Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 318 57 Duck Iodine Chloride and Bromine

It was just a telegram to the United States. The salesman from United Artists did not need to make the trip back to London and back again. He only needed to find a place to stay in Cambridgeshire, and then go to the telegraph office in the county. Just take a photo and wait for a call back from the US side.

Chen Muwu also went to the telegraph office and sent a telegram to the headquarters of the British Steam Navigation Company in London, asking where the ship his family was traveling to now and what the expected date of entry was.

However, before he could wait for a reply from United Artists and the shipping company, he was greeted by another acquaintance whom he had not seen for a long time.

Years ago, when Chen Muwu went to London, he met with the Duke of York.

Before the meeting, he happily felt that his seat belt design was about to come to fruition. However, after the meeting, the other party told him that the British Rolls-Royce Motor Company did not like the seat belt at all. .

Chen Muwu's wish to make a huge amount of royalties from it came to nothing, let alone leave a good reputation in automobile history for considering the safety of drivers and passengers.

At that time, he was depressed and helpless. He felt that a Rolls-Royce was no more than a pearl that could not discern pearls.

However, I can't rush to build a car factory myself and produce cars on my own...

Why not?
His own strength may be limited, but that doesn't mean he can't find someone to cooperate with, right?
After the idea came to mind, Chen Muwu immediately wrote a letter to Sweden, mentioning that cars would play an increasingly important role in future life, and stated that he wanted to build a car factory in Sweden. The matter of independent production of cars.

He originally intended to write this letter to the Crown Prince of Sweden, but because His Highness the Crown Prince was still traveling around the world at that time and had not returned to the country, Chen Muwu forwarded the letter to young Marcus and asked him to wait for His Highness the Crown Prince. Let's discuss it after we return home.

At first, little Marcus was sent to please the Crown Prince of Sweden as soon as he got involved in the Wallenberg family's business, so he got in touch with Chen Muwu.

At first, he didn't think much of this Oriental who was about the same age as himself. He only met Chen Muwu out of politeness and the respect of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.

Fortunately, he was not at a loss this time. Chen Muwu gave him some business advice, which allowed Marcus, who had just entered the workplace, to successfully gain a foothold and enter the position of the head of the Wallenberg family. within the field of view.

Chen Muwu tried his best to ask Marcus Jr. to suggest that the family acquire Ericsson, a company engaged in telephone production and telecommunications services. In the end, the Wallenberg family defeated the Swedish match king Kruger in the acquisition battle and obtained Ericsson's shares. The vast majority of shares.

He not only suggested that Marcus Jr. make an acquisition, but also proposed the company's operating strategy after the acquisition, which was to temporarily avoid the spotlight and compete with a series of American companies headed by the Bell Telephone Company that were gaining momentum to grab cakes in mainstream markets such as Europe and the United States. The purpose is to be one of the first to eat crabs and to open up the domestic market of the somewhat mysterious eastern neighbor, Sulian.

At that time, Su Lian had changed his spokesperson, had basically stabilized the domestic situation, and was preparing to seek to resume national construction and economic development.

However, due to the natural distrust of the red Soviet Union by the European and American powers, they blocked and pursued them in all aspects, preventing the Soviet Union from attracting large investments or introducing advanced Western technology.

Under such circumstances, Ericsson took the initiative to contact the Soviet Union and help build telecommunications construction in major cities in the Soviet Union such as Moheli. It was completely an act of providing help in a timely manner.

This is not only a gift of telecommunications technology, but more importantly, a statement.

Since then, the Soviet Union government has opened the door to Ericsson, and it is precisely by relying on the eastward move that this Swedish company, which was already about to lose money and go bankrupt, turned losses into profits in Soviet Union.

With the two brilliant moves of acquiring Ericsson and entering the Soviet Union market, young Marcus became the No. 1 person of his generation to enter the inner circle of the Wallenberg family.

At the same time, he also determined that Chen Muwu not only had a smart brain capable of achieving countless achievements in scientific research, but also had a keen vision and detached judgment in business.

After receiving Chen Muwu's letter, Marcus began to pay attention to the automobile manufacturing industry in Sweden and other European and American countries.

Just because he was busy with affairs at the end of the year, and Chen Muwu said in the telegram that he would also prepare to go to Italy for a meeting in early 1927, the meeting between the two people has not waited until after the Como Conference.

After meeting with the representative of the Swedish plutocratic family, Chen Muwu was most concerned about whether he could establish an automobile industry in Sweden.

In fact, cars are not cars, but Chen Muwu is looking for a source of income for his school in Stockholm.

After all, if you want to run education well, engage in scientific research, and continuously achieve various new results, you need a lot of financial support.

If you just rely on your relationship with the Crown Prince of Sweden and Marcus Jr. and sell your face to obtain funds from them, the relationship will always fade one day.

Only if you have "food in your pocket" can you "not panic in your heart".

He even wanted to know when the school in Stockholm would be completed. Don't wait until the domestic selection examinations were over. As a result, the school in Sweden was not completed, leaving these selected talents with nowhere to go.

It is not a problem for Chen Muwu to get three to five students to enter the University of Cambridge and the Cavendish Laboratory every year, especially since he is now the acting director of the laboratory and has much more power than when he was a student.

But if dozens or hundreds of people are allowed to enter the University of Cambridge at the same time, let alone him, the acting director of the Cavendish Laboratory, even the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Balfour, or even a nobleman. The second son of the British King, the Duke of York, couldn't do it.

Good guy, are you trying to treat the UK's number one higher education institution like a crowded market where you can come and leave as you please?

