Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 383 122 Pointing at the nose and cursing on the street

After putting their luggage in the accommodation prepared by Marcus for the group, Chen Muwu couldn't wait to take Marcus with him to visit the Stockholm Prince's College construction site not far from the residence.

A year ago, Chen Muwu took the opportunity of the Swedish Crown Prince's visit to China to follow him back to China.

It was during his return to China that Chen Muwu and the Swedish side jointly announced at the Swedish Embassy in China in Jihai that they would jointly establish a school in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, to cultivate talents for China and Sweden.

Since leaving in China, this time he came to Stockholm. This was the first time that Chen Muwu went to the field to watch and inspect the construction progress of the school.

In his subconscious mind, the workers in Europe are not hard-working enough. They adhere to an eight-hour work system every day, go to and from get off work on time, and will never do such things as overtime.

Especially since Sweden is located in Northern Europe, which is known for its high welfare, the efficiency of workers may be lower than in other parts of Europe.

Therefore, before coming to Sweden, Chen Muwu had no hope for the progress of school construction here.

But what he forgot is that it is 1927, not 2027.

The ancestors of Europeans a hundred years ago were still much more industrious than their descendants a hundred years later.

This is like a Showa boy versus a waste from the Heisei and Reiwa eras. It's completely different.

Chen Muwu believed too much in his memory, so he used the sword of the previous dynasty to kill the officials of his own dynasty.

As early as 1817, Robert Owen, the early British utopian SH, proposed the prototype of the "eight-hour work system": "Eight hours of labor, eight hours of rest, and eight hours of free allocation."

But his slogan, just like his title, was just empty talk and was not implemented in practice at first.

In 1817, when Owen proposed the slogan, Britain was at the peak of the first industrial revolution.

The explosion of industrial standards brought about by the first industrial revolution greatly improved people's lives, but it also provided a large number of job opportunities and created a dilemma of shortage of workers.

Before the first industrial revolution, the British were still very loyal religious believers and adhered to the concept of not working on religious days. The normal working days in a year were 208 days.

But when the first industrial revolution broke out, opportunities arose in large numbers, and the number of normal working days in the UK suddenly rose to 306 days a year.

In London in the 19th century, there were even a large number of sweatshops that worked sixteen hours a day and seven days a week. Workers made great sacrifices for the improvement of British industrial standards, but the rights they received were It's completely inconsistent with what they paid for it.

In the late nineteenth century, American capitalism entered the imperialist stage at a speed far exceeding that of other capitalist countries. In order to stimulate the rapid development of the domestic economy and extract more surplus value from workers to maintain this high-speed capital ZY machine, Capitalists continue to cruelly exploit workers by increasing working hours and labor intensity.

A landmark moment when capitalists truly compromised with workers was the general strike that broke out in Chicago on May 1886, 5.

Just look at this time and you will know that this is the origin of May Day International Labor Day.

During that and subsequent strikes, workers shouted the slogan of the "eight-hour work day" proposed by Owen, fought for their rights, and forced capitalists and factory owners to continue to compromise.

But in fact, the real eight-hour work system only appeared for the first time in the Ford Motor Factory on the other side of the Atlantic not long ago, and then slowly spread to the entire United States.

Although British workers have fought for certain rights for themselves through repeated struggles, working eight hours a day is still a fantasy in their eyes.

However, the feelings of British workers towards their American compatriots are not envy and jealousy, but sarcasm.

The British look down on Americans on the other side of the Atlantic who speak with strange accents, and they are jealous that the United States is getting richer and richer. This is an indisputable fact. If they cannot make changes, they are more and more willing to attack verbally. Those vulgar foreigners, so they accepted the easier eight-hour work system, but became a point of view for the British to attack the United States.

Even though they have fought for their rights through strikes again and again, in the UK and Europe, workers' daily working hours are often more than ten hours.

Therefore, the progress of their project at the Prince's College in Stockholm was very fast, much faster than Chen Muwu imagined.

When Chen Muwu visited the construction site in person for the first time, he was really shocked by the situation inside.

He felt that he might be faced with a pile of foundations digging into the ground, and there were several yards of red bricks that had been placed but had not yet been filled into the building.

But in fact, several buildings have been capped, and the few remaining buildings that have not been capped are also in the final stages of finishing.

Chen Muwu pointed to the only piece of land not far away that was built on a hillside. The pit had just been dug and was still in the foundation state. He asked little Marcus who accompanied him to visit: "Mr. Wallenberg, where is that place?" ?”

"Dr. Chen, that is an urgent addition to the first phase of our project. It is an observatory that His Royal Highness the Crown Prince named to build for Dr. Hubble.

"It is expected that when this observatory is completed, it will become the largest observatory in Northern Europe and will have the largest astronomical telescope in Europe."

Little Marcus said quite proudly.

Being rich means being willful.

Americans who are getting richer and richer only have a history of two or three hundred years, so they like to create wonders in all aspects.

Presidential Hill, which just announced the construction of a presidential portrait on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota this year, is an example. The astronomical telescopes with larger and larger diameters that are popping up all over the country are also a reflection of their wealth.

America is accustomed to ordinary things, and the Europa astronomer is heartbroken.

The United Kingdom, the richest country in Europe, cannot compete with its cousin across the Atlantic in terms of the caliber of astronomical telescopes, let alone other countries that are not very developed and have just experienced a world war.

But this obviously excludes old money families like the Wallenberg family. Isn’t it just an astronomical telescope? How much is it worth? “The biggest in Europe? Don’t you want to hit the world record?”

Chen Muwu didn't mind watching the excitement.

"There was indeed such a plan at the beginning, and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince also suggested to Dr. Hubble whether to build an astronomical telescope larger than the 100-inch diameter of the Mount Wilson Observatory.

