“This isn’t a discussion at all! I haven’t spoken once in this meeting!”
“This is outrageous!”
“Somebody, talk some sense into him!”
“It won’t work, he doesn’t listen. I’ve told him many times that CERN has researched the 750 GeV characteristic peak for a whole year! Jesus, he wants to waste time on this again!”
“Maybe CNN is right, he’s a scientific villain…”
The meeting was quite unfortunate for some people.
A group of people walked out of the meeting room angrily as they loudly complained about Lu Zhou.
While waiting for the elevator, Professor Frank Wilczek noticed the rage on Professor Whittle’s face. He walked forward and spoke.
“What happened? Didn’t the meeting only happen an hour ago? Why did it end so soon?”
“Meeting? That wasn’t a meeting at all!”
Professor Whittle waved his hands and loudly said, “I’m going back to New York, I’m going to tell those people at the Brookhaven Science Associates what the Chinese did! The Chinese people are abusing their power in the physics field!”
Frank Wilczek was stunned to see Professor Whittle so angry.
His intuition told him that something terrible must have happened an hour ago; otherwise, Professor Whittle wouldn’t be this mad… However, Whittle wasn’t exactly the most well-tempered person either.
He was more and more curious as to what happened in the meeting…
Did they fire the board of members?
No way?
…
According to Murphy’s law, anything that could go wrong would go wrong.
Professor Frank Wilczek heard about what happened from an old friend who worked at CERN. He heard about the meeting and started to feel worried.
In his impression, Lu Zhou wasn’t a stubborn and ignorant scholar; he almost believed that Professor Whittle and the other board representatives had misunderstood Lu Zhou’s intentions.
However, the facts wouldn’t lie.
What made Lu Zhou do something like this.
Frank Wilczek found Witten and invited him for a cup of coffee.
Wilczek talked about the board meeting and sighed.
“The situation is bad.”
Witten expected he would talk about the ILHCRC, so he raised his eyebrows slightly and spoke.
“Oh yeah?”
Frank Wilczek took a sip of coffee and shook his head with a pessimistic look on his face.
“My worst fears came true. From the very beginning, the ILHCRC did not seem to be cooperative with others. I admit that his academic status is beyond most people… But this shouldn’t give him a reason to do whatever he wants.”
After hearing Frank Wilczek, Witten suddenly smiled and said, “Maybe he found something at the 750 GeV that we didn’t.”
“Impossible, my friend, you know this better than anyone else.” Wilczek shook his head and said, “Not to mention that I’ve worked with him on this project. At first, I believed that he could do it, I even tried to get permission from the LHC to do the experiment. When I realized this wasn’t going to work, I parted ways with him. I know this pathway is impossible!”
Witten said, “Then why do you think he insists on doing this?”
Frank Wilczek: “Maybe he’s scared of being wrong? Or maybe he’s too arrogant? Or stubborn? Or wants to use his power in physics? Regardless of what the reason is, it is wrong to conduct research with this mentality.”
Witten smiled and shook his head.
“It seems like you don’t understand him at all.”
If this was anyone else other than Lu Zhou, maybe Wilczek would be correct.
However, for a scholar like Lu Zhou that only sought the truth, Wilczek’s speculation was too superficial.
Witten had met many people in academia.
Some of them were after fame, some of them were after fortune, however, Lu Zhou was undoubtedly the most special…
He wasn’t completely indifferent to fame and fortune. He felt accomplished when he won awards or prizes, but that wasn’t what he truly pursued. What drove him forward was only his curiosity about nature and the universe.
This was a rare and precious quality.
Out of all of the scholars Witten had met…
Lu Zhou was the purest one among them.
“Oh?” Frank Wilczek raised his eyebrows and said in a dissatisfied tone, “Witten, I know you have a good relationship with him, but I hope you can see reality clearly. As his friend, you should persuade him instead of watching him go further down the wrong path.”
“Wrong path?”
Witten used a spoon to stir his coffee. He smiled and spoke slowly.
“What is correct then?”
“We know less than one percent of this universe. There is no right or wrong in physics, and strictly speaking, there is only completeness and incompleteness. Ever since the birth of quantum mechanics, we have realized that—”
Frank Wilczek: “Stop being pedantic, why should we waste time on something that has proven not to work? CERN has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into this. Now we’re about to waste another year on something that doesn’t work!”
“But some people think it works.” Witten looked at Wilczek and calmly said, “Maybe because he discovered something new, or maybe CERN didn’t understand his theories. Maybe this is his intuition… I think these are all possible reasons.
“Exploring the standard model is like finding a needle in a haystack. While physics is much more than just the standard model. Regardless of which research direction we go in, we will always be taking on risk… So why don’t we trust him? He’s never let us down before.”
Wilczek: “…”
So you just want me to believe in him?
That’s a bit ridiculous.
“I know what you’re worried about.” Witten smiled at Wilczek and said, “Don’t worry, if this doesn’t work out in the end, I will try to convince him that he’s wrong…
“Let’s trust his judgment for the time being.”
