After getting off the train in Cambridgeshire, all Ye Gongchao could think about was the story of a Chinese student named George Chen who happened on another train.
But Chen Muwu was thinking in his mind whether the method he gave Ye Gongchao was Zhuge's tip to stabilize the country or Zhou Lang's clever plan to lose his wife and troops.
……1
January of 924 was also an eventful winter.
Vladimir still failed to overcome the stroke and died on the 21st.
The next day, Ramsay Macdonald moved into No. 10 Downing Street and became the first Labor Prime Minister in British history.
In order to commemorate a generation of great men, two days later, Kapitsa's hometown also changed its name, from St. Petersburg to Luograd.
Another day later, in order to warm up for the upcoming Olympic Games in the summer, France held the Winter Olympic Sports Week in Chamonix. In the future, this will be regarded as the first Winter Olympics.
Just a few days after returning to Cambridge University, the winter semester started again in mid-January.
Blackett and Dirac, who were still students, both returned to school on time, while Kapitsa, who had been promoted to a teacher in the Cavendish Laboratory and was no longer burdened by studies, was still in a valley in the Austrian Alps. Galloping happily on the snow.
Kapitsa took over a three-year Clark Maxwell Scholarship from Chadwick two years ago, which suddenly enriched his life.
If one only considers his contribution to physics in the Cavendish Laboratory, then Chen Muwu is actually more qualified to get this money than Kapitsa.
But on the one hand, Chen Muwu was not short of money, and on the other hand, his time in the Cavendish Laboratory was too short, so he gave the money to Kapitsa.
In addition to the postcards Kapitsa sent from Innsbruck, after returning to school, Chen Muwu received two more important letters to him, one from Berlin and one from Paris.
The last time he went to London and participated in the negotiations on the Boxer reparations, Chen Muwu wrote a letter to Einstein, asking him to help contact Harper and BASF. He did not expect the results to come out so quickly.
Einstein said in the letter that there was news from the BASF factory, and the other party agreed to contact and discuss the sale of technical equipment for the ammonia plant.
After learning the news, Chen Muwu immediately went to the telegraph office in Cambridgeshire and sent a telegram to the domestic Wynn Soda Plant, asking them to immediately send someone to Germany to negotiate related matters.
Although the fastest and most convenient way for him to go from the UK to Germany was at this time, Chen Muwu firstly did not have business negotiation skills, secondly, he did not have the right to make decisions for Wynn, and thirdly, he still had many important things to do.
Helping with matchmaking can be regarded as the best effort I can do in my current situation.
As for the content of the other letter, it brought Chen Muwu an even bigger surprise.
Your Excellency the little prince is really simple and easy to deceive. Debroglie said in the letter that he recently learned that the United States has manufactured a high-quality and high-precision vacuum pump, which may be able to meet Chen Muwu's experimental requirements.
De Broglie said that he could buy one on his behalf, but because he was a history major, his hands-on ability was very poor, and no one in his elder brother's private laboratory was willing to do this experiment.
So if Chen Muwu could agree to come to the laboratory in Paris to do experiments himself, he would be ready to place an order with General Electric of the United States and buy the vacuum pump back to Paris.
Aristocrats are worthy of being aristocrats. They can pay two thousand pounds at a time. They are indeed much richer than Chen Muwu and the Cavendish Laboratory.
Chen Muwu originally wanted to reply a letter to de Broglie immediately, but he thought that he was still a student, so he could only take de Broglie's letter and go to his mentor Rutherford.
Hearing Chen Muwu mention the surname de Broglie, it brought back a past event in Rutherford's memory: "Is this de Broglie that little guy from Paris, France? I remember that more than ten years ago, he held a meeting in Brussels At the first Solvay Conference, as a young man, he served as secretary of that conference."
"No, director, the de Broglie you are talking about is not the same person as the de Broglie who wrote to me. The former is actually the latter's brother."
"I see," Rutherford nodded, "Oh, by the way, Chen, since we are talking about the Solvay Conference, Professor Lorenz, the chairman of the conference not long ago, has sent me an invitation letter for April this year. , the topic of this meeting is about the electrical conductivity of metals, do you have any good ideas on this topic?"
Solvay Conference?
The most profound memory of Chen Muwu was the one held in 1927, where all the talented people came together and all the young and old came together.
When he was in college, every time he had final exams, Chen Muwu’s roommate, who stayed in the dormitory all day and banged out DNFs, would always bow to the photo posted on his bedside, hoping that the gods would bless him well. Passed.
However, have you ever heard that a Solvay Conference was held in 1924?
Chen Muwu felt that because this conference had never appeared in his memory, it could be explained to a certain extent that the status of this conference in the history of physics was not that high.
And the topic is still what, the conductivity of metals?
Rutherford asked himself what he thought about this issue. Chen Muwu's first reaction was to use the perspective of quantum mechanics to deduce the conductivity in metals.
However, deriving conductivity requires the use of Fermi-Dirac statistics, and to create FD statistics, at the very least, the electron spin needs to be figured out first.
