The rise of a great power: starting with military industry

National Day is also a peak tourist season and a golden week for tourism.

All the scenic spots are crowded with people.

There are people everywhere, crowded together. What you see in the scenic area is not the scenery, but the people!
The Great Wall, as the saying goes, 'He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man', has attracted countless people who want to be heroes to climb the Great Wall. During the National Day holiday, the Great Wall is packed with people, like a long dragon.

The Forbidden City welcomes the most tourists every year. People from all over the country come to Beijing for tourism and must visit the Forbidden City. Even the special museum established by China with many cultural relics brought back from the UK has not affected the flow of people in the Forbidden City.

Wherever there is a tourist attraction, there is no place without people and business is slow.

When the statistical data came out, this National Day once again set a record. The number of people traveling during the National Day reached 7.82 million, and tourism revenue exceeded 7000 billion yuan!

This is a shocking figure for a world in the midst of a global economic crisis.

And this is still in the country!

By now, many people have become accustomed to traveling abroad, and this is also the case during this year's National Day.

Maldives, the Mekong River Golden Waterway, the Chao Phraya River Golden Waterway, the South China Sea Golden Route, etc., also ushered in the highest peak of the year, even more than the number of tourists during the Spring Festival.

This has also boosted tourism in these places, bringing a glimmer of warmth to the chill of the world economic crisis.

Of course, some people also travel to Europe, the Middle East, the United States, South America, Australia, New Zealand, etc.

While people were still immersed in the atmosphere of National Day, the Nobel Prizes were announced one after another.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on October 10 that the 6 Nobel Prize in Physics would be awarded to Yang Zhenning and Liu Tao.

With the two winning the award, 'Yang-Mills theory' and 'Yang-Mills equations' became widely known.

Liu Tao published three papers, using mathematical methods to prove the existence of solutions to the Yang-Mills equation; prove the general solution to the Yang-Mills equation; and solve the mass gap problem in the Yang-Mills theory.

These three papers caused a great sensation in both the mathematics and physics communities, especially the physics community.

The status of the Yang-Mills equation in physics far exceeds that in mathematics.

Because to the mathematical community, the Yang-Mills equation is just a difficult partial differential equation.

But for the physics community, this is the first step towards the grand unified theory of physics. It is no exaggeration to say that it is the holy grail of modern theoretical physics.

After the world entered the 21st century, an embarrassing situation arose in the physics community. That is, apart from the discovery of some particles that had long been predicted and the verification of several pieces of the standard model, no "new things" had been born in the physics community!

This makes Yang Zhenning's statement in a speech that year, "The feast of large colliders is over", repeatedly mentioned.

Can the Large Hadron Collider still produce great results?
The whole world is skeptical about this!

China did not carry out the large collider project at that time. Even now, the large collider project has been mentioned many times, but it has never been approved. The large collider in the United States is extremely valuable. As for the large collider in Europe, there are many people who oppose it, and as for great achievements, it can be said that there is no great achievement in the 21st century.

The Yang-Mills theory has been confirmed, which is absolutely a huge, great physics theory.

Its importance is such that there is probably no greater achievement since the mid-20th century!
Even if we count from the beginning of the 20th century, this achievement is so great that it is enough to rank among the top three in the past hundred years!
It is precisely because of this that even though Yang Zhenning and Liu Tao have both won the Nobel Prize in Physics, because this achievement is so great, the Nobel Prize could not wait to award this year's Nobel Prize in Physics to the two of them again.

The whole of China was in a sensation because this year's Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Yang Zhenning and Liu Tao, but Liu Tao was very calm. In fact, because of these three papers, he has won many domestic and international mathematics and physics awards.

He also had no plans to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony. After all, there were too many people abroad who wanted to kill him, and he would not leave the country without adequate security guarantees.

The whole world thought that he was doing theoretical research, but in fact, they didn't know that this was just the theoretical basis that needed to be solved in the process of controlled nuclear fusion.

After all, if a unified relationship can be established between strong interactions and electromagnetic effects, it will be more helpful to deepen our understanding of the conditions for nuclear fusion.

