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

Chapter 679 Einstein-Li Yuqiao

The radio business is advancing by leaps and bounds now.

Li Yu's LY Radio Company is running out of steam, especially for vacuum tubes. The American Radio Company alone is almost unable to produce orders.

The main reason is that broadcasting has begun to appear in Europe and the United States.

Broadcasting is definitely a product of hardware accumulation to a certain extent. Radio stations already have high-power audio transmission technology; and miniaturization technology based on vacuum tubes allows radio receiving equipment to enter ordinary homes.

Equipment produced by LY Radio was the first to have built-in amplifiers and speakers, so listeners no longer needed headphones. Even though it is just a small change, it is of great significance to sales.

For the first time, the whole family could sit around the radio and listen together, and a new family pastime was born.

Radio is somewhat unfamiliar to people in the 21st century, but when it emerged a hundred years ago, it was almost as significant as the Internet.

Because radio can be said to be the first "social equalizer", everyone has access to the same information overnight, regardless of whether they live in a big city or whether they are highly educated or not.

Some panicked newspapers even refused to print radio programmes, fearing that their business models would be lost to the competition - after all, the printing press could not compete with radio broadcasting the latest events in real time.

The impact can be imagined.

In just a few years, radio became popular in the United States. By almost 1924, there were more than 300 million radios in the United States, or 10% of households purchased a radio. Cafes, restaurants, and other public places looked to radios as a means of attracting customers.

When the Great Depression hit the United States in 1929, most businesses suffered, with the exception of the broadcasting industry. People saw radio as a cheap way to have fun without having to buy tickets or pay for travel, so between 1930 and 1933, an additional 400 million radio receivers were sold.

In short, Li Yu's company must be extremely busy and extremely profitable. It is estimated that the output of vacuum tubes must be increased to more than 1924 million pieces in 1000.

This is the first outbreak of consumer electronics products in human history, and it has quickly spread to all countries, including China across the ocean.

And because of Li Yu's intervention, radio in China came a few years earlier than in history.

Now the major broadcasting companies in the United States are beginning to take shape, the most typical of which is Radio Corporation of America, and their programs have also developed to a relatively rich level.

After Einstein and Planck completed their lecture tour and returned to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Li Yu was listening to "The War of the Worlds".

"George Wells?" Plank said.

"That's right, the sound quality is still not good enough." Li Yu said.

"War of the Worlds" was later remade into a famous movie of the same name by Spielberg in 2005, starring Tom Cruise.

The story is probably that Martians invaded the earth. Humanity's resistance was powerless in the face of Martian technology. The Martians almost made humankind extinct.

But suddenly, the Martians themselves were doomed.

Later I found out that it was the germs on Earth that caused all the Martians to burp.

This setting is really cool when you think about it: not only humans are resisting alien organisms, but the viruses and bacteria that have survived and multiplied on the earth for billions of years are also resisting invaders in their own way, and in the end they succeeded, by the way Protected humanity.

The original work was published in 1898. It seems that "War of the Worlds" is also the originator of alien invasion science fiction works.

I have to admire George Wells for his imaginative thinking.

It's just that Spielberg changed the setting in the movie to the 21st century, while the original work was set around the early 20th century.

Li Yu watched the movie when he was a child. It was quite shocking. It can be called the shadow of childhood...

Several people listened to the passage with great interest. Einstein said: "It's good to be able to hear the sound. In this regard, Germany has fallen behind the United States and the United Kingdom."

The UK has just established its first national broadcasting company, the British Broadcasting Corporation Limited (BBC), and one of the founders is Marconi himself.

According to the British Wireless Telegraph Act, starting from the second year, listening to the radio requires an annual radio license fee of 10 shillings.

At this time, the average weekly wage of ordinary laborers was 2 pounds 12 shillings, and the charges were not exaggerated.

The main reason is that these broadcasters have found the real profit point-advertising.

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There are no programs on the ocean liner, so I can only buy a few books to read.

Einstein and Li Yu immediately discussed the previous topic about "bridges".

