Chapter 526 - 515 Group Photo_1

Capital, Great Hall.

Today is September 30, and it is the fourth day of the Institute of High Energy’s TEPA public opinion gathering meeting.

However, the official name of the meeting is "The First World Frontier Physics Exchange Conference," which ignited widespread excitement on the very first day.

When the conference opened on September 27, the attendee list included over 1,600 renowned foreign scholars and scientists, including 125 Nobel laureates, more than 4,000 domestic scientific community members, and an additional 3,000 social elites from the educational and literary sectors, totaling nearly 10,000 people. This reached the maximum capacity of the Great Hall.

The agenda of the conference was very clear: first, summarize the current achievements in high-energy physics and fundamental science, then decide on the next stage of breakthrough directions, subdivide task goals, and finally, determine the required specifications for experimental facilities, essentially justifying the need for high-energy accelerators.

There was no host; the center of this conference revolved solely around scientific endeavors. In the anticipated month-long schedule, countless leading scientists could take turns presenting. Although 99.999% of the external audience could not understand what they were saying, they would absolutely take their words for granted.

This morning, Bob Roster took the stage, having participated in the Tevatron accelerator and the LHC, coming from the renowned Fermi Laboratory.

In 1983, the Fermi Laboratory spent a huge sum of money to start the construction of the Tevatron, the world’s largest high-energy particle accelerator at that time, and then announced the discovery of quarks in 1995, followed by predictions of the existence of the Higgs boson, definitely an authority in the field of high-energy physics.

The Tevatron was a "trillion electron volt accelerator," the LHC raised the bar by an order of magnitude to "ten trillion electron volts," and now China intends to build a "hundred trillion electron volt level" accelerator, specifically three hundred trillion electron volts, which won the collective cheers of the Fermi Laboratory.

This time he brought the latest achievements and many related conjectures from the Fermi Laboratory, which could also be the most precious scientific conference Bob believed he had attended. At least a thousand people in the audience could keep up with what he presented, truly feeling a sense of not being alone on the path of science.

It must be said that there’s a rather significant cognitive bias among the general public; the modern leading-edge physicists are actually not inferior to those of the recent past. However, with science developing continuously, it has become difficult for people to understand what it truly means to advance from 99.98% to 99.981%. Frontier science is no longer as simple as "E=mc^2." Perhaps in the future, the Grand Unified Theory will make things simpler, but certainly not now.

Only when the scientists of today slowly and painstakingly inch forward until they break through a certain limit will people realize the magnitude of their achievements.

Ye Changsi and Wu Yunfeng sat together in the front row. The latter said in a low voice,

"If the ceiling collapsed right now, the world’s research force in high-energy physics would be cut by half, and research progress would be set back by fifty years."

Changsi, "So we’d better take advantage of them being together later to take a big group photo, which will certainly be a photo for the history books of this century."

"True, we have 8K cameras here, so even a few thousand faces won’t blur."

The academic content of this meeting would be recorded, so Wu Yunfeng was not in a hurry to watch now. Instead, he turned his head to scan the densely packed crowd in the two areas behind him.

The over ten thousand people were unexpectedly quiet; even the professionals from other fields who did not understand the topics maintained their silence in front of cutting-edge science as a sign of respect, indicating a good omen.

Although the higher-ups still had not formally commented on the TEPA project, many clues could already be seen from this physics exchange meeting:

Nominally organized by the Institute of High Energy, but in reality managed entirely by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Otherwise, with so many people, there would be trouble even with everyone’s high cooperation. In fact, the day before the conference began, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a notice stating it would reimburse all participants’ domestic and international travel and dining expenses, and that’s no small figure.

The Great Hall was also made available to the Institute of High Energy for free, providing top-tier services at no cost. This was not only a reflection of the importance the authorities placed on the attending scientists but also indicated that TEPA was likely to pass the project approval process.

The Institute of High Energy and the Academy of Sciences also frequently requested reports, which turned out to be a good sign. They were not afraid of failure to pass; what they feared was being ignored.

Several of China’s scientific research institutes have already started to prove the feasibility of constructing a super collider at this energy level on their own initiative. Constructing a gigantic collider isn’t as simple as stacking vacuum coils; the leap in orders of magnitude means that the required subsystem equipment is completely different.

The simplest task is digging the hole. Although the requirement is for a depth of one hundred meters, with China’s infrastructure level, the cost would only be around ten billion yuan, which is negligible compared to the entire project.

The remaining one hundred billion yuan, once thrown into the mix, would be enough to guide the domestic related industries through a major upgrade, enlarging thousands, if not tens of thousands of enterprises, and surely some of this cutting-edge technology would transfer to other fields.

Wu Yunfeng had already taken TEPA as his own goal; he had to ensure the TEPA would be established in his lifetime!

He couldn’t calm himself down for a long time at the thought of all this until Ye Changsi woke him up with a pat when they adjourned for lunch.

"Let’s go, the meeting restarts at 2:30 PM, just in time to announce something," said Ye Changsi.

"Announce what... Oh, you mean that?" responded Wu Yunfeng.

Already an A+ rated external scientist at Base A, Wu Yunfeng was privy to all the projects and immediately thought of something.

Around 2:50 PM, after a break of more than two hours, the meeting continued. It was the turn of a research institute from Hefei. As the speaker was preparing to present, suddenly Ye Changsi walked up to the stage and took over the proceedings.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement to make. Although it is unrelated to the matters at hand here, I still need to inform you because it is an equally remarkable achievement," Ye Changsi proclaimed.

The sudden turn of events surprised the audience of thousands, who quieted down to listen attentively to Ye Changsi’s words.

"At 14:07 this afternoon, the Cloud Ascend project, a single-stage-to-orbit manned spacecraft developed jointly by the Science and Technology Committee and the Aerospace Development Committee targeting the next generation of manned spacecraft, has conducted its first experimental flight.

And two minutes ago, at 14:53, it successfully entered a low Earth orbit with an apogee of 370 kilometers and a perigee of 270 kilometers.

The four astronauts have safely reached orbit, marking mankind’s mastery of a cheaper, safer mode of space travel."

...

Two hours earlier.

At 12:40 PM, a vast crowd once again began to gather on the side of the base’s runway. With tens of thousands of staff inside the base, plus additional designers and technicians from other bureaus, many had no choice but to find a nearby warehouse or rooftop to avoid the risk of heatstroke from the crowded conditions below.

The sky was cloudless, and the sunlight evenly illuminated every inch of land. From a distance, the shimmering of the light four to five meters above the asphalt runway looked like clear lake water under the sun due to heat distortion.

The runway had been cleared since the morning, Tiger Mountain Airport had ceased flights, and the Air Force had restricted the surrounding airspace and dispatched fighter jets to patrol the area.

The residents living near the base soon realized something new was about to happen. They quickly looked for higher ground, set up their cameras, and aimed in the direction of the base.

Some people posted about these unusual movements on forums, and even more enthusiasts and other individuals who lived nearby rushed over, speculating which type of flying machine it might be; was it aviation or aerospace? Or perhaps a new spaceplane?