Great Country Academician

At the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Xu Chuan searched around but couldn't find his mentor, Edward Witten, and couldn't get through the phone.

Finally, I found my senior brother Lin Feng and asked him, only to find out that the old professor is not in Princeton now, and flew to the European Atomic Energy Laboratory a few days ago.

Xu Chuan couldn't help but hang up the phone, the old gentleman was really kind to him.

Except for assigning a task to himself when they met for the first time, he ignored it, and did not assign him the task of teaching assistant. The two of them didn't have much communication afterwards.

So much so that in the end, where the mentor went, he, the student, didn't know at all.

Shaking his head, Xu Chuan was just about to return to his dormitory when he made a wrong step and walked towards Professor Deligne's office.

It's all here, there's no reason not to say hello to this mentor.

Knocking on the door, there was a voice from inside, Xu Chuan pushed the door open and walked in.

Compared with Witten, who is flying all over the sky, Deligne's whereabouts are quite fixed, and he is often in the office of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Seeing that it was Xu Chuan who came in through the door, Deligne put down the ballpoint pen in his hand and asked, "How is your research going?"

Although he didn't ask what the disciple in front of him was going to do on leave, he could guess that it was unsurprisingly that he was studying the problem of 'the mystery of the proton radius'.

As a supervisor, it is perfectly normal to care about how the student's research topic is progressing.

Xu Chuan: "It's finished."

Hearing this, a hint of surprise flashed in Deligne's dark brown pupils.

If he remembered correctly, it has only been a short week since the student in front of him asked him for leave?

That problem can be solved in a week?

No matter how you look at it, it's impossible.

"Show me your new method."

Deligne said, he knew that Xu Chuan must have the manuscript with him.

"Hold on."

Xu Chuan responded, took off the backpack behind him, took out a stack of manuscript paper, and handed it over.

Professor Deligne took the manuscript and looked down.

He is not as ignorant of the mystery of the proton radius as he was before, and he talked with Wei Teng about it a while ago.

This is a difficult problem for the entire physics community. Since this problem appeared in 2010, the precise charge radius of the proton has not been able to obtain a relatively stable value.

It bounces repeatedly between 0.879±0.011 fm femtometers and 0.833±0.00067 fm femtometers.

For the same particle, the diameters measured by two different methods differ greatly, which is so large that it exceeds the allowable range of error, and it is so large that it directly shakes the foundation of the particle physics building.

Five or six years have passed, and the physics community has not yet found the reason for this gap.

It is also impossible to determine which of the measured values ​​is more biased towards the correct proton charge radius.

If this kind of problem is put into the mathematics world, it is tantamount to a problem at the level of the twin prime number conjecture.

But physics is a bit more special than mathematics.

What mathematics can rely on is just a pen, a piece of paper, and a brain of the researcher.

But physics is different. Many physical problems can be solved through physical experiments.

Just like the problem of the proton radius mystery, it appears in the physical experiment, and the final solution must be completed by the physical experiment.

But it may take a long time.

After all, no one can tell how long it will take for the physical equipment used for experiments to develop and update iterations.

It may break through as soon as you wake up, or it may still be standing still ten years later.

And mathematics can make physics solve problems in advance when the performance of the equipment is not enough.

For example, the mystery of the proton radius, the radius of the proton can be calculated theoretically through the first principles of mathematics.

It's just that no one can do it yet.

The first-principle calculation of the proton information inside the nucleus is so difficult that it has been directly upgraded from the twin prime number conjecture level to the Goldbach conjecture level.

Deligne didn't think that his student could calculate the proton radius from the first principles in such a short period of time. This is impossible, even if his mentor Grothendieck was resurrected.

But even a new way to calculate the proton's radius is a remarkable feat.

In the office, Professor Deligne was flipping through the manuscript paper in his hand.

Xu Chuan was also polite, found a cup to make a cup of coffee, and found a mathematics journal by the way, while waiting.

The quality of coffee in Professor Deligne's office is very good, all of which are expensive hand-ground coffee.

