A Man of Science and Engineering in Troubled Times Wandering in the Late Qing Dynasty

Chapter 638 The Pulse of the Universe

Liang Qichao and others did not stay after arriving in the United States and immediately went to Europe, while Li Yu wanted to stay in the United States for a while.

First, I went to Columbia University to visit Lu Bicheng. She majored in fine arts and European literature. While her painting skills have greatly improved, her English is also quite good.

Lu Bicheng happily took out a manuscript and showed it to Li Yu: "I am translating an English book."

The title of the book is "A Comprehensive History of the Founding of the United States". Li Yu said with a smile: "Fortunately it is the history of the founding of the United States, otherwise it would have become a big book."

Lu Bicheng also smiled and said: "Short is a bit short, but foreign books are really a bit long-winded. They can end with one line, but they insist on writing two or three lines. It doesn't matter whether they delete it during translation or not. It's very distressing."

"Just delete it," Li Yu said, "but this may increase the workload, and you need to consider and reorganize the sentences."

"This is the only way." Lu Bicheng is a perfectionist and must do better.

"Academician Li Yu," Dewey came over and said with a thumbs up, "Mr. Li Yu's wife is really amazing. She can translate history books with one hand and write poems and paintings with the other. Talented women in China have to admire her. Some time ago, the New York Times specially Wrote a report."

"Thank you Professor Dewey for the compliment," Li Yu said, and then asked Lu Bicheng, "Why didn't you mention this in the telegram?"

Lu Bicheng blushed slightly, "The newspaper boasted about me a bit too much... I even felt embarrassed when I read it."

Dewey laughed and said: "There is no moisture at all."

Li Yu recalled the telegram he had sent before and asked, "When will the professor go to China?"

"It should be within a few months," Dewey said.

Calculating that he could arrive before the May Fourth Movement, Li Yu said, "Maybe we can go together by then."

"Looking forward to this trip to China." Dewey said.

Li Yu and Lu Bicheng then went to visit factories in the United States. They had made considerable profits in the past few years. Affected by the economic boom during the war, the distribution of Star Wars and Alien had also been good, and the pots were almost overflowing. Come.

After driving around with Lu Bicheng for two days, she wanted to go back to class. The American university had a lot of courses, mainly because she took two majors at the same time.

Li Yu went to an annual physics meeting organized by the American Academy of Sciences, attended by Michelson, Millikan, Hale and others.

When Li Yu arrived, Millikan was sitting on a stool and talking eloquently, giving some pointers to physics professors from other universities from time to time.

After returning from the army, Millikan changed a bit. On the one hand, he was more confident, and on the other hand, he was a little flamboyant. His daughter once said that he especially likes to share the latest "Millikan characteristics" with his family at the dinner table, which are some ideas and ideas in experiments.

His students described him as "an arrogant person who cares very much about his reputation."

Even Millikan's colleagues had their fair share of criticism.

But Millikan had crazy capital. Michelson was so old and semi-retired. He was the boss of the American physics community.

Although the Nobel Prize has not been awarded for a long time, everyone knew very clearly many years ago that Millikan would definitely win the Nobel Prize.

"I have submitted a joint project proposal to the Carnegie Foundation in New York, and the one that concerns me the most is the cosmic ray project," Millikan said. "This mysterious radiation energy was discovered by Li Yu many years ago and he made speculations. It should come from somewhere in the universe."

Haer is engaged in astronomy and asked: "After so many years, is there a good way to study cosmic rays?"

Millikan shook his head and said: "It is very difficult. The penetrability of these rays is far greater than that of X-rays, and the energy is unusually high. High-energy rays with tens of billions of electron volts have been captured many times."

"The energy is so high?" Haer was a little surprised. "If I have the chance, I will also build an instrument to measure the radiation energy of solar flares."

"The energy of the sun's rays is too small, otherwise all life on the earth would have been wiped out," Millikan said. "But you can give it a try. After the war in Europe, Jean Perrin and others in France also began to conduct research on cosmic rays. , but their research environment is definitely not as good as ours.”

In his words, Millikan clearly wanted to dominate the European physics community.