There is only one nearly impossible way to get so many people to enroll at the same time, and that is to suddenly send a strong man from the sky to donate a huge sum of money to the University of Cambridge, buy land to build a new college in Cambridgeshire, and successfully persuade the previous students. The Cambridge University Senate, headed by Balfour, asked them to agree to accept the newly established college as a member of the University of Cambridge.

But wouldn't this be no different from what Chen Muwu did in Stockholm?
Moreover, compared with Cambridge County, Stockholm not only lacks a school supervisor, Balfour, who dislikes Chen Muwu's displeasure with Chinese people and will definitely obstruct him at every turn, but also has an additional Swedish crown prince who loves Chinese culture and has a good relationship with Chen Muwu.

Any fool knows where this school should be built, and that’s exactly what Chen Muwu did.Chen Muwu breathed a sigh of relief after receiving a positive answer from Marcus Jr., saying that the Stockholm Prince's College should be completed and put into use as scheduled.

But compared to the owner who was worried about the development of education, this guest from Northern Europe was more concerned about another less important thing.

After answering Chen Muwu's questions, little Marcus suddenly became a little mysterious: "Dr. Chen, do you think this alien really exists?"

Damn, I really regret it. Why did I tell Fermi about this in the first place?

He also didn't expect that Fermi was a big talker. He calculated a conclusion by himself that was unclear whether it was correct or not, so he couldn't wait to find reporters and wanted to publicize it.

Now, everyone who comes to Cambridge University to find me cannot avoid mentioning this matter.

But looking at little Marcus with eyes full of "curiosity", Chen Muwu had no reason not to answer this question of his partner for the next few decades.

"Who can say for sure about this? As I have always emphasized, from a probability perspective, aliens may exist, but there is no evidence of their existence on the earth, not even anywhere."

Chen Muwu gave his response politely, wanting to change the topic to building a car factory as soon as possible.

However, little Marcus wanted to break the censorship: "Recent newspapers have reported a lot of news about wonders, some of which have existed for a long time, and some of which have been recently discovered. But no matter which kind they are, these things have not been discovered before. Human beings cannot explain why they exist, but your new alien point of view can explain it. - If there are no aliens, how were these things built? Isn’t this exactly what you said, Are the traces left by aliens on the earth evidence of their existence?"

"What you mean is that because these things look like they were built by aliens and people can't explain them, they were built by aliens."

"Yup!"

Chen Muwu felt that if he continued like this, he would probably fall into an endless melee where one side said they were not aliens and the other side said they were aliens, so he thought he would try to explain in another direction.

"Let's not talk about aliens for now. I want to ask this: if an animal looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and swims like a duck, then is it a duck? ?”

The duck problem was very popular in the United States in the 50s and [-]s.

It's not that Americans at that time started to think about philosophy, but because at that time when a certain congressman named Mai was popular, they used this fallacy to judge whether a person was a ***, which was similar to Mo Xuyou in the Southern Song Dynasty. .

"I can't prove you're a ***, but when I see a bird quacking like a duck... of course I assume it's a duck."

Not only in the United States, Archbishop Richard Cushing of Boston once used this rhetoric to accuse the legendary bearded man who was assassinated by the CIA more than 600 times without success.

"Of course it is a duck! The same goes for those things that people can't explain. They seem to be left by aliens, so they are left by aliens."

Little Marcus felt that the analogy given by Chen Muwu was very vivid and reasonable, so he actually supported aliens coming to the earth, but because of his status as a scientific worker, he could not express his views publicly. He could only Tell yourself in this very subtle way?
"Forget it, let me give you another example to prove how unreliable the human subconscious judgment of something is.

"There is a chemical element called chlorine, which is one of the constituent elements of the table salt we eat every day.

"There is another chemical element called iodine, which is also widely distributed in the sea. It is an indispensable trace element for the human body. It can also turn starch solutions blue, thus serving as a detection reagent for starch.

"These two elements combined together can turn into a compound called iodine chloride. When the temperature is low, it is a reddish-brown crystal. When the temperature rises, it will melt into a dark red liquid, and there will be Pungent smell.

"If there is such a liquid, it also has the same pungent smell as halogen, and the color is also dark red. The source is the same as iodine chloride. It is extracted from the sea. Even if you calculate the molecular weight, you can The molecular weight of this liquid was found to be comparable to that of iodine chloride.

"If we follow the duck theory just now, there is no doubt that this unknown new liquid is iodine chloride.

"The great German chemist, Baron von Liebig, the 'father of organic chemistry', thought so too at the time, and a German businessman offered him a bottle of this new liquid obtained from the filtrate of seaweed ash, hoping Liebig would Can analyze the composition of this bottle of liquid.

"After getting the liquid, Liebig did not use the chemical instruments in the laboratory to measure the new liquid. He just looked at it with his naked eyes, smelled it with his nose, and then hastily labeled it. Iodine chloride' label, and then put it in the corner of the cabinet where you store medicines.

"This release lasted for four years. It was not until four years later that a young man in France, Anthony Barral, a chemical laboratory assistant who had just obtained a degree in pharmacists, also obtained it from the filtrate of seaweed ash in Montpellier. This new liquid.

"Baral, like Liebig, initially believed that the new liquid was iodine chloride. But he tried to prove his judgment, and the result of this attempt was a failure.

"So Barral judged that this new liquid was not iodine chloride, and there should be a new element in it.

“Later people learned that this new element was called bromine.

"Mr. Wallenberg, I think through this example that really happened in the history of chemistry, you can understand that it doesn't just look like, sound like, and can swim, it must be a duck."

"Dr. Chen, I roughly understand what you mean. Do you want to say that although those traces look like they were left by aliens, they are not necessarily aliens. They may also look very similar to aliens. The underground people?"

(End of this chapter)