1 First Sight

January 2012, International Research Center for High Energy Physics, border of countries F and S in Europe.

Li Guanghan, a 43-year-old Chinese high-energy physicist, stood in the square outside the research center, breathing deeply in the cold and sweet air. At a depth of 100 meters beneath his feet is the world's largest and most advanced hadron collider and a 17-mile-long circular tunnel. The square is surrounded by mountains, the summit of which is covered with snow, and at the foot of the hill are many well-planned, ultra-modern buildings. A three-car tram stops quietly at the tram stop in the distance.

Lee's gaze fell on the massive spherical building in the center of the square, a brown dome that looked rusty in the winter sun. Li Guanghan was wondering if this institution was so short of scientific research funds.

"It's not rust, it's an all-wood building."

Behind him came the voice of a soft and intellectual woman. Lee looked back at him, and a young, tall woman was looking at him with a smile on her haul. The woman wore a gray fedora and a thick apricot wool shawl, and her long legs were tightly tucked into high leather boots wrapped in jeans.

"How do you know I'm Chinese?"

"You are wearing a down jacket that is all over the streets of China, and the double-glazed glass thermos cup on the side of the backpack is soaked in wolfberry chrysanthemums, which is the standard configuration of Chinese uncles at first glance!"

The woman smiled mischievously, her long eyelashes flickering in the sun, and Li Guanghan noticed that her eyes were a little grayish-green, and her skin was more like Caucasian, and only her straight black hair and authentic Beijing accent made him feel that she should have Chinese blood.

"You're also Chinese?" Lee Kwang Han asked again, "Are you here to visit or to work?" ”

"Well, I'm here for you!" The woman giggled. "Just kidding you, I'm a graduate student from Huajing University who came here for an internship, and I just got off the bus, my name is Chen Aili. My mother is Chinese and I grew up in Beijing. ”

"I'm Li Guanghan, a researcher at the Institute of Physics, so I'm your senior brother, and I've been invited here to do experiments to complete my thesis."

"Ah, senior, it's a pleasure to meet you, I will ask you if you have any questions in the future, don't bother me."

"I can't talk about it, let's make progress together. Let's go inside. ”

The two walked into the spherical building in front of them, one after the other. The tall Li Guanghan offered to help Chen Aili get the box, but she politely refused.

The all-timber dome is the reception area for the research center. The floor in the center of the hall is inlaid with a large circular metal cut-out pattern. The solid metal part looks like a map from ancient times, and the hollow part shimmers with colorful light, like rays emitting from the ground, and its color change seems to represent the impact of cosmic ray particles on the earth.

Li Guanghan was a little dizzy, he felt that it was not exactly the exhaustion of the journey, but more like the dome in the room and the metal patterns on the ground made him a little spinning, déjà vu excitement, breathless. Chen Aili didn't care about Li Guanghan who was in a daze, and dragged her suitcase straight to the front desk. "Hello, I'm Aili Chen, a graduate student from China, and Dr. Emmons invited me to intern as his assistant." She pointed to Li Guanghan and said to the front desk, "This gentleman is my companion, please arrange a room closer to us, okay?" ”

Chen Aili went through the formalities and gestured to Li Guanghan who was in a daze. She had taken off her fedora and shawl, and her tight sweater and jeans perfectly showed off her long and delicate figure. Li Guanghan accidentally caught a glimpse of a strange necklace on her exposed snow-white neck, half-hidden in the V-neck, looming.

Late at night, Li Guanghan, who had been bumpy and excited for a day, leaned on the head of the bed after taking a shower, and as soon as he relaxed, a wave of sleepiness hit him, and he fell asleep. The next morning, Lee woke up with thirst, his throat was dry like fire, and there was a strange smell in his nasopharynx. He thought maybe the heating in the apartment was turned on too much, and he fell asleep too quickly last night and forgot to turn on the humidifier. So, he rolled over and got out of bed to get his double-layer insulated glass, which was still soaked in yesterday's wolfberry chrysanthemums, and he wanted to quickly pour it out. He habitually grabbed the cap part, and hey! How loose and loose, before I could react, the cup had fallen heavily to the ground.

Li Guanghan thought to himself, it seemed that he was really tired, and he usually paid special attention to tightening the bottle cap, and he also missed sometimes. Fortunately, the apartment already had local mineral water, and when he drank the cold mineral water, he felt very sweet. The air in the room was muddy, and he opened the window, and the fresh morning breeze blew in, and it was cold. Lee thought it would be better to make a cup of hot tea and drink it.

When he opened his suitcase and took out the new electric kettle that his wife had prepared for him, he was stunned. Li Guanghan clearly remembered that his wife told him that the wires and the conversion socket were stuffed together in the cup, and the conversion socket was placed on the top, so that when he needed to use other small electrical appliances brought from China, he could quickly take them out and use them. But now it's the opposite, the two things are tangled together, and the wires are on top. Although Li Guanghan thought it was strange, he didn't think much of it.

2 Strange Doctors

Lee arrived at Dr. Emmons' office at 10 a.m. at the appointed time. happened to meet Chen Aili coming out of the doctor's office, Li Guanghan was very surprised, such a little-known little girl was also invited to intern and work as an assistant to this academic master, it seems that he really underestimated her. The two nodded and smiled at each other, which was considered to have greeted each other.

Dr. Emmons is a leading international figure in fundamental physics research and has worked at the research center for 40 years, focusing on how to find subatomic particles through a full range of particle accelerator systems to explore the early origins of the universe, such as how matter was formed, how to find and use antimatter, how to observe and find dark energy in the universe, and so on. He took the initiative to contact Li Guanghan after seeing a paper in the International Journal of Physical Research, proposed many revisions to his paper, and suggested that he personally come to the research center to do experiments. Lee Kwang-han thanked him and respected him from the bottom of his heart. Ever since he learned that the research center's hadron collider was operational, Lee has focused his research on observing and analyzing data on the energy generated by proton collisions, from which the state of the universe at the time of the Big Bang 13.6 billion years ago can be deduced. If the Big Bang created an equal amount of matter and antimatter, then why is there more matter than antimatter in the universe? He felt that this was an important step for humanity to explore the unknown. The strange ideas of the unknown prehistoric world and the unknown future world often appear in the mind of the teenager Li Guanghan, who came out of the mountains of Xiangxi, China, after winning the top prize in the college entrance examination, gave up the popular, fashionable, and fast-making major when choosing a major, and chose high-energy physics, which is obscure and difficult to understand, not easy to get grades, and does not make money, which really made his family regret it for a long time.