A genius? I just love studying.

Chapter 333 The Theory of Grand Unity

Under Qian's series of questions, the meeting room fell silent, and everyone was speechless.

They were naturally aware of Chen Hui's contributions to China over the years, but reality wasn't calculated that way. They couldn't just consider Chen Hui's contributions; they also had to consider China's future. The Chaos Ring Project alone required a budget of 100 to 200 trillion in the initial stages—an astronomical figure. Furthermore, based on past experience with such large-scale projects, the actual implementation would inevitably exceed the budget.

Thinking of her experience, Wang Wenying looked at Yang Zhenning in the conference room and asked, "Professor Yang, what do you think?"

Yang Zhenning, who is over ninety years old, attended the meeting. He had applied to become a volunteer when the Immortal One was undergoing clinical trials, and he even had a long talk with Chen Hui.

In the end, Chen Hui approved his application. Now he no longer looked old, but looked like a man in his fifties or sixties, and was full of energy.

Unfortunately, he has been out of touch with cutting-edge science for many years, and it is probably hopeless for him to return to the state of scientific research he had back then.

Yang Zhenning was a key figure who opposed China's construction of a large particle collider back then, and his thoughts coincided with those of Yang Zhenning, so he believed that Yang Zhenning would support him.

"I support Professor Chen's Chaos Ring Project!"

However, Yang Zhenning's answer caught him off guard.

"why?"

He was very puzzled.

"This time, that time."

Yang Zhenning shook his head. "I stopped it at the time because at that time our level in high-energy physics was still far from international leadership. Even if we had built the particle collider, the final experimental results would have just benefited others."

"Most importantly, the living standards of our people at that time did not support us in doing this."

"But now, on the entire planet Earth, I doubt there is any country where the people's standard of living is higher than ours, and I doubt there is any country where the research in high-energy physics is as advanced as Professor Chen's."

"While we shouldn't aim too high, now that we've solved our immediate problems, it would be too boring if we didn't pursue poetry and distant places."

"We have become a truly great power, and we should do things that demonstrate the responsibility of a great power!"

Wang Wenying returned to her seat and remained silent.

He wasn't convinced; he just knew that continuing the argument would be pointless. Although he had a bunch of supporters, they were only a minority. Most people were now caught up in the frenzy because of the miracles Chen Hui had created, and he felt helpless about it.

He understands the principles Yang Zhenning is talking about, but it is also very difficult to change his original views.

"Alright, since everyone has no objections, let's start assigning tasks now."

Now, let's get back to the main topic.

Now that the decision had been made, even those with differing opinions quickly joined in, offering suggestions and engaging in a methodical discussion.

Chen Hui sat to the side without saying a word. Yang Zhenning and Qian Xuesen had already said many things, so there was no need for him to say more.

But he had his own selfish reasons for building the planetary particle collider. Besides the string of high-sounding reasons mentioned earlier, he also wanted to uncover the secrets of the data panel that had always been with him through real exploration of the world!
However, he also firmly believes that the benefits that the Chaos Ring can bring to human civilization will far outweigh the resources needed to build it, and he is also convinced that he can glimpse the truth from it!
With the general direction finalized, the Chaos Ring Project proceeded in full swing. When Industrial Cthulhu went all out to do something, the terrifying power it unleashed not only shocked Westerners but also left the Chinese people dumbfounded.

Especially now that China can mobilize resources far beyond what it used to be, this time not only China, but also the countries and people around the equator have been mobilized.

People elsewhere may still have reservations about the project, but the people around the equator are already all smiles. The Chaos Ring has brought them a lot of work, with wages far exceeding their usual wages, and they wish the Chaos Ring could continue to be built forever.

Of course, construction work has been ongoing, but the controversy surrounding the chaos ring has never ceased.

[Tears welling up! This is true national responsibility! While other countries are still arguing over petty gains, we are already exploring the ultimate truth for the future of all humanity! Support Professor Chen, support the Chaos Ring Project!]

From a technological perspective, the Pangu Project will greatly drive the upgrading of all cutting-edge industrial chains in China, including superconducting materials, quantum computing, and space transportation. This is not only a scientific investment, but also a strategic investment in technological dominance for the next century.

I support it, but I'm currently renovating and heard that the price of a certain type of special steel has tripled, and they say there's a shortage... Oh well, for the sake of the bigger picture, I'll bear with it.

[Putting aside sentimentality, has the Chaos Ring Project overdrawn our public welfare?]

The mainstream sentiment on Chinese domestic platforms is national pride, technological optimism, and trust in authority. Although there are minor complaints about the impact on people's livelihoods, these are quickly overwhelmed by a sense of the big picture, and overall, people still support Chen Hui. This is the absolute authority that Chen Hui has established in China over the years.

Although they didn't know exactly what use this thing would be to them, they believed that what Professor Chen was researching would bring them great benefits, as had been proven countless times.

However, on Western platforms, people are filled with fear, doubt, and a sense of powerlessness towards this behemoth, focusing on ethical risks, environmental costs, and resource inequality, mixed with a deep distrust of Huaxia and Chen Hui's personal motives.

You really think that's just a collider? It's an orbital weapon! It's an energy launch platform! China wants to use it to control global weather and communications! Wake up!

[Replying to the comment above, where's the evidence? It's your conspiracy theory again.]

What evidence do you need? By the time you have evidence, you'll already be roasted chicken. Or turned into a puddle of mud by some strange substance.

[Internal sources say that Professor Morris's institute was cut off from its high-end liquid helium supply last week, citing strategic resource controls as a systematic way to suppress dissent.]

Professor Edward Morris, a highly respected senior figure in particle physics, a Nobel laureate, and now the spiritual leader of the Human Survival Consortium, believes this is creating an artificial black hole.