There are less than four months left before the start of this session. In terms of time, it is far from enough.
"Sorry, Director, I really don't have any good ideas."
"Chen, since someone is helping to pay for it, I think you can go to Paris. If your experiment produces perfect results, I hope you can write the paper more beautifully than usual and make it a How is your doctoral thesis?"
"this……"
Hearing Rutherford's request, Chen Muwu was a little surprised at first. How come he was about to graduate with a Ph.D. in just over a year after coming to Cambridge?
In this era, PhDs are indeed graduated very quickly. Kapitsa studied in the Cavendish Laboratory for two years before graduating, so he is considered one of the slow batch.
The fastest person to get a doctorate should be Heisenberg. He graduated from high school and entered university in 1920. By 1923, he had already received his doctorate.
Chen Muwu graduated with a doctorate this year, which is barely satisfactory.
However, Chen Muwu changed his mind and thought that writing a thesis on the electron wave behavior and electron diffraction experiments was the best opportunity for him to graduate as a doctoral student.
Cavendish is a laboratory after all, and his mentor Rutherford is an experimental physicist after all.
If you miss this opportunity and come to Cavendish for your doctoral defense next time with a purely theoretical wave equation paper, then it will be more or less nondescript.
However, didn’t he not only steal de Broglie’s paper this time, he even stole the famous scene as well?
After pondering for a moment, Chen Muwu finally agreed to his mentor: "Thank you, director."
I just don’t know if the official fees allocated to me by various domestic departments after graduation will still be counted?
Now that he has received Rutherford's approval, Chen Muwu no longer has any worries.
Back in the office that basically belonged to him, Chen Muwu held the typewriter and typed a reply to De Broglie.
Calculate the time, from when de Broglie received a reply from him confirming his trip to Paris, to when he ordered the vacuum pump from the United States, to when General Motors shipped the goods across the ocean to Paris on the European continent...
This series of processes must be completed, at least until after the Lunar New Year.
Before that, there was still a veil covering the great discovery, waiting for Chen Muwu to uncover it.
…
January 27, Sunday, evening, sunny weather.
Following his usual practice, Chen Muwu once again came to the Cambridge University Observatory.
Since November last year, Chen Muwu has been coming to the observatory every Sunday night to independently operate the 90-year-old Northumberland Telescope in front of him to "search" for Planet X.
In almost two months, he took dozens of photos one after another.
Although many of them were taken in vain to confuse the public, there are more than a dozen photos of the real Planet X included.
Although the earth is still revolving around the sun continuously during these two months, it can still be observed from the photos that the position of a star is constantly changing.
Although the Cambridge University Observatory has no money to build a large telescope, it can still afford small things like the scintillation comparator invented by Carl Zeiss in 1904.
Just put the photos taken in these days into the scintillation comparator one after another, and you can clearly see the trajectory left by the star during its movement in two months.
Tonight is the last time Chen Muwu plans to come to the observatory and use the Northumberland Telescope to take photos of Planet X for the last time.
The day after tomorrow, he plans to publish this amazing discovery.
After adjusting the position of the telescope according to the coordinates that had been calculated long ago and familiar to him, the planet that had met Chen Muwu countless times appeared again in the center of the eyepiece.
Chen Muwu pressed the shutter button and recorded Planet X's figure on the photographic film for the last time.
On Monday morning, he left the observatory with the developed photos. Chen Muwu asked for a leave from the Cavendish Laboratory, and then had a good sleep.
After waking up, he rarely used his increasingly handy typewriter. Instead, he "calculated" the trajectory of Planet X on paper, which he had long known by heart.
Seeing that the sun was gradually setting in the west, Chen Muwu took a dozen photos and the piece of paper with the orbit calculation process and walked from Mrs. Brown's house to the Cambridge University Observatory.
At first, Eddington thought that Chen Muwu said that he was also interested in Planet X just to avoid embarrassing himself.
But I didn’t expect that since the last meeting, this young Chinese man not only submitted a very in-depth reading report on the Planet
And every weekend, Chen Muwu always comes to the observatory on time, unlike his peers who stay hot for three minutes.
Eddington was very moved by the rigorous scientific spirit displayed by Chen Muwu. No wonder he was able to stand out in the world of physics in just one year. Superhuman talent is one thing, but perseverance That's the most important thing!
However, Eddington was still surprised to see Chen Muwu again at the observatory before getting off work tonight.
Because didn't this person just leave this morning? Why did he come here again after less than a day?
"Chen, did you remember the time wrong? Today is Monday."
As the relationship between the two became more and more familiar, Eddington also liked to joke with Chen Muwu from time to time.
In this regard, Chen Muwu never suffers: "Mr. Eddington, you remembered wrongly, today is Sunday, because I just started the time travel machine and quickly skipped five long and boring working days."
"Chen, you are so interesting! Tell me, what happened today?" Eddington pointed at Chen Muwu's back, "Stop hiding it, I have already seen those things behind you."
