A genius? I just love studying.

Chapter 271 What was said unintentionally was taken to heart by the listener.

Nick stood up from behind his desk with a serious expression. "Tell me in detail, what happened?"

"Did anyone contact him during that time?"

"Professor Chen and his students held a party at the apartment to celebrate proving the twin prime conjecture. On their way back, they ran into one of Professor Chen's high school classmates, who ended up staying overnight at Professor Chen's apartment."

Give a brief summary of the matter in just a few words.

Nick's expression grew even more serious. "Investigate Professor Chen's high school classmate's background immediately."

"Find out why the listener is broken."

"Send another team over there and keep a close eye on them."

"Notify the other squads to go on high alert, be prepared for them to resort to desperate measures, and authorize the killing of everyone if the situation becomes critical!"

Based solely on the briefing, Nick had already taken a series of actions.

Although he didn't think Chen Hui's research would pose any harm to America, if China really did something under their noses, then he would have to reassess the importance of this mathematical genius.

……

Princeton, 3 p.m., tea break room
Zhang Yitang pushed a packet of Phoenix Dancong tea to Chen Hui, saying, "I brought this from the capital. People who are proving important conjectures need good tea to calm their nerves."

It's hard to imagine that just a few days ago he was mocking Chen Hui for being unable to prove the Riemann Hypothesis.

Maynard snapped the Rubik's Cube back to life. "I bet this packet of tea can be traded for Chen Hui's manuscript draft paper. Perelman's draft paper sold for $100,000 last time."

Amidst the laughter of the crowd, Gus silently added a few strokes to the curve on the whiteboard, turning it into a cat devouring the ∞ symbol.

It's a Princeton tradition to have discussions in the tea break room during tea breaks, so there's always a blackboard in the tea break room so that people can demonstrate on the blackboard whenever the discussion gets heated.

Fefferman stirred his coffee and looked at Chen Hui. "Hui, so you're saying that your inspiration for proving the twin prime conjecture came from the Riemann Hypothesis?"

"You've already seen that road?"

"Perhaps there has been some progress, or perhaps it's just another wrong turn; who knows?"

Chen Hui shook his head; he was still a long way from proving the Riemann Hypothesis.

Zhang Yitang's eyes lit up. "My inspiration for finite spacing came from the Colorado highways. Those equidistant streetlights suddenly reminded me of the spacing between prime numbers!"

"So, should we go to the seafood market next time? The spiral of the seashells might hold the key to Goldbach's Conjecture."

Gus said with a smile.

"Great idea!" Chen Hui responded enthusiastically.

Maynard looked at Chen Hui and said, "You know what? I initially wanted to tackle the Riemann Hypothesis, but I got lost in the zeta function and unexpectedly stumbled upon the door of multiple prime pairs. The god of mathematics always opens another window for those who are lost."

“I still dream of zero dancing on the critical line, but this time, twin primes are like a consolation prize given to the losers by the zeta function.”

Chen Hui smiled nonchalantly, proving that the twin prime conjecture had already brought him enough gains. His mathematical proficiency had improved by a full 5% because of this paper, so he had nothing to regret.

As long as proficiency continues to increase, proving the Riemann Hypothesis is only a matter of time.

Zhang Yitang also shared his thoughts: "When I was delivering food in New Hampshire in 2005, I never thought that 'failure' itself would be the lemma that the future would prove."

"Chen's proof is like a precise Swiss watch, with each sieve gear fitting perfectly, but my intuition tells me that the nature of prime numbers might be geometric..."

Gus suddenly came to the blackboard and drew a dotted arrow between the prime number and the Riemannian manifold.

Fefferman quickly put down his coffee and said with a serious expression, "Gus, last time you said that the knot theory could prove Goldbach's conjecture, and it ended up crashing three MIT servers."

“This time it’s different! Chen’s sieve method gives a lower bound for the ‘hole spacing,’ which corresponds exactly to the contraction threshold of the Ricci flow…”

Gus said defiantly.

Maynard snatched the marker from Gus's hand. "Dear Geometry Prophet, can your mysterious manifold derive the asymptotic formula for this divergent series?"

After a three-second silence, he suddenly drew a cowboy hat on the summation symbol. "If we add a noncommutative geometric hat to it, maybe it will work!"