But to be honest, he can't drink much difference between this handmade coffee and instant coffee.

Maybe a little more delicate in taste?

He doesn't like coffee anyway, but there's nothing else to pass the time right now.

Xu Chuan finished his cup of coffee slowly, and Professor Deligne hadn't read the manuscript in his hand yet.

After waiting for a while, he sorted out the manuscript paper and handed it back.

"Pretty mathematical calculations. Your mathematical ability in functional analysis is much deeper than I imagined. If you don't see it with your own eyes, it's hard to imagine that these things came from a young man who hasn't turned 20."

Even in the face of his own students, Deligne did not hesitate to praise himself.

In fact, the mathematical methods used in this calculation method are very delicate even for him, especially the Fourier transform of the three-dimensional spatial distribution of proton charges used when finally solving the problem of atomic elastic scattering interface charge interference.

He got a little inspiration from it, otherwise he wouldn't have read and thought for so long.

Moreover, praising this thing may have bad effects such as conceit on other students, but for this disciple in front of him, he is qualified enough to be inflated.

Looking at all mathematicians under the age of 30 in the entire mathematics world, it can be said that no one can compare.

Hearing Deligne's exaggeration, Xu Chuan smiled shyly and said, "Compared to you, teacher, I still have a lot to learn."

Deligne: "This new calculation method is very good. Although I am not sure whether it is correct for the physics world, the mathematical method in it is quite exquisite. Who are you going to vote for?"

Xu Chuan shook his head and said, "It's not clear yet, and I haven't thought about it yet, maybe we should let Mentor Wei Teng read it before making a decision?"

Deligne looked at the calendar on the table, and said: "Today is July 4th, and Wei Teng may not come back until near the tenth, you can sort out the documents first, enter them in the computer and send them to him by email. You can also hang it on arxiv first."

The arxiv preprint server was originally a place for physicists to communicate.

Although it is now occupied by computers, it is undeniable that many physicists still communicate their ideas on it.

Xu Chuan nodded and said, "I will do this."

Deligne smiled and said: "If this method is correct, the physics world will be shaken because of you."

He did not exaggerate what he said. The puzzle of the proton radius has caused confusion and pursuit in the entire particle physics community, and even in the fundamental physics community since its appearance.

Solving this mystery has significant implications for understanding the laws of physics, and it's not just that the physics community has a more precise piece of data.

It has also greatly promoted the development of physics, such as the quantum electrodynamics theory that describes how light and matter interact.

After returning to his dormitory from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Xu Chuan sorted out the calculation methods related to the "proton radius mystery" in his hands and entered them into the computer.

This is a very boring job, but it requires 12 points of patience and care. It is necessary to constantly check every character entered into the computer to check whether there are any mistakes.

In this kind of paper, if you enter a wrong word, or a character, or even a punctuation mark, it may cause serious consequences.

At the least, the review editor thinks you are unprofessional, and at worst, the proof process of the entire paper may be scrapped.

Especially in mathematics, it is not unheard of.

Previously, a mathematician in the United States made a mistake when uploading a certain mathematical symbol when he completed the push for a real number theory with an exponential function.

As a result, when the journal was reviewing, it was directly rejected and stated that there were serious errors in the core proof process of the paper.

But fortunately, this error was discovered during the later inspection, and after the modification was completed, it finally passed the review smoothly.

Xu Chuan didn't want to make this kind of mistake, it would make people laugh, and it would be embarrassing to say it.

It took more than a day for Xu Chuan to input the entire calculation method on the manuscript paper into the calculation.

After checking and confirming that there is no problem, he first uploaded it to the arxiv preprint server, then found the email address of his tutor Wei Teng, and sent it over.

After thinking for a while, Xu Chuan opened his mailbox again, found his mentor Chen Zhengping at Nantah University from among his contacts, and sent him the calculation method of the 'Proton Radius Mystery'.

In name, he is still a doctoral student at Nantah University.

He came to Princeton to study in the name of an exchange student, but he did not use the school's exchange student quota, but his own invitation letter, so there is no limit on the time limit for studying abroad.

