However, those who can leave their names in the history of science should not be underestimated for their own abilities and levels.

Take a mistake in the history of optics, Poisson Bright Spot, Fresnel proposed at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences that light can be diffracted by light.

In order to refute his "extremely absurd" view and maintain the firm position of the theory of particles of light from being shaken, Poisson, a professor of mathematics at the Sorbonne, tried his best to find a counterexample and use irrefutable experimental phenomena to silence Fresnel, who insisted on the "fallacy of light fluctuations".

He racked his brains and finally came up with a disk experiment: if light passes through an opaque disk, if diffraction can occur, then a bright spot should appear in the center of the disk's shadow at a certain distance from the disk.

This was absolutely unacceptable to the vast majority of physicists who believed at the time that light was a particle and that light propagated in a straight line in a homogeneous medium.

The believers in these particle theories do not even hesitate to do experiments, because the results of this calculation are completely contrary to their intuition and contrary to the facts they insist on.

Poisson wanted to prove that Fresnel's diffraction theory was wrong, but he didn't expect that in the same French Academy of Sciences, there was a physicist named Arago who did not believe in evil.

For this simple optical experiment, the experimental instruments are not complicated to prepare.

Arago quickly found the bright spot in the center of the disc's shadow that most physicists in the Academy of Sciences scoffed at, and demonstrated this experimental phenomenon at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, which not only left many scientists led by Poisson speechless, but also proved that light can be diffracted during propagation, so it should be a wave.

It is ironic that the bright spot in the center of the shadow of this disc is not named after Fresnel Bright Spot, nor after the Arago who completed the experiment, but is conventionally called "Poisson Bright Spot".

Looking at the history of physics alone, Professor Poisson, who has been in a high position in the French Academy of Sciences for a few years, is undoubtedly the biggest villain in the story, a representative who does not pursue progress and is complacent.

But in fact, not to mention Poisson's contribution to mathematics as a mathematician, but only his contribution to physics, is definitely not a joke about Poisson's bright spots, but a mathematical mark - Poisson parentheses.

Poisson parentheses play an important role in mathematics, as well as in Hamiltonian mechanics of analytical mechanics.

A century after Poisson proposed Poisson's parentheses, this mathematical notation also shines in quantum mechanics, which seems to have nothing to do with him.

Dirac discovered that the correspondence between mechanical quantities in quantum mechanics is very similar to the Poisson brackets in Hamiltonian mechanics, and on this basis he invented quantum Poisson brackets, also known as symphons.

A Poisson, who has become impossible to bypass in the history of optics and physics because he was slapped in the face, has such an academic level, let alone Eddington, who is very famous in modern physics.

When it comes to Eddington, the title given to him is that of Einstein's best friend and staunchest supporter in Britain, the astronomer Yunyun who first proved the general theory of relativity through solar eclipse observations.

However, Eddington's contribution to physics is much more than that, but the reason why people always have a stereotype like the one above when they mention him is because Einstein and the theory of relativity are so famous that people like to talk about this issue, whether they understand it or not.

Eddington's ability to be the first to think from the mass-energy equation, and the difference between the masses of four hydrogen atoms and one helium atom, that the loss of mass can be converted into energy to continuously recharge the combustion of the sun, is enough to show how keen his own intuition is about physics.

It's just a pity that Eddington proposed that the sun's energy source is nuclear fusion, which is a bit inopportune.

Because physicists and chemists at that time only knew that there were hydrogen atoms and helium atoms in the universe, they did not know that these two elements also had their own isotopes.

Therefore, in Eddington's calculations, although the nuclear reaction of four hydrogen nuclei fusing into one helium nucleus can provide enough energy to power the sun, it cannot explain that the conditions under which this nuclear fusion reaction occurs, that is, the temperature is much higher than the actual temperature of the sun observed in reality.

As Eddington had guessed, it was true that four hydrogen nuclei were fused into a helium nucleus, but the fusion reaction was not done in one step, but in several steps.