High-energy collisions could produce exotic matter that could instantly turn the entire Earth into a soup of quarks!

Concentrating such enormous energy on a microscopic scale is unprecedented. Once a stable microscopic black hole is formed, it will not evaporate due to the weak Hawking radiation. Instead, it will sink into the Earth's core and gradually devour the entire planet!

They claim that what's even more terrifying is the strange matter, which could transform any ordinary matter it comes into contact with into a strange form, triggering a chain reaction that could eventually turn the entire Earth into a high-density strange core. This is not alarmist; it's a reasonable deduction based on existing physical models!

Despite Chen Hui's release of a hundreds-of-pages white paper on technical safety, which used the most rigorous mathematical proofs that the collision energy was far lower than that of natural events where cosmic rays bombard the Earth, the panic could not be quelled by formulas.

They continued to protest online, and a widely circulated apocalyptic novel, "The Silent Singularity," depicted a scenario where Earth was swallowed by a black hole it created after the Chaos Ring Project was launched, triggering widespread public panic.

And in a very short time, the newly published novel was made into a movie and released. The disaster scene became a nightmare for countless people. As long as the Chaos Ring was under construction, they would not be able to get a good night's sleep.

During this period, there were even many attacks on the Chaos Ring construction site. Of course, they were all stopped by the intelligent security system surrounding the construction site. After the first electric shock warning was ineffective, the security system switched to live ammunition.

After countless bloody lessons, such incidents were finally brought to a stop. It wasn't that they were afraid of death, but rather that they discovered that no matter how hard they tried, they could not break through the defense line made of machines.

This inevitably reminded them of cyberpunk. They were like humans in that absurd setting, with highly advanced technology, yet incredibly fragile. The Chinese were the true elites who held real power, while they were merely consumables.

This filled them with fear and resentment, leading to a series of protests across the West.

However, after the seventh-generation fighter jets made several patrols, these activities all went underground, and everything seemed to have returned to normal.

The outside noise had no effect on Chen Hui. He was engrossed in studying the unified theory of the four fundamental forces. Day after day, the empty park was only occupied by Chen Hui and the company responsible for his safety.

Standing downstairs, Dai Yafeng looked at the solitary lamp on the top floor of the research institute and couldn't help but feel admiration.

If it were just one day, it wouldn't be so bad, but three months have passed now, and he's been doing it every day. He asked himself if he could do it, and he believed that very few people in the world could do it. No wonder Professor Chen was able to achieve such amazing success.

In the research room, Chen Hui stood in front of a huge whiteboard, which was filled with the gauge symmetry group of the Yang-Mills equations, the Riemannian geometry of general relativity, and the faint connection between prime number distribution and quantum chaos derived from the Riemann Hypothesis.

The air was filled with the aroma of markers and tea. Chen Hui now understood why his grandmaster and great-grandmaster both liked to drink tea. He had also picked up this bad habit, but drinking tea kept him awake and made his mind clearer and more agile.

He didn't know why he hadn't experienced this before. Since that illness, he had started to rely on external things to maintain his strong focus, but Chen Hui didn't delve into the fascinating study of the Grand Unified Theory.

“Graviton…why are you so lonely?” Chen Hui murmured to himself.

In his mind, the microscopic quantum world is a bustling marketplace where particles interact intensely by exchanging messenger bosons, while the macroscopic universe is like a silent and deep ocean, smoothly curving.

How can the rules of the market and the rhythm of the ocean create a harmonious symphony?
Suddenly, his pen stopped.

He recalled a brand-new mathematical tool he had built when proving the Riemann Hypothesis: Chern topological manifolds, which could ingeniously describe the hidden connections between spaces of different dimensions.

A crazy idea flashed through his mind like lightning: what if gravity is not a force, but an emergent phenomenon caused by the information entropy of spacetime itself under a specific topological structure?

Like a whirlpool on the surface of water, it may appear to be a solid entity, but it is essentially a macroscopic manifestation of the movement of water.

At that moment, he found the key!

For the next three months, Chen Hui entered a creative state that was almost divinely inspired.

Using the Chen manifold as a framework, he viewed gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force as different phases of a more fundamental information field under different symmetry breaking conditions.

The drafts of the paper piled up like snowflakes, and a unified and beautiful mathematical structure began to take shape. It was like the symphony score of the universe itself, with every note just right.

However, when the movement reached its most brilliant part, the melody abruptly stopped.

Chen Hui encountered a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

The singularity problem!
Within his theoretical framework, when tracing back to the origin of the Big Bang or the center of a black hole, all elegant equations collapse, yielding absurd results of infinity.

It's like a perfect world map, but at the most crucial points it has turned into an unrecognizable blob of ink.

He tried all known mathematical methods: noncommutative geometry, superstring theory, loop quantum gravity... but each attempt was like patching a beautiful robe, not only ugly but also disrupting the overall harmony.

The beauty of the theory has vanished, replaced by an artificial and stiff stitching.

One month, two months... Chen Hui locked himself in his room, neglecting to eat and sleep.

His once bright eyes have become tired and stubborn, and the dense formulas on the whiteboard seem to have become a maze that imprisons him.

Talk of his creative exhaustion began to emerge, but he turned a deaf ear to it. He stood on the edge of the precipice of his own wisdom, gazing into the abyss of his theories, and for the first time felt the weight of ignorance.

Even when he was studying the Millennium Problem, he had never been troubled by a problem for so long. Staring at the formula in front of him, Chen Hui had to start to consider whether the problem was beyond his current ability.
Perhaps we should wait until we've improved our proficiency in all aspects before studying this issue?
With a thought, Chen Hui brought up the data panel.

(End of this chapter)