Early the next morning, Xu Chuan followed his mentor Chen Zhengping and several other physics professors from China and rushed to the CERN headquarters.
Geneva is not far from the legendary "town", it only takes a short drive to get there.
Under the leadership of Qi Xishao, the group arrived and checked into a modern hotel.
Just after checking in, an old man with a white beard appeared in the lobby.
Seeing this figure, Chen Zhengping was stunned for a moment and then quickly stepped forward to say hello.
"Professor Engler, I didn't expect to meet you here."
Hearing the sound, the old man stopped and glanced at Chen Zhengping, with a mellow smile on his face.
"Welcome, Academician Chen."
After saying hello to the old man, Chen Zhengping pulled Xu Chuan and Qi Xishao over and introduced: "This is Professor Francois Engler, the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics."
"Hello, Professor Engler, my name is Xu Chuan, from China."
Xu Chuan took the initiative to say hello to the old man in front of him and shook hands.
Francois Engler, a top figure in theoretical physics.
He and Peter Higgs won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013 for their prediction of the Higgs boson.
Unfortunately, Professor Robert Brault, who together with him proposed the Higgs mechanism and Higgs boson theory, is deceased and could not receive this honor.
In fact, the old man in front of me is already eighty-five years old this year.
It can be seen that winning the Nobel Prize not only requires huge contributions, but also requires living a long life.
Engler stretched out his right hand and shook Xu Chuan's hand, and said with a smile: "This name sounds familiar. I seem to have heard it somewhere. Let me think about it."
"Xuchuan, Xuchuan..."
After uttering a few sentences, Francois Engler's eyes lit up and he asked with a hint of surprise: "Did you write the paper on the calculation method of the mystery of the proton radius at the beginning of this month?"
Xu Chuan said modestly: "It's just a trivial achievement. Compared with your achievements and glory, it is completely worth mentioning."
Engler smiled and said: "This is not an insignificant contribution. You have advanced the precise value of the proton's radius a big step forward. Perhaps in the near future, we will have a more accurate value to use."
Xu Chuan smiled and said, "I hope so."
...
After chatting with Francois Engler and exchanging contact email addresses, the group went upstairs to place their luggage.
Then, Xu Chuan was pulled out by the enthusiastic Qi Xishao, saying that he was familiar with the environment.
For Xu Chuan, he is very familiar with the environment. He stayed here for many years in his previous life and made many research results with the help of the Large Strong Particle Collider at his feet.
I revisited my old place and was filled with emotion.
But I have to say that the town below is a rare place that can be compared with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Relying on the Large Strong Particle Collider buried one hundred meters underground, more than one-third or even half of the world's theoretical physicists and high-energy physicists are gathered here.
If you go to a random restaurant in a small town to eat, the person sitting opposite you might be a great master in theoretical physics, or an honorary professor from a well-known university.
It is no exaggeration to say that if this place is 'bombed' by terrorists, then human physics will be directly set back by at least twenty years.
Incidentally, it is worth mentioning that at the door, there is a sculpture of the Hindu Shiva dancing the cosmic dance of creation and destruction.
What's more worth mentioning is that every time the LHC is activated or increases its energy, a disaster or weird event happens in a nearby area or at the same time.
For example, on September 10, 2008, when the LHC was first activated, four major earthquakes occurred within 24 hours.
Including Yinlang's magnitude 6.1, Atlantic's magnitude 6.6, Indonesia's magnitude 6.6, and Hokkaido's magnitude 6.9, a total of four major earthquakes.
On January 12, 2010, when the LHC increased its power to 3.5 tev, a few hours later, a magnitude 7 earthquake occurred in Haiti, killing 300,000 people.
On December 21, 2012, when the LHC was turned on to its maximum energy, on the same day, a strange vortex similar to the one in the Norwegian sky on December 9, 2009 appeared in the Australian sky.
At that time, this strange vortex was considered by many people to be a time vortex that led directly to 2009, and they believed that one could go directly back to 2009 through it.
