From all-round academic master to chief scientist

Chapter 392 P=NP!

"Now I need someone who understands both physics and mathematics to translate for me what Lin's paper is about!"

At the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a physicist clapped the Science magazine in his hand and looked at the other people around him, as if looking for the target person in his words.

The person next to him said with a smile: "Maldacena, obviously, the person here who best fits your description is the guy from Witten. But unfortunately, that guy is still in China, in Lin's country." In the research institute, maybe he is discussing with Lin."

"That guy, did he encounter something that made him happy in China? Or is it that our Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton has become unattractive in his eyes?"

Maldacena couldn't help complaining immediately, and then lowered his head to read the paper in his hand. At the same time, he took out his pen and continued to deduce the part that stumped him.

It is also the part that makes the editors of "Science" magazine feel confused, the mathematical derivation that requires the use of supercomputers.

Juan Maldacena, like Edward Witten, is also a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His main research interests are general relativity and superstring theory.

Although he is not a physicist like Witten who won the Fields Medal in mathematics, he has also won many important awards in theoretical physics due to his research on general relativity, such as the Breakthrough Prize in Basic Physics, Famous awards such as the Dirac Medal and the Lorenz Medal.

In addition to these awards, he is only one step away from the Nobel Prize. However, since he is only in his fifties, he is still relatively young compared with other Nobel Prize winners.

Hearing Maldacena's complaints, the professor next to him couldn't help laughing.

This professor is obviously also a big shot, named Stephen Adler, who mainly studies quantum field theory and elementary particles.

And precisely because he studies these two aspects, he can't help but sigh with emotion about Lin Xiao's paper: "But having said that, this paper is indeed very powerful. It can stably discover gravitons at 70TeV. I have never done that before." I really hope that China’s CEPC can be completed as soon as possible so that I can see the birth of gravitons before I die.”

Suddenly, Adler changed his words again and joked with a smile: "But having said that, now you should believe in the existence of gravitons, right?"

He who studies elementary particles obviously hopes that gravitons exist.

As a researcher of general relativity, Maldacena is among those who do not believe in the existence of gravitons.

Maldacena curled his lips and said: "I admit that Lin's paper is very good, but I still want to say that unless we can really find traces of gravitons based on his theory, or in the future 70TeV collision, the exact Only when the earth discovers gravitons can I confirm the existence of gravitons. Otherwise, I will still maintain a non-commentary attitude."

Adler burst out laughing, and then said without caring about Maldacena's face: "Why have you changed to no comment now? I remember when Lin published his last paper, you said,' This is just a mathematical coincidence, gravitons or something, impossible, absolutely impossible', and then he said, 'Lin is just a juggler playing with his mathematical talent in physics, and I will never look at him again in the future. There are papers on this and so on."

"Hey! Speaking of which, you seem to be watching right now?"

Maldacena's face suddenly dropped. How could she say such a thing directly?

"Adler, you just said it casually at first, how can you take it seriously?"

"Yeah, yeah, don't take it seriously." Adler laughed again.

Maldacena looked at Adler's teasing smile, and finally couldn't stand it anymore, so he stood up decisively and said, "I'm leaving. I'm going back to the office to continue research."

Then he picked up the "Science" magazine and left here.

Adler shook his head with a smile, but didn't say anything.

He could see that Maldacena was very happy with Lin Xiao's paper. After all, Maldacena's most important achievement in the past was in quantum gravity.

Quantum gravity is a theory that describes the gravitational field in a quantized manner, which is what theoretical physicists have always wanted to overcome, so that the gravity of relativity and quantum mechanics can be unified.

The most famous achievement of Maldacena is an important result in this area, which is the most reliable manifestation of the holographic principle in the world - namely the AdS/CFT correspondence, the conjecture about the equivalence of string theory in the ADS space. , and the boundary defined in AdS space, it is conjectured that some quantum gravity theories are equivalent to other quantum mechanical theories in one less space-time dimension.

His original paper on this achievement was cited more than 10,000 times in 2015, making it the most cited paper in the field of high-energy physics. After 2020, it has exceeded 20,000 times.

It is precisely because of this that Leonard Suskind, known as one of the fathers of string theory, commented that he was "perhaps the greatest theoretical physicist of his generation."

Now, Lin Xiao's paper will completely combine gravity with quantum mechanics, and gravitons with relativity. As a researcher in this area, Maldacena will certainly be happy.

And he has no reason to be unhappy, after all, for him, this can even help him better conduct the next research.

But it was probably because the unification of the two required the intermediary product of gravitons, so he felt a little awkward.

Of course, as long as we accept this fact, in the future, physicists who study relativity and quantum mechanics will no longer have to disagree as before. From now on, everyone can call themselves brothers and say that they study the theory of everything. .

For Stephen Adler, who studies quantum field theory and elementary particles, he just needs to have fun.

"Gravitons, gravitons, hehehe~ It seems that in this final round, our quantum mechanics is better."

He smiled, and finally sighed helplessly. Unfortunately, he was already over eighty years old, and he could only read papers and other things. As for spending more energy on doing research and other things, it would not work.

…

Lin Xiao's paper has once again become a hotly discussed topic in the scientific community. At the same time, because this time the gap between quantum mechanics and relativity has been eliminated, the two top theories in physics have finally begun to move towards a unified path, so even Some ordinary people also feel unclear about it, not to mention the theory of everything mentioned in it.

In Chinese it is called Theory-of-Everything, in English it is [Theory-of-Everything]. For various languages, these powerful-sounding words can obviously attract the attention of many people, especially when it is linked to science rather than Science fiction time.

However, compared with ordinary people's various words such as "I'm lying in a trough", "I bought Karma" and so on, which contain many amazing words, although the scientific community is more active about Lin Xiao's paper, at the same time He also maintains a more serious attitude.

Because the entire scientific community felt extremely incomprehensible because of the mathematical methods Lin Xiao used in his proof.

Let’s not talk about how to use supercomputing to deduce mathematical processes. Just talking about the large number of formulas that Lin Xiao gave that need to be run by supercomputing has already made both mathematicians and physicists have only one thing in mind. The idea is, "It's so weird."

So for a short period of time, no one understood how Lin Xiao came up with the idea of ​​using this method to prove it, and it happened to be correct.

No one can imagine where Lin Xiao's idea came from. It seemed like someone suddenly learned a method from the Creator, and then used this method in the proof process.

It was not until a week after Lin Xiao's paper was released that Gerd Faltings, director of the Max Planck Institute of Mathematics, published a short article describing his views on Lin Xiao's paper.

[As everyone knows, I am not a physicist, I am just a mathematician, so regardless of the physical results of Lin's paper, I will only talk about the part that everyone wants to know.

At first, I learned that some of the mathematical processes in Lin's paper were very difficult to understand, as if I had learned the standard answer in advance. But now I have read it, and now I am sure that if Lin did not know it from God, If the standard answer is given, then there is only one possibility. Lin has begun to get closer to God - okay, just kidding.

All in all, Lin's process used the idea of ​​​​the P=NP problem. Although it is deeply hidden, it can be seen that Lin specifically provided a method to solve the NP problem using the method of solving the P problem for his physical problem. Means, that is to say, he simplified the problem into a problem that can be solved only by giving it to a computer!

...]

With the release of Faltings' short article, the scientific community was even more shocked!

P=NP!