"But Dr. Hubble, who came from the Mount Wilson Observatory and had personally used that telescope, said it was not necessary because he heard that the Americans were no longer satisfied with the one hundred-inch diameter. The Rockefeller Foundation was raising funds to build a two-hundred-inch telescope. A larger astronomical telescope with an inch diameter.

"He persuaded us that there is no need to engage in an 'arms race' with the American oil king in terms of aperture. Moreover, the larger the aperture of an astronomical telescope, the more construction costs will increase geometrically," Professor Hubble said. We can definitely use the money saved to build other aspects of the school.”

Fine.

Chen Muwu's attempt to conquer the fire failed.

He did not expect that Hubble, as an American, would not like large-diameter astronomical telescopes, and he was also a pragmatist who believed that "enough is enough".

It's a pity that Chen Muwu, who wanted to create a spectacle because he had a good son to spend money on, was disappointed.

Of course he knew that the two-hundred-inch astronomical telescope that Marcus Jr. relayed to Hubble would be the Hale telescope that would be installed at the Palomar Mountain Observatory in the future.

And without Chen Muwu, Hubble, who stayed in the United States, proposed Hubble's law of universe expansion, and became the American astronomer Taishan Beidou, would have been the first user of the behemoth Hale Telescope.

The Hale telescope held the world's number one position until 1976, when it was surpassed by the six-meter BTA-6 built by Sulian, another country that likes to build spectacles.

The latter lost its dominance in the field of astronomical telescopes because of the ten-meter Keck telescope built in Hawaii in 1993.

The aperture value of the world's largest telescope also shows traces of the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union for hegemony.

Therefore, even if the Crown Prince of Sweden builds a telescope in Stockholm with a larger diameter than the Hale telescope, it is estimated that the American oil man Rockefeller will soon come up with a countermeasure for an astronomical telescope with a large diameter.

There is another reason why Hubble does not support the construction of a record-breaking large-diameter astronomical telescope in Sweden. The larger the diameter, the more difficult and longer it takes to grind the lens, and it also needs to be installed on the observatory bracket. The longer it takes.

As a newly established school, Stockholm Prince's College is a place that is eager to produce results. Although it is said that "if you want to do your job well, you must first sharpen your tools," but you cannot waste all your time on "sharpening your tools."

Chen Muwu felt that he had made a good move by recruiting Hubble to Sweden because of the conflict between Hubble and the American astronomy community, because this astronomer really cared about the development of the school.

Anyway, in the end, the compromise between Hubble and the Crown Prince of Sweden was to not compete with the United States as the world's largest, but to establish a European hegemon.

If nothing else happens, the dominance of this telescope will also be lost in 1976.

Since young Marcus mentioned Hubble during the conversation, Chen Muwu took advantage of the situation and asked where the astronomer was currently.

If he was also in Stockholm, Chen Muwu would like to find an opportunity to meet with him and talk about their plans for astronomy research after the completion of Prince's College.

As a result, Marcus Jr. informed Chen Muwu that Professor Hubble had returned to the United States for Christmas not long ago and would not return to Sweden until next year to continue supervising the construction of the observatory.

In this case, it can only be said that they were destined to meet each other, so Chen Muwu had to give up his plan to meet, and he turned to ask about other things.

"Mr. Wallenberg, where does the power supply for this school come from? Is it going to be integrated into the urban Stockholm power grid? I looked at the map and there are no power plants around here, and there is no plan for this on the planning map. .”

Little Marcus did not deny it: "If nothing else, it is indeed the case, or Dr. Chen, do you have any other ideas?"

"I'm thinking that when the college is finally built and put into use, there will definitely be a lot of experiments. We really need a stable power supply environment, and I remember that the power plant in Stockholm seems to be located in another direction of the city, from where it sends electricity to Prince's College. Electricity has to pass through the entire urban area.

"Do you think we can plan a small power plant near the school that mainly supplies power to the school? This is very important to us."

Ninety-nine percent of power plants in this era are thermal power plants that burn coal, so there is no hope of environmental protection.

Small thermal power plants are the hardest hit areas with environmental problems.

Chen Muwu could already imagine that in nearly a hundred years, an ugly girl with a big face might pop up in Sweden, standing at the door of the small power plant he planned, pointing at the plaque with the school gate written on it and yelling curses.

But so what?

Stable power supply is very important for a scientific research institution.

After hearing Chen Muwu's request, little Marcus showed a "painful" expression on his face. He wanted to make a joke with Chen Muwu: "Dr. Chen, you who do physics research really waste money and need a laboratory. We need experimental equipment, an observatory, an astronomical telescope, and now we also need a power plant.

"I really hope that His Royal Highness the Crown Prince did not meet a 'hard-to-maintain' physicist like you, but an easy-to-talk mathematician. In that case, we would not need to build any laboratories, observatories, etc. Power plant. Just find an empty room, give the mathematician a pen, paper, and a wastebasket, and he can get to work."

Chen Muwu knew that Marcus was joking, so he didn't take it seriously, but echoed him and continued: "In my opinion, mathematicians are still too troublesome. If they were replaced by philosophers, maybe You don’t even need a wastebasket, just a pen and paper.”

Little Marcus obviously understood what Chen Muwu meant, because mathematics may also give wrong results and have to use the wastebasket.

But philosophy cannot distinguish right from wrong, which means that all theories can be regarded as correct and without errors, so there is no need to prepare a wastebasket.

On the surface, he was joking, but in his heart, Chen Muwu still felt that little Marcus was a little ignorant:

It's just a matter of money to build a few laboratories, so I have to complain about myself.

If I take out a 100 million RMB cryo-electron microscope that can publish at least one paper every time I turn it on, will he point his nose at it and curse?

(End of this chapter)