But unfortunately, the vortex did not exist for very long, so no one could successfully pass through it.
However, every time the LHC operates, some strange phenomena or disasters occur, which makes many people believe that this reflects its adverse effects on the earth.
Therefore, many people believe that the LHC is a tool to open hell, and constantly call for marches and protests in order to close it.
.........
After visiting this holy land of physicists with Senior Brother Qi, Xu Chuan returned to the hotel and called his mentor Witten to inquire about his location.
Originally, Witten should have returned to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton by now, but because of the mystery of the proton radius, he stayed here.
What surprised Xu Chuan was that the hotel where Witten stayed was actually the same hotel he was staying in now, except that he lived on the third floor.
According to the house number provided by Witten, Xu Chuan successfully found his mentor.
Knocking on the door, the old man inside welcomed him in.
"You came quite early. If we remember correctly, today seems to be only the 15th, right? There are still about ten days before your experiment."
Seeing Xu Chuan appear here, Wei Teng asked in surprise.
This chapter is not over, please click on the next page to continue reading! "I originally came here with my mentor in college. He had experimental cooperation here on the 18th of this month and came here as an intern in the project team. "
"But tutor, you have applied for the use of the proton accelerator for me, so I will not be able to participate in the project there."
Xu Chuan explained briefly, and Witten nodded: "It turns out that it will be good for you to participate in more projects, but that will be in the future. The most important thing for you at the moment is to focus on the proton radius first.
Let’s talk about the mystery.”
After a pause, Witten continued: "Since you have arrived early, let's get familiar with the environment here, as well as the work process and other things."
"There will be a manual and instructions for these things. I will send them to your email later. You can take a good look after receiving them."
"In addition, you should take time in the next two days to go to the office to apply for employment, join my scientific research project team, and become a researcher, so that you can officially participate in the acceleration experiment of the proton radius mystery."
Xu Chuan nodded and agreed.
This is the benefit of following a top physics professor.
If he joins China's Atlas research team, he can only become an intern.
But Witten directly provided him with the status of a formal researcher, skipping the step of being an intern.
Even though there is only one level of difference between an intern and a formal researcher, following the formal process requires at least one doctoral student or more to polish the process for at least one year.
Obviously, the old professor opened a backdoor for him this time and allowed him to take a shortcut and skip the interns directly.
With such an identity, Xu Chuan can come at any time in the future and join
Of course, he is only a formal experimental researcher, not a theoretical researcher.
There are less than thirty formal theoretical researchers, and each of them is a national treasure-level scholar in various countries, a true top boss.
It can be said that the absolute fate of these thirty people also determines the fate of the physical world.
For example, Witten is both an experimental research professor and a theoretical researcher.
........
After saying hello to Witten, Xu Chuan returned to his room.
He did not read the manuals and instructions in the mailbox. After all, he was familiar with the workflow of the LHC Large Strong Particle Collider and the workflow of small and medium-sized accelerators. It would undoubtedly be a waste of time to read these things again.
In contrast, Xu Chuan was more curious about what new discoveries he could bring to him after being exposed to it more than three years earlier than before his rebirth.
After all, the collision experiments are different every year, so the collision data produced are also completely different.
Although these collision data are generally stored in the European Organization for Nuclear Research database after the first analysis is completed, under normal circumstances, almost no one will be idle and bored to look through the huge data in the database in order to learn from it.
Discover something.
Because this data has already been analyzed once, it is undoubtedly a waste of time and inefficient to dig it out again.
Xu Chuan has never looked through the huge data in historical databases. The first time he came into contact with it in his previous life was in early 2019.
This means that he had no contact with the experimental data from 2016 to 2019 in his previous life.
So for him now, these data are first-hand, brand new, and worth exploring.
...........
After completing the formalities and officially becoming an experimental researcher in the Witten project, Xu Chuan looked through the work schedule for the second half of 2016.
For the world's largest particle physics laboratory, there are countless scientific research experiments every year.
However, the most important scientific research experiments are four major categories, corresponding to the four large detectors of the LHC.
