Chapter 832 Revealing the Shape of the Universe
"Of course, old friend. You are the head of this institute, and this should be your job."
Langton K. Ray replied with an almost unthinking smile.
But.
Then his tone became serious:
"I only have one request, and that is to be quick."
"The Millennium Mathematics Conference will be held next month. If we want to catch up to participate, then no matter what, we must start building public opinion before this month. Otherwise, it may be difficult to get an invitation."
But Arthur Jeff frowned.
As a mathematics professor, he has shown quite genius attributes since childhood.
Basically all math exams from childhood to adulthood are full marks.
In this way, he entered Harvard University smoothly.
Then the sky fell.
Soon he realized that there was a gap between geniuses.
Just like the famous saying - every water cooler keeper in the NBA is Jordan in his own life.
Every scumbag at Harvard is also a genius in his own life.
Unfortunately, Arthur Jeff became one of them.
Of course, it is indeed an exaggeration to say that he is a scumbag.
After all, after graduating from Harvard, Jeff stayed at the school to teach and was promoted along the way to become a professor.
It can even be considered as crossing the threshold of "mathematician".
But that’s all.
After so many years, he has already had a clearer understanding of himself -
It is already relatively difficult to achieve a lasting name in history by relying on serious academic achievements.
Only some swords can take a deviant approach.
Therefore, he must consider whether this will be his only chance in this life.
Millennium Math Puzzle.
There is a reward of one million dollars per solution.
Gimmicks enough.
Even people who don’t understand mathematics can at least understand the value of one million dollars.
The only problem is academia.
If the chosen problem is not of high enough theoretical and practical significance.
Or maybe it's simply not difficult enough. Within two years of your release, people have cracked it three times, five times, five times, and two times twice.
That can indeed leave a mark in history.
It's just a clown's name.
Therefore, we must be cautious enough in this matter.
After thinking for a long time, Jeff proposed a compromise plan:
"Anyway, it's just to build momentum. Just publicize the million-dollar reward. As for the specific reward list, we can leave it in suspense and wait until the conference to announce it. This may have a better effect."
"That's fine."
Langton Clay followed suit:
"But at least the quota must be determined first. I mean, set up a total of several bounty questions. You just said , there may not be 23 questions left for me now.”
In fact, if possible, he wanted to completely replicate Hilbert’s operation.
But since the objective conditions do not allow it, then if you are only one or two less than the opponent, you will actually be inferior.
It is better to have less and realize the effect of making things more valuable when they are scarce.
"Then...seven?"
Jeff gave the answer quickly this time.
In fact, he has already determined about five to six questions in his mind. The reason why he chose 7 is because in many European and American cultures, 7 is a number with special meaning.
Since you want to hype, you have to have all the elements.
“That’s it.”
Clay nodded:
“In two days, an announcement will be issued in the name of the Clay Institute’s Scientific Advisory Committee. , saying that in order to promote the development and application of mathematical theory, we decided to spend 7 million US dollars to offer rewards to the world for the answers to seven mathematical problems..."
...
In the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the early to mid-1990s, the Chinese media paid almost pathological attention to foreign news.
It’s not like paying attention to what big things happen abroad.
But whether there is anything going on or not, we should pay attention to it.
Even some media with official background will report some foreign trivial matters with added vigour.
You can say that this is a rare and strange thing about the outside world after it was first opened. Of course, you can also say that it is a stinky way to praise foreigners.
At the turn of the century, although thanks to Chang Haonan's changes to the timeline, some Chinese people's filter on foreign countries, especially the United States, is a bit broken.
But on the other hand, it was also because of the changes he made to the timeline that the accumulated emotions among the Chinese people were much weaker. After all, what happened in early 1996 has been a long time ago.
The successful entry into the WTO at the beginning of the year has rekindled some people's fantasies about the West.
In short, although the situation has improved compared to the 1990s, big things like "reward of US$7 million" still spread quickly to the country.
The efficiency is comparable to that of the self-media era more than 20 years later.
However, Chang Haonan did not pay attention at the first time.
When Tang Lintian excitedly ran to the computing center with the newspaper to find him, he only got the answer "Professor Chang closed the door to thank guests and was concentrating on solving key problems"——
After Chang Haonan brought Li Yabo back from Shanghai to participate in the certificate collection celebration ceremony, they dived into the computer room.
For more than half a month, except for the occasional meal, I even slept inside.
Because the Ricci flow truncation method that has been searched for through supercomputing has produced results.
Perelman successfully gave two lemmas that lead directly to the canonical field hypothesis and the long-term existence hypothesis.
That is, assuming M is a three-dimensional compact simply connected manifold, it is easy to know that it is orientable, and any given metric on M is normal through scaling, and then This normal metric is the initial value, and the surgical Ricci flow must be obtained.
Next, as long as it is proved that the solution can disappear in finite time, it can be deduced that M's differential homeomorphism is S^3 from the simple connectivity of M.
That is [Theorem 1] in the entire proof process.
Poincaré's conjecture - any simply connected, closed three-dimensional manifold must be homeomorphic to a three-dimensional sphere.
The fact that "the solution can disappear within a limited time" is exactly the result that Chang Haonan needs supercomputing to help him find.
In other words, this proof has closed the loop.
Even compared to the series of proofs given by the previous Perelman between 2002 and 2003, it is a step further.
Because, Chang Haonan also dealt with the problem of "singularity points" in Ricci flow during the proof process.
It can be regarded as directly capping the skyscraper in the field of mathematics called Poincaré's conjecture.
"Huh..."
Looking at the content on the draft paper in front of him, Chang Haonan let out a long sigh of relief.
He believed that Perelman, 6,000 kilometers away, should be doing the same thing as him.
Moreover, the progress is almost the same.
He picked up a cup of strong tea from the side and took two sips.
In the past, Chang Haonan basically only drank plain water.
But in the past few days, he discovered that tea can indeed bring about a refreshing effect.
I happened to pick up some from Tang Lintian just a few days ago, so I took advantage of it.
“It can be regarded as blocking the way for future generations...”
As for the proof process of Chang Haonan and Perelman, if it were broken down, it would probably produce more than ten or twenty papers at the level of the "Annals of Mathematics".
No...
It's already in the Mathematics Annual, so it can't be said to be water.
In short, it is to leave future generations with no way to go in this direction.
At least for now, Chang Haonan can say with great confidence:
No one knows topology better than me...
It wasn't until the new email notification sounded that he came back from his thoughts.
From Perelman.
【How do you think we should publish the entire proof process? 】
This is the first email between the two that does not mention any academic issues since they met.
But there is no doubt that——
The other party also succeeded.
The two people cross-checked each other's results and ultimately came to the same conclusion.
This basically avoids the mistakes of Alfred Whitehead or Papa Chirakopoulos.
Both of them thought they had proved the Poincaré conjecture, but in a short period of time, their mistakes were discovered from the beginning of the proof.
As for the issues mentioned in the email...
In the last life, Perelman, who solved this problem alone, chose to disclose it directly to the world.
To be honest, just half a year ago, Chang Haonan, who had just dabbled in the Poincaré conjecture, still didn’t quite understand what the other party was thinking.
But now.
Faced with nearly a hundred pages of proof process.
Facing nearly a century of ups and downs from 1904 to the present.
He actually had the same idea...
Chang Haonan touched the keyboard with both hands.
A string of characters quickly appeared on the screen:
[Our job is to describe the specific appearance of the four-dimensional universe in the three-dimensional world. Such an achievement that spans dimensions should naturally not be Be tied to a specific journal. 】
[So I suggest that you skip those publishing houses and publish it directly to the world in a completely open form! 】
(End of this chapter)