Chen Hui slowly interjected, "It's like putting a straw hat on a teapot; it may not be practical, but it's quite interesting."

Hahahaha...

Joyful laughter filled the tea break room.

The discussion lasted until 6 p.m. before everyone reluctantly left.

The discussion did not produce any papers, but in Maynard's words, what they exchanged was not theorems, but the oxygen that keeps mathematics breathing.

"Hui, why don't you continue studying the Navier-Stokes equations?"

Before leaving, Gus suddenly said to Chen Hui, "For example, its application in weather forecasting. If it can accurately predict the weather, I will definitely stand on the top of the MIT mathematics building, point my finger to the sky, and summon thunder. Just imagining that scene is so cool!"

Chen Hui felt as if Gus had truly struck him with a thunderbolt. A thousand thoughts flashed through his mind like lightning. Originally, he had only asked Elena to study weather forecasting on a whim, but now he felt that perhaps he should give her more help.

If he had celestial assistance when escaping America, his success rate would have been many times greater.

A daring escape plan had already taken shape in his mind.

"That's quite difficult. Good luck!"

After a brief moment of distraction, Chen Hui recovered and smiled at Gus, "My students are currently conducting related research, perhaps we can collaborate on this project."

Gus waved his hands repeatedly. He was just fantasizing. As someone who studied differential geometry and topology, it wouldn't be so easy for him to switch to studying partial differential equations. After all, not everyone can be like Chen Hui.

The exchange meeting ended quickly. Chen Hui did not gain any inspiration for the Riemann Hypothesis from the meeting, but he gained a lot. Gus himself could not have imagined the impact of his unintentional remark.

Back in the lab, Deng Leyan and Elena were both engrossed in their work in the office, but Michael was nowhere to be found.

"Elena, has the problem from last week been resolved?"

Chen Hui came to Elena's side. He valued her project highly and had given her some constructive advice just a few days ago.

However, the importance of this project still falls short of the Riemann Hypothesis, but things will be different after today.

“By dynamically refining the grid in areas of intense meteorological activity and coarsening the grid in stable areas, a significant amount of computational resources can be saved. However, the truncation and rounding errors introduced by the discretization process still exist. Even if NSE has a globally smooth solution, the discretized numerical model may still deviate from the true solution due to the accumulation of errors.”

Elena was very troubled.

"Show me the data."

Chen Hui came up behind Elena and looked at the four high-definition screens in front of her.

“We can try compact difference methods and spectral methods to reduce the damage of numerical dissipation to small-scale structures. For example, spectral methods can maintain high resolution in the global scope by expanding variables into orthogonal polynomials, which can be used for large-scale atmospheric simulations…” After frowning and thinking for a moment, Chen Hui had some ideas. Pointing to the fitting data on the screen, he quickly solved the problem that had been bothering Elena for a long time.

"As for computing resources, I'll go and request them from Professor Fefferman."

Weather forecasting is, after all, an applied research field, unlike theoretical research where you can sit for half a day with just a pen and paper. Elena's project requires a lot of meteorological data, which can be found on public websites.

Meteorological data is abundant and complex, and the calculation of multidimensional partial differential equations is extremely complicated, requiring a large amount of computing resources.

Chen Hui sighed. If this were in China, he could have used a supercomputer to do this. Unfortunately, he was in America now.

But if he were in the country, he probably wouldn't be so enthusiastic about this project.

Elena was not happy about Chen Hui's strong support; instead, she still frowned. "Teacher, during the calculation process, I discovered an even more fatal problem."

"The core of weather forecasting relies on the accuracy of the initial meteorological field, such as the distribution of temperature, air pressure, and wind speed. However, the spatial coverage of observation stations in the actual collected data is limited. According to the currently available data, there is only one station per 100 kilometers on average, which is far from enough and makes it impossible to capture small-scale meteorological details."

Furthermore, errors in satellite and radar remote sensing data can introduce noise into the initial field.

Chen Hui frowned. He understood that even a tiny deviation in the initial conditions, such as a temperature error of only 0.001 degrees, would be amplified exponentially during the calculation process due to the nonlinearity of the NSE term, resulting in the so-called butterfly effect.

Even if a global solution to the NSE exists, initial errors can still cause the predictions to deviate from the true atmospheric conditions.

