Orion Crest, Series_1

Chapter 104: Bad news

　　The shorter the words, the more informative they were.

　　Remembering what Stewart had said to him after he returned from the International Conference on Theoretical Physics in Brussels, Orion had a vague feeling that Professor Frank might have something important to say to him.

　　So, without the slightest delay, he quickly replied to the email.

　　[I can do it anytime, let's see when you're free?]

　　After waiting for a while, Professor Frank did not reply.

　　Orion looked at the time and figured that he was probably asleep, so he got up and walked into the bathroom to take a shower and went to rest as well.

　　Early the next morning, Orion got up and checked his email, and sure enough, he received a reply.

　　[The day after tomorrow I'll go to Stony Brook University, and I'll probably stay there for three days. If you're free, we can meet up there.]

　　Orion glanced at the calendar.

　　There was a lecture in two days, but he had already asked Professor Deligne for leave.

　　After thinking about it, he edited an email and replied.

　　[Okay then, the day after tomorrow at noon, I'll contact you when I get there]

　　The reply was only two letters.

　　[OK]

　　......

　　New York, situated on the East Coast, was the economic and cultural hub of the entire East Coast, as well as one of the East Coast's technological centres.

　　Many people know that Wall Street and Broadway on Manhattan Island, but few people know that right next door on Long Island, but also located in one of the world's top integrated scientific research base - Brookhaven National Laboratory.

　　Many Nobel Prizes have been awarded here, including the Nobel Prizes for Chen-Ning Franklin Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee for their work on the Parity violation and Samuel C. C. Ting for his discovery of the J-particle. Currently there are about 3,000 researchers and engineers here, and an average of 4,000 visiting scholars work here every year.

　　It's not quite as big as CERN, but it's still a pretty impressive number.

　　And therein lies the significance of the collider. The discovery of a novel particle doesn't seem to change human life immediately, but it attracts a large number of scholars to gather here, spawns a large number of suppliers specialising in cutting-edge equipment, and creates a huge "research ecosystem".

　　For example, the Hadron Collider's storage ring requires nearly harsh vacuum conditions, which gave rise to the development of ultra-high vacuum technology, and these technologies eventually played a role in the medical and electronics industries and other fields of industrial value.

　　And there are many more like it.

　　The lab is currently under the Department of Energy, but is run by the Brookhaven Science Associates LLC, a company founded by Stony Brook University and the Battelle Memorial Institute.

　　It happens to be Monday, and Orion arrives in New York in his newly acquired and beloved car.

　　Professor Frank's appointment to meet up with him was at the cafe in front of Stony Brook University. I don't know if it was Orion's illusion, but he always felt that the professors he knew were fond of things like coffee.