the power grid.
As for what the distant future could be like, only time could tell.
…
This was the first time Lu Zhou focused on a pure mathematics problem after he leveled up to mathematics level 8. This was also his first time experiencing the difference between mathematics level 7 and level 8.
The difference wasn’t in the calculations.
It was more reflected in a transcendent way of thinking.
It was very hard to describe this feeling. But if he had to write down his thoughts, it would be as if his entire body were immersed in the mathematical proposition, like everything in the world had slowed down.
Maybe because his thinking speed had increased, that was why the time seemed to slow down?
This sounded a bit outrageous, but this was how Lu Zhou felt.
Of course, even though his thinking speed had increased, when he was immersed in research, he still felt time would fly by quickly. Without knowing it, an entire day had gone by. He still had to rely on his stomach to remind himself to eat.
Lu Zhou stopped writing and pinched his eyebrows. He looked at the time on the bottom right corner of his computer screen.
“Is it ten o’clock in the morning already?”
It was just pitch black outside, but it’s so bright now.
Of course, what surprised him more was the date.
A week had passed since the physics lecture he attended, but he didn’t feel this week passed by at all.
Lu Zhou opened the curtains and looked at the rubbish bin that was full of draft papers as well as the stacks of draft papers on his table. He sighed and got out of his chair.
“As expected, it’s not that easy to solve…”
However, his work over the past few days wasn’t resultless.
At the very least, he nearly finished the part on the proof of the existence of a solution.
Objectively speaking, the mathematical difficulty of the Yang-Mills equation wasn’t as difficult as the Navier–Stokes equations.
When Lu Zhou was trying to solve the existing problem of the Navier–Stokes equations, he invented the L-manifold and the “differential topology research method for differential equations” during his research. They were also very effective in solving the existence of the solution for the Yang-Mills equations. This saved him a month of work, at least.
If he didn’t have to do something today, he would have continued his retreat.
However, today was the beginning of week ten.
He still had to teach a computational materials science class later.
If his doctoral student were excellent enough, he would have given this task to him.
Unfortunately, Wu Shuimu’s current level of computational materials was still too far away for him to lecture others. Wu Shuimu was less competent than his two master’s students at Princeton. Therefore, Lu Zhou had to do this thing himself.
Lu Zhou stood in front of the door of his study room and thought for a bit. He cleared his throat and said, “Xiao Ai, help me clean my room… Clean the things on the desk.”
A chat bubble popped up on the lower right corner of the computer screen.
[Okay, Master! (๑•̀ᄇ•́)و✧]
Soon, a drone flew in from the open window and after grabbing the rubbish bin full of papers, it flew out the window. After that, a sweeping robot brushed past Lu Zhou’s legs and went into the study room. It began to clean the rubbish on the floor.
Lu Zhou smirked and looked at the little guys helping him clean his room. He then turned around and walked downstairs.
He hadn’t been outside for a week, and the study room wasn’t the only thing he had to clean up.
Lu Zhou took a hot bath and dried his hair. He put on a clean outfit and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror for a while before walking to the front door.
When he was about to put on his shoes, he heard the doorbell.
He looked through the security camera and saw the person standing outside his gate. He paused for a second.
Yan Yan?
What is she doing here?
Even though Lu Zhou was suspicious, he still pressed a button to open the gate for her. He then opened the door.
After a while, Yan Yan walked through the front yard and went into the house. She was wearing casual clothes.
She didn’t greet him. She only looked at him.
“You didn’t go to the medical examination yesterday.”
“Oh, really? I don’t really remember.”
Lu Zhou vaguely remembered that Wang Peng had told him about this, but he was thinking about the problem when he was on the phone. He couldn’t remember what he talked about in the phone call.
Yan Yan looked at Lu Zhou’s muddled face and sighed. “I know you’re busy. I even brought the stuff to you… Oh yeah, you haven’t eaten breakfast, right?”
“I was about to eat…” Lu Zhou looked at the plastic cup and cotton swab that she handed him and asked, “What’s this?”
Yan Yan said, “One’s for urine collection, one’s for feces collection. Do you need my help?”
Lu Zhou: “No need, thanks.”
He originally planned to eat then go to class.
But now, he seemed to have lost his appetite.
[a]what is a “centered area”? like central area?
