The report ended in failure.

Although the physics community is usually tolerant enough of such a world-class problem, as long as he can make reasonable repairs to the problems that arise in this paper, no one will immediately sentence his paper to death, but for him personally, it is still a heavy blow.

After all, in general, if it is not a paper that has been published for a long time or is obviously full of loopholes, it is difficult for even the most prominent scholars to point out errors in the process of argumentation at the presentation, especially for most scholars who are not primarily engaged in this field.

Revisions to papers, lengthy debates and communication with the jury, and those troublesome things are usually carried out during the review process of the journal submission.

However, now, it was only the part of the report meeting, and it ended in such a fiasco.

While frustrating him, he couldn't help but feel humiliated......

"Damn it!"

Dropping the manuscript paper on the ground, Professor Brian's fists clenched, but he didn't hit the table for fear of hurting himself.

Looking at the angry Professor Brian, the office was silent, and no one dared to make a sound.

Although this old gentleman usually looks like a personable old gentleman, this does not mean that he is like this all the time. After spending time with him, you will know that his heart is not as big as it seems.

Especially when he is angry, if anyone provokes him, as long as this person is still in Oxford, he will not want to have a good life.

His chest heaved and heaved, and after a while, Professor Bryan finally calmed down.

The assistant standing next to him observed his expression and saw that the time seemed to be almost up, so he hesitated for a moment and said comfortingly.

"This is not a fatal mistake, although we can't explain the problem, but at least we used the scalar field on this space-time manifold to calculate the mass m of that particle, and the computer simulations basically agreed...... There may be flaws in our argument process, but at least no one can prove us wrong. ”

Hearing this, Professor Brian's expression softened slightly, but he still couldn't talk about how friendly he was.

"It doesn't make sense...... Computer simulations are not always convincing, especially on this kind of issue," said Professor Brian, who pressed his index finger and thumb to his eyebrows, and finally said, "But you are right, at least no one can prove us wrong, but it is not perfect." ”

His brow furrowed, and Professor Bryan took a deep breath, raised his head to regain his spirits, cleared his throat and spoke.

"Alright, boys, get ready for work...... The professor from Asia was right, this loophole is critical. If we can't prove that the lattice step size is approaching the zero time limit, it will be fatally flawed in our proof, and it would be a good thing to find this vulnerability early. ”

Hearing Professor Brian's words, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and the office was busy again.

Before he got to work, Professor Brian got up and walked over to the coffee machine next to the cupboard and made himself a cup of coffee.

Returning to his desk and sitting down, he was going to set a revised status to the paper hanging on Arxiv before he could begin to solve the problem.

However, when he logged on to the Arxiv website, he found that he had tracked a new paper on the label, and it was the mass gap of the Yang Mills equation, a proposition that he had claimed to prove.

Slightly stunned, Professor Bryan thought to himself who was so iron, so he clicked on the paper.

However, it didn't matter at all, the moment he saw the title of the paper and the author, he was immediately shocked.

Lu.Zhou？！

TF？！

Without hesitation, he quickly glanced at the abstract of the paper and immediately jumped to the main part.

However, the more he looked down, the more uncontrollable his eyelids became.

Especially when he saw the middle part and saw the key line of "m=√(2+O(λ^3))", the beating frightened in his eyes instantly turned into a fire of anger.

Proof that the idea is the same as his?

The preprint posted by Lu Zhou also cites the paper published by Jia Fei in the Academic Yearbook, and the asymptotic unfolding method of quality m on λ!

At most, there is only a little "small" deviation in the way of solving the problem...... Quite tiny, at least in his opinion.

For example, he uses a scalar field on a spatiotemporal manifold, which is a continuation of the method used by Weinberg to establish a unified theory of weak electricity, while Lu Zhou uses a quantum field corresponding to the classical action in the aforementioned problem, that is, the quantum Yang Mills field.

There was a thunderous roar in the office, and Professor Brian angrily stood up from his chair.

"It can't be a coincidence!"

He got it all.

Why didn't Lu Zhou appear at the scene.

Why did it appear at the scene that it was a "nobody" from Jinling University?

