Chapter 173: Debate and Exchange

In the central building of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, representatives from all over Europe and members of the CERN board of directors were arguing fiercely.

CERN has not added new member states for a long time. The last time it absorbed a new member state was in 1999.

After entering the 21st century, Brazil, Turkey, Pakistan, Ukraine, and even the Russians and the United States have applied for member states, but none of them have been approved.

Compared with observer countries and cooperative institutions, member states are the core of CERN. After all, funding and policy support are inseparable from these member states.

"CERN has never allowed non-European countries to join as members. Even the United States is not our member. If China is allowed to pass, we cannot explain to the United States or the outside world."

Beside the desk, a middle-aged man in a suit and tie expressed his opinion.

"Jewish is also a member state, but it is not a European country."

Opposite, the Bulgarian representative spoke calmly and refuted the remarks of the Danish representative opposite.

Compared with most Eastern European countries, Bulgaria and China have a lot of cooperation and have always had a good relationship. If it does not violate their own interests and can help, they will still choose to help.

Across the desk, the Danish representative who had just spoken rolled his eyes in his heart.

Judea, that is, Israel, is indeed a non-European country, but does it represent itself?

Everyone knows that it is not. It occupies the status of a member of CERN and actually represents the interests of the United States.

Everyone present knows this, but he can't say it at the meeting.

After all, the Jewish representative is here, and he will definitely turn against him if he says this.

"Okay, everyone, today's debate ends here for the time being. Regarding China's application to join CERN as a formal member, let's vote below."

David Gross, who presided over the meeting, stood at the main seat of the desk, interrupted everyone's quarrel, and then said:

"Please cast your precious votes."

So far, CERN has a total of 22 member states, and Judea is the only non-European country.

Each member state has two official representatives, responsible for government management and national scientific interests respectively.

But each member state has only one vote. Although the Council will try to seek unanimous consent when making decisions, in practice most decisions are made by the simple majority principle.

Following David Gross's words, the Bulgarian director took the lead in casting his vote.

Suddenly, there was one more vote in favor on the side of the projection screen.

As the Bulgarian director cast the first vote, the number of votes in the Council kept increasing on the projection screen.

There were those who voted in favor, those who voted against, and those who abstained.

In less than a minute, the director had already cast his vote.

Waiting for the last member state representative to cast his vote, David Gross looked at the projection on his side and sighed slightly in his heart.

But then, he announced: "The final result of this vote is as follows:"

"CERN directors voted a total of 22 times, including 8 votes in favor, 12 votes against, and 2 abstentions. The number of votes in favor did not exceed two-thirds."

"According to the previous rules, the meeting decided to reject China's application to become a member of CERN."

Professor David Gross solemnly reported the various votes, and the final number rejected China's application to become a member of CERN.

Although this result was expected, Gross still sighed in his heart.

Scientists should consider things relatively purely. In his opinion, China has developed to the present and has a considerable number of scientists in basic science, and the achievements made in CERN in recent years are representative.

Whether it is the Higgs particle, the four-quark particle, the five-quark particle, the Higgs decay, etc., China's contribution is quite large.

On the other hand, if there is one more member state, CERN's funding will increase by a large part.

At present, CERN's annual budget is generally about 1 billion Swiss francs (CHF, about 1.02 billion Swiss francs).

But this number is not fixed. For example, it was 970 million euros in 2015 and 1.09 billion euros in 2016.

Because CERN's funding is shared by all member states in proportion to GDP.

According to this calculation, if China becomes a member of CERN, then next year, CERN's funding will soar by nearly 300 million euros.

If it is not for the sake of balance, CERN stipulates that the funding of each member state cannot exceed 20% of the total funding, then this number will be higher.

The funding of 300 million euros is enough for CERN to conduct dozens of collision experiments every year.

With dozens of collision experiments every year, the probability of discovering unknown particles or unknown cosmic phenomena will increase by hundreds of times.

This can greatly promote the development of high-energy physics.

For scientific research, China's joining is beneficial and harmless.

But for the member states, China's joining is not such a wonderful thing.

For CERN, member states can share various technologies born by CERN, and many of them are in short supply in China.

Throughout Europe, most or even the vast majority of countries do not want to see the rise of the red country in the East.

