After getting off the train in Cambridgeshire, Ye Gongchao's mind was full of the story of a Chinese student named George Chen who happened on another train.

But Chen Muwu was thinking in his mind, was the method he gave Ye Gong to surpass Zhuge a plan to stabilize the country and secure the country, or Zhou Lang's clever plan to lose his wife and soldiers?

…… 1

January in 924 was also an eventful winter.

Vladimir still failed to overcome the stroke and died on the 21st.

The next day, Ramsay MacDon moved into 10 Downing Street and became the first Labour Prime Minister in British history.

In memory of a generation of great men, two days later, Kapitsa's hometown was renamed from St. Petersburg to Zha Grad.

The next day, in preparation for the upcoming Olympic Games in summer, France hosted the Winter Olympic Week in Chamonix, which will be posthumously considered the first Winter Olympics in the future.

A few days after returning to Cambridge, the winter semester reopened in mid-January.

Blackett and Dirac, who were still students, returned to school on time, while Kapitsa, who had been promoted to Cavendish Laboratory, was no longer tired by his studies, and was still happily galloping across the snow in a valley in the Austrian Alps.

Capitsa received a three-year Clark Maxwell Scholarship from Chadwick a year ago, which made his life life fuller.

If only the contribution to physics in the Cavendish laboratory is considered, 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, the time he entered Cavendish's laboratory was too short, so he gave the money to Kapitsa.

In addition to the postcards sent by Capitsa from Innsbruck, after returning to school, Chen Muwu received two more letters that were important to him, one from Berlin and one from Paris.

The last time he went to London, after participating in the negotiation of the Gengzi reparations, Chen Muwu wrote a letter to Einstein, asking him to help contact Haber and BASF, but he didn't expect the results to come so quickly.

In the letter, Einstein said that there was news from the BASF plant that they had agreed to contact and discuss the sale of the technical equipment of the ammonia plant.

Upon learning of this news, Chen Muwu immediately went to the telegraph office in Cambridgeshire, took a telegram to the domestic Yongli alkali factory, and asked them to immediately send someone to Germany to negotiate relevant matters.

Although it was the quickest and most convenient way for him to travel from England to Germany at this time, Chen Muwu did not know business negotiation skills, second, he did not have the right to make decisions for Wynn, and third, he still had a lot of important things to do.

Helping to match the bridge can be regarded as the best effort I can do in my current state.

As for the content of the other letter, it brought Chen Muwu an even greater surprise.

His Excellency the Little Prince is really simple and easy to deceive, De Brogyi 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 for him, but because he himself was a history major, his hands-on ability was very poor, and no one in his eldest brother's private laboratory was willing to do the experiment.

Therefore, if Chen Muwu can agree to come to the laboratory in Paris to do experiments by himself, he is ready to place an order with General Electric of the United States to buy this vacuum pump back to Paris.

The aristocracy is worthy of being a nobleman, and two thousand pounds can be paid at once, which is indeed much richer than Chen Muwu and Cavendish Laboratory.

Chen Muwu originally wanted to reply to De Broglie immediately, but he thought that he was still a student now, so he could only take De Broglie's letter and go to his mentor Rutherford.

Hearing Chen Muwu mention the surname De Broglie reminded Rutherford of a past in his memory: "This De Broglie is the little guy in Paris, France?" I remember that more than a decade ago, at the first Solvay Conference in Brussels, he was a young man and served as secretary of that conference. ”

"No, director, the De Broglie you mentioned 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 talked about the Solvay Conference, the chairman of the conference not long ago, Professor Lorenz, has sent me an invitation letter for April this year, the topic of this conference is about the conductivity of metals, do you have any good ideas on this topic?" ”

The Solvay Conference?

The most memorable time for Chen Muwu was the one held in 1927.

When he was in college, every time he took the final exam, Chen Muwu's roommate, who stayed in the dormitory all day and crackled DNF, would always bow to the photo posted on the bedside, hoping that the gods could bless him with a smooth pass.

But haven't you heard that there was a Solvay conference in 1924?

Chen Muwu feels that because this conference seems to have never appeared in his memory, it can also be said to a certain extent that the status of this conference in the history of physics is not so high.

And the topic is still what, the conductivity of metals?

Rutherford asked himself about his thoughts on this question, and Chen Muwu's first reaction was to use the perspective of quantum mechanics to derive the electrical conductivity in metals.

However, to derive conductivity, we need to use Fermi-Dirac statistics, and to create FD statistics, we need to at least get the electron spin first.

With less than four months to go before the start of this session, time is far from enough.

"I'm sorry, Director, I really don't have any good ideas."

"Chen, since someone has helped to pay for it, then I think you can go to Paris, if this experiment produces perfect results, I hope you can write your thesis more beautifully than usual, and let it be your doctoral dissertation, how about it?"

