For the past two days, whenever Li Dong had a spare moment, he would head over to the School of Chemistry’s academic building to sit in on advanced chemistry courses.
Whenever he encountered a concept in microscopic characterization or Quantum Chemistry he didn’t understand, he couldn’t be bothered to look it up in the library anymore. He just pulled out his phone and poked Qi Yu on WeChat.
[Problem Grinder]: Senior, when using synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction to analyze the local atomic coordination of multiphase catalysts, why does the Fourier transform of the Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) always have a phase shift deviation?
A few minutes later, a message from Qi Yu came back.
[Qi Yu]: You’ve input the wrong photoelectron backscattering amplitude function. Just use the FEFF software to fit the theoretical path and compensate for the phase shift between the central atom and the coordinating atoms.
Every time, Qi Yu answered the question with no unnecessary small talk, showcasing her efficiency.
This saved Li Dong the time he would have spent looking through research papers. He felt that calling her ’Senior’ was more than worth it.
This afternoon, just as Li Dong was about to head to the School of Chemistry to sit in on a lecture by the old lady, his phone suddenly started vibrating.
It was a call from Gao Wen.
"Hello, Teacher Gao."
"Li Dong," Gao Wen’s voice came from the other end of the line.
"The high-performance computing nodes at the Weiming No.1 Supercomputing Center have been approved! Starting tomorrow, you can log in to the terminal directly through the campus intranet and use them."
"I’ve gone ahead and approved the highest level of access for you, valid until the end of this semester!"
Hearing this, Li Dong felt a surge of excitement.
This was more than enough time for him to run that algorithm to the hardware’s physical limits!
Gao Wen continued over the phone.
"There’s one more thing. Early next month, Huaxuan Technology will probably send some people over for a formal kickoff meeting with you and a few core teams from our School of Information Science and Technology and the School of Mathematics."
"After all, to port the underlying Logic of your algorithm to the lithography machine’s fluid-thermal coupling control system, we need to coordinate all departments and labs to ensure a smooth technical handover. You should start preparing for that."
Since he was getting paid, this was all part of the job, so Li Dong replied.
"Got it, Teacher Gao. I understand."
After hanging up, Li Dong didn’t head to the School of Chemistry. With the supercomputing nodes about to be available, he had to go back and do a final check of the program for calculating the zeros.
For the past few days, besides cramming chemistry, he had spent every free moment in his mind repeatedly studying the "Fragment of the Calculation of Non-trivial Zero Points of the Riemann Zeta Function."
Previously, in his rush to verify the algorithm, he had only extracted the most core part of the manuscript—"multipoint evaluation and nonlinear FFT grid expansion"—and translated it into C++ code.
But over the past few days, as his research deepened and coupled with his terrifying Basic Attributes, his understanding of the manuscript had become increasingly thorough.
He suddenly realized he had overlooked a very important detail!
When the program was previously processing High Tier intervals, for the asymptotic expansion of the high-order remainder term, he had only performed a simple Taylor truncation!
This kind of truncation could barely keep the error stable when calculating zeros on the scale of hundreds of billions.
But once on a supercomputer, when the data magnitude soared to one hundred quadrillion (10^17) or even one quintillion (10^18), the local fluctuations in the Gram point distribution would be infinitely amplified. The floating-point truncation error would directly cause the calculation to crash!
’In the last few pages of the manuscript, Riemann actually left a saddle-point method deep topological isomorphism technique!’
Li Dong reviewed it in his mind as he walked.
’By using contour integration and complex analysis to slightly deform the integral path of the remainder term, I can completely absorb the truncation error caused by high-frequency oscillations without increasing the time complexity at all!’
’I’m a freaking genius. This program and algorithm is basically version 2.0 of what I published.’
Li Dong shamelessly headed back to his dorm.
The moment he pushed open the door to dorm 404, he heard Wang Hao’s voice.
"Brother Dong! You’re freaking awesome!"
Li Dong paused for a moment.