The first step is the fusion of two hydrogen nuclei into a deuterium nucleus, releasing a positron and an electron neutrino at the same time:

Ｈ+Ｈ→Ｄ+ｅ+ν。

The second nuclear reaction is deuterium, the product of the first step, which continues to fuse with the hydrogen nucleus to produce helium-3 and release a photon at the same time:

Ｄ+Ｈ→He+γ。

The third step of the reaction is the reaction that finally produces the helium nucleus, and the main way is the fusion of two helium-3s to form one helium-4 and two hydrogen atoms:

He+He→He+Ｈ+Ｈ。

Of course, there are other ways in which lithium, beryllium and boron participate in the reaction in the third step, and the whole cycle may also be a carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle with carbon, nitrogen and oxygen participation.

However, the latter two nuclear reactions account for a relatively small proportion of the sun, and the most important ones are the three steps mentioned above.

Together, the combination of these three steps results in the fusion of six hydrogen nuclei into one helium nucleus, and the release of two more hydrogen nuclei.

By subtracting two hydrogen nuclei on both sides of the reaction at the same time, four hydrogen nuclei are fused to form a helium nucleus, which can be said to be exactly the same as the nuclear reaction equation that Eddington guessed at the beginning.

But the only difference between the two is that the nuclear reaction proposed by Eddington is a one-step process, while the real nuclear reaction in the sun is divided into several steps.

In this way, the requirements for the reaction environment are no longer so harsh, and there will be no contradiction such as the difference between the theoretical temperature and the actual temperature by several orders of magnitude.

Eddington didn't go any further than to think that nuclear fusion reactions in the sun were carried out step by step, not because of his lack of imagination, but because he came up with this theory at a time when deuterium and helium-3 had not yet been discovered by scientists.

In the original space-time, as the first of the three major discoveries of nuclear physics in 1932, deuterium was discovered by Yuri of the United States in the same year.

Helium-3 was discovered even later than deuterium, not only on the basis of Yuri's discovery of deuterium, but also after the invention of particle accelerators.

In 1934, Mark Olyphant, an Australian student at the Cavendish Laboratory, bombarded hydrogen with an accelerated fast deuterium nucleus on the Cocroft-style particle accelerator invented by Cowcroft and Walter, and then photographed the trajectory of the helium-3 nucleus for the first time in a cloud chamber.

- No matter in any time and space, after having a particle accelerator and a deuterium nucleus, Rutherford would always think of accelerating the hydrogen nucleus to deuterium, or accelerating the deuterium nucleus to hydrogen atoms.

The difference is that Chen Muwu withstood the pressure and did not do this experiment.

As a first-time student, Oliphant did exactly that, and completed the experiment to discover helium-3.

In addition, the nuclear reaction completed by Olyphant in the Cavendish laboratory in which deuterium and hydrogen collide to form helium-3 nuclei, which is also the first successful nuclear fusion in the history of human physics.

It wasn't until 1939 that helium-3 was first isolated from helium.

It is difficult for a clever woman to cook without rice, and Eddington could never have guessed the correct equation for a nuclear reaction in the sun without knowing the existence of deuterium and helium-3.

People have always wondered where the energy in the sun comes from, which is why Bohr proposed that energy is not conserved in the sun.

Later, even though the particle accelerator had been invented for more than a decade, human physicists still did not know under what conditions the nuclear fusion reaction should take place.

In 1943, more than a year had passed since Pearl Harbor, and the United States and Ben were at war in the Pacific, and the "Manhattan Project" to develop the atomic bomb was also in full swing in the United States.

At this point, Oppenheimer, the head of physics for the Manhattan Project, was still struggling with a serious problem.

Atomic bombs are blown off by nuclear fission, but at the high temperatures and pressures generated by the release of energy after nuclear fission, hydrogen and other lighter nuclei are likely to fuse into more massive nuclei and release a large amount of energy.

- Just as it happens all the time in the sun, hydrogen coalesces into deuterium, and hydrogen and deuterium converge to become helium-3.

The earth is divided into three oceans and seven parts of the land, and there are many more deuterium atoms in the sea than in the air.

In addition, helium in the air is not very stable, but slightly more stable than deuterium in seawater.