Why is this "nobody" able to poke at the weakness of his thesis in one sentence?

It turned out that everything was foreshadowed, and everything was just to ruin his presentation, and then while he was revising the paper, he improved his proof ideas, and finally won the result before him.

This situation is not uncommon in the academic world, at least not in the physics world, when an idea is released but not well used, it is quickly processed into its own things by peers, in order to achieve the reputation of "first" or "separate at the same time".

However, he never thought that a well-known scholar like Lu Zhou would do such a thing!

"Professor—"

looked at the professor who stood up in a daze, and the assistant sitting at the desk next to him had just said half a sentence, but swallowed it back stiffly.

I saw that the distorted face had been filled with anger.

When a person's eyes are already obscured by the flames of hatred, it is useless to say anything.

Staring at the paper on the screen with blood-stained eyes, Professor Bryan gritted his teeth and said, "Help me contact the BBC reporters, I have to let everyone know what shameless things this unscrupulous guy is doing behind his back!" ”

……

The campus of the University of Oxford.

With scholars from all over the world departing, the academic atmosphere on campus has returned to its former tranquility.

On the asphalt road in front of a nearby café, two theoretical physics PhDs with books under their elbows walk side by side. Judging from the conversation between the two, they probably just came out of the library and were about to return to the dormitory.

The topic quickly shifted from quantum chromodynamics to the latest research in gauge field theory.

"Have you heard? The problem of mass clearance with strong interactions has been solved! ”

"You mean Professor Brian Caro's proof? Wasn't that proven wrong? ”

"It's not him, I'm talking about Professor Lu's paper."

"Lu? That Lu of Jinling University? ”

"Don't you know? He hung the preprint on Arxiv last night, and at 3 a.m. my professor tweeted 'unbelievable', and when I woke up in the morning, I ran to like it. ”

"On Arxiv?! Thanks, it occurred to me that I had something left in the library, and I went first! ”

“……”

Under a large umbrella outside the café.

Looking at the young man hurrying by the side of the road, Witten, who was wearing sunglasses, smiled.

"It seems that Professor Lu took the lead."

In the past two days, he has not rushed back to CERN, but has been exchanging ideas with Dean Goddard about the new idea of "solving the problem of mass clearance from the perspective of string theory", but now it seems that the discussion of these two days is somewhat unnecessary.

After all, Professor Lu, who has always been known for his rigor, released a preprint.

It's even more difficult to find fault with his papers, especially in the field of mathematics, than to write one.

Sitting across from Witten, Goddard took a sip of his coffee and said as if expecting.

"Expected."

"There's another meeting at CERN the day after tomorrow," Witten looked up at Dean Goddard, glancing at his watch, "So, now that the issue of the quality gap has been resolved, is it necessary for us to continue the discussion?" ”

Goddard: "Although the problem of mass clearance has been solved, the problem of correlating strong interaction with electromagnetic interaction has not been solved, are you not interested in the Nobel Prize?" ”

He is well aware of Witten's weaknesses, and he has clearly opened the era of string theory, but he failed to win the Nobel Prize, which has always haunted him.

At present, it is impossible to win the Nobel Prize through the M theory, after all, there is little hope that this theory will be tested for at least a century. However, there is not only string theory to be pursued in the field of theoretical physics, nor is there only one path to the grand unified theory.

However......

"Don't waste your efforts," Wei Teng smiled and stood up from his seat, "If he is right, then no one in this world is closer to the truth than him." If you want to walk in front of him, in addition to having talent far better than him, as well as sweat. If you are twenty years younger...... Or thirty, I'd be interested in competing with him, but now ......"

After a pause, Witten looked at Goddard and shrugged his shoulders and continued.

"Don't say it's me, do you have that confidence?"

Goddard didn't speak, just stretched out his index finger, lightly touched the coffee cup, and took a silent sip.

Aging is a sad topic.

Especially for them who regard academics as their lives.

Although he didn't mind adding a few more grooves to his face, the slowness of thinking and the decline of energy were irreversible, and neither he nor his old friend Witten was at the age where he could discuss an academic issue for days and nights.

The time that belonged to them has passed......