Chapter 1212: Call From The Void

[Shocked! ILHCRC Latest Results Disprove The Mass-Energy Equivalence! Perpetual Motion Machines May Be A Possibility!]

When Lu Zhou saw this headline, he nearly vomited.

The media always used all kinds of weird messages to twist his words.

When did the ILHCRC disprove the mass-energy equivalence? How come I, the chairman, doesn’t know about this?

Is it so difficult for them to understand and to just say that there was “abnormal mass expansion in three sets of experimental data”?

Even if the foundation of physics is overthrown, perpetual motion machines are still extremely unlikely to exist!

At least in this universe!

“Do these people not think before they publish these articles?”

After reading a few lines, Lu Zhou threw the newspaper into the trash can beside him with a look of disgust on his face. Spending an extra second reading this article was a waste of his time.

“The media industry is in a downturn, it’s normal for them to attract audiences with clickbait…” Witten saw Lu Zhou throw the newspaper in the trash can and said, “How’s it going, any clues?”

“Don’t think of me as some oracle, I know just as much as you.” Lu Zhou sighed and grabbed the mouse. He clicked on the browser and logged into a physics forum.

Just like he had expected, the physics community was going crazy.

There were nearly a dozen posts on the front page; all with varying degrees of emotion.

First, a professor at Stanford University said that if this wasn’t a mistake from the lunar collider, he would eat his boxer briefs.

Lu Zhou also wondered if the collider had a problem or if the detector was broken. However, it was hard to believe that both of them were broken at the same time.

A professor from Oxford University also came forward with a similar opinion, but he did not suspect that there was a problem with the collider. Instead, he attributed the source of the error to statistics. He thought that ILHCRC was responsible for this and that the researchers made a big mistake. He thought the ILHCRC should set up an expert team to re-analyze the data.

On the other hand, there were already many well-known professors on arXiv who had already started to speculate on why this phenomenon occurred.

Theoretical physics was a difficult field.

Not just in the academic sense.

But also in the real-life sense.

Even the mathematics community was affected.

On the MathOverflow forums, there were already many experts in the mathematics circle who were beginning to discuss if any of this was true, and would it bring any enlightenment to mathematics?

Lu Zhou didn’t quite understand what this meant.

Even if mass energy is no longer conserved, 1+1=2 should always stay true, right…?

Yeah, definitely.

“Before I came to the ILHCRC, I worked at CERN for 30 years. But this is my first time seeing a situation like this.” Witten was holding a coffee cup as he walked to Lu Zhou’s desk. He pondered for a while and said, “From a mathematician’s perspective, where do you think the extra mass might come from?”

“I don’t know, mathematics is not defined using physics. But I do know that significant mass and energy cannot appear out of thin air, unless…”

Witten: “Unless?”

“Unless it comes from the other side of time…” Lu Zhou opened his mouth, but he soon shook his head and said, “No, wait, that is impossible… That is even more ridiculous than the increase in mass energy.”

Time was irreversible; this was also one of the basic agreed upon theorems of physics.

The curvature of space-time might change, but the direction it was traveling in must be constant.

The reason behind this was complicated.

If someone wanted to understand this, they must first understand that, at least for mainstream physics, time was not a “thing” and had nothing to do with the dimensions of the universe. Strictly speaking, it was a “scale” that appeared along with the Big Bang, pointing toward the end of the universe.

However, one shouldn’t rule out that new discoveries might appear in the future that could redefine the concept of time.

But at least for now, Lu Zhou did not see these signs from the latest findings at the ILHCRC. Instead of attributing the anomaly to another concept of time, it would be better to attribute this to the Void…

Wait a minute…

Lu Zhou suddenly blinked.

Witten noticed the emotional change on his face. He quickly asked, “What are you thinking?”

“A possibility… But it might be a little unrealistic.”

Witten smiled and said, “More ridiculous than string theory?”

“Probably…” Lu Zhou thought for a while and said, “If, in addition to the n strings that make up the universe, there is an n+1 string, which does not belong to the universe, and it runs through the universe. It’s like… putting two mirrors against each other, or a lake’s reflection inside a lake.”

Lu Zhou heard about this theory from The Observer.

After Witten listened to Lu Zhou, he frowned and said, “Even you will say some weird stuff sometimes.”

“Who else says weird stuff like this?”

“Nash… You might know him as a genius that was tortured by mental issues. When he was alive, I liked to discuss math problems with him.”

“It’s a shame he passed away then.”

“About what you said… I cannot rule out that possibility, but since we cannot prove it, there is no point discussing such things.”

After a pause, Witten said, “There is no point discussing things before the Big Bang, it will only ever be conjecture. This is the beginning of science. Unless one day we can step outside the box of the universe, otherwise, we, who are stuck in the box, won’t ever have a chance to step outside…”

Lu Zhou struggled to describe this concept. He looked at Witten and said, “The Void. I plan on calling it that.”

“Void? That’s an interesting name.” Witten shrugged and said, “But like I said, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Does it really not make sense?

Lu Zhou spent the entire morning thinking about this problem.

This was no longer his scientific intuition.

The title of the mission already gave him a hint on where the problem came from. The contradictions all pointed toward the existence of an extra dimension beyond the n dimension, which was older than the Big Bang.

However, if he wrote down these concepts in a paper, people would think that he was crazy.

For some reason, he suddenly empathized with Einstein.

Apparently, Einstein’s later days were quite “miserable”. This misery was not only due to political suspicion and exclusion, but it also stemmed from the fact that his beloved physics had abandoned him.

People respected him, but they no longer believed in him. The reputation of absolute authority gained from his youth had faded. No one could understand the things he calculated on the blackboard before his death, and people stopped trying to dive deep into his later works. They stopped caring about what the chaotic old man had to say.

An advanced physics theory was acceptable to the world, but if the theory was in the realm of philosophy, no one would believe them.

Maybe once he really discovered something, he could claim that he “knew everything all along”.

He was the only one that could prove his own theories…

Lu Zhou quickly ate his lunch.

He then returned to his desk and turned on his computer.

Suddenly, a chat bubble popped up.

Xiao Ai: [Master, you have mail. (๑•̀ᄇ•́)و✧]

New mail?

Lu Zhou logged onto his email and opened the unread email.

When he saw the name, he paused for a second.

Satoshi Nakamoto?

Lu Zhou had a strange look on his face, and he continued to read the email.

The whole email was only one sentence.

[I want to have a chat with you.]

Is this a way of greeting me?

Lu Zhou smiled as he shook his head. He typed a reply.

[I’m sorry I don’t have time right now. Let’s talk about it when I finish dealing with the matter at hand.]

After Lu Zhou clicked the “Send” button, he closed the tab and focused his attention on the draft paper on the table.

He wouldn’t be able to solve any problems if he let his attention diverge.

If he wanted to find any clues, he had to do rigorous calculations.

Even though he might not succeed…

He had to prepare as well as he could for the next experiment…

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