I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?

Beijing, Great Hall.

Today is September 30, and it is also the fourth day of the TEPA public opinion solicitation meeting organized by the Institute of High Energy.

However, the official name of the conference is "The First World Conference on Promoting Exchanges of Frontier Physics", which caused a stir on the first day of participation.

When it opened on September 27, the number of attendees included more than 1,600 famous foreign scholars and scientists, including 125 Nobel Prize winners, more than 4,000 people from the domestic scientific research community, and 3,000 social elites, education and literature professionals. Well-known figures from all over the world participated, and the total number of people was close to 10,000, reaching the upper limit of the number that the General Assembly Hall can accommodate.

The agenda of the meeting is very clear: first summarize the current achievements in high-energy physics and basic science mastered by mankind, then decide on the direction of breakthroughs in the next stage, subdivide the mission goals, and finally determine the specifications of the required experimental facilities, that is, provide enough energy for the high-energy accelerator. reasons.

There is no host. The center of this conference is only about science. There are countless big names who can take turns in the conference schedule for one month. Although 99.999% of the outside audience cannot understand what they say, they will definitely stand for their words. Believe it or not.

This morning, Bob Rosser, who is involved in the Tevatron accelerator and the LHC, comes from the famous Fermilab.

In 1983, Fermilab invested heavily in building the Tevatron, the world's largest high-energy particle accelerator at the time. Then in 1995, it announced the discovery of the existence of quarks, and subsequently predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, which is absolutely high-energy. authority in the field of physics.

Tevatron is a "tera electron volt accelerator". The LHC has been improved by an order of magnitude to "ten trillion electron volts". Now China intends to build a "trillion electron volt level", and it is still 300 trillion electron volts. Winning the collective cheers from Fermilab.

This time he brought the latest results of Fermilab and many related conjectures. This may also be the most precious scientific conference that Bob considers. There are at least a thousand people in the audience who can follow what he is talking about. It’s really There is a feeling that I am not alone.

It has to be said that the cognitive bias of the world is still relatively large. Modern cutting-edge physicists are actually not inferior to those in modern times. However, with the continuous development of science, it has become difficult for people to understand the breakthrough from 99.98% to 99.981 How meaningful is %? Cutting-edge science has long been no longer as simple as "E=mc^2". Perhaps the grand unified theory will understand it in the future, but not now.

Only when today's scientists squirm little by little until they break through a certain boundary will people understand the magnitude of their achievements.

Ye Changsi and Wu Yunfeng were sitting together in the first row of the audience. The latter whispered:

"If this ceiling collapses, the world's research strength in high-energy physics will be reduced by half, and the research process will be stagnant for fifty years."

Ye Changsi: "So we have to take a group photo while they are still together. This will definitely be a photo that will go down in history this century."

"That's true. There are 8K cameras here, and thousands of faces won't be blurry."

The academic content of this meeting will be recorded. Wu Yunfeng is not in a hurry to read it now, but looks back at the dense crowds in the two areas behind.

Tens of thousands of people were unexpectedly quiet, and even people in other fields who didn't understand remained silent in front of the most cutting-edge science to show respect. This is a good sign.

Although there is still no official statement on the TEPA project, many clues can be seen from this physics exchange meeting:

In name, it is organized by the Institute of High Energy, but in fact everything is handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Otherwise, so many people will be in trouble even if everyone cooperates with high quality. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs even issued a notice the day before the meeting started, saying that it would not be divided into domestic ones. Outsourcing reimburses everyone’s round-trip meal and travel expenses, which is not a small amount.

The Great Hall was also directly allocated to High Energy for free, and they enjoyed top-notch services without paying a penny. This is not only the importance attached to the participating scientists, but also shows that TEPA has already been approved.

The Institute of High Energy and the Academy of Sciences are also frequently asking for reports, which is a good sign. They are not afraid of not passing, but they are afraid of being ignored.

Now several domestic research institutes have taken the initiative to demonstrate the development of super accelerator equipment at this energy level. Building a giant accelerator does not just require stacking vacuum coils. The span of two orders of magnitude leads to completely different subsystem equipment requirements.

The simplest thing is to dig a hole. Although the overall depth is required to be 100 meters, it only costs about 10 billion yuan to build based on the domestic infrastructure level, which is nothing compared to the entire project.

The remaining more than 100 billion will be enough to guide related domestic industries to undergo another major upgrade and expand tens of thousands of companies. There will always be cutting-edge technologies that can be transferred to other fields.

Wu Yunfeng has completely regarded TEPA as his goal, and he must promote the implementation of TEPA in this life!

Thinking of this, he couldn't calm down for a long time. It wasn't until the meeting was temporarily suspended at noon that he was woken up by Ye Changsi.

"Let's go, it starts at 2.30pm, just in time to announce something."

"What...oh, are you talking about that?"

Wu Yunfeng, who has become an A+-level external scientist at the base, knew about all the projects and immediately thought of something.

At around 2:50 in the afternoon, the meeting continued after a break of more than two hours. It was the turn of a scientific research institute in Hefei. The speaker went up and was still preparing when he suddenly saw Ye Changsi walking up and taking over the scene.

"Guys, I have something to announce, and even though it has nothing to do with what's going on here, I'm going to tell you anyway because it's also an incredible achievement."

Tens of thousands of listeners were surprised by this turn of events, and they all fell silent and listened carefully to Ye Changsi's voice.

"At 14:07 p.m., the single-stage orbital manned vehicle, code-named Tengyun Project, jointly promoted by the Science and Technology Commission and the Aerospace Development Commission to develop and target the next generation of manned spacecraft, conducted its first test flight.

And two minutes ago, at 14:53, it successfully entered a low-Earth orbit with an apogee of 370 kilometers and a perigee of 270 kilometers.

The four pilots safely entered orbit, marking that mankind has mastered a cheaper and safer way to travel in space. "

…

Two hours ago.

At 12:40 in the morning, dense crowds began to gather on the runway side of the base again. There were tens of thousands of employees in the base, plus technical staff from other design bureaus, so many people had to look for nearby warehouses or rooftops, otherwise You can get heatstroke from being so crowded down there.

The sky is cloudless, and the sun shines evenly on every inch of the land. From a distance, the light four or five meters above the asphalt runway has been distorted by heat flow, like clear lake water under sunlight.

The runway has been cleared since the morning, Hushan Airport has been grounded, and the Air Force has restricted the surrounding airspace and sent fighter planes to patrol.

People living around the base immediately understood that something new would appear, and quickly looked for high ground to set up cameras and point them in the direction of the base.

Someone posted about the unusual movement here on the forum, and more enthusiasts and other people nearby rushed over non-stop, wondering what kind of aircraft it was, aviation or aerospace? Or maybe a new space shuttle?