After all, most European countries are the biggest beneficiaries of the current international order. They have a small population and relatively abundant resources. They can live very well by mastering a few core technologies.

If China continues to develop, it will inevitably change the white supremacist international order centered on the United States and Europe.

Once this order is broken, their lives will not be so good.

So even though China's application for CERN's membership has already been communicated with various governments many times in advance and can pay a lot of benefits, most countries still choose to oppose it.

After reporting the voting results, David Gross picked up a manuscript from the table and continued: "Next, the second item of this meeting will be carried out."

"About China's application for CERN's associate member."

"This matter will still be decided by the vote of the Council."

As he said, Professor Gross operated the computer in the conference room.

"In addition, before the voting begins, please allow me to report another matter."

"In the past three days, CERN's public mailbox has received a total of applications from 37 different national physical laboratories, research institutes, and 127 top physicists."

"I hope CERN will hold one or two, or more lectures on mathematical calculation of physical particle energy level channels."

"Excuse me, I would like to ask what this has to do with China's application for CERN associate member status?"

In the conference room, a director raised his hand to interrupt David Gross's speech.

Gross adjusted his glasses and continued calmly: "Of course it is related, because the only person who has mastered the method of calculating the energy level channel of physical particles from mathematics is in China."

"If you have seen the press conference of CERN some time ago, you should know that mastering this method can save millions or even tens of millions of dollars of collision research funds for CERN or other high-energy physics laboratories every year."

"If we are lucky, we can use this method to complete the improvement of the standard model and Higgs particles in advance, and even find something beyond the standard model, such as dark matter and dark energy."

There was obviously some commotion in the office about Professor Gross's words.

Whether it is saving millions or tens of millions of scientific research funds every year, or the subsequent dark matter and dark energy, these things are quite tempting for any country and research institution.

Half of the directors currently participating in the meeting are official personnel from member states of various countries.

These people are basically selected from governments of various countries, voting on behalf of member states, participating in the formulation of major policies and guidelines, as well as participating in the vote to accept new member states, communicating and connecting with governments of various countries, etc.

They usually don't pay much attention to CERN's own collision experiments and physical development, unless there are major discoveries. For example, the Higgs particle.

The other 22 directors are basically physical scientists from various countries.

These people are the main personnel who discuss CERN's daily development, such as the arrangement of collision experiments.

At present, it is obvious that not all official directors of member countries are aware of the details of the recent discovery of the Higgs and third-generation heavy quark Yukawa coupling phenomenon.

It is certain that they know this, but not everyone is necessarily clear about the role of mathematics in it.

The time interval is too short, and many directors who are physicists have not had time to report to their own countries.

"A mathematical method, is it necessary to have it? Can't we study it or do it ourselves?"

At the desk, a government representative director looked at David Gross and asked.

Gross shook his head and said, "Of course not. Theoretically, if someone can do this, we can do it too."

"But if we do it ourselves, it will probably take a long time, maybe three or five years?"

"After all, the core of that calculation method is currently only mastered by him, which is indeed very important for CERN."

"If the original author gives a report and explanation, the time it takes for other physicists to master this method may be shortened to a few months."

Hearing this, some government representatives who did not know much about the details of the matter began to ask the physicist directors around them, and the whole conference room was noisy.

David Gross sat quietly in his chair.

He raised this point at the meeting today, not from the request in the public mailbox of CERN, but from Xu Chuan.

After all, whether to hold a report meeting does not need to be discussed with government representatives of various countries, but only needs to communicate with Xu Chuan and obtain his consent.

Xu Chuan knew that his motherland was applying for a member state quota of CERN.

But he could not do anything about this matter.

After all, he is currently just a small researcher at CERN. Even if he has made some achievements in physics, he cannot influence the decision of the CERN Council, and he is not even qualified to make suggestions.

But just in these two days, David Gross found him and hoped that he could hold two lectures at CERN to explain the previous methods.

Taking this opportunity, he made his request to the chairman, hoping that he could talk about this matter at the member states meeting.

In exchange, he will stay at CERN to hold two lectures, explaining in detail the mathematical methods used to calculate the optimal decay channel for the Yukawa coupling between the Higgs and the third generation of heavy quarks.

Therefore, Professor Gross brought this up at today's meeting.