Deep Space Wandering Fleet

Chapter 88: Chapter 90 Turbulence Problems

Senior Brother Zhao asked with a hint of interest, “Have you come up with any good ideas?”

“I don’t have any yet, just trying to understand more about it.”

Zhang Yuan didn’t dare say he wanted to take on this century’s tough problem outright, for fear of being laughed at… Although generally speaking, Senior Brother Zhao wouldn’t laugh at him, he’d just suggest that Zhang not tackle such a difficult problem.

Time quickly passed, and two days silently slipped away…

The spaceship had successfully turned, the main engine roared to a stop, entering a brief maintenance state.

A man-made light source from Jupiter’s moon shone on the Light Sail, causing the entire Mother Ship to enter a slow deceleration.

The light path, an incredible technology.

Because of this technology, small spaceships didn’t need to carry a large amount of fuel, and they could quickly travel back and forth between the Moon and Jupiter. Formerly, space travel from the Moon to Jupiter required at least half of the payload for fuel. But not anymore; a small spaceship weighing several hundred to several thousand tons could now reach Jupiter from the Moon in just a month’s time—a significant advancement.

Zhang Yuan witnessed the main engine slowly extinguishing.

It was as if a pot of boiling water had been extinguished, without sufficient temperature, the bright plasma slowly died out, and the nuclear fusion reaction automatically stopped.

From this angle, the nuclear fusion engine was quite safe. It wouldn’t explode, but would only automatically shut down when reaction conditions were insufficient.

Inside the engine room of the Earth Era, only a secondary engine and two Molten Salt Reactors remained, providing basic electrical power.

The Molten Salt Reactor was a type of nuclear fission breeder reactor that had helped humanity through the long “Gray Era.” The technology was quite mature, so it was usually used as a backup power source. For the crucial safety of a spaceship, one couldn’t rely solely on fusion power.

For the following period, maintenance staff would perform a series of services on the entire engine.

The internship in the engine room was temporarily over…

Zhang Yuan returned to the living quarters somewhat aimlessly.

He had a few days off to rest, and he had to work at a nuclear power station next. Since there wasn’t much else happening, he planned to stay at home and read papers.

Well, regarding the turbulence problem, despite several days of reading literature, he had no ideas at all. After all, it was a world-class challenge…

At six o’clock in the evening, a small dinner was underway at the “Big Food Barrel Restaurant” in Zone A.

Academician Ding, no matter how busy, would make some time to have a meal with everyone at the beginning of each month and casually check in on the condition of his students.

“Are you trying to tackle the turbulence problem?”

“I’m just trying to understand it…” Facing his mentor, Zhang Yuan honestly confessed.

Ding Zhaodong smiled, perhaps reminded of his own reckless youth, and he didn’t discourage his young disciple.

“Indeed, it is a very difficult problem. Many people have researched for more than a decade and still can’t produce particularly good papers, simply wasting their time. If you want to work on this, you have to be mentally prepared.”

“If you have any questions about mathematics, feel free to ask Senior Brother Luo Wenhao, or you can come directly to me.”

Senior Brother Luo, sitting on the side, was already close to forty years old. He had long graduated with his doctorate and was usually busy with his work, seldom attending such gatherings.

This was the first time Zhang Yuan had met him.

Senior Brother Luo was a big shot, involved in information field research. However, his focus tended towards mathematics and he was quite famous for his research on positive curvature, having solved two famous Hopf Conjectures.

Why two? Because Hopf Conjecture itself contains multiple conjectures, one being “There is no metric of positive sectional curvature on S^2XS^2,” and another: “The Euler characteristic of even-dimensional positive curvature manifolds is positive.”

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Two conjectures could have scored two big awards, but he swept them all up in one fell swoop.

Zhang Yuan felt a sudden surge of respect and a desire to cling to someone greater.

“Senior Brother Luo!”

“Turbulence problems, ha ha, ambitious! I really like making friends with young people who have ideals. I’ve studied that area before.”

His wife was sitting nearby, a Lan Country mathematician in her thirties, dressed exquisitely with a special Victorian flair.

“Hello. Are you the Zhang Yuan who owns 300 kilograms of gold?”

Zhang Yuan replied with a smile, “Ms. Mo, you jest, but honestly, I’d prefer having 300 kilograms of antimatter for experiments.”

“Really? Antimatter is quite expensive… Your reputation is high among the girls in our District F! Want me to introduce you to some?”

Zhang Yuan couldn’t help but feel a bit embarrassed, “Girls from Lan Country, eh? My contacts list already has several options to choose from…”

Everyone burst out laughing.

The atmosphere around the dinner table was relaxed, with the group first discussing recent personal development, followed by some academic gossip, all of which was quite interesting.

This included someone proving a difficult mathematical problem; new breakthroughs in condensed matter physics; the renowned “Modern Science” journal, which had taken a hit in influence due to academic corruption scandals, and more.

“More and more people are suffering from depression. If diagnosed, they disembark at Jupiter’s moon and return to Earth.”

“I see…”

“‘Modern Science’ has temporarily suspended publication. Several of the peer-review editors are under investigation. I used to submit there too… I didn’t expect this to happen.”

“Academic corruption can happen anywhere and is hard to completely avoid… It mainly relies on the cultural environment for restraint, I suppose.”

Zhang Yuan was startled, wondering if the journal’s plummeting influence had anything to do with the incident that happened to him?

However, finding that the discussion did not focus on him, he gradually let go of his concern.

After the meal ended, Zhang Yuan had another brief discussion with the newly acquainted Senior Brother Luo.

“Turbulence problems mainly need to focus on non-uniform turbulence. After reading the paper, my first thought was Fourier analysis and related integral transformations. But then I realized that wasn’t quite right…”

This was his intuitive thought.

“Fourier analysis is too mundane,” Senior Brother Luo laughed. “I thought of that too, but later found it only worked for uniform turbulence. Even if it worked, the fitting wouldn’t be very good, not very meaningful.”

Zhang Yuan agreed, “It would be good for a question on an exam paper though.”

Senior Brother Luo smacked his forehead as if he had an idea, “Purely mathematical methods are hard, but for direct numerical calculations, I’ve seen a good idea involving the use of LES and wall functions for both non-equilibrium and equilibrium…”

“Considering the impact of different wall parameters under three types of grid division and comparing it with the corresponding DNS results… it’s an innovative algorithm in the last few years, but in practice, it’s still not quite as good as your father’s.”

An idea suddenly flashed through Zhang Yuan’s mind, as if he grasped something, “Grid division?”

“Then, can we classify the entire observation results into some sort of community division, first breaking down the big problem into smaller ones…”

“Communities?”

Senior Brother Luo was taken aback, “But in the end, you still have to bring the whole problem back together, otherwise, all the data is meaningless. What are the methods for division and recombination?”

“That… I haven’t figured that out yet.”

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