Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
The first media outlet to report this news was the British, “Guardian”.
The reporter who wrote this article stated the discovery in amazement.
“… CERN captured anomalous signals in the experiment. Experts say this could be a major clue to the discovery of supersymmetric particles. What is incredible is that this clue was discovered by an intern!”
The mysterious powers from the West seemed to have influenced the Hadron Collider.
Right after, the media dug out the identity of this intern.
A lot of people were shocked.
For example, Germany’s “Focus Weekly” captured people’s attention with the identity of the intern.
“… The intern who found the 750 GeV characteristic peak is actually a master’s student from the University of Jin Ling. His achievements are not only in the field of physics, but he also received the Best Young Speaker Award at the Princeton mathematics conference earlier this year. He’s the one that proved the twin prime conjecture!”
“… Our reporter interviewed Mr. Francis, the president of the Federal Mathematical Society, and Mr. Edward Witten, the winner of the Fields Medal. Mr. Francis commented that this is a young scholar with excellent thinking and innovation abilities while Mr. Edward Witten thinks he may become the first Chinese scholar to win the Fields Medal.”
Originally, the 750 GeV news did not cause a huge commotion. It was only circled around in the particle physics community. It was only after the Focus Weekly report that the news was pushed to the peak.
People were already surprised that an intern was able to discover this clue, but they were even more shocked to learn that this intern was also nutty in mathematics.
The news had not traveled to China yet, but it had already caused heated discussions on western social media.
An Ivy League campus forum…
[Sh*t! I was on holiday, but yesterday my supervisor called me and told me to come back to campus. He said that I have a new research project… Crazy.]
[That’s good :)]
[Maybe not, what if CERN confirms the signal in a month?]
[Impossible. CERN is very slow at operating the LHC. It could take years. You’ll have time to finish your thesis.]
American student forum…
[Omg, even the Fields Medal isn’t good enough for him. He must be going for a Nobel Prize…]
[He’s still far from a Nobel Prize, lol, but he is pretty strong. Theoretical physics is the most difficult discipline to produce results.]
[Speaking of which, there’s been an insane amount of particle physics theses being submitted these few days.]
[This guy’s too good. Will I be this nutty when I’m a master’s student?]
[Wake up, this dude’s only supposed to be an undergrad.]
[… F*ck.]
…
After the Focus Weekly interview, other major media outlets also reported on this incident.
Although many media outlets carried out investigations on Lu Zhou, Nature Weekly was the first to interview the Intern.
Of course, he was no longer an intern but a formal researcher at CERN.
August 2nd, noon.
Professor Grayer drove Lu Zhou to a coffee shop in Geneva. He then introduced him to the female journalist from Nature Weekly.
“This is Ms. Belinda, an Oxford graduate,” said Professor Grayer. He then looked at Belinda and said, “This is Lu Zhou.”
The two nodded at each other.
However, Lu Zhou felt a sense of awkwardness in the air.
This source of the awkwardness came from Professor Grayer. On the other hand, Belinda had a natural smile.
“Hello, Ms. Belinda,” said Lu Zhou as he reached out his right hand.
“Hello, nice to meet you,” said Belinda as she smiled. She then continued, “This interview might take a while. Can we start now?”
“Of course,” said Lu Zhou with a smile. He then said, “I hope my answers will satisfy you.”
After all, Nature Weekly was a somewhat scientific and rigorous journal. It was a lot more sophisticated than those Chinese “Daily News” media outlets.
No wonder Belinda was an Oxford graduate; her questions were all professional questions.
For example, her first question.
“How did you find the 750 GeV characteristic peak?”
“An accident,” said Lu Zhou. He smiled and added, “My colleagues thought that the 750 GeV peak was just an accident. But this accident appeared on both ATLAS and CMS, so it can’t be just a coincidence. Therefore, I asked Professor Grayer to find 2012 and 2013 LHC records, and the results were interesting.”
“750 GeV characteristic peak?”
“Not quite, but close,” said Lu Zhou. He shrugged, “I had limited samples, so the information I could get was quite limited. Therefore, I tried to prove it from a statistical model probability perspective. When this probability was large enough, CERN would have a reason to undergo this experiment. As for this characteristic peak, it was found by the collider, not me.”
Ms. Belinda smiled and typed some words in her laptop before she continued to ask, “I noticed that you used a lot of uncertain words. Is that just a habit or because of the rigorous nature of physics?”
Lu Zhou nodded and said, “It’s the latter. Because even now, we don’t know what it is.”
Belinda, “What do you think the particle could be?”
“I hope it’s a supersymmetric particle. If it is, then our biggest trouble will be solved. But… That’s just my personal wish. Things don’t always go smoothly,” said Lu Zhou. He thought for a moment before continuing, “If I had to guess, I’ll rather believe that it is something that we don’t understand… Like dark matter.”
Belinda opened her mouth in surprise and asked, “Amazing speculation… But why?”
“Because the signal is too unstable,” said Lu Zhou with a smile. He continued, “The Hadron Collider itself is the accumulation of countless small probability collision events, and the appearance of this signal shows a kind of situation that is difficult to explain with our existing theories…”
“… But it also could just be a two-photo signal…”
“… But hopefully, it could lead us to “new physics…”