Chapter 151 "Nature" magazine is negligent
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 on the phone.
After finally finding his senior brother Lin Feng and asking, he found out that the old professor was no longer in Princeton, and had flown to the European Atomic Energy Laboratory a few days ago.
Xu Chuan couldn't help but hang up the phone. This old gentleman was really treating him.
Except for assigning a task to himself when they first met, he ignored him and didn't assign him a task as a teaching assistant. The two of them didn't have much communication at all.
So in the end, he, the student, had no idea where the instructor had gone.
Shaking his head, Xu Chuan was about to return to his dormitory, but then he made a mistake and walked towards Professor Deligne's office.
You are already here, there is no reason not to say hello to this instructor.
Knocking on the door, a voice came from inside. Xu Chuan opened the door 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 the person who came in through the door was Xu Chuan, 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, not surprisingly, he should be studying the 'mystery of the proton radius'.
As a mentor, it is normal to care about the progress of your students' research projects.
Xu Chuan: "It's done."
Hearing this, a trace of surprise flashed across Deligne's dark brown pupils.
If he remembered correctly, it had only been a week since the student in front of him asked for leave, right?
Can that problem be solved in a week?
It looks impossible no matter how you look at it.
"Show me your new method."
Deligne said, knowing that Xu Chuan must be carrying the manuscript with him.
"Wait a moment."
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 paper and looked down.
He is not as ignorant about the mystery of the proton radius now as he was before. He had talked about this with Witten some time ago.
This is a problem for the entire physics community. Since this problem appeared in 2010, the precise charge radius of the proton has never been able to obtain a relatively stable value.
It jumps repeatedly between 0.879±0.011fm femtometer and 0.833±0.00067 femtometer.
The diameters of the same particle measured using two different methods are very different, so large that it exceeds the allowable error range, and is so large that it directly shakes the foundation of the building of particle physics.
Five or six years have passed, and the physics community has still not found the reason for this gap.
It is also impossible to determine which of the measured values is more biased toward the correct proton charge radius.
This kind of problem, if put in the mathematical world, is nothing more than a problem at the level of the twin prime number conjecture.
However, physics is a bit more special than mathematics.
All mathematics can rely on is a pen, a piece of paper, and a researcher's brain.
Physics is different. Many physical problems can be solved through physical experiments.
Just like the problem of the proton radius mystery, it appears in physical experiments, and the final solution must be completed by physical experiments.
But it may take a long time.
After all, no one knows how long it will take for the physical equipment used in experiments to be developed and updated.
You may have a breakthrough as soon as you wake up, or you may still be stuck in the same place ten years later.
Mathematics can help physics solve problems in advance when the equipment performance is insufficient.
For example, the problem of the proton radius puzzle, 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 principles calculation of proton information inside the nucleus is so difficult that it has been directly upgraded from the twin prime conjecture level to the Goldbach conjecture level.
Deligne did not think that his student could calculate the proton radius from first principles in such a short period of time. This was impossible, and his mentor Grothendieck could not do it even after he was resurrected.
But even a new way to calculate the radius of a proton would be an incredible achievement.
In the office, Professor Deligne flipped through the manuscript paper in his hand.
Xu Chuan was not polite. He found a cup and made a cup of coffee. He also found a mathematics journal and read it while waiting.
The quality of the coffee in Professor Deligne's office is very good, all expensive hand-ground coffee.
But to be honest, he couldn't tell much difference between this handmade coffee and instant coffee.
Maybe the taste is more delicate?
He wasn't interested in coffee anyway, but there was nothing else to occupy his time now.
Xu Chuan drank a cup of coffee slowly, and Professor Deligne hadn't even finished reading the manuscript paper in his hand.
After waiting for a while, he sorted out the manuscript documents and handed them back again.
"Very precise mathematical calculations. Your mathematical ability in functional analysis is much deeper than I imagined. If you hadn't seen it with your own eyes, it would be hard to imagine that these things were produced by a young man who is not yet twenty years old."< br>
Even when facing his own students, Deligne did not hesitate to praise him.
In fact, the mathematical methods used in this calculation method are very subtle even for him, especially the Fourier transform of the three-dimensional spatial distribution of proton charges used to finally solve the problem of atomic elastic scattering interface charge interference.
He got some inspiration from it, otherwise he wouldn't have read and thought about it for so long.
Moreover, praising this thing may make other students inflated and have bad effects such as conceitedness, but for the disciple in front of him, he has enough qualifications to inflate.
Looking at all the mathematicians under the age of 30 in the entire mathematical community, it can be said that no one can compare.
Hearing Deligne's exaggeration, Xu Chuan smiled shyly and said: "Compared with 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 sophisticated. Who are you going to vote for it to?"
Xu Chuan shook his head and said: "This is not clear yet. I haven't thought about it yet. Maybe I should let the Witten instructor read it before making a decision?"
Deligne looked at the calendar on the table and said: "Today is July 4th. Witten may not be back until close to the 10th. You can sort out the documents first, enter them into 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 there are still many physicists exchanging their ideas on it.
Xu Chuan nodded and said: "I will do this."
Deligne smiled and said: "If this method is correct, the world of physics will be shaken by you."
He was not exaggerating. Since its emergence, the problem of the proton radius has caused confusion and pursuit in the entire particle physics community, and even in the basic physics community.