"Me, awesome?" Li Dong looked baffled. "Haven’t I always been awesome? Why bring it up all of a sudden?"
Wang Hao held up his phone and shoved it right in front of Li Dong’s face.
"Look at this! Professor Jiang Yubai from the School of Mathematical Sciences at Beijing Normal University!"
"Using the dimensionality reduction algorithm you open-sourced on GitHub, he used the supercomputer cluster at Capital University and freaking pushed the number of verified non-trivial zeros to one hundred quadrillion (10^17), and he’s even about to break the one quintillion (10^18) mark!"
The video was an academic interview.
The person being interviewed was none other than Jiang Yubai, the leading authority on analytic number theory in the country.
Ever since Li Dong had open-sourced the underlying algorithm, the supercomputer cluster at Capital University had clearly been running at full capacity day and night. Now that it had reached the current hardware limit, the media naturally caught wind of it and flocked to interview this giant of the academic world.
In the video, a female reporter asked.
"Professor Jiang, many viewers don’t quite understand. What is the true significance of us using such massive supercomputer power to calculate so many non-trivial zeros of the Riemann Zeta function?"
Jiang Yubai spoke eloquently to the camera.
"The true significance is not just mathematical."
"The more non-trivial zeros we verify on the critical line, the more precise our control over the error bounds of the prime number distribution becomes."
"In terms of practical applications, this is directly related to the cornerstone of modern information security."
"For example, the underlying Logic of the RSA public-key encryption algorithm."
"The better we understand prime numbers, the more robust our cryptographic systems become."
At this point, Jiang Yubai steered the topic elsewhere.
"However, for me personally, I am currently researching a project."
"This project relies heavily on an extremely large volume of non-trivial zero data as its underlying mathematical support."
"That is why I have gone to such lengths to deploy supercomputer resources to run this algorithm."
The female reporter immediately followed up.
"Professor Jiang, could you reveal some details about your project to our audience?"
Jiang Yubai smiled and waved his hand.
"There’s no rush. When I have results to show, everyone will surely know."
Seeing that she couldn’t get any specific details, the reporter changed the topic:
"So, what are your thoughts on the Yan University student, Li Dong, who proposed this dimensionality reduction algorithm?"
Hearing Li Dong’s name, a smile of appreciation appeared on Jiang Yubai’s face.
"I greatly admire student Li Dong."
"He is truly talented. I personally believe he has the potential to vie for the highest honor in the world of mathematics."
"I believe that with the abilities he has demonstrated, he will definitely be able to win a Fields Medal before he turns 40!"
This statement stunned even the reporter conducting the interview.
The Fields Medal! That’s the Nobel Prize of mathematics!
However, Jiang Yubai then added, half-jokingly.
"But, with his algorithm, I can’t shake the feeling that it isn’t quite perfect when handling the extremely high-order remainder terms. It seems there’s still room for optimization."
He smiled at the camera.
"I wonder if student Li Dong is intentionally holding something back?"
The reporter and the crew on site all laughed good-naturedly.
Finally, Jiang Yubai looked at the camera and extended an invitation to Li Dong.
"I also hope that if the opportunity arises, student Li Dong might join my current project."
The video ended there.
Wang Hao was already beside himself, muttering, "Holy shit, holy shit..."
"Brother Dong, you’ve hit the big time!"
"Professor Jiang Yubai! He’s a titan, a leading authority in analytic number theory in the country! And he publicly invited you to join his project!"
"Brother Dong, don’t forget about us when the time comes! See if you can get us in on it, even just for some grunt work on the sidelines of the research group! That would be such a huge boost for our resumes!"
However, after rambling on for a while, Wang Hao noticed that Li Dong, standing beside him, hadn’t said a word and seemed to be in a daze.
"Huh? What’s wrong, Brother Dong? Are you stunned with joy?"
Li Dong finally snapped out of it and shook his head with a wry smile.
"Professor Jiang is in a different league..."
"I’m out of my league."

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