Berlin, late September 1928.

Wolfgang Pauli, a professor of physics at the University of Berlin, walked out of the cinema alone, and he was not very satisfied with the Chaplin film "The Circus" that he saw today.

Although it is really surprising to say that the movie has moved the circus show from real life to the screen, and Chaplin's signature costume and his performance are still his magic weapons to attract audiences.

But compared with Chaplin's other films, the breakthrough of this movie is actually not significant, especially the little man named "Charlie" he plays, coupled with the love routine starring the beautiful woman, which more or less makes Pauli, a veteran Chaplin movie audience, have some aesthetic fatigue.

All in all, the new Chaplin movie he saw today can only be described as decent.

But for Chaplin, a giant of art, being decent means-

Fail.

Pauli was not alone in Chaplin's movies.

He even felt that the whole year of 1928 from the beginning of the year to the present, was not going well.

Who would have thought that the positron that would never appear on the earth would really be found by Chen Muwu from the laboratory!

In fact, people are more interested in the neutron discovered by Chen Muwu than the positron.

Because everyone has studied for more than ten years, they have not been able to understand what the structure in the nucleus is like, what is there other than protons, and whether the electrically neutral particle with a binding structure composed of a proton and an electron as mentioned by Rutherford exists.

Chen Muwu's discovery immediately solved the mystery that had puzzled physicists for a long time, and the focus of everyone's first attention was, of course, on the neutron.

In the early days, Pauli was the only one who paid more attention to Chen's paper on the discovery of positrons, which was published at the same time as neutrons.

Of course, he can't pay attention to it, behind this small particle, there is also a gamble with a stakes of up to 8,000 pounds!

Because Chen Muwu had advertised in major newspapers and academic journals before, and Rutherford published the news of Chen Muwu's discovery of neutrons in the weekly "Nature".

So as soon as he received the Prince's College Journals from Stockholm, Pauli looked critically at the inaugural issue of the academic journal.

After reading the catalog, he found that Chen Muwu not only discovered neutrons, but also positrons.

He quickly finished reading Chen Muwu's article, using an alpha particle beam to bombard boron crystals, can you get neutrons and positrons?

Even if Chen Muwu had Rutherford and Bohr behind him as a platform for him, Pauli was still not very optimistic about Chen Muwu's discovery of the positron.

But as more and more physicists around the world reported that they had independently verified the correctness of Chen's experiments, Pauli finally began to sit still.

If Chen Muwu hadn't made that bet with him before, Pauli might have congratulated Chen Muwu from the bottom of his heart for his great contribution to physics.

But the point is that the two of them made such a huge bet, and now that Positron has found out, where is he going to raise the huge sum of eight thousand pounds?

The experiment was confirmed by physics laboratories all over the world, and Chen Muwu's discovery of neutrons and positrons was already a sure thing.

Pauli could only start from other aspects, trying to find Chen Muwu's mistakes.

He searched and searched, but he could only draw a question mark on the problem of neutron spin.

No way, as a newly discovered particle, people have limited understanding of neutrons, such as its discoverer, Chen Muwu, who just measured the relatively accurate mass of neutrons at the Prince's College in Stockholm.

Does a neutron have spin, and if so, what is its spin?

No experimental physicists have conducted experiments on this question, so Pauli doesn't know what the answer is.

What bothers Pauli is not only the bet with Chen Muwu.

In the summer, he also received a telegram from the Chen family from London to Berlin, which was very simple, inviting Pauli to attend the wedding of Chen Muwu and Eve on a certain day of the month.

Chen Muqiao just acted according to the list left by Chen Muwu, and sent wedding invitations to everyone on the list.

But in Pauli's eyes, which received the telegram, the telegram meant much more than a marriage certificate.

He didn't know that Chen Muwu was not in London at that time but attending the International Congress of Mathematicians in Bologna, Italy, and mistakenly thought that Chen Muwu sent him a wedding invitation letter to urge him to go to London and pay the 8,000 pounds gambling contract as soon as possible.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt that my guess was correct, and quickly made an excuse, saying that I couldn't go to the wedding because of something.

So Pauli was not present at the gathering of internationally renowned scientists in London and Cambridgeshire in September this year.

He regretted that he had found himself this unhappiness because of his momentary rapidity.

Where should I go to find the eight thousand pounds?

Or is it much better to simply bear the infamy of not paying off the debts than to go bankrupt directly for the sake of face.

Pauli became an ostrich with his head buried in the sand, trying to forget about it in some other way.

Today, for example, go to the cinema to see the latest Chaplin movie imported from the United States.

As a result, this "Circus" made Pauli very dissatisfied, and felt that the American master of silent humor seemed to be in the situation of Jiang Lang's end.

Pauli, who returned to the University of Berlin from the cinema, never let out his frustration.

Immediately after that, he found a stack of letters sent by the secretary of the physics department on his desk.

Basically, every once in a while, Pauli receives quite a few letters.

These letters are filled with teachers, friends, and peers from all over the world sharing daily or exchanging academic issues, or physics enthusiasts from Germany or nearby countries asking for advice on their whimsical ideas in physics.

Pauli always thought that the contents of the pile of letters he had received today should be similar to the contents of the previous ones, until he found a letter with the postmark of Stockholm on it.

"Professor Pauli:

"Zhan Xinjia!

"Do you remember that four years ago in Copenhagen, there was a lot of argument between you and me about the result of the positively charged electron calculated in the equations of quantum mechanics.

"In the end, in the presence of Professor Bohr and Dr. Heisenberg, we made a bet worth ten Sovereigns.