Solving this mystery is significant for understanding the laws of physics, not just because the physics community has a more precise piece of data.
It has greatly promoted the development of physics, such as the quantum electrodynamics theory that describes how light and matter interact.
Returning to his dormitory from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Xu Chuan sorted out the calculation methods related to the 'mystery of the proton radius' and entered them into the computer.
This is a very boring job, but it also requires a lot of patience and care. You need to constantly check every character entered into the computer to check whether there are any errors.
In this kind of paper, if you enter a wrong word, character, or even punctuation mark, it may cause serious consequences.
At worst, the reviewing editor may think you are unprofessional; at worst, it may cause the whole paper certification process to be scrapped.
Especially in the world of mathematics, it's not like this has never happened before.
Previously, when a mathematician in the United States completed the promotion of a certain real number theory with exponential functions, he uploaded a certain mathematical symbol and recorded it incorrectly.
As a result, when the journal reviewed it, it was directly rejected and said that there were serious errors in the core proof process of the paper.
But fortunately, this error was discovered during subsequent inspections, and after completing the modifications, 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 out loud.
It took Xu Chuan more than a day to input all the calculation methods on the manuscript paper into the calculation.
After checking and confirming that there were no problems, he first uploaded it to the arxiv preprint server, then found the email address of his instructor Witten and sent it there.
After thinking about it, Xu Chuan opened his email again, found his mentor at NTU, Chen Zhengping, from his contacts, and sent him the calculation method for the 'proton radius mystery'.
In name only, he is still a doctoral student at NTU.
He came to Princeton to study for a Ph.D. in the name of an exchange student. However, he did not use the school's exchange student quota, but his own invitation letter, so there was no limit on the time limit for studying abroad.
As for the rest, it's just a matter of waiting.
Mainly waiting for Professor Witten's reply.
If he is sure that there are no problems, then there will basically be no problems with this paper, and he can then 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 demonstrated his ability in physics. Naturally, he must choose the most suitable candidate for the paper and journal.
There are many top journals in the physics world, such as "Physical Review Letters", "Applied Physics Letters", "Nature-Physics", "Science", "Physical Reviews A/B", "Progress in Physics", etc.
But to be honest, it is impossible to publish these top physics journals in one of the four major journals like mathematics journals.
Except for a few of these physics journals, which cover all categories of physics, the others basically have their own focus, which feels like a hundred flowers blooming.
In today's physics world, in terms of the reputation and popularity of current magazines, "Nature" and "Science" are the highest, while PRL (Physical Reviews Letters) is relatively lower.
Therefore, ordinary scientific researchers usually have a pre-judgment about the general research results they obtain. If they think it is suitable for publication in Nature or Science, they generally will not submit it to PRL first.
If you are a scientific researcher in China, you will often submit your paper to Nature first. If your paper is rejected, you will then submit your paper to Science, and finally you will choose 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 very great reputation and a high impact factor.
Because it has been exposed many times that there have been "academic misconducts" in papers.
The most serious thing, and the one that has been widely known to the whole people, is the falsification of two Nobel Prize-level medical papers.
The first time was the famous falsification of the universal cell paper by Haruko Obokata of Kojima.
The other time was the possibility of academic misconduct in more than 20 papers published by neuroscientist Sylvain Lesné of the University of Minnesota in the United States, which would only be revealed later.
This includes a groundbreaking paper published by Lesné in Nature in 2006, a groundbreaking paper that has been cited more than 2,300 times.
This groundbreaking paper involves some of the most cited Alzheimer's disease research of the 21st century.
In this paper, Lesné introduces the substance discovered in the laboratory-Aβ*56.
This discovery caused a stir in the field of AD research at the time - as a specific Aβ oligomer, there is a link between Aβ*56 and cognitive decline, which pointed out 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 the "Amyloid, Oligomers, and Alzheimer's Disease" research has risen from zero to $287 million in 2021.
However, outside the laboratories of Ashe and Lesné, few subsequent publications have mentioned Aβ*56. Likewise, other scientists who study the Aβ protein say they are not sure whether Aβ*56 actually exists.
According to Science, many Alzheimer's researchers have tried but been unable to replicate these findings about Aβ*56.
One of them is Dennis Selkoe of Brigham and Women's Hospital, a leading advocate of the "amyloid hypothesis." In 2008, Selkoe reported that Aβ*56 could not be found in human cortical extracts and cerebrospinal fluid.
Then Science magazine, the old rival of Nature, spent six months investigating, and conducted an in-depth investigation of these papers with famous independent image analysts and top Alzheimer's disease researchers.
It was eventually discovered that more than a hundred pictures in these papers contained suspicious traces.
Elizabeth Bick, a molecular biologist and well-known academic counterfeiter, said: "These images appear to be composite images by the author by piecing together parts of images from different experiments."
"Perhaps the authors obtained experimental results that may not have been expected and then changed the data to better fit a hypothetical image."
Both serious fraud incidents had a huge impact on the medical community, wasting countless financial and material resources, and the energy of a large number of scientific researchers.
This made Xu Chuan seriously doubt whether Nature's impurity review was as good as they said.
Although "Nature" is indeed one of the oldest scientific journals in the world, it has made a huge contribution to the development of science.
But it is undeniable that they have successively failed in their review work.
(End of chapter)