Generally speaking, someone doing theoretical research was doing one of two things.
They were either reading the relevant literature or working on their thesis.
Even at Lu Zhou’s level, he was still tied by this rule. Every day, aside from his miscellaneous work, he would either read theses from the top 3 journals or quietly sit at his desk and think about his own problems.
After the “Control of Earth and Moon” mission chain finished, he planned on returning to mathematics research and reach level 10 in mathematics. Lu Zhou used a keyword software to search for relevant mathematics literature.
Lu Zhou would find and carefully read any theses regarding the Riemann hypothesis or the Riemann function, as long as they were in the top 5 journals.
Even though he knew it was unrealistic for someone in this field to create outstanding research results, he still wanted to get a little inspiration from other people’s work.
As usual, Lu Zhou came into the office at 8 o’clock in the morning. After he finished reading He Changwen’s discussion class notes, he opened his laptop and checked if there were any relevant theses he should read.
Suddenly, a chat pop-up window appeared on the bottom right corner of his computer screen.
Xiao Ai: [Master, you have a review invitation.~ (•̀∀•́)]
Thesis review invitation?
Lu Zhou put down his coffee mug and clicked Xiao Ai’s email link.
The invitation was from the Mathematics Chronicle.
Lu Zhou still remembered that his first thesis regarding Zhou’s conjecture was published in the Mathematics Chronicle. Even though he didn’t publish any other thesis on Mathematics Chronicle since then, he would still occasionally receive review invitations from that journal.
Normally speaking, any thesis that was published in this journal had some amount of value.
Lu Zhou was intrigued. He opened the thesis in his email and looked at the thesis title. He raised his eyebrows.
“… Using Odlyzko–Schönhage algorithm to prove Corney’s critical line theorem.”
Lu Zhou sat up straight and quickly read the thesis abstract. He then began reading the thesis body.
This wasn’t a long thesis; it was only 15 pages in total.
The author proved Corney’s critical line theorem using a new method. Even though they weren’t able to push the 40% number higher, the proof method was still fascinating.
If Lu Zhou recalled correctly, everyone used Levinson’s algorithm to research this problem.
After carefully reading the entire thesis, Lu Zhou wrote down his own review and approved the thesis.
Most professors took 3-5 days to review a thesis, Lu Zhou, on the other hand, could instantly spot any problems with the thesis.
Lu Zhou glanced at his screen and paused for a second. He then grabbed his mouse and highlighted some of the formulas.
He didn’t know why, but he felt like the formula structures were familiar.
Mathematics Chronicle had a double-blind review system; neither the reviewer nor the author knew who the other person was. However, there were ways to find out who the author was.
Many scholars had the habit of uploading preprints online before submitting it to a journal. It was quite easy to find out who the author was.
Lu Zhou was curious about the author. After all, the thesis had already been reviewed by him, it wasn’t illegal for him to find out who the author was.
I want to find out!
Lu Zhou hesitated for a bit and made up his mind. He logged onto arXiv and began searching.
As expected, the author had the habit of uploading their theses online before submission. He easily found the author’s information.
When he saw the author’s name, he was stunned.
Molina!
And…
Vera Pulyuy.
“This is a small world…”
After a while, Lu Zhou smiled and shook his head. He closed his browser page and went back to the Mathematics Chronicle email.
No wonder he felt the thesis structure was so familiar. He knew both the authors, and one of them was even his student before.
What surprised him was that Molina hadn’t given up on the Riemann hypothesis, and she even brought Vera into this mess.
Lu Zhou was hesitant about whether he should send Vera an email and ask how her research was going. Suddenly, the office door opened and someone walked in.
“Hey, Lu Zhou, look who’s here!”
Lu Zhou looked up at the door and said to Luo Wenxuan, “You came here from Beijing?”
“I came from Switzerland. I went to CERN for a two-month business trip. I just came back today,” Luo Wenxuan said. He pulled out a chair and sat across from Lu Zhou.
When he saw Lu Zhou’s piece of draft paper on the table, he was intrigued. He picked up the draft paper and asked curiously, “The Riemann hypothesis? When did you start attacking this question?”
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Just doing some research for fun.”
“Wow, what a fun activity…” Luo Wenxuan pulled out a file and said, “Anyway, I did what you asked!”
Lu Zhou picked up the document and glanced at it. He looked surprised.
“Already?”
This was the project plan for the lunar hadron collider!
The detailed blueprints were not in this document. It only contained a rough engineering plan. However, judging from Luo Wenxuan’s expression, the detailed blueprints should have been completed.
Hearing how surprised Lu Zhou was, Luo Wenxuan smiled proudly.
“It wasn’t too difficult to design. There were two main difficulties regarding the collider. One was the tens of kilometers long vacuum pipelines, and the other was the liquid helium cooling system. It’s not too difficult to build these things on the Moon. The structure is a lot simpler than LHCb. The main difficulty is from the engineering side, how do you plan on building the tens or even hundreds of kilometers long tunnel on the Moon?”
“I have that sorted out, so you don’t have to worry about it.” Lu Zhou smiled and put the document aside. He then said, “Tell me, how was your two-month visit to CERN?”