The throne of controlled nuclear fusion needs to be built brick by brick. It is far from enough for Liu Tao alone to complete this process. It requires a large number of talents, and this process is to cultivate talents.

Only in this way can a controlled nuclear fusion reactor be built well.

So far, there are two main experimental devices for controlled nuclear fusion in the world. One is the Soviet route, that is, the tokamak device; the other is the European and American route, that is, the stellarator route. The "tokamak device" is a device developed to achieve magnetic confinement and can generate a sufficiently strong toroidal magnetic field. As early as 1954, the world's first tokamak device was built at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in the former Soviet Union.

It seems that controlled nuclear fusion is about to be achieved? In fact, it is not. In order to be put into practical use, the energy input to the device must be much smaller than the output energy. The Tokamak device at that time was very unstable. After more than ten years of development, no energy output was obtained. It was not until 1970 that the Soviet Union obtained actual energy output for the first time on the Tokamak device that had been improved many times. However, it could only be measured with the most advanced equipment at that time, and the energy gain factor Q value was about one billionth.

Don't underestimate this one billionth, because it gave the world hope. So the world worked hard under this motivation and built their own large-scale tokamak devices. Europe built the United Torus-JET, the Soviet Union built the T20, Japan built the JT-60 and the United States built the TFTR. These tokamaks have repeatedly set new records for the Q value. In 1991, the European Union Cup achieved the first deuterium-tritium operation experiment in the history of nuclear fusion. Using a 6:1 deuterium-tritium mixed fuel, the controlled nuclear fusion reaction lasted for 2 seconds, and an output power of 0.17 kilowatts was obtained, with a Q value of 0.12.

In 1993, the United States used a 1:1 fuel of deuterium and tritium in the TFTR. The fusion energy released in the two experiments was 0.3 kW and 0.56 kW respectively, and the Q value reached 0.28. In September 1997, the United European Ring set a world record of 9 kW, with a Q value of 1.29, which lasted for 0.60 seconds. Only 2 days later, the output power was increased to 39 kW, and the Q value reached 1.61. Three months later, Japan's JT-0.65 successfully conducted a deuterium-deuterium reaction experiment. Converted to deuterium-tritium reaction, the Q value can reach 60. Later, the Q value exceeded 1. This is the first time that the Q value is greater than 1.25. Although the deuterium-deuterium reaction is not practical, the tokamak can actually generate energy in theory.

The core of the Tokamak device is the magnetic field. To generate a magnetic field, you need to use a coil and pass electricity. With a coil, there is a wire, and with a wire, there is resistance. The closer the Tokamak device is to practical use, the stronger the magnetic field must be, and the larger the current must pass through the wire. At this time, resistance appears in the wire, which reduces the efficiency of the coil and limits the large current that can pass through it, and cannot generate enough magnetic field. The Tokamak seems to have come to an end. Fortunately, the development of superconducting technology has brought the Tokamak back on track. As long as the coil is made into a superconductor, the problem of large current and loss can be solved in theory. Thus, the Tokamak device using superconducting coils was born, which is the super Tokamak.

Another device is the stellarator, which is mainly developed in Europe. This device is a magnetic confinement fusion experimental device with an external spiral winding. It consists of a closed tube and an external coil. The closed tube is in a straight line, a "runway" shape, or a space curve. Common stellarators have two or three pairs of spiral windings. The magnetic surface of the former is similar to an ellipse, while the latter is similar to a triangle. When equal and opposite currents are passed through adjacent spiral windings, the magnetic field generated by the spiral windings is combined with the longitudinal magnetic field, and the magnetic lines of force undergo a rotational transformation, thereby confining plasma without longitudinal current.

At present, tokamaks are generally recognized by scientists as the device most likely to achieve controlled nuclear fusion, while stellarators have been less studied. However, with the optimization of stellarator design and the advancement of high-temperature superconducting technology, advanced stellarators based on high-temperature superconducting strong magnetic field technology are expected to become a strong competitor for the steady-state magnetic confinement fusion technology route.

