Chapter 73: I Don’t Want To Go To s.p.a.ce Yet
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
It was half past eight in the morning and the lecture hall was almost full.
When Lu Zhou found a seat, he sat down in a low-key manner.
By 8:50 am, the lecture hall was full. Some people even brought chairs inside or sat on the aisles to listen.
Even students from other schools came.
It seemed that Professor Ren Changming was quite popular.
At 9:00 am, the lecture finally began. Lu Zhou looked at the old gentlemen on the podium and thought that he looked familiar. Maybe it was because Lu Zhou was too far away or the old man changed clothes, he really could not remember where he saw him.
When the powerpoint began, the female student who was sitting next to Lu Zhou finally stopped talking and reached for her notebook and pen.
The moment she saw Lu Zhou next to her, she was shocked.
As she looked at him, she asked quietly, “Student, are you, Lu Zhou?”
Lu Zhou nodded his head and said, “Yeah.”
That girl’s eyes lit up and she whispered with slight excitement, “You… You are from the 2013 mathematics cla.s.s, Lu Zhou?”
“Yes… What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing,” said the young school girl as she shook her head.
Then why did you say my name!
Lu Zhou was speechless as he opened his notebook and started taking notes.
“…”
Lu Zhou: “…”
It might have been an illusion, but Lu Zhuo felt like the two girls sitting next to him were secretly watching him. They kept whispering and pointing at him.
Lu Zhou sighed.
Is this the troubles of being famous?
It feels…
Pretty good?
Fortunately, they did not talk about him for too long as they quickly changed topics.
Lu Zhou automatically s.h.i.+elded himself from external distractions by concentrating on the lecture.
When the professor finished his opening remarks, Lu Zhou had not missed anything.
“… We all know that prime numbers are natural numbers with only two factors. You might have known the first hundred prime numbers when you were in middle school. The twin prime numbers refer to prime pairs with a difference of 2, ie p and p+2 are both prime pairs, such as 3 and 5, 5 and 7, 11 and 13, 17 and 19, etc. As the number becomes larger, the number of twins that can be observed becomes fewer.”
“There are 8 twin prime pairs within 100, and there are only 2 pairs between 501 and 600. As the prime numbers increase, the next prime should be further and further away from the previous prime. The Goldbach’s conjecture a.s.serts that there is an infinite number of prime numbers, which differ only by 2, such as 3 and 5, 5 and 7, and even this…”
Professor Ren wrote down a line of numbers on the blackboard.
[2003663613×2195000-1 and 2003663613×2195000+1]
He then turned around and laughed before he continued to speak.
“There is an infinite number of primes with a difference of 2. That is the guess of the twin prime numbers.”
So far, Professor Ren had only talked about simple stuff. Even Lu Zhou who had not studied the twin prime numbers yet could easily follow his speech.
It was the same for the other first-year students. Whether they were mathematics enthusiasts or not, all of them listened with interest.
However, the content of the lecture soon became difficult.
“… The twin prime number conjecture has always been a difficult problem in the field of mathematics. Just last year, there was a breakthrough in the study of the issue,” said Professor Ren as he smiled. He turned to the next page of the powerpoint before he continued, “The Chinese mathematician, Mr. Zhang Yitao, announced a proof that states there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by 70 million or less. This was a huge breakthrough for the twin prime numbers problem.”
Professor Ren pushed his gla.s.ses and wrote the proof on the blackboard.
[Define theta(n)=lnn. if n is a prime number; define theta(n)=0 if n is a composite number. Take the function lambda(n)=…, define S1(x)=…,S2(x)=…]
[Verify S2−(log3x)S>0…]
[…]
When the students who were following the lecture saw the ever-increasing formula on the blackboard, there were unable to follow along anymore.
For example, the female student next to Lu Zhou had a look of “Where am I? What is this?” on her face. Within a second, the entire lecture had changed…
However, Lu Zhou was able to keep up with Professor Ren’s thought process.
Simply speaking, Mr. Zhang skillfully selected a lambda function and successfully proved that k>=3.5*10^6, and concluded that S2−(log3x)S1>0 holds.
In this way, by listing the first 3.5*10^6 prime numbers as acceptable sets, it could be proved that there were infinite numbers of infinite differences of less than 70 million.
“As of now, Mr. Zhang’s k>=3.5*10^6 has been reduced to k>=50. That is to say, the figure of 70 million has been reduced to 246. The rest of the work needs to be completed by latecomers.”
Professor Ren smiled and thew the chalk on the desk as he said, “Perhaps, the great person who will complete this historic work is sitting in this lecture hall right now.”
“I look forward to that day!”
Clap clap clap!
The crowd applauded in thunder.
The audience was enthusiastic.
Even though they could not understand the content, they still clapped!
Of course, there were some people that understood and they were those that had a thoughtful expression on their faces.
For example, Lu Zhou.
The twin prime was just an introduction. Unlike an academic report meeting, the intention of the lecture was only to stimulate the students’ pa.s.sion for mathematics.
Professor Ren talked about the Goldbach conjecture from the twin prime conjecture, and from the Goldbach conjecture, he talked about the current development of domestic number theory and some relatively advanced research results.
It was safe to say that this professor was quite skilled.
The professor took obscure topics and made them seemed interesting for beginners.
However, the content of the second half of the lecture was much less interesting than the content of the first half of the lecture. So, Lu Zhou did not listen carefully. His mind was still stuck on the proof of the twin prime.
Lu Zhou recalled the discovery in the library while he stared at the blackboard. He frowned as he felt like there was something in the dark that and whenever he tried to catch it, it would run away…
Once the lecture was finished, the students from the student union took a name list and pa.s.sed it around for the other students to sign.
After Lu Zhou finished signing it, he wanted to rush to the library but he was blocked by the schoolgirl sitting next to him.
“Student, student, wait a second. Um, can I add your QQ?”
Lu Zhou did not want to waste his time, so he wrote down his QQ number on a piece of draft paper. He did not even give her a chance to speak before he quickly walked away.
However, when he walked out of the lecture hall, he was stopped by another person.
This time it was not someone random, but Professor Ren.
From the smile on the old gentleman’s face, it was obvious that he had waited for Lu Zhou for a while.
“Ah, young man, we meet again.”
Lu Zhou: ? ? ?
We’ve met?
I think we have met actually…
The old gentlemen did not even wait for Lu Zhou to speak before he asked, “Young man, are you interested in rocket development?”
Lu Zhou was still thinking about the prime numbers problem and he was shocked by this question.
What the f*ck. Are you asking me to be an astronaut?
How is that possible?
Lu Zhou smiled awkwardly, “Professor, I don’t want to go to s.p.a.ce yet.”