They are the torus universal detectors atlas and cms, the heavy ion experimental detector alice, and the half-front field detector lhcb.
Atlas and CMS are mainly used to detect various common signals, and two independent experimental groups verify each other to ensure the credibility of the experimental results.
The Higgs particle, known as the 'God particle', was discovered by these two detectors at the same time.
The third detector, Alice, is only turned on during experiments to collide lead nuclei to study heavy ion interactions.
As for the last one, lhcb, it is mainly used to study asymmetry in the collision process, to search for antimatter, to study parity non-conservation and the strange properties of various flavors of physics.
In recent years, the importance of lhcb has been increasing as time goes by, because it is the basic workhorse in the study of quarks.
Xu Chuan looked through the work schedule for the second half of this year. The atlas and cms experimental devices are still mainly observing the Higgs boson, and the standard model is measuring to test its correctness.
Alice is mainly conducting experimental measurements of strange baryons and anti-baryons. In the second half of the year, Alice will collide lead ions to reconstruct the initial shape of the universe after the "Big Bang" under laboratory conditions. The data obtained will allow physicists to
Study the properties and states of quark-gluon plasma, a substance believed to have existed only a short time after the Big Bang.
As for lhcb, it still maintains the observation of quarks in order to collect more hadrons or discover new particles.
The four detectors have their own mission arrangements. After thinking about it for a while, Xu Chuan drew a circle on Alice's experiment.
He is very interested in this.
Reconstructing the early form of the universe after the "Big Bang", just listening to this experiment can make people tremble with excitement.
.......
In the Huaguo Research Area, the office area of Jinling University, Chen Zhengping is leading several project team members to analyze the data in hand.
"Xishao, how is your work going? How long will it probably take?"
In the office, Chen Zhengping asked after taking a sip of warm water from a thermos cup.
Upon hearing the inquiry, Qi Xishao shook his head and said: "The data this time is far more complicated than the analysis we have done before. I can't find a way to reduce the background caused by secondary leptons and mistakenly reconstructed leptons.
event, no direct evidence of the coupling of the top quark with the Higgs particle Yukawa was found.”
"It could be hiding in this data, but we can't find it."
Hearing this, Chen Zhengping couldn't help but pinch his brows.
If this is the case, this experiment will be in trouble.
...........
After the discovery and public announcement of the Higgs particle in 2012, the emergence of the Higgs particle filled the last piece of the Standard Model, but could not explain dark matter and dark energy.
So people hope to find new physics beyond the Standard Model to explain these phenomena.
The standard model contains some experimentally measurable parameters. If the experimental measurement values are consistent with the standard model, it means that the standard model has been verified. If it is inconsistent with the standard model, it means that new physics may be included.
In the standard model, the Higgs particle has special properties. It is the reason why other particles gain mass. Both fermions and bosons gain mass through the Higgs mechanism.
Therefore, studying the specific physical properties of the Higgs particle is still an important topic in the LHC experiment.
The main research object of the two most important experimental facilities of the LHC, the Atlas and CMS experimental facilities, is the Higgs particle.
Since the discovery of the Higgs particle, the Atlas collaboration team has collected more than 5 million Higgs boson data, thereby achieving higher-precision experimental measurements and stricter constraints on the theory.
The Higgs boson was first discovered in the LHC experiment through the zz, γγ and ww decay processes, perfectly demonstrating the coupling of the Higgs and gauge boson.
In 2015, the Yukawa coupling of the Higgs and the third-generation lepton (Tao t) was observed for the first time.
This year, the project team he led applied for the Yukawa coupling of the Higgs and the third-generation heavy quark (top quark t and bottom quark b).
This part is undoubtedly very important.
But important things are often not researched by one family. Just like them, there are two other universities and institutions that have applied for this part of the scientific research experiment.
One is from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States, and the other is from the Australian University in Australia.
Both of these rivals are quite strong, ranking much higher than NTU in the world universities.
Therefore, their research time is very tight. If they cannot produce results in a short time, I am afraid that the value of this collision data will be tapped out by the other party.