"If the positron is not discovered within ten years, then I will pay you ten gold coins of Sovereign.

"And if it is discovered, you will pay me ten gold coins of Sovereign according to the bet.

"If you've read the Journal of Prince College, which I sent to the physics department of the University of Berlin, you should know that I discovered positrons in the lab in the first half of this year.

And after the verification of physics colleagues in the past few months, it is now safe to say that the positron is not an experimental error, but does exist in a physical phenomenon.

"Excuse me, is it time for us to fulfill our bet? If you agree with the idea that positrons do exist in our world, I look forward to welcoming you in Stockholm.

"Chen Muwu

"Year, Month and Day"

After reading the last line of the letterhead, Pauli had mixed feelings.

Without looking at the content of the letter, just looking at the postmark on the envelope, Pauli had already thought of what Chen Muwu wrote in this letter.

But what Pauli didn't expect was that Chen Muwu did not mock and humiliate himself in the letter because of the bet between the two people before.

He just used a very calm tone to explain the whole thing in the letter.

At the end of the letter, Chen Muwu also very politely invited himself to Stockholm......

No, that's not the point!

The point is that when mentioning the bet between the two people, Chen Muwu only mentioned the ten-pound bet that he had won in front of Bohr and Heisenberg at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen.

He made no mention in his letter that the two men had doubled their bet from £10 to £8,000 at a meeting at a meeting last year.

Did Chen Muwu forget, did he do it on purpose, or was he careless?

Why didn't he mention the eight thousand pounds?

Pauli thought it was a little strange.

To be honest, Pauli has now fully admitted that he and Chen Muwu are not on the same level when it comes to physics research.

Even if Chen Muwu can't reach Newton's T0 level, at least it can be regarded as T0.5, and below him is the echelon of T1 level.

Pauli felt that if he only looked at his contribution to physics, it would be whimsical for him to even enter the T2 level, and it was estimated that he could barely be counted as a T3 level.

Moreover, the so-called T1, T2, and T3 scientist levels are not linearly distributed with each other, but increase exponentially.

If the distance between T0 and T1 is 1, then the distance between T1 and T2 is 9, and the distance between T2 and T3 is 90.

It's just because he wants to save face and suffer that he has always refused to admit his previous mistakes to Chen Muwu, but has been gritting his teeth.

Many people know that they and Chen Muwu have a bet on positron, and it is not the same thing to drag it on like this.

Now that he has received this letter from Sweden from Chen Muwu, Pauli has read some sense of reconciliation in it.

He felt like he was going to Stockholm for a while, and it didn't seem impossible?

However, Pauli did not write a reply to Chen Muwu, expressing his willingness to go to Sweden to meet him.

You can't say that if you tell me to go, I'm going to go, so what has become of me?

Letters cannot be written, and Stockholm cannot be left unattended.

Pauli returned home, packed his belongings, bought a ticket and quietly left Berlin.

He first took a train to the northern coast of Germany, then abandoned the shore and boarded a boat, crossing the straits of the Baltic Sea to Sweden on the other side.

Pauli then took a train within Sweden to Stockholm, then around the city until he arrived at the Prince's College on the outskirts of the city.

The letter sent to Berlin, Germany, was nowhere to be heard, and Chen Muwu felt that Pauli might still be the same character as before, and he might not be too embarrassed to come to Stockholm to fulfill the gambling contract.

It doesn't matter if you come here anyway, the current manpower in the Prince's College is enough to compile a suitable basic physics textbook.

Chen Muwu didn't expect that Pauli, who had no news at all, would unexpectedly appear in front of the gate of the Prince Academy.

However, Pauli, as one of the parties involved, did not expect that Chen Muwu was not the only one on the side of the Prince's College.

His little junior brother Heisenberg is not in Munich, Germany, but in Stockholm.

Heisenberg smiled awkwardly at Pauli, which gave him some new ideas all at once.

When I made a bet with Chen Muwu in Copenhagen, there were three witnesses at the scene.

One of them is the American Oppenheimer on Chen Muwu's side, and the remaining two people, one is his teacher Bohr at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, and the other is his little brother Heisenberg, who has been together since Germany.

Chen Muwu called himself from Berlin to Stockholm, and called Heisenberg here in advance, what did he mean?

Could it be that he wanted to make the witnesses of the two-person gambling contract present, and then deliberately embarrassed himself?

Pauli felt for a moment that he seemed to think too well of Chen Muwu, and his face immediately became not very good-looking.

But they have all come to Stockholm, at least they must first figure out what Chen Muwu wants to do when he called him over.

Pauli, who had mixed tastes in his heart, took the lead in admitting his mistake to Chen Muwu.

"Happy newlywed, Dr. Chen! Congratulations on the discovery of neutrons and positrons, and I admit that it was my lack of understanding of the equations of quantum mechanics that led me to make a misjudgment that positrons do not exist. ”

Pauli pretended to be confused and did not mention the specific gambling money, because he still did not know whether he wanted to compensate Chen Muwu for ten Sovereigns or a huge sum of 8,000 pounds, so he could only wait for the other party to send it.

Unexpectedly, Chen Muwu never mentioned the specific amount, and his face was also full of guilt, saying that he was too young at the beginning, so he would treat science as a child's play, and did the absurd thing of taking the existence of scientific phenomena as a bet.

Chen Muwu put his posture very low, so that Pauli on the opposite side was completely unsure of what he meant.

It wasn't until the end that Chen Muwu, who was poor in the dagger, finally said his intentions: "Professor Pauli, why don't we write off our previous bet?" However, I have one more thing to ask for. ”

(End of chapter)