"This ......"

Hearing Rutherford's request, Chen Muwu was a little surprised at first, how could he have only been in Cambridge for more than a year, and he was about to graduate with a doctorate?

In this era, Ph.D. graduates are indeed very fast, and Kapitsa studied in Cavendish Laboratory for two years before graduating, which is considered the slow batch.

The fastest to get a doctorate should be Heisenberg, who graduated from high school in 1920 and entered college, and by 1923, he had already received a doctorate.

Chen Muwu graduated with a doctorate this year, which is barely decent.

However, Chen Muwu thought about it again, and writing a thesis on electron wave and electron diffraction was the best chance for him to graduate with a doctorate.

Cavendish was a laboratory after all, and his mentor Rutherford was an experimental physicist after all.

If you miss this opportunity and come to Cavendish for a Ph.D. defense with a purely theoretical thesis on wave equations, you will be more or less nondescript.

However, didn't he not only snatch De Broglie's papers, but even the famous scenes?

Chen Muwu, who pondered for a moment, finally agreed to his mentor: "Thank you, Director." ”

It's just that I don't know if the official fees allocated to me by various departments in China after graduation are still counted?

Now that he has received Rutherford's approval, Chen Muwu no longer has any worries.

Back in the office, which was basically his own, Chen Muwu held a typewriter and typed down a reply letter to de Broglie.

Counting the time, from de Broglie receiving a reply from him confirming his trip to Paris, to his order for the vacuum pump from the United States, to General Motors' voyage across the ocean to Paris on the European continent......

This series of essential processes will come down, at least until after the Lunar New Year.

Before that, there was a veil covering the great discovery, waiting for Chen Muwu to unveil it.

……

Sunday, January 27th, evening, fine weather.

As usual, Chen Muwu came to the Cambridge University Observatory again.

Since November last year, Chen Muwu has been visiting the observatory every Sunday night to independently operate the 90-year-old Northumberland telescope in front of him to "search" for Planet X.

In the past two months, he has also taken dozens of photos one after another.

Although many of them were taken to confuse the public, there were more than a dozen photos of the real planet X.

Although the Earth continued to revolve around the Sun for two months, it was still possible to observe that the position of a star was constantly changing.

The Cambridge University Observatory could not afford to build a large telescope, but the small thing such as the scintillation comparator invented by Carl Zeiss in 1904 could still be afforded.

You only need to put the photos taken in these days into the scintillation comparator one by one, and you can clearly see the trajectory left by the star in the movement of two months.

Tonight is the last time Chen Muwu plans to visit the observatory and use the Northumberland telescope to take pictures of Planet X.

The day after tomorrow, he plans to publish this astonishing discovery.

According to the coordinates that had been calculated a long time ago and had been familiar with the coordinates of the telescope, the planet that had met Chen Muwu countless times appeared in the center of the eyepiece again.

Chen Muwu pressed the shutter and recorded the figure of Planet X on the photographic disc for the last time.

On Monday morning, he left the observatory with his washed photographs, and Chen asked for a leave of absence from Cavendis's laboratory, and then slept soundly.

After waking up, he rarely did not use the typewriter that he was getting more and more comfortable with, but "calculated" the trajectory of Planet X, which he had long been familiar with, on paper.

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 written on it, 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 not embarrass himself.

But unexpectedly, since the last meeting, this young man from China not only submitted a very in-depth reading report on the literature of Planet X, but also participated in the astronomical observation course he set for him very carefully from beginning to end.

And every weekend, Chen Muwu always comes to the observatory on time, not like his peers, who maintain a three-minute heat.

Chen Muwu showed this rigorous scientific spirit, so Eddington was very moved, no wonder he was able to stand out in the physics community in just one year, the transcendent is one thing, but perseverance is the most important!

However, before leaving work tonight, Eddington was surprised to see Chen Muwu again at the observatory.

Because didn't this man just leave this morning? Why is it that he is here again after less than a day?

"Chen, are you misremembering the time? It's Monday. ”

As the relationship between the two became more and more familiar, Eddington also became more and more fond of making a few jokes with Chen Muwu from time to time.

In this regard, Chen Muwu never suffers: "Mr. Eddington, you are mistaken, today is Sunday, because I have just started the time travel machine and quickly skipped five long and boring working days. ”

"Chen, you're so interesting! Tell me, what's going on today? Eddington stretched out his hand and pointed behind Chen Muwu, "Don't hide it, I already see 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 the right of first choice.

"Tonight, I can help you confirm with Northumberland, and if it is indeed a new asteroid that has never appeared on the sky map, then congratulations, young man, you can think about the name of your first child.