He suddenly saw Li Yu: "Your Excellency, the academician, has arrived."

"Long time no see, Professor Millikan, Professor Michelson, Professor Hale," Li Yu said hello first, and then said, "As for the cosmic rays you mentioned, I happened to have written a paper in the past few days and can take it out. Let’s study together.”

Millikan asked curiously: "Is there any significant progress?"

"I can't say there has been much progress, just some theoretical deductions," Li Yu said. "The energy of cosmic rays is so high, we have to boldly assume that it is likely to have a large number of protons."

"The new particles you and another Chinese scholar He Yujie discovered not long ago?" Millikan asked.

"Yes." Li Yu said.

Haer said puzzledly: "How can charged particles have such high energy? Can they penetrate distant stars and reach the earth? There are so many of them."

"There are countless interstellar stars with magnetic fields, and it is not difficult to accelerate rays and particles. Because of this, we cannot find the source of cosmic rays," Li Yu said.

"Proton..." Millikan thought for a while, "It seems that this thing has always been around us."

Haer said: "If it is a particle in an atom, is it possible that nuclear changes are occurring at any time in the universe?"

"You can guess that." Li Yu said.

Millikan asked: "Rutherford once used alpha particles to bombard gold foil. You have also used alpha particles to bombard various substances. Its energy is much smaller than cosmic rays. If you bombard it directly with cosmic rays, wouldn't you be able to discover more interesting things? thing?"

Millikan's idea is not surprising, and I guess many people think so, but it is indeed quite bold.

Rutherford opened a new door for experimental physicists. Everyone wants to bombard other things with high-energy rays when they have nothing to do. As long as they find something new, it is a big event.

The energy of cosmic rays is so high that it is beyond the reach of human power. As mentioned before, the most energetic record was a particle with an energy of 300EeV. When converted into joules, it is equivalent to the energy of a 10-pound discus hitting your feet from a height of one meter. The scientist who discovered it at that time exclaimed "oh my god", so it was named "oh my god particle", that is, OMG particle.

(Fortunately, I didn’t shout what the fock! That would be WTF particles.)
You don’t have to worry about what will happen if this cosmic ray hits you, because it is just a proton, which is so small that it will pass through you without any obstacles.

The energy of this OMG particle is tens of millions of times that of the human Large Hadron Collider!
In other words, the highest energy of particles accelerated by humans through collider is less than a fraction of others.

At this level, the only difference is speed and a few nines after the decimal point.

The Large Hadron Collider can accelerate protons to 99.9999991% of the speed of light (six nines after the decimal point), which is only 6 meters/second slower than the speed of light, which is already a very terrifying speed.

The speed of OMG particles is at least 21 nines after the decimal point.

If this thing is used for experiments, the collider will definitely say "I can't do it" and "Please spare me!"

Li Yu said: "Although cosmic rays are natural high-energy particles, it is too difficult to capture them, and it is impossible to determine which direction they are coming from, so if you want to use them for collision experiments, it is impossible to operate."

——The Large Hadron Collider accelerates a beam of particles to achieve collision.

Hale immediately said: "What about conducting experiments in space? There are more rays there."

Li Yu said with a smile: "At present, it can only exist in science fiction novels."

In any case, the discovery of protons has given us another good weapon to explore cosmic rays.

In the first report that followed, Li Yu spoke in detail about his knowledge of cosmic rays.

After finishing his speech, Michelson applauded excitedly: "What an excellent speech. Cosmic rays are like the music of celestial bodies. It's so beautiful!"

After the end of World War I, newspapers returned to their normal state and no longer reported daily on the progress of the war and casualties. News on science and technology became one of the hot topics again.

Technology was definitely a super mainstream in the 1920s and 1930s. Everyone's life was closely related to technology. The word "science" was a spoken word in various countries.

Often prefixing a sentence with "science tells us" is enough to quell public opinion. Some salespeople or clergy in the United States will always say "this is scientific" when promoting their products or activities.

Yes, the clergy are no exception.

Across the world, scientists are regarded as saints.

