Scholar’s Advanced Technological System

Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Institute of Mathematics.

Director Dai Huohong sat at the desk and read a paper. He squinted his eyes and spoke while touching his sparse beard.

“Amazing, this is wonderful!”

His reaction was different from Professor Faltings’.

After seeing the proof of the ABC conjecture, Director Dai’s reaction was quite calm. It only took him less than ten minutes to go through the paper from beginning to end.

Academician Xiang Huanan, who was sitting on the sofa, couldn’t stand listening anymore. He couldn’t help but complain.

“What are you talking about?”

Director Dai put away the paper and spoke with a smile.

“Of course about Academician Lu’s paper, what else?”

Academician Xiang: “…”

Although he wanted to say, “You don’t understand anyway, what’s so wonderful”, he resisted the urge and changed the subject.

“A while ago, I told you not to poach talents in a hurry. I asked you to wait and see the situation at Jin Ling University. But in the end, you didn’t listen. Now look what has happened. Academician Lu and the team have solved this problem by themselves. What’s going to happen to the Chinese number theory professors you poached from overseas?”

“Since I already poached them, I’ll keep them, what else can I do?” Director Dai was open-minded, he didn’t feel at a loss. He said with a smile, “It’s not like I can just kick them away? Also, the money for poaching people was from the special funds allocated by the Ministry of Science and Technology. It will not affect the resources from other projects. What if this turns out to be a good investment? You never know what can happen.”

Academician Xiang Huanan couldn’t help but complain.

“You’re quite an indulgent old man.”

“What do you mean indulgent!”

Of course, this situation was quite pitiful.

After all, whoever proved the ABC conjecture would receive the scientific research funding of 100 million yuan per year.

The 100 million yuan was not directly given to scientific research institutions. Instead, it was given to the people who could solve the problem, so the money wouldn’t directly be transferred to the professor’s account.

Generally speaking, it was first paid to the special account of the university or research institute for research funds, then reimbursed in batches.

It was common practice in academia for universities to draw a management fee from it. The proportion of the commission was determined by a series of factors such as the management rules issued by the relevant departments, the number of professors, the size of the funds, the nature of the problem, etc. The average was about 5% to 10%. But taking anywhere upwards of 40% wasn’t uncommon in China.

So why did major universities like to compete for academicians?

One of the most direct reasons was because of money!

It was a great feeling to receive a hundred million yuan in scientific research funds.

Even including the 5%-10% management fee, this money was enough to support the “sub-projects” under the larger projects, as well as the Changjiang Scholars Program.

Director Dai felt a little painful when he thought about this.

Had it not been for Lu Zhou, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which poached talents from Princeton and École Normale Supérieure, would be the most promising place in China to solve the ABC conjecture.

Regardless of how low the probability was, it was still higher than other institutions.

But although this piece of the pie was taken, there could be other opportunities in the future.

After all, there were still more opportunities to communicate with that “extraterrestrial civilization”. Seeing how they were so obsessed with the ABC conjecture, they probably had a fascination with mathematics.

Director Dai wasn’t the only one who thought of this; most of the mathematics research institutions in China had similar ideas.

Perhaps someday in the future, number theory would become the first bridge of friendship between human civilization and an extraterrestrial civilization…

…

Lu Zhou had some ideas about how the proof of the ABC conjecture would affect the mathematics community before he uploaded the paper.

However, even though he considered a lot of things, he still underestimated the scale of the tsunami.

As well as the size of the impact area!

When Xiao Ai told him that the arXiv website went down on the day the paper was uploaded, Lu Zhou was even more dumbfounded.

It seemed that the whole world regarded the ABC conjecture as the key to open the door to dialogue with the extraterrestrial civilization.

The governments of various countries even convened the United Nations General Assembly to urgently negotiate the establishment of loose political alliances such as the “Human Alliance” or the “Earth Federation”, in order to seek a unified position on “foreign” issues and to study foreign affairs that were in the overall interests of mankind.

However, only Lu Zhou himself knew about the “extraterrestrial civilization”. Perhaps it did exist in a certain corner of the universe, but at least for now, everything was just an illusion.

The key in his hand was not as impressive as people imagined. What it could open was just a treasure chest left by the Void Civilization.

It would be a huge disappointment if there were only a few thousand tubes of Energy Medicine or a large pile of processed alloy ore in the treasure chest.

Judging by the way the system had screwed him over in prizes, this was entirely possible.

The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment.

Lu Zhou only hoped for one thing now, which was that his trip to Mars wouldn’t have any negative impact on the future development of human civilization.

Such as the “human alliance” or “Earth federation” organizations…

Every time Director Li excitedly asked him which name was better, Lu Zhou felt anxious.

He had to smile and come up with a lie.

After all, if it wasn’t for the internal information that only he knew, this was indeed a joyous event for universal celebration. If he didn’t act happy, it would be hard to explain in the future.

In addition to these large effects, there were also some small aftermaths rippling.

For example, according to Xiao Ai’s report, because of the outage of the arXiv server, the number of visits to the LSPM website linked on his personal homepage thesis suddenly received a huge amount of traffic.

The average number of daily visits exceeded a million, with tens of thousands of discussion posts. This temporary discussion page became the world’s largest academic exchange forum.

Lu Zhou didn’t expect this to happen.

After some consideration, he finally adopted Xiao Ai’s suggestion and allowed it to upgrade the website and open up several sub-categories.

One reason was to give a platform for pop-mathematic fans to discuss the paper. It also gave a place for scholars to actually discuss academic problems.

After all, Lu Zhou’s original intention of establishing this discussion page was to give everyone in the entire mathematics community a chance to review the manuscript together.

As well as giving them a chance to improve the paper…

Time quickly passed by, the departure date was getting closer and closer.

After several meetings and discussions, the launch schedule was successfully implemented.

The second wave of immigrants to the Guanghan Special Economic Zone would depart in mid-May.

At the same time, the scientific expedition team to Mars would also follow this flight to the Moon Palace, where they would stop for a while, then transfer to a new colonial ship to go to Mars.

Although he felt a headache for the second dialogue that was about to begin, Lu Zhou had no better option. He just had to take it one step at a time.

However, just when he was getting ready to go to Mars, something unexpected happened.

Lu Zhou never expected that Schultz, who had just returned to Germany, was sent back to Jinling.

Moreover, Director Li came with him…