"But I don't recommend you call it Chen Xing, Chen Scattering, Chen Universe, Chen Solution, Chen Effect, Chen Statistics...... I've heard so many things named after this monosyllabic over the past year! ”

Because Chen Muwu used the word star in his words, not planets, Eddington naturally thought that Chen Muwu had discovered an asteroid.

"Sir, I think what I found may not be an asteroid, but the 'Planet X'," Chen Muwu put the photo and the piece of paper with the orbit calculation data on the desk in front of him in turn as Kong Yiji discharged nine large sums of money on the counter of the Xianheng Hotel, "Sir, this is the photo I took in the past few days, and this is the trajectory of Planet X calculated by me based on the trajectory on the photo." ”

Of course, Chen Muwu knew that in the era before he came, Pluto had been deprived of the qualification of a planet, and was relegated to the ranks of dwarf planets.

But he can't use the word "dwarf planet" here, which has not yet appeared, so he can only call him a planet for the time being.

Chen Muwu said these words lightly, and Eddington was terrified when he heard it.

How did this planet X, which was "broken through the iron shoes and nowhere to be found" by astronomers, come to Chen Muwu, just like picking out the only apple from a pile of potatoes, "it takes no effort to get it"?

Of course, there is no evidence, and Chen Muwu's words alone are not enough to believe that he has indeed discovered a new planet.

So Eddington hurriedly lifted his glasses, leaned out, and carefully examined the pictures on the table one by one.

Because Chen Muwu discharged more than a dozen photos at once, Eddington didn't even need to clip the photos to the flicker comparator for comparison.

Following the guidance of Chen Muwu's pen, Eddington also found that there was a bright spot in these photos that was not too bright, and the position kept changing with time.

He found the latest version of the sky map on the bookshelf, and found that the planet had never been marked on it.

But with only photos and sky maps, it is still impossible to conclude that this bright spot must be the mysterious planet X.

Eddington felt that seeing was believing only after dark with the Northumberland telescope.

Looking out the window at the sunset, he felt for the first time that time was passing so slowly.

"Sir," Chen Muwu also thoughtfully made a cup of coffee for Eddington and handed it over, "You may stay up late tonight, you have to pay attention to your body." ”

Although on the surface, Eddington was still as calm as a gentleman, but the hand he took the coffee could be seen to be trembling visibly.

After dark, Chen Muwu skillfully manipulated the telescope and aimed at the trajectory of Planet X tonight.

Eddington was very uneasy, he first took the photo and compared the orbit formula several times, and then came to the telescope to check that Chen Muwu had made any low-level mistakes.

In the face of the vast universe, stargazing is indeed a work that must be meticulously detailed, and there is no room for sloppiness.

Time passed minute by minute, and neither of the two people under the dome said a word.

With a few minutes left before the calculated time, Eddington took off his glasses and pressed his eyes to the eyepieces.

When the mysterious planet X, reflecting the dim light of the sun, appeared in view on time, Eddington felt that tonight might be the best night he had ever stayed up.

"Chen, I saw it, I saw it!"

He shouted excitedly, like a lion roaring in the African savannah.

"So, Mr. Eddington, can you now be sure that it is the mysterious planet X?"

"That's right, that's it, Chen, Dr. Einstein is right, you're a genius!"

Now that Eddington had successfully confirmed the existence of the planet, Chen Muwu felt that there was no need for him to stay at the observatory anymore.

After there was no mobile phone and the Internet, Chen Muwu's ability to stay up late was obviously weakened.

After a night yesterday and another night today, he really needed to go back to the second floor of Mrs. Brown's house to catch up on sleep.

But Eddington obviously didn't want to let him go: "Chen, you don't want to go home tonight, barely rest a few hours at my place, and wait until tomorrow morning, we will take the earliest train to the Royal Astronomical Society in London, to the Royal Observatory Greenwich." Such a great astronomical discovery must be made public as soon as possible, without a single minute or a second! ”

Eddington was secretly refreshed, you Yankees have money and money, whether you use a 60-inch telescope or a 100-inch telescope, but what's the use?

After more than 100 years of chasing the mysterious planet X, didn't you just rely on our Cambridge small-aperture antique telescope to observe?

It seems that sometimes, the aperture of the telescope is not so important, the only important thing is to see if there is a genius like Chen Muwu in the observatory!

Chen Muwu, who was sleepy, used the last trace of sobriety 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 can only appear in the telescope's field of view after dark. ”

"Yes, yes, I was too excited to take that into account," Eddington quickly admitted his mistake, "and then we will take the express train to London at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, and meet in front of Trinity College at nine o'clock." ”

Chen Muwu, who was dressed in stars and moons, dragged his tired body and returned from the observatory to his apartment.

He left a note outside the door of Mrs. Brown and Dirac's room, asking them to wake him up promptly by eight o'clock the morning.

(End of chapter)