Chapter 696: Nobel Prize Season

Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations

Even though Lu Zhou could feel that the two new pilots were somewhat reluctant to accept their new identities, fortunately, they didn’t bring their emotions into their work. They completed each task meticulously.

What satisfied Lu Zhou the most was that these elite pilots achieved excellent results in all of their tasks, whether it was underwater weightless training or high-G centrifuge training.

They obviously nailed other tasks such as skydiving and outdoor survival training.

Since they were formal aviators, they had already completed those training missions before.

In fact, compared with the chemical high-thrust manned rockets, the Skyglow didn’t have particularly tough physical fitness requirements. Its acceleration in the atmosphere was only 2 g. After entering low-Earth orbit, the Hall-effect thruster would switch to outer space mode and fly with a lower engine thrust. Therefore, even ordinary people could handle flying in this spacecraft.

However, they still had to prepare accordingly.

The days quickly flew by, and it was soon December.

Another year of the Nobel Prize dinner was held in the Stockholm Blue Hall.

Even though Lu Zhou, like previous Nobel Prize laureates, received an invitation from the Swedish royal family, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also asked if he was interested in attending diplomatic occasions, after some careful consideration, Lu Zhou politely declined the invitation.

First of all, he was too busy with his research. Secondly, it was pretty boring to sit on the sidelines. Rather than watching other people receive awards, he much preferred to receive the awards himself. Even though the food in the Blue Hall was quite memorable, it wasn’t good enough to make him want to go back.

Also, this year’s winners of the Physics award were David O’Sharon and Arthur C. Gossard, and the reason for their award was because of their research in the field of semiconductor spin electronics.

The former had a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University and was a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The latter was a big name in the field of materials science and computer engineering, who was also teaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In this day and age, it was very rare to find scholars who were proficient in two fields at the same time. It was even rarer for those scholars to achieve outstanding results in two different fields. Because of this difficulty, their research results were regarded as prominent.

In particular, the discovery of the quantum-restricted Stark effect and the fractional quantification of the Hall effect was a huge physical breakthrough. It also had profound impacts on the computer chip industry.

In fact, many years ago, many people predicted that these two would win the prize.

Now, this award had finally fallen into the hands of these two.

It was worth mentioning that people had been predicting whether or not Lu Zhou would win this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, and people even began to place bets online.

Just like Lu Zhou had predicted, even though the controllable fusion project was excellent, the Nobel Prize Committee did not consider giving awards to group research projects.

However, Lu Zhou thought that this was only one of the many reasons. The main reason was probably that he had just won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry not long ago. Otherwise, the theoretical model of plasma turbulence in the application of controllable fusion engineering would be more than enough to win him the award.

Not to mention there was also the He3 atom probe technology.

As a generous person, he would have gladly shared the millions of krona prize money with Professor Lazerson.

The same day when Lu Zhou decided to reject the Nobel Prize dinner invitation, he heard news from East Asia Energy.

After a year of construction, the Xihe fusion reactor in Daya Bay was finally completed. The final commissioning would be completed before the end of the year. On New Year’s Day, it would begin to deliver clean and cheap electricity to the Guangdong, Shenzhen, and Xiangjiang area.

So far, the installed capacity of the power station had reached 11,000 MW, which had exceeded the total installed capacity of the original Daya Bay Fission Nuclear Power Station. The new reactor would continue to expand its electricity generator, eventually matching the Pangu 100,000 MW capacity.

In the month of December, the Southeast Asian cross-regional power grid project had entered its final phase. The Jinwu and Houyi reactors, which were located in the north and central regions, had also completed their first project phase and could be put in use as soon as next fall.

By then, controllable fusion would supply power to East China, South China, North China, and Central China. The high pollution thermal stations would gradually be phased out.

Apparently, because of the Houyi reactor, some people proposed to dismantle the Three Gorges Dam. This matter was heavily debated in the academic world and was still unresolved.

On the other hand, after the Xihe reactor began its construction, the other ITER member states had begun to negotiate.

One year ago, they were confident that they could replicate the success of Pangu rector in five to six years. Now, regardless of whether they were still confident in their scholars and ITER itself, the gap between them and China would slowly increase. China would go through an energy revolution. The other countries couldn’t stand waiting anymore.

Lu Zhou wasn’t very certain about the specific negotiation progress and what the Americans and Europeans had offered in exchange. However, due to the fact that the Sweden Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited him to Stockholm, the negotiations should be going smoothly.

After all, if the negotiations weren’t going well, the Chinese government wouldn’t risk letting him set foot on foreign soil.

Lu Zhou was standing at the training room entrance. He thought about all of the interesting experiences he missed out on and couldn’t help but sigh.

He looked at the two people laying on the vibration training machine with their teeth trembling, and he muttered, “I’m so jealous…”

Wang Peng, who was standing beside him, paused for a second.

“Jealous?”

Wang Peng looked at the two pilots on the vibration training machine, then looked strangely at Lu Zhou.

What is there to be jealous about?

“Yeah,” Lu Zhou nodded and said, “don’t you want to fly?”

Wang Peng: “Fly… You mean in space?”

“Yeah.”

Wang Peng shook his head and said, “I’ve never thought about flying so high before.”

Lu Zhou sighed and said, “What was your maximum skydiving height?”

Wang Peng: “The highest was probably… six thousand meters.”

Generally speaking, airborne parachuting was completed at heights of less than one thousand meters. At this height, the temperature and air pressure outside the aircraft were at normal levels, and the parachutists wouldn’t have to risk the lack of oxygen or freezing conditions.

Skydiving above five thousand meters was extremely dangerous, even for special forces. It was only used as an absolute last resort, like when an aircraft was in a critical area and couldn’t descend. Otherwise, no one in their right mind would skydive at those heights.

“Six thousand meters?” Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Once you return to the army in a few years, thousand-kilometer skydives will be the norm.”

A thousand kilometers?

Wang Peng chuckled.

I never thought the rigorous Professor Lu would make mistakes with his units.

A person jumping from a thousand kilometers would become popsicles.

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