Deep Space Wandering Fleet

Chapter 89: Chapter 91: The Geniuses Among Peers

After the banquet ended, Zhang Yuan hurriedly returned to his own room and opened his personal tablet computer. On it was an idea left to him by his dad—”A New Algorithm for Community Detection.”

The ideas left by his dad were all highly innovative.

After pondering for half an hour, Zhang Yuan was surprised to find that this community detection algorithm could be very fittingly applied to the turbulence problem!

“Is it possible to use it?”

A burning flame of enthusiasm rose from within his heart!

Community detection is a very classic problem in graph theory, especially the detection of community structure in complex networks, which is a major research focus in information science.

The nodes in a network can be divided into groups, with relatively dense connections between nodes within a group, and these dense groups of nodes are referred to as a community structure.

According to Zhang Yuan’s intuitive idea, a turbulent flow could be seen as a complete community structure.

Analyzing individual communities would significantly reduce the difficulty.

“But, after analyzing individual communities, how do we merge the data together?”

Without being able to analyze the system as a whole, the value of the algorithm isn’t considered very significant.

This issue was particularly puzzling, and the difficulty of solving it was unknown.

Zhang Yuan furrowed his brow tightly, and for the moment, he had no good ideas.

Now, two paths lay before Zhang Yuan. First, to copy his father’s inspiration and sort out this “Community Detection Algorithm in Complex Networks” into a decent paper.

According to his current understanding, publishing this paper in a top-tier journal would be no problem and would be more than enough for a graduation thesis.

The second direction was to continue solving the turbulence problem and integrate this “Community Detection Algorithm” into it as a small part of the thesis.

However, if the subsequent parts were poorly handled, this promising idea would be wasted.

“How should I choose?”

Zhang Yuan contemplated for a moment, his expression changing. Finally, he let out a long sigh.

He realized deep down that he still wanted to choose the second path. It really lacked integrity to plagiarize his father’s idea again—although all of those were willingly given to him by his father.

Money?

Fame?

He did not need these things now.

Zhang Yuan opened his father’s photo again, and memories of the past, purified by the passage of time, seemed to be coated with a layer of brilliant gold.

Zhang Yuan said softly, “Father, thank you.”

…

Time flowed like water, passing day and night without distinction.

As the communication delay increased, communication with Earth became more and more difficult, and the atmosphere within the spaceship slowly became oppressive. Those chatting by the roadside, exercising in the gym, were noticeably fewer.

After eating, everyone worked, and after work, they went to sleep as if only busyness could help forget the worries.

Regardless of whether they were willing or not, people had to adapt to the universe.

Zhang Yuan’s moment of high interest had finally passed, and Falls’s wealth ranking was once again converted to federal coins. A few newcomers emerged on the list, but they did not stir up much attention.

Everyone was only interested in the first Mr. Billion, with little interest in the second or third.

Earth’s money isn’t the kind you can use on a spaceship. It’s just a number, and after you see it enough, it doesn’t feel all that significant.

The competition in the academic rankings, however, is extremely fierce, with the first place changing many times.

The truths of the universe, in this small society, begin to attract even more attention.

“Extra, extra! Star University’s ranking has officially entered the top 500 of all humanity!”

“Our Deep Space University has been totally outclassed. We can’t even make it into the top 1000!” Ye Kaifu, the guy who’s always on top of things, greeted me with these words.

With a troubled expression, he said, “Young Master Zhang, as a leading graduate student at Deep Space University, you really need to step up. My teacher is constantly pestering me to publish papers, and it’s so annoying.”

Zhang Yuan was startled. “You can’t blame Deep Space University’s ranking on me… What about the professors?”

“The professors are busy tuning the spaceship, where do they have the time to write papers? Such a huge ship!”

“Hold on, Star University has made some more impressive achievements? What, are they popping pills or something, to be this awesome?”

“I’ll forward it to you.”

A guy named Zhang Yingbo wrote an innovative paper on “Light Stagnation Technology,” which caused quite a stir.

Light Stagnation is a hot research topic at the moment, where the principle is to interweave light waves together to make them stop in their intrinsic orbits. This technique relies on adjusting the waves so they meet at what’s called the “exception point.”

With this principle, people can use lasers to send and store information.

Zhang Yuan read the paper with keen interest and was amazed at its innovativeness. He couldn’t quite figure out how this Zhang Yingbo managed to write such a paper under conditions of such limited experimental resources.

There was also a recent paper by a guy named Xiao Weixing on “Light Catalysts” that was so full of specialized terminology and so out of my field of expertise that I couldn’t understand it and, consequently, had no way to judge its quality.

Anyway, it received a positive response from the industry.

Right, this guy’s also from Star University.

There was another paper on “genetic matching” by a student named Jina, who had dug into the mutual selection between genes from a big data perspective, and the mathematical model was quite impressive.

This guy is from Star University too!

Being in their twenties is the best age for having brilliant and inventive thoughts, and the fierce competition also led to Zhang Yuan’s ranking gradually declining, slipping all the way down to just over 100.

“Zhang, the academic tycoon, aren’t you working on the turbulence problem? A single breakthrough in turbulence could wipe them all out!” Ye Kaifu said with no good intentions.

Zhang Yuan replied with a grimace, “Go on, you think it’s that easy to tackle this problem?”

“Aren’t you the top student in terms of academic performance? I’m just a weakling here. In these eight months, I’ve managed to publish just one paper… ranked at 233.”

Suddenly, Zhang Yuan realized what Ye Kaifu was doing: he was trying to stir up envy. Ye Kaifu was catching up to him, who hadn’t published anything in so long.

Zhang Yuan felt a bit annoyed, but he knew that he had to stick with the topic he had chosen no matter what, “You’re so sure I can’t do it? Listen, come closer…”

“I’ve grasped the true essence of the turbulence problem and have created an equation, called Ye’s Equation. Its vector form is given by: =-Ñp+ρF+μΔv…”

“Really? No way!”

After swallowing hard, Ye Kaifu felt his heartbeat skip a beat. Even though he didn’t quite understand, he deeply recognized the significance of the turbulence problem. Besides, not understanding meant he couldn’t refute if the other person was talking nonsense!

“Hold on, why is it called Ye’s Equation?”

“Ye Kaifu’s Equation, because your provocation gave me the drive to keep going and the conviction to continue. If I really make a breakthrough, I’ll name it after you, the Ye Kaifu Equation.”

Ye Kaifu had an epiphany, and with a smile, said, “Alright then! To show my gratitude, from now on, all devices I fix, including the phones that girls give me to repair, I’ll secretly etch your name, Zhang Yuan, on them. How does that sound?”

“You wouldn’t dare!”