While the problem of computing resources can be addressed, the problem of initial data is a real headache, and it's not something that can be solved simply by money.

To build a predictive model, you need accurate data, and this data should not be limited to a single city or region, but rather span a vast area, in order to make the model as accurate as possible.

Because the Earth is a whole, disturbances in one place can cause changes in the weather in other places. If the area where data is collected is not large enough, even the most sophisticated model cannot make accurate predictions.

This problem is almost fatal!

"You improve the model first; I'll figure out how to handle the computing resources and data."

After offering Elena a few words of comfort, Chen Hui walked out of the office, his mind filled with questions about how to solve the math problem.

Before he knew it, he had arrived at Carnegie Lake.

It was evening, and many teachers and students were still running by the lake. Many greeted Chen Hui warmly. The "coffee stain revelation" and the "lawn collision" have become popular topics at Princeton, and everyone is willing to communicate with Chen Hui.

Chen Hui, with his eyes wide open and his mind full of thoughts, ignored them and sat down on a bench by the lake, watching the sunset slowly sink into the water.

These people didn't care. They didn't think Chen Hui was being rude. There were just too many people like Chen Hui at Princeton. Even these runners themselves often found themselves in that situation.

"how?"

"Is there anything that our great mathematician Chen cannot solve?"

Lin Xiaotang sat down next to Chen Hui, holding her game console. "Tell me about it, maybe I can help you?"

She looked up from the game screen and glanced at Chen Hui.

Chen Hui shook his head. He admitted that Lin Xiaotang might have some skills as a secret agent, but the problems he encountered were clearly beyond her ability to solve.

But soon, Chen Hui turned to look at Lin Xiaotang, and a bright light slowly appeared in his eyes.

Lin Xiaotang couldn't help him, but she was sent by her country, and behind her stood the world's most powerful mobilization force, known as the Industrial Cthulhu.

No, to be precise, it was the powerful motherland that stood behind Chen Hui!

"What are you looking at me for?"

Lin Xiaotang was very sensitive to gazes. Even while she was focused on playing the game, she still felt Chen Hui's gaze. She looked up and asked in confusion.

Chen Hui did not answer.

I turned my gaze back to the now dark surface of Carnegie Lake.

But this matter is of great importance, and there are no immediate benefits to be seen. The people behind it may not agree. The investment in this project will be substantial, and even if it ultimately succeeds, America will inevitably be the first to benefit.

Chen Hui knew that his every move was being watched by those people.

But he still picked up his phone.

He didn't contact her through Lin Xiaotang's channels, unsure if it would expose her identity.

The phone was answered after only a few rings.

"Teacher, how have you been lately?"

Chen Hui smiled and spoke first.

His phone has been constantly ringing, and he has been keeping in touch with his aunt and uncle these past few days; otherwise, they would have been worried long ago. Of course, every word he says is recorded by S.H.I.E.L.D. and analyzed by specialists.

How are you doing over there?

Yuan Xinyi's voice came through, sounding more weathered than when he came to receive the Fields Medal more than two months ago, clearly indicating that he had experienced a lot in the past two months.

Chen Hui felt a little guilty, knowing that his teacher was worried about him, so he said lightly, "It's great. I've wanted to come to Princeton for a long time. I eat well, sleep well, and my research is progressing well. I should have come here a long time ago."

"Ah That's good."

Yuan Xinyi knew what kind of person Chen Hui was. If Chen Hui really wanted to stay at Princeton, he wouldn't have gone to Jiangcheng University back then.

"Teacher, I have a very interesting project. Would you be interested in joining me and collaborating with me?"

Chen Hui got straight to the point, without much small talk, knowing that saying too much would only lead to more mistakes.

"What project?"

"Applying the Navier-Stokes equations to weather forecasting."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Currently, our data all comes from the public internet, and the granularity of the collected data does not meet the standards. Can the teacher help us solve this problem?"

Send me your specific requirements, and I'll figure something out for you.

With just a simple sentence, Yuan Xinyi could roughly guess what Chen Hui wanted to do. He naturally understood that a project of this scale was beyond his capabilities. He also understood that Chen Hui didn't really want to recruit him into the project; he just wanted him to pass on a message.

"Then I'll trouble you, teacher."

Chen Hui happily hung up the phone; communicating with smart people is so effortless.

(End of this chapter)