Chapter 604 - Unavoidable Bottleneck
Chapter 604: Unavoidable Bottleneck
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, it was still noon.
After Sarrot sent the email, he went to the bar and got drunk.
In order to maintain a clear mind for experiments, he never drank during the day. However, today was an exception.
As he sat in a bar in Silicon Valley, his assistant Paul looked at him and sighed. Paul tried to comfort him.
“Think about the big picture. ExxonMobil buying your laboratory isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Even though Professor Lu is a great scholar, he didn’t actually provide you with that much resources. Not to mention, ExxonMobil spent US$50 million to buy us, they definitely won’t just leave us alone…”
Professor Sarrot didn’t react at all. Paul knew that his comforting words were not effective. Therefore, he shrugged and ended the conversation topic.
“In short, having money isn’t a bad thing.”
Sarrot snorted. “You don’t understand.”
Paul: “What don’t I understand?”
Sarrot didn’t explain anything. He just picked up the bottle and drank a few mouthfuls. He then began to talk about other things.
“My dear Paul, I have always believed that academic research should have freedom. As long as it doesn’t violate basic human rights, even if it isn’t definitively correct, as long as you think it is correct, you should advocate for it. The more people disbelieve in you, the more you should prove to them you are right.”
Paul frowned and said, “Do we not have freedom now?”
“Maybe we do.” Sarrot stared at the ceiling and sighed. “But once you get to my level, when your research affects the world… Your understanding of freedom will change.”
Paul didn’t say anything. He just looked at Sarrot.
After a while, Sarrot placed the empty bottle next to the stool and picked up another bottle.
Paul was about to tell him that he was drinking too much when Sarrot suddenly said, “I plan on migrating soon.”
“To where? Professor Lu’s laboratory?”
“I don’t know, but not China. There’s only one Professor Lu there…”
Sarrot, who was holding the bottle, scratched his head and said, “Maybe the Netherlands? I heard my father tell me that our family used to live in a small town in Utrecht until the Germans bombarded Rotterdam… I’ve never been there. A long time ago, Utrecht University sent me an invitation to become a professor, but the salary was too low and the resources weren’t comparable to Cornell University… But now that I think about it, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I take the offer?”
…
The research on fusion batteries had reached a bottleneck. The nuclear core heat dissipation problem seemed to be difficult to solve. A lot of people inside the project team had even begun to doubt the feasibility of this technical route.
After all, was it really possible to miniaturize nuclear fusion?
Also, was inertial confinement fusion on the miniaturized controllable fusion really possible?
The most troublesome thing was that if they couldn’t use a magnetic field to withstand the energy, what kind of material could they possibly use to restrain the heat?
However, it seemed that inertial confinement fusion was their only choice. After all, there simply wasn’t enough room in a small spacecraft for them to create a magnetic confinement cage for the plasma.
No one had the answer to these questions. They didn’t even have any previous research to use as a reference.
In order to find inspiration to solve this problem, Lu Zhou collected a large number of theses in the field of aerospace, fission batteries, and space station cooling technology. He tried to get some inspiration from these public research resources.
Actually, these theses did give him a little inspiration.
For example, the thesis on the “first-principles study of phonons in α-boron and its icosahedral boron-rich compounds” contained an interesting thermoelectric conversion model and discussed the scattering of electrons by phonons.
Converting thermal energy to electrical energy was an interesting idea in some sense. In fact, most nuclear fission batteries used in spacecraft would generate electricity with this method.
However, this didn’t solve the problem on a fundamental scale.
Using the temperature difference inside the spacecraft and outside the spacecraft might increase the efficiency of converting thermal energy into electrical energy, but it didn’t change the fact that the heat was difficult to dissipate.
Lu Zhou sat in his office and leaned against his chair as he stared at the ceiling and whispered to himself, “If only I could slow down the controllable fusion reaction.”
Or reduce the fast ignition area…
Suddenly, a voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Professor, what are you talking about?”
Zhao Huan stood in front of his desk while holding a binder, and she looked at him with a curious expression.
Lu Zhou: “Nothing… What’s up?”
Zhao Huan said, “It’s the tenth week, and your computational materials class is about to begin. This is your class schedule.”
“Okay, just put the schedule on my desk.” Lu Zhou stood up from his desk and sighed as he said, “I’m going for a walk, call me if there is anything.”
“Okay.” Zhao Huan nodded.
She didn’t know why, but she felt like Professor Lu wasn’t in a good mood.
Actually, Zhao Huan was correct, Lu Zhou wasn’t in a good mood; he was even a little annoyed.
His intuition told him that the research path he chose was correct.
However, it was almost like there was an invisible barrier that blocked the seemingly feasible road that was in front of him.
Lu Zhou vaguely felt that the bottleneck wasn’t in the engineering department. Instead, he felt that the problem was in the theoretical field.
Which was, there wasn’t enough theoretical foundation to support his idea of the miniaturization of controllable fusion.
Also, he couldn’t treat this like the tokamak or the stellarator and convert theoretical problems, such as magnetic tearing, into engineering problems.
“Is the research efficiency decreasing because of the advanced research topic?”
Lu Zhou walked along the tree-lined path on campus. He suddenly smiled and shook his head.
Two years ago, when he first got into the research on controllable nuclear fusion, he was in a similar situation.
At that time, the research methods of the L-manifold and partial differential equations had not been invented yet. The existence of a smooth solution to the Navier–Stokes equations and the theoretical model of plasma turbulence were two unsolved mysteries in mathematics and physics.
After he solved these theoretical problems, controllable fusion had a sufficient theoretical basis for it to become feasible.
Without these theories as a foundation, it would be impossible to achieve the results of the German Wendelstein 7-X or the modified STAR-1 stellarator machine.
However, where was the theoretical bottleneck of the miniaturized controllable fusion?
If this really is a theoretical bottleneck…
Lu Zhou walked through the tree-lined path and began to think about these problems in his head. Without knowing it, he walked to the lecture building that he normally lectured at.
He didn’t recognize the professor on stage, but from listening to the content, he could tell it was physics.
Through the windows of the lecture hall, he could clearly see the students listening to the lecture intently.
However, when he was about to leave, from the corner of his eyes, he saw a couple of keywords on the blackboard.
A moment of inspiration passed through his body.
Without hesitating, Lu Zhou walked toward the back entrance of the lecture hall.