"Mr. Eddington, I think I may have discovered a new star."
"That's great, isn't it? According to the naming rules of the International Astronomical Union, if it is confirmed to be an asteroid, you have priority in naming it.
"Tonight, I can help you confirm with Northumberland. If it is indeed a new asteroid that has never appeared on the starry sky map, then congratulations to you young man, and you can think about it. What did you name your first child?
"But I don't recommend you call it Chen Xing, Chen Scattering, Chen Universe, Chen Jie, Chen Effect, Chen Statistics... In the past year, I have heard too many things named with this monosyllabic name!"
Because Chen Muwu used the word star instead of planet in his words, Eddington naturally thought that Chen Muwu had discovered an asteroid.
"Sir, I think what I discovered may not be an asteroid, but the 'Planet Papers of data were placed on the desk in front of them one after another. "Sir, these are the photos I took over the past few days, and this is the trajectory of Planet X that I calculated based on the trajectory on the photos."
Of course Chen Muwu knew that in the era before he came, Pluto had been deprived of its planetary qualifications and was downgraded to the ranks of dwarf planets.
But here he cannot use the word "dwarf planet" which has not yet appeared, so he can only temporarily call it a planet.
Chen Muwu said these words calmly, and Eddington was frightened when he heard them.
Planet
Of course, Chen Muwu's words alone are not enough to believe that he has indeed discovered a new planet.
So Eddington hurriedly adjusted his glasses, leaned out, and carefully looked at the photos on the table one by one.
Because Chen Muwu arranged a dozen photos at once, Eddington didn't even need to clip the photos two by two to the flash comparator for comparison.
Following the guidance of the pen in Chen Muwu's hand, Eddington looked at the photos one by one. Eddington also discovered that there was a bright spot on these photos that was not too bright, and its position kept changing with time.
He found the latest version of the starry sky chart from the bookshelf and found that the planet had never been marked on it.
But with only photos and starry sky maps, we still can't conclude that this bright spot must be the mysterious Planet X.
Eddington felt that he had to wait until after dark and see it with the Northumberland telescope before seeing could be believed.
Looking at the sunset outside the window, he felt that time passed so slowly for the first time.
"Sir," Chen Muwu thoughtfully made a cup of coffee for Eddington and handed it over, "You may stay up very late tonight, so you should pay attention to your health."
Although on the surface, Eddington was as calm as a gentleman, the hand he was holding the coffee in was visibly shaking.
After dark, Chen Muwu manipulated the telescope with ease, aiming at the trajectory where Planet X would appear tonight.
Eddington was very worried. He first compared the photos with the orbit formula several times, and then went to the telescope to check whether Chen Muwu had made any stupid mistakes.
In the face of the vast universe, stargazing is indeed a job that must be meticulous and there is no room for sloppiness.
Time passed by, and neither of the two people under the dome said a word.
There were still a few minutes left before the calculated time. Eddington took off his glasses in advance and put his eyes on the eyepiece.
When the mysterious Planet
"Chen, I saw it, I saw it!"
He shouted with excitement, like a lion roaring on the African savanna.
"So, Mr. Eddington, are you sure now that it is the mysterious Planet X?"
"Yes, that's it, Chen. Dr. Einstein is right, you are a genius!"
Now that Eddington had successfully confirmed the existence of this planet, Chen Muwu felt that there was no need for him to stay at the observatory anymore.
Without mobile phones and the Internet, Chen Muwu's ability to stay up late was obviously reduced by 90%.
He stayed up all night yesterday, and stayed up all night again today. He really needed to go back to the second floor of Mrs. Brown's house to catch up on some sleep.
But Eddington obviously didn't want to let him go: "Chen, you don't want to go home tonight. You can barely rest here for a few hours. We will take the earliest train to the Royal Astronomical Society in London early tomorrow morning." , go to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Such a great astronomical discovery must be made public as soon as possible without any delay!"
Eddington felt secretly happy, you Americans are rich, you can use a 60-inch telescope or a 100-inch telescope, but what's the use?
The mysterious Planet
It seems that sometimes, the diameter of the telescope is not that important. The only important thing is to see if there is a genius like Chen Muwu in the observatory!
The sleepy Chen Muwu used the last trace of clarity in his brain to point out a contradiction in Eddington's words: "Mr. Eddington, it is useless for us to go to London early tomorrow, because this planet, it It only appears in the field of view of the telescope after dark."
"Yes, yes, I was in a moment of excitement and didn't take this into consideration," Eddington quickly admitted his mistake, "Then we will take the ten o'clock express train to London tomorrow morning and arrive at Trinity College at nine o'clock. Gather in front of the door, see you there or not."
Chen Muwu, covered with stars and moonlight, dragged his tired body back from the observatory to his apartment.
He left a note outside the door of Mrs. Brown's and Dirac's rooms, asking them to wake him up on time before eight o'clock tomorrow morning.
(End of chapter)
