Spreading it out on the table, Lu Zhou started from the first page and studied it carefully.
Lu Zhou: "Are you at the Flintstone Library? Thank you."
Putting the manuscript aside and looking at the contents organized in the notebook, Lu Zhou fell into thinking.
It always felt like the old man was teasing him on purpose.
However, what surprised Lu Zhou was that after the old man heard his purpose, not only did he not have any stupid reaction, he even quickly came to a two-person high bookshelf and took it down from it with the help of a ladder. A thick notebook with a leather cover.
However, at this time, Lu Zhou noticed that the old man's hand holding the notebook was shaking, as if he was waiting for an opportunity to move.
With an indifferent expression on his face, the old man stretched out his withered hand again.
"I will."
Looking at the Bible, Lu Zhou's face was full of helplessness.
It seemed that he just wanted to give himself a piece of advice.
"...It's unimaginable that this was something from sixty years ago." Closing the old manuscript, Lu Zhou couldn't help but sigh softly and gave his own evaluation.
Lu Zhou spent an afternoon watching it from beginning to end.
It would be better to give him a copy of Newton's "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" or Einstein's "Unified Field Theory", which would still look a little more dignified.
Lu Zhou raised three fingers.
Because so far, the measures people can take on plasma are only "diagnosis" rather than "measurement".
"Thanks."
Is it a superconducting material closer to normal temperature
The first two are at the application level, while the latter is at the theoretical level. No matter which one is difficult, it is not easy.
Closing the notebook in his hand, he took the manuscript and his things with him and stood up from the chair.
What's the use of having an atheist swear by this stuff
The person responsible for managing the collection of books here is an old man who seems to have a somewhat rigid and eccentric temperament.
"Of course...but before that, you must swear that what it looked like when you borrowed it, and what it will look like when you return it."
Lyman Spitzer is such a person.
At the same time, it is also a theoretical model set up from the perspective of a pure physicist.
…
Especially his cloudy eyes made people wonder whether he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease and whether he could still hear what others said.
Lu Zhou felt that if it were him, he would definitely not allow such "unclear" things to remain in the world...
However, the old man did not make him wish. As if he was fishing, he retracted his stretched out hand at an exaggerated speed.
The concept of controllable nuclear fusion is too big. Although the general description is only five words, the names of the research projects involved are no longer than five pages.
In silence like this, about ten minutes passed.
Lu Zhou thanked him and reached out to pick up the manuscript.
"I promise, whatever it looked like when you borrowed it, it will still look the same when you get it back."
Lu Zhou:? ?
…
"Lyman Spitzer's manuscript?" Edward Witten touched his chin and thought for a moment, "I really haven't paid attention to research in this area, but I remember that he donated the manuscript to the Institute for Advanced Study in the end , these things were donated to the Flint Library for preservation at the beginning of the millennium. If you are interested, you should be able to find them in the Flint Library's collection room."
"This is the wealth of civilization, please keep it properly."
In addition to him, Freeman Dyson, who proposed the concept of Dyson sphere, and Tsiolkovsky, who proposed the concept of space elevator, can be included in this list.
In a sense, one of the reasons why Lu Zhou wanted to borrow Lyman Spitzer's manuscript was that he hoped to gain inspiration from it.
Without stopping for a moment, Lu Zhou immediately walked to the reading room next to him after taking the manuscript...
"You don't swear to me." The old man took out a Bible he bought from somewhere and looked at Lu Zhou seriously, "You have to swear to it."
Since time has given it the property of a cultural relic, even if he borrowed the book from the Flintstone Library, Lu Zhou could not actually take the manuscript out of the library and could only read it in the reading room in the book collection area.
After leaving these words with a smile, Lu Zhou said goodbye to Witten and walked outside the Institute for Advanced Study without stopping.
Controllable nuclear fusion is a huge project, and both its significance and the broad prospects behind it are enough to arouse his interest.
Of course, this has been sixty years ago, so this work must have been done by someone.
Although some things are public information, they have been compiled by others after all.
However, in order to save time, Lu Zhou did not talk too much. He still followed what he said, put his hand on the cross of the Bible, and spoke in an honest tone.
Especially regarding the front-end technology that completed the final vision of the stellarator, Lyman Spitzer's judgment was basically consistent with his own conclusion.
Or, from a mathematical perspective, try to study "the movement rules of plasma in the stellarator"
There is a type of scholar in academia who, while engaging in rigorous research work, still maintains an unbridled imagination.
A smile suddenly appeared at the corner of his mouth. Lu Zhou raised his pen and drew a circle on the line "Motion rules of plasma in the stellarator".
Lu Zhou: "I will consider it if necessary, but before that, I have to determine my research direction."
After listening to Lu Zhou's words, Witten took a sip of coffee and said with a smile: "I hope you can find what you are looking for."
Although he was a little dissatisfied with Lu Zhou's lack of solemn attitude, after he completed this weird ceremony, the old man reluctantly nodded and handed the manuscript into his hands.
"I swear… "
Sure enough, there are still more challenging problems that are more suitable for me.
"You're welcome," Witten smiled and continued, "Actually, if you are interested in stellarators, why don't you consider visiting relevant research institutions for exchanges? Now no one at Princeton is studying this thing. On the contrary, Stanford, MIT, and Caltech have done more research on this stuff.”
Ever since he solved Goldbach's conjecture, there had never been an unanswerable question that made his heart so excited...
"This is what you want."
After bidding farewell to Witten, Lu Zhou went to the collection area of the Flintstone Library and found the librarian here.
Compared to the latter two, Lyman Spitzer is obviously not famous, but no one can ignore his influence in physics, especially astrophysics.
Although it is common to see all kinds of weirdos in Princeton, it is quite rare for a mystic like this to wear a nightgown as work clothes in the library.
"I understand...can you give it to me now?" Lu Zhou looked at the old man in front of him with a strange expression, but did not reach out to pick up the notebook.
For documents that are hundreds of years old, you even have to pass relevant qualification tests and wear special gloves before borrowing them.
What Lu Zhou wanted to see was Lyman Spitzer's original vision for the stellarator when he was designing it.
Although many parts were difficult to understand, he still felt that he had benefited a lot after reading it.
I don’t know what his mood was when he wrote that will and donated all his manuscripts to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
"I hope you remember your promise."
"I'd like to lend you some good words."
For things that seem unbelievable to ordinary people, their first thought is not to prove the impossibility of the matter from a professional perspective, but to try to give realistic meaning to the fantasy from a scientific perspective.
Even now, if you refine the thoughts in this note and the design concept of the stellarator, you can still get a paper of considerable academic value.
However, the problem is that he needs to choose a suitable entry point.
Seeing that Lu Zhou was not fooled, the old man's eyes flashed with disappointment that he had failed. He coughed lightly and continued to speak with a straight face.
Because it was he who first proposed putting telescopes into space to eliminate the shielding effect of the Earth's atmosphere, which later led to the birth of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Returning to the wooden counter, the old man handed the notebook in his hand to Lu Zhou with a straight face.
It is not easy to fully understand the contents. Lyman Spitzer's notes are as wild as his imagination. The handwriting is scrawled and mixed with some simple drawings of unclear meaning.
However, once this problem is effectively solved, it will not only promote the progress of nuclear fusion projects, but also be very inspiring for the study of Navier-Stokes equations...
However, this note is relatively "new", with a history of only more than sixty years.
In memory of him, the Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), the last space telescope of the Large Orbiting Observatory Project, was named after him.
Especially the latter involves the study of quite complex plasma turbulence phenomena. It can be said that this is the most difficult and complex one among the many research directions on the Navier-Stokes equation.