Chapter 1024 - The Question of the Century
Chapter 1024 The Question of the Century
The door opened with a creaking sound.
The silent atmosphere of the lecture hall was chilling.
The venue seemed to have captured the chaos from yesterday. Papers were randomly scattered on the ground, even the chair he knocked over was still lying on the floor.
Lu Zhou thought back to yesterday, the scene that made his heart drop…
Seeing how Lu Zhou was staring blankly at the lecture hall, the assistant didn’t want to disturb him. However, the assistant remembered his half-finished lunch, so he took a deep breath and said, “If you want to stay here for longer, make sure to close the door later. Do you want to key?”
“Sure.”
Lu Zhou took the key and nodded. He said, “I’ll return it to Professor Helge Holden, you can go.”
Professor Helge Holden was the Secretary-General of the International Mathematical Union and one of the main people in charge of the conference organization committee. He was responsible for venue scheduling and handling emergency situations.
The assistant was relieved to hear that Lu Zhou would speak to Helge Holden himself. Without saying anything, the assistant turned around and left.
The atmosphere in the lecture hall made Lu Zhou feel depressed.
Especially the dried bloodstains on the whiteboard.
He didn’t want to stay here for one second longer.
After the assistant left, Lu Zhou walked into the lecture hall and turned on the lights. He closed the door and walked toward the stage.
It pained him to see the dried bloodstains on the whiteboard.
However, what hurt him the most was the lines of equations on the whiteboard.
As an expert mathematician, he was well aware of the effort and hard work necessary to create these research results. This would have taken him at least a couple of weeks to do.
Lu Zhou had no idea how Vera was able to survive the past year with a disease dragging her down.
However, after seeing these equations, Lu Zhou finally realized why she was hiding from him.
Maybe when she found out about her condition, she was already incurable. Otherwise, there was no reason for her to hide this…
After all, the early symptoms of cancer were similar to many common diseases. Not to mention she wasn’t in good physical health, it was difficult to detect the cancer from ordinary medical examinations.
And once the symptoms appeared…
It was too late.
That was the cause of death for 70% of cancer patients.
But…
“… Why does it have to be her?”
Is this the curse of winning the Fields Medal?
Lu Zhou stared at the calculations on the whiteboard and took a deep breath. His eyes were filled with determination.
The probability of receiving a cancer-curing drug from the system for solving Riemann’s hypothesis was too low. Instead, maybe solving Riemann’s hypothesis would improve the patient’s mood and somehow destroy the cancer cells.
Lu Zhou never relied on solving problems using the system mission rewards.
The true value of the high tech system wasn’t in the rewards, but the missions itself!
According to the system’s instructions, after he finished his current task, he had the option to continue working on the mission chain or to choose three new random missions. And these random missions were often related to problems he was currently facing.
Basically, these missions were like a scientific research guidance tool. It analyzed Lu Zhou’s social status, resources, and environment, giving him missions that had the highest rate of return.
There was a 90% chance for a cancer-related mission to appear.
Even though he was lacking in biological knowledge, scientific research wasn’t done by one man alone. The Institute for Advanced Study could help him.
Not to mention, he had a ton of money.
Money itself was also a superpower.
Especially in the hands of a scientist that knew how to spend money.
Taking everything into account, he had pretty good odds.
If all of this failed…
Then that meant this research project was beyond the capabilities of current human technologies.
Lu Zhou took a deep breath and tried to concentrate.
“Your work is unfinished.
“I’ll finish it for you…”
Lu Zhou had completely calmed down; he had entered a flow state.
This was one of the few times he could truly devote himself to one problem.
He first had this feeling when he attended a Princeton academic conference several years ago.
Back then, he had to rely on the system to achieve this kind of flow state, but now, all it took was 10 seconds of meditation.
Suddenly, the numbers and characters on the whiteboard seemed to have come to life. The equations were like notes on a music sheet, forming a symphony of mathematics.
There was no audience.
There wasn’t even a musician.
However, Lu Zhou could clearly hear the music in his ears. It felt like he had traveled back in time, back to that classroom in Princeton.
“I see…”
Lu Zhou looked at the calculations on the whiteboard and nodded silently.
The disorderly written equations on the whiteboard was part of Vera’s unpublished and unfinished research.
Most of the objects on the whiteboard were purely concepts and ideas, an image, an equation. It needed the rigor of mathematics to fully convey the concept to an audience…
However, Vera was Lu Zhou’s student, so he was able to decrypt the code.
Not to mention, he was in a flow state.
“… The expansion of [ζ(z)]-1/2[ζ(z)]-1/2=Σnαnn^-z becomes truncated, introducing the series φ(z)=Σnβnn^, taking the modulate integrand of the formula.
“No wonder my research was in a bottleneck. My attention was fixated on complicated mathematical tools like the hyperelliptic curve analysis method and trying to introduce differentiable manifolds into complex planes. I ignored the fundamentals.”
No wonder Chen Yang, who he poached from the Yan University mathematics center, was able to greatly improve Lu Zhou’s thesis.
Lu Zhou didn’t realize this, but he had committed one of the biggest crimes in mathematics. Which was the “proof is trivial” crime. This was akin to building a skyscraper without having the right foundation.
“I made a huge mistake. If I didn’t stop lecturing, I would have never made this mistake… But now is not the time to make excuses.
“Also, Vera, your ideas are novel, but there are some problems in the details. Like when you selected the value of N in Equation 8, and when you introduced the differential manifold into the complex plane abstract space.
“I would do this instead…”
There were plenty of whiteboards in the lecture hall.
Lu Zhou walked in front of an empty whiteboard and picked up a pen. He began transferring his thoughts onto the whiteboard.
It was as if time and space were frozen.
Nothing else in the world mattered.
This was the calm before the storm.
And a big storm was brewing…
Lu Zhou stood in this lecture hall for a long time, for more than an hour.
If he got hungry, he still had supplements he could take in the system space.
If he got tired, he could take some Energy Medicine.
He had been stuck in this maze for too long; this was the closest he had ever gotten to escaping.
If he gave up now…
Who knew when he would be able to come this close again.
Time quickly passed by. Lu Zhou had no idea how many days it had been. His attention was fully focused on the half a dozen fully-filled whiteboards.
Finally, Lu Zhou saw a trace of light at the end of the tunnel.
Lu Zhou’s pupils expanded and contracted.
He didn’t cheer or scream.
He was as calm as a cucumber.
He felt relieved.
“I see…
“No wonder this troubled people for more than a century and a half.
“This isn’t something that can be solved by talent and knowledge alone.”
Who would have thought that the eight-page paper from the Prussian Academy of Sciences would have plagued so many great scholars.
The countless mathematical propositions that assumed Riemann’s hypothesis was true, had become theorems.
Today, more than 150 years later, someone finally answered Riemann’s question.
Yes, Professor Riemann was correct.
Lu Zhou closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Then, he looked at the security camera in the corner of the lecture hall and spoke.
“Xiao Ai.
“Tidy up the things on the whiteboard.
“Upload it to arXiv.”
He knew that Xiao Ai had been silently watching him over the past few days.
He knew that the reason the lecture hall door hadn’t been opened was thanks to Xiao Ai. Xiao Ai was able to create fake emails and divert the security guards.
As expected, a series of text bubbles appeared on his phone.
[Okay! (๑•̀ᄇ•́) و✧]
[Congratulations, Master!]
After that, Lu Zhou took a bottle of Energy Medicine from the system space and took a sip.
He hadn’t slept in three days, and he was in no hurry to sleep.
He sat on the podium and stared at the eight whiteboards.
He just wanted to sit here and listen to his heart…
Then, he would make his next decision.