“Schwarzschild’s solution at that time still had many problems in mathematics. For example, it had two singular locations, namely R=0 (the singular point) and the Schwarzschild radius boundary. In these two places, Schwarzschild The solutions all diverge, which is simply indescribable," Einstein said.

Li Yu naturally knew that physics could not explain what the inside of a black hole looked like even a hundred years later, let alone this time.

But now we are just chatting casually. Li Yu said: "Since gravity can bend space-time, if space-time is strongly curved or even folded in half, two space-time points will be close to each other; and there will be another space-time point between these two close space-time points. What will happen to the space-time tunnel?”

Einstein was stunned and put his pipe on the table: "Mr. Li Yu, are you talking to me about science fiction or science?"

Li Yu smiled and said: "It's considered science and science fiction."

"Time travel?" Einstein picked up his pipe and took a few puffs, thinking about it, "Since you are so bored, I will also accompany you to be bored for a while."

The two of them scribbled on the paper for a while, and finally came up with something.

I'm afraid that in this world, the "Einstein-Rosen Bridge" will be renamed the "Einstein-Li Yu Bridge".

Planck strolled over, saw their results, and asked in surprise: "Are you serious?"

Einstein said: "It is physically impossible, but mathematically it seems possible."

"It's mathematics again," Planck said, but he picked it up and looked at it anyway.

In fact, there have been signs of this in physics since many years ago: people first solve something through mathematics, and then slowly find out whether it has any physical meaning. After all, partial differential equations are too complex, and the solutions obtained by different boundary conditions vary widely.

Planck murmured: "A bridge that can travel through space..."

Li Yu said: "Or give it a more popular name, such as... wormhole. An ant is crawling on an apple, and a hole suddenly appears on it, allowing the ant to pass through the hole and reach the other end of the apple."

"This name sounds so disgusting!" Einstein didn't like it.

Li Yu smiled and said: "From a memory perspective, uncomfortable things are easier to remember."

Einstein stretched out his arms: "I'm already getting goosebumps."

"Is it really possible to travel through time and space instantaneously through a wormhole?" Planck asked. He was not very good at general relativity. Einstein shook his head: "Impossible, because if a person wants to travel through a wormhole, he must travel faster than the speed of light, and this is absolutely impossible."

Li Yu said: "Not only that, if you want to maintain the stable existence of such a channel, you must construct a strange substance in physics, a substance that is very difficult to understand."

Planck said: "Something that doesn't exist on Earth?"

"I'm afraid it's hard to find it in the universe," Li Yu said. "This strange substance must have negative energy."

"Negative energy?" This was the first time Planck heard such a word.

"It means having negative energy." Li Yu said.

"How is it possible! The lowest energy is zero, and it cannot be a negative number." Planck studied thermodynamics after all, and was very good at energy theory, so he could not accept this theory.

Li Yu couldn't explain it very well, so he said: "So physically, this space-time tunnel cannot exist."

Planck said: "You are so imaginative, turning science into science fiction. Is this paper going to be published?"

"Of course we have to publish it," Li Yu said. "We just made a little mathematical speculation."

Plank said: "Based on my experience of reading all the science fiction works in bookstores, this paper will definitely be wildly sought after by science fiction novelists, even if it is obscure."

Planck's prediction was indeed correct. Even Li Yu and Einstein said it was "possible" to realize time travel. Where can I find such good materials? Since then, time travel has basically become a "conventional" setting of science fiction.

However, scientists have actually done research on this road for many years. Half a century later, in 1964, Soviet scientist Novikov obtained another solution based on Schwarzschild's solution, namely the famous white hole.

White holes are somewhat difficult to understand.

At least there is scientific observational evidence for black holes, while white holes only exist in theory.

As for negative energy, it has been discovered in the laboratory.

Negative matter has not been discovered yet, and it is indeed too difficult to imagine. ——Please note that negative matter is not antimatter, it is not the same thing.

The setting in the masterpiece "Interstellar" is that the protagonist enters a wormhole through a black hole 100 billion light-years away from the earth and comes to the five-dimensional civilized world.

These settings come from Thorne, a physics guru who studies wormholes and black holes.

