Chapter 183: Met an acquaintance?
Xu Qingzhou and Catherine didn't stay in the cafe for long and left separately. He went back to the hotel to eat, while Catherine went back to write her paper.
The cafeteria was crowded.
As soon as Xu Qingzhou entered, a scholar came up to him and said, "Mr. Xu, I am from Columbia University and I am currently doing research on the Riemann hypothesis. Are you interested in collaborating?"
"Sorry, I don't have any idea about the Riemann hypothesis."
Xu Qingzhou politely declined.
The other party was unwilling to give up: "Mr. Xu, we have made considerable progress. If you are willing to join us, we can work together after the results are out."
Xu Qingzhou shook his head, said sorry, and left.
Afterwards, during the 20 minutes of dinner, Xu Qingzhou received 5 invitations, all asking if he wanted to join their research projects.
The pie these people painted was too round for him to catch. The progress they said was fake. There was a 99% chance that they wanted to pull him, who had the title of "Cramer's Theorem Prover", over to ask for funding.
After getting the money, you can just come up with a result. Whether it is correct or not is a later question. Even if you can’t produce any results, you can still say at the end, can what we do as mathematicians be called cheating? It’s just that the result is not as good as expected.
He finished his meal in a few bites and hid in the room.
In front of the desk.
Xu Qingzhou took out all the manuscripts. From the time he came across the twin prime conjecture to the present, there were more than a hundred pages of manuscripts. He let out a breath, calmed down again, and planned to go over all his ideas one by one.
That's right, he had figured it out. Since he had come this far, there was no point in overturning the existing results and going back to follow Zhang Yitang's method again.
Zhang Yitang's method was to optimize the GPY sieve method and proved that there are infinite sets of adjacent prime number pairs with a spacing of less than 70 million. After that, although mathematicians followed his ideas to upgrade the sieve method, even Terence Tao said that the chances of proving it were slim.
He used the Selberg sieve method and also made corresponding improvements and optimizations.
For example, in addition to requiring λ to be zero when d>R, we also require that λ should also be zero when d has a large prime factor. At the same time, the Selberg parameter is changed to a more flexible polynomial function.
23:50 London time.
Xu Qingzhou looked at the pile of manuscripts, still having no idea what to do, so he simply packed up and went to bed.
In room 802, Academician Xu Shihui was still looking at materials and writing down data from time to time. Suddenly, a cell phone rang in the silent room.
Academician Xu glanced at the number, answered the call, took off his reading glasses, and greeted with a smile: "Old Gu."
Professor Gu Zhizhong's voice came: "Old Xu, how have you been these past few days? Have you gained a lot?"
Academician Xu smiled and said, "Well, several problems have been solved, so it's not a wasted trip. But... you, an old man, didn't call me just because you care about me, did you?"
"We have been friends for decades, so I can't care about you."
"Huh, I don't know you?" Academician Xu laughed twice. "Let's get down to business. Your precious student stole the spotlight today."
"Oh? Isn't his lecture still in a few days?" Professor Gu on the other end of the phone was a little surprised.
Academician Xu told Professor Maynard about what Xu Qingzhou had discussed on stage today. He paused and then asked in confusion, "Why would you let such a good talent study physics?"
He shared the same idea as Professor Maynard. A person's energy is limited. If one goes to the Institute of Physics, he naturally cannot devote 100% to the study of mathematics.
"It's his choice."
Professor Gu's helpless voice came over the phone, and he added, "After the experiment at the Physics Department is finished, I will ask him which direction he plans to take in mathematics."
Academician Xu smiled and said, "I heard that he is currently studying the twin prime conjecture."
Professor Gu was obviously stunned for a moment, then laughed and said, "I used to worry that he would be overwhelmed by trying to do both physics and mathematics, but I didn't expect that this kid would put a huge mountain on his shoulders." Academician Xu also sighed, "Yeah, Mr. Gu, do you think he can come up with any new results on the twin prime conjecture?"
Professor Gu thought for a moment and said, "Although this kid's talent is really terrifying, I can only say that it is difficult. The twin prime conjecture is much more complicated than Cramer's theorem. There are so many mathematicians in the world studying it, but they have only come up with that little."
Academician Xu sighed and said with some emotion: "It's good for young people to have some courage and initiative."
"Yeah, let him try."
It's good to have results, but if there are no results, it can let young people know that they can't be impatient about everything, especially when doing research, they need to take it slow, calm down, and be able to sit on the bench.
Professor Gu said, "Okay, Old Xu, it should be 12 o'clock over there now, go to bed early. You are old, but you still stay up late like the young ones."
"I'll look at the materials for a while, then go to sleep." Academician Xu nodded.
"I'll treat you to tea when you come back."
"I've been waiting for you to say this. Let me make it clear first. I'll drink the tea leaves in the small jar in your cabinet."
"Okay, Old Xu, you old fellow have been thinking about this for a long time, right?"
In the next few days, Xu Qingzhou was immersed in the enthusiastic atmosphere of mathematical research.
During this period, I was invited by Professor Maynard to attend a seminar on prime numbers, from which I gained a lot.
These are the top scholars in the field of prime numbers in mathematics. They have comprehensive knowledge and a wide range of interests. During the conversation, Xu Qingzhou gained a lot of insights.
For example, mathematicians from Sweden intend to try to calculate the largest twin prime number by using hardware resources such as high-performance computer clusters and large-capacity storage devices.
Professor Maynard and several mathematicians improved Zhang Yitang's method, optimizing the upper bound of the prime number interval to describe the distribution law of prime numbers.
But unfortunately, there is not much that Xu Qingzhou can learn from.
Of course, he also saw a lot of interesting things during this period. In addition to the Goldbach conjecture mentioned above, someone announced that he had proved the twin prime conjecture.
This person used the method that Euclid used to prove that there are infinite prime numbers to prove that there are infinite twin prime numbers.
Xu Qingzhou saw the counterexample at a glance.
Apart from attending lectures and communicating with participating scholars, he basically stayed in the hotel to calculate the twin prime conjecture and declined the invitation from Senior Brother Zhao Zhenglai and Catherine to go to the bar.
Three days passed in a flash, and it was April 3nd.
At 9 o'clock in the morning, after finishing his breakfast, Xu Qingzhou picked up the prepared report and walked towards the report hall.
Today, the sun is shining brightly, and the orange-yellow light is shining on the ancient city. Pedestrians are walking leisurely on the road. Occasionally, the sound of cars passing by can be heard in the distance, and then tranquility returns to the city.
Xu Qingzhou was thinking with his head down. Over the past few days, the feeling that he was about to grasp the truth became clearer and clearer.
"handsome guy!"
A shout rang out.
Xu Qingzhou looked up and pulled his thoughts away from his calculations, and saw two people standing at the corner in front of him. The girl had a surprised expression on her face, and the boy was looking at him gloomily, seeming a little unhappy.
Oh, it's those two people on the plane.
(End of this chapter)