As for the rest, just wait.

Mainly waiting for Professor Witten's reply.

If he is sure that there is no problem, then there is basically no problem with this paper, and then he can choose a journal for submission and publication.

As for which journal to submit the manuscript to, Xu Chuan fell into deep thought.

This is the first time in his life that he has truly shown his abilities physically. The selection of papers and journals naturally has to choose the most suitable ones.

There are many top journals in physics, such as "Physical Review Letters", "Applied Physics Letters", "Nature-Physics", "Science", "Physical Review A/B", "Progress in Physics" and so on.

But to be honest, it is impossible to divide these top physics journals into one of the four major journals like mathematics journals, which may not be possible in physics journals.

Except for a small number of journals in these physics journals that accept all physics categories, the others basically have their own focus, which feels a bit like a hundred flowers blooming.

In today's physics world, in terms of the reputation and popularity of the current journals, "Nature" and "Science" are the highest, and PRL (Physical Review Letters) is relatively low.

Therefore, ordinary scientific researchers usually have a pre-judgment about the general research results they have obtained. If they think it is suitable for publication in Nature or Science, they will generally not submit it to PRL first.

If you are a scientific researcher in Huaguo, you will often submit to Nature first. If your manuscript is rejected, you will submit to Science again, and finally you will select PRL (Physical Review Letters).

But to be honest, Xu Chuan doesn't like the journal "Nature" very much, even though this top journal has a great reputation and a heavy impact factor.

Because it has been exposed many times that there have been "academic misconduct" in the papers.

The most serious and known to the public is the falsification of two Nobel Prize-level medical papers.

The first was the falsification of the thesis on universal cells by Haruko Obokata, a well-known small island country.

The other is that there may be academic misconduct in more than 20 papers published by neuroscientist Sylvain Lesné of the University of Minnesota in the United States, which will come out later.

Among them is a groundbreaking paper published by Lesné in Nature in 2006, a groundbreaking paper that has been cited more than 2,300 times.

This seminal paper involves the most cited study of Alzheimer's disease (commonly known as "senile dementia") in the 21st century.

In this paper, Lesné describes a substance discovered in the laboratory - Aβ*56.

This discovery caused a sensation in the field of AD research at the time - as a specific Aβ oligomer, there was a link between Aβ*56 and cognitive decline, which pointed a way for drug research in the field of Alzheimer's disease .

Since then, the medical community has devoted a lot of attention to this aspect.

Since then, NIH support for "Amyloid, Oligomers, and Alzheimer's Disease" research has risen from zero to $287 million by 2021.

However, few subsequent publications outside Ashe and Lesné's labs mentioned Aβ*56. Likewise, other scientists who study the Aβ protein say they cannot be sure that Aβ*56 actually exists.

Many Alzheimer's researchers have tried but been unable to replicate these findings on Aβ*56, reports Science.

One of them was Dennis Selkoe of Brigham and Women's Hospital, a leading proponent of the "amyloid hypothesis." In 2008, Selkoe reported that Aβ*56 could not be found in human cortical extracts and cerebrospinal fluid.

Then "Science", the old opponent of "Nature" impurity, spent six months of investigation time, and famous independent image analysts and top Alzheimer's disease researchers conducted in-depth investigations on these papers.

In the end, it was found that there were more than hundreds of pictures in these papers with suspicious traces.

"These images appear to be composite images by the author by piecing together parts of images from different experiments," said Elizabeth Bicker, a molecular biologist and renowned academic crackdown.

"Perhaps the authors obtained experimental results that might not have been expected, and then changed the data to better fit a hypothetical picture."

The two serious fraud incidents had a huge impact on the medical community, wasting countless financial and material resources, as well as the energy of a large number of scientific researchers.

This made Xu Chuan seriously doubt whether the review of impurities in "Nature" is as good as they say.

Although "Nature" is indeed one of the oldest scientific impurities in the world, it has made great contributions to the development of science.

But it is undeniable that they have successively 'dereliction of duty' in the review work.