However, whether it is a tokamak device or a stellarator, the current level of technology only allows it to remain at the second level. They are both laboratory in nature and are still very far from industrial applications.

That is why some scientists say: It will always be 50 years away from achieving controlled nuclear fusion!
Liu Tao's solution to the Yang-Mills theory seems to have helped speed up the process of realizing controlled nuclear fusion, but there is still a long way to go from theory to application.

It would take more than a few years for other countries to thoroughly study the paper.

Not to mention, applying theory to practice.

In scientific research projects, the most important person is often the leader. An excellent leader can always make the project progress.

Just as Oppenheimer was to the Manhattan Project, Korolev was to Soviet spaceflight.

Liu Tao doesn't care about winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, but Yang Zhenning and his family and relatives are different.

For a long time, the Yang-Mills equation has been a milestone in the field of theoretical physics and a significant contribution made by the Chinese in the history of theoretical physics. This time, this unsolvable equation has been solved, and the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Liu Tao and Yang Zhenning. This represents the recognition of the entire academic community and also means that Yang Zhenning's legendary color has become even more profound.

The Yang-Mills equation is the first step towards the grand unified theory of physics. In the building of the strong electric unified theory completed by Liu Tao, in addition to Liu Tao, Yang Zhenning's name will be constantly mentioned and recorded on this building.

It can be said that it will completely change the face of physics in the next hundred years.

Yang Zhenning, now 87 years old, has never thought that he would win the Nobel Prize in Physics one day. It is not that he is very eager to win a second Nobel Prize in Physics, but because he is very clear that since the 50s, the Nobel Prize has undergone some subtle changes. That is, unless one can produce results that are much greater than the previous winning results, there is no hope of winning a second Nobel Prize.

In the past years, many physicists have won the Nobel Prize in Physics, but this does not mean that these physicists who have won the Nobel Prize in Physics have the same level and status. In fact, even if they win the same Nobel Prize in Physics, there is a huge gap in the status of physicists.

Some people make Nobel Prize-level achievements, and the award committee can't wait to award them the Nobel Prize. But some people make achievements, but they have to wait in line, and the waiting time may be ten, twenty, thirty or even longer.

Many scientists who were qualified for the Nobel Prize ultimately waited in line until their death but still could not get his turn.

This is the gap.

Yang Zhenning was very happy to win the Nobel Prize in Physics this time.

He felt that his life was already very complete. In the first half of his life, when he was young, China was facing the most dangerous time. He and his classmates continued to study at Southwest Associated University, and then he went to the United States to study. At a young age, he made outstanding achievements in the field of theoretical physics. At the age of 35, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, making him famous all over the world. At that time, he was a Chinese citizen. Later, although he became an American citizen for various reasons, he still contributed to China in his own way and built a bridge of communication between China and the United States.

In the second half of his life, after the golden years of scientific research ended and he entered the second half of his life, he was invited to return to China to participate in the reconstruction of Southwest Associated University. He personally participated in the construction and creation of a world-class university, helped the development of higher education and theoretical physics in China, and used his influence to influence batches of overseas Chinese to return to China to participate in national construction. Faced with the choice of nationality, he decisively chose to give up his American citizenship and return to Chinese nationality.

Even though his health later prevented him from serving as the head of a school and he retreated to the second line, he still had various honorary titles. For example, he was still the honorary president of Southwest Associated University. However, he no longer participated in the administrative management of Southwest Associated University. Even at Southwest Associated University, he only continued to make use of his remaining energy to teach physics courses to undergraduates and occasionally accept one or two doctoral students.

The first half of his life was glorious, but the second half was equally great.

Yang Zhenning believed that even if he died now, he would have no regrets.

He would tell his father, his teachers, his classmates and friends that China had become very powerful and had entered an era of prosperity, which was unimaginable to the Chinese people at that time.

The greatest hope of the Chinese people who were suffering at that time was to end the war and restore peace to the Chinese land so that they would no longer have to live in insecurity.

I would rather be a dog in a peaceful time than a man in a chaotic time. (End of this chapter)