Chapter 122: Solving a Difficult Problem to Show Strength
Zheng Mingyu's eyes instantly sharpened.
"Then what are you waiting for!"
Jubian turned his head and looked out through the cafeteria glass.
On the way to school, he also looked back every few steps. Although he didn't find any anomalies, he could just feel that he was being monitored by certain people or certain equipment.
"I'll make a long story short. Actually, after playing 'Star Sea' for two weeks, I was 100% sure that the blueprints in the game were definitely not artistic resources to set the mood; they were the real deal!"
"That's illogical!"
Zheng Mingyu immediately pointed out the logical fallacy: "If that were true, given your identity, you would immediately verify or publicize the blueprints, and then it would be impossible to keep it a secret. Not to mention the whole world, at least the country would know."
Jubian: "Did I say I didn't do that? At first, I gave the aerospace-related blueprints to my leader. He was very interested and took it seriously at first! But after a careful look, he scoffed, only saying, 'Oh, this game must have hired consultants; the drawings are really lifelike.' Heh!"
Zheng Mingyu said, "Either you're stupid, or your leader is."
Jubian said, "No, it's not his fault! The most primitive technology of Cangyuan in the game is from around 2090, which doesn't connect with our current technology; there's a technological gap in between. Let me ask you, if you provided a complete set of blueprints for a modern smartphone to the World War II era, say, to a British Engineer like Turing, what would he think?"
Zheng Mingyu thought for a while.
"He would understand semiconductor logic circuits, so he would suspect that a very delicate and powerful computing machine could be built based on these blueprints, but he wouldn't be able to verify it. The manufacturing processes below 10 nanometers in smartphones would be like magic to them. Even Turing would be unlikely to predict what future chip photolithography would look like in 1945. Perhaps only Von Neumann could do it—"
Jubian: "Exactly! That's the situation I faced at the time. What's more, the blueprints came from a video game, so my leader naturally found them unbelievable! But then things took a turn—"
Zheng Mingyu: "What turn?"
"Later, I showed my leader the black-tech hydrogen-oxygen engine with an impulse of 545s. This was something he had been working on for most of his life, so it didn't take long for him to notice something was off! Then he started asking me about the game every day, and then watching live streams every day!
"After that, I sent the metallographic structure diagram of the iron-based metal ceramic from the game to a brother institute. When they ran a simulation on their computer, holy cow! Theoretically, it was at least twice as good as the best cutting-edge stuff in our lab! The whole place went wild that night; a group of people stayed up all night and didn't go home!"
"Impossible!"
Zheng Mingyu's expression was serious.
"Absolutely impossible, it must be a coincidence. If this were true, I'd be getting goosebumps all over. Do you know what this means?!"
However, Jubian was even more serious than him.
His face was even a bit dark.
He said with a bitter smile, "Brother, you're getting goosebumps already? You haven't seen the truly terrifying, truly decisive stuff..."
Zheng Mingyu was genuinely a little scared.
He felt that if he continued listening, he might touch upon some unspeakable power and would never be able to turn back, but curiosity wouldn't allow him to just leave.
"What exactly is it—"
Jubian took a deep breath: "You know I work in aerospace, right?"
"Nonsense!"
"Then you should know that in the field of aerodynamics, there are a lot of empirical formulas, right?"
"Of course, I know. Just open any textbook on aircraft design, and it's either ugly empirical summaries or wind tunnel test data."
Zheng Mingyu pointed at Jubian: "And this is why I despise your major; it's essentially Shennong tasting a hundred herbs, no different from ancient herbal medicine."
"Then do you know the underlying reason for this phenomenon?"
Zheng Mingyu thought for a moment again.
"At least part of the reason is that current humanity cannot fully solve the Navier-Stokes equations on three-dimensional manifolds."
Jubian nodded: "Yes, that's correct. But in the Cangyuan industrial ship database, in the engineering blueprints for atmospheric flight vehicles, I've never seen a single empirical formula. All formulas, including all supercomputer simulation results, are real and precise..."
"Then—then of course, the formulas must have been reverse-engineered from the game's physics engine, completely different from reality, just low-precision high-fidelity imitations."
As he said this, Zheng Mingyu himself didn't quite believe it, because it was unlikely that Jubian wouldn't have thought of this. He knew that things were about to take a strange turn.
Jubian: "Hahahaha—I thought so too at first, but every time I went offline, sitting in the research institute, facing the computer screen, one thought always lingered in my mind: what if it's real?
"So three days ago, after I went online, I searched the entire industrial ship database and finally found the general solution to the Navier-Stokes equations in the notes section."
"What did you say! What did you find?!"
Zheng Mingyu reacted with great intensity, almost springing from his seat, startling the graduate students eating breakfast around him.
It's over, another senior brother has been driven mad by research.
"The general solution to the Navier-Stokes equations?! Are you sure? Impossible, impossible! This is—this is one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems in mathematics! And it's generally considered one of the more difficult ones, the hardest equation in engineering physics!
Do you know what you're talking about?!"
Currently, among the seven Millennium Prize Problems in mathematics, only the Poincaré Conjecture has been proven to have a solution.
And its prover, Perelman, is highly and consistently praised in the mathematical community, especially among students.
"God of gods."
Jubian wasted no more words. He pulled out his laptop from his satchel, turned it on, and pushed it in front of Zheng Mingyu.
"I've already downloaded it. See for yourself."
For the next three hours, Zheng Mingyu and Jubian didn't say another word, nor did they leave their seats. The students next to them went from eating breakfast to eating lunch.
Finally, he gently pushed away the ghostly laptop screen and looked around.
The student cafeteria, built with metals and silicate materials from the earth's crust, the students, the green trees outside—all carbon-based life forms on this small planet. My mind is so messed up...
Things that were once incredibly familiar and common now looked different in Zheng Mingyu's eyes. He suddenly realized how vast the true universe was, and how small he and his academic career were.
"My mathematical foundation, I should say, still has a big gap compared to true mathematicians, but I can understand this solution process! Because it's so concise and ingenious that it's hard to comprehend! It's undoubtedly the real deal!"
Jubian, with his legs crossed, shifted his gaze from his phone screen and nodded lightly.
Dude, could I possibly lie to you?
Zheng Mingyu: "Have you published a paper?"
"How could I—who would I put as the corresponding author? The Cangyuan Executive Officer?"
"Then have you uploaded it to arXiv?"
"No, I haven't."
"You should know that the Americans are offering a reward of several million dollars for this problem, and they will definitely offer a professorship at a prestigious university, right?"
"Of course, I know."
Jubian glanced at the other person.
"But I am a researcher in national defense, and I am aware of the sensitivity of national defense. The general solution to the Navier-Stokes equations can directly serve the design of missiles, fighter jets, and bombers, so, you know."
"Hmm—indeed!"
Zheng Mingyu completely understood Jubian's concerns; both of them fundamentally disbelieved the notion of "science without borders."
"And even if I had ulterior motives, I wouldn't have the chance now," Jubian added.