As usual, newspapers praised Li Yu's achievements. The New York Times claimed in an editorial: "Academician Li Yu has gone beyond the uppermost atmosphere surrounding us to search for sources of radiation that cause mysterious interference to physicists' electroscopes. He Through careful calculations and adventurous assumptions, the nature of powerful and penetrating wild radiation sources has been discovered. Cosmic rays will definitely occupy an important place in the technological encyclopedia of our tiny planet, because they are related to a Such a noble and humble person to relate to.”

"Le Monde" is even more interesting. It wrote a gorgeous article to praise: "The cosmic rays discovered by Academician Li Yu are so mysterious and beautiful. They come from outside space, from a dark interstellar space behind the explorable door to the universe. The hall comes from a cosmic ovary still filled with expanding gases and possibly star embryos. It pierces toward the earth, passing through the chaotic space; passing through the planes where parallel lines intersect; passing through the vast nothingness. There is only time whirling like a tiny weathervane in the vortex of eternity.

"This is the pulse of the universe!"

The newspapers at this time were like this. Li Yu had made too many achievements and was accustomed to it, but Lu Bicheng was still a little embarrassed because of the excessive praise in the newspapers.

Returning to the Annual Physics Meeting, the second day's meeting was about another currently important physics topic - atomic physics.

The first person to report was still Millikan:

"It has long been thought that all elements may be composed of some basic substance, and Plaut's famous hypothesis that all matter is made of atoms is the most widely known example of this view. In the hottest On our planet, the spectrum of hydrogen and nitrogen dominates, but as the temperature drops, the spectrum becomes more complex and lines of heavier elements appear.

"It is assumed that when the temperature drops, the light elements combine to form heavier elements. There is no doubt that it is a very difficult task to achieve the transmutation of matter in ordinary earth environment. Huge energy conversion is accompanied by The transformation of radioactive materials also explains why such a huge amount of energy is required to combine lighter elements into light and heavy elements."

Millikan's vision of physics was quite sharp, and this time he was only a small step away.

A few months later, in the newly bustling Cavendish Laboratory, Rutherford, who succeeded the laboratory director, led his students to discover artificial transmutation (the conversion of one element into another element through a nuclear reaction).

Millikan continued: "We have been forced for the first time not only to admit the possibility of atomic transmutation, but also the fact of growth and decay of material elements. In the case of uranium, we see only decay. Yet it is almost certain that Somewhere else, somehow, these elements must be constantly combining. Can we learn to control this process? Why not? Only research can tell.

"What's the value of trying to do this? $100 million? $1 million? $10 billion?
"If the experiment fails, it will be worth that much money, because the by-products of the experiment can bring in more than that amount. And if the experiment succeeds, mankind will have a new world!"

Millikan was a great speaker, and the questions he raised were indeed critical.

However, the base camp of nuclear physics is obviously in Europe. Although Millikan knew that it was important, he was not good at nuclear physics.

But Millikan was ambitious at this time and wanted to catch up with European physics.

During the free discussion stage, Millikan and Haer indeed talked to Li Yu about the matter.

Haier said: "Academician Li Yu, we are planning to establish a benchmark university for science and engineering in the western United States. This university already exists, but the level of education is much lower. I have sought a fund to carry out academic research. Upgrade, Professor Millikan is also very thoughtful.”

"Caltech?" Li Yu asked.

Haer said: "Yes, many years ago I took several professors from Caltech to meet Mr. Academician. This school is very ordinary. It's great that you still remember it."

"Of course I remember." Li Yu smiled.

Haier said: "Professor Millikan promised to transfer to the California Institute of Technology in one year, and we will provide maximum financial support specifically for physics research. It will be the best atomic physics research base in the United States. If Mr. Academician can It would be a great honor for us to go to the lab at Caltech for guidance from time to time.”

Haer's tone is not small, but Caltech was not weak in atomic physics later.

Li Yu had to put forward some conditions: "There are many Chinese people in California. If the school can recruit more Chinese students, I will seriously consider it."

Haer immediately agreed: "This matter is so easy. As long as anyone is willing to apply to Caltech, we welcome them!"