Oppenheimer's concern was that if the atomic bomb was exploded, there would be a chain reaction that was not controlled by humans, and hydrogen would become deuterium, and hydrogen and deuterium would become helium-3...... The water in the ocean and the air in the atmosphere will be ignited, and the earth will be in an endless burning spirit, and eventually destroyed.

Oppenheimer himself did not dare to bear such serious consequences, so he could only go to Bole, Compton, who had suggested to the military that he should be the chief of physics, to discuss what might happen.

Both of them were pessimistic about this, and felt that it was better to passively accept Nac's slavery notice than to send all the human beings on Earth into the abyss from which they would never recover.

Einstein and other scientists jointly wrote to Roosevelt, saying that Germany was also stepping up the development of the atomic bomb, a weapon of mass destruction that does not emphasize martial virtues.

They had to get ahead of the Germans and craft the key that might open the gates of hell.

In the end, Compton made a decision that if the calculations confirmed that the probability of the Earth being destroyed by atomic bombs exceeded 0.003 per 1,000, then he would call off the Manhattan Project.

Fortunately, in the end, Compton's calculations were lower than the value set by Compton, and the Manhattan Project could continue smoothly, and Xiao Ri was lucky enough to experience what is called "thunder, rain, and dew".

By 1943, the world's top physicists were still worried about whether nuclear fusion would destroy the Earth, and in 1927, the American astronomer named Elvey feared that the sun would explode one day.

Seeing Chen Muwu, who was sitting opposite him, with a solemn expression and not saying a word, the reporter of the "Times" quietly wrote something in his notebook.

"After I asked this question, Chen of Cambridge University was silent, and fell into deep thought for a long time, as if the problem of the explosion of the sun was very serious, and he was very entangled."

After the reporter wrote this paragraph, he planned to remind Chen Muwu that after all, he came to Cambridge this time with a certain ZZ mission.

The British people must not be panicked by the American astronomer's "maybe", and they begin to panic all day long, worrying about the end of the world every day.

What the British government is saying is that astronomers have to stand up at this time, whether they are right or wrong, and they have to have a calming effect.

That's why the matter of coming to Cambridge for interviews will be handed over to The Times, which will speak for the government to a certain extent, and the reporters who go to the Royal Observatory Greenwich to cover the news will also be other reporters in the newspaper.

The reporter who came to Cambridge was even prepared to make plans to help Chen Muwu be decent if Chen Muwu was not dignified and said something that was not conducive to stabilizing the people's will.

Dr. Chan ......"

"Ahh Chen Muwu, who heard the call, raised his head and looked apologetic, "I'm sorry, Mr. Reporter, I was thinking about some questions just now, and I neglected you if I wasn't careful."

"You're here to ask me about the American astronomer's opinion that the sun could explode at any moment, right?

"My view on this is that this is complete nonsense, and the sun above us is so stable that even if an explosion occurs on one of our islands in the Pacific Ocean, there is no possibility of an explosion from the sun.

"I think the astronomer may have miscalculated the source of the sun's energy for the entire solar system.

"In the early twenties, Professor Eddington, director of the Cambridge University Observatory, was the first to propose that the interior of the sun may be undergoing nuclear fusion, from the fusion of four hydrogen nuclei into one helium nucleus, and the reduced mass into energy. But because this reaction temperature is much higher than the temperature of the sun, it is doubted and denied by other physicists.

"A few years ago, a few colleagues and I discovered deuterium, the isotope of hydrogen, in the Davy Faraday laboratory in London, so is it likely that the nuclear reaction in the sun is not done in one step, but in several steps? For example, two hydrogen nuclei fuse to produce a deuterium nucleus, and then the two deuterium nuclei further fuse to produce a helium nucleus? Will the temperature be a little cooler?

"Scientific research cannot be based on speculation, and I plan to simulate the possible nuclear fusion reactions in the sun in the Cavendish laboratory as soon as possible, and then release the results to the public as soon as possible, and use the experimental facts to dispel everyone's fears in the recent past."

(End of chapter)