He set this up because he must have understood that neither human power nor the power of any three-dimensional civilization can create a wormhole.

Because if you want to artificially create a wormhole, you need a lot of negative matter and negative energy (according to the mass-energy equation, mass is energy, energy is mass, and mass and energy are equivalent).

A wormhole with a radius of 1cm requires as much negative matter as the mass of the Earth.

By the way, there is another very crucial property of the wormhole that I forgot to mention: because it is composed of negative matter, it naturally has extremely strong negative pressure, or to put it more bluntly, it is tension, a force that tears outward.

The negative pressure of a wormhole can easily tear a person apart, including the atoms that make up a person.

If you want atoms not to be torn apart, the radius of the wormhole must be at least 1 light-year!

There is not enough energy in the entire galaxy.

Anyway, according to the current theory, time travel is impossible. We can only imagine that high-dimensional civilization can help us like in "Interstellar".

Or there may be some other unknown method. After all, human beings still have many blind spots in their understanding of the universe, and technology also has a very broad future.

Einstein also agreed to publish the paper, but it took him a long time to accept the term "wormhole".

Moreover, in the paper, Einstein clearly stated that it is impossible for it to exist stably, and super-light speed is also prohibited. ——Strictly speaking, objects with mass cannot be accelerated to the speed of light. So there is no worry about fake papers.

After two weeks of sailing, the ship first arrived in Japan. The little devil will definitely not miss the opportunity to have a bunch of big guys come to visit.

Responsible for welcoming the guests were Hantaro Nagaoka from Tokyo Imperial University and Jun Ishihara, another physics professor.

Without Li Yu, Jun Ishihara would have been the first person to introduce the theory of relativity in the East.

"Three great saints in the scientific community, welcome to Japan!" Hantaro Nagaoka said excitedly.

Li Yu has long been well-known in the Japanese scientific community. Even the business community regards Li Yu as a god-like figure. Just like when he was in the United States before, he is accustomed to the respect of the Japanese.

Einstein asked: "Don't the Japanese wear a special kind of clothing? Why do you all wear suits?"

Jun Ishihara said: "Nowadays, civilized people in Japan are proud to wear suits."

"Okay." Einstein said noncommittally.

Planck's first request after setting foot in the East for the first time was to eat. He asked: "Is there any similarity between Japan's diet and China's?"

Hantaro Nagaoka said: "We have our own unique way of eating sashimi to preserve the deliciousness of the food as much as possible."

The level of sashimi at this time is actually far inferior to that of a hundred years later. In the eyes of Westerners, eating sashimi is simply like drinking blood.

The corner of Gangplank's mouth twitched: "Eat it raw?"

Hantaro Nagaoka said: "I will never let the professor down."

Einstein prefers novel things and laughed: "Whatever, try it first and then talk! If it doesn't work, let's just eat what Li Yu said... the instant noodles!"

The little devil also provided Einstein with a reward of US$10000 this time, but most of it was more like appearance fees for commercial performances.

Each of Einstein's speeches in Japan lasted up to four hours, with on-site translation.

Ishihara Jun compiled Einstein's speeches and published them. Unfortunately, there were some mistakes, which caused a small mistake in the history of science.

Einstein himself did not publish a written version of his speech in Japanese, and Ishihara Jun published Einstein's speech by compiling his own notes without obtaining Einstein's consent.

In the speech draft compiled by Ishihara Jun, there is an additional note at the beginning, pointing out that this article was not written by Einstein, and Ishihara Jun himself is responsible for possible errors. But this additional note was omitted in later translations, and even in a collection of Einstein's lectures compiled by Jun Ishihara himself.

It just so happens that most of the works on Einstein in Asia, especially in my country during the Republic of China, were translated from Jun Ishihara's translation, which brought some errors.

A typical example is regarding the Michelson-Morley experiment. Jun Ishihara said that Einstein did not pay attention to this experiment at all.

Fortunately, there are not a few Chinese people studying in Europe and the United States, and there are also many people who have read the original version, and have gradually corrected some of Ishihara Jun's mistakes.