248: Chapter 248 Academic Tsunami

After the initial excitement, Zhao Yang took a deep breath.

He put down his pen and glanced at the time; it was already 5:30 AM.

There was still much to do. His report session was this morning, and he had to upload his paper to arXiv before then!

Thinking of this, Zhao Yang went to the bathroom and splashed his face with cold water. The icy water helped lower the temperature of his overheated brain.

Returning to his desk, he opened his laptop.

The proof was complete. The next step was to convert these hundred-plus pages of purely handwritten drafts into LaTeX formatting.

This was a laborious task. If he were to manually input all those complex integral symbols and topological matrices, it would likely take several days.

But Zhao Yang didn't need to go through all that trouble.

He had the artificial intelligence Shin-chan, which could work remotely with incredible efficiency.

"Shin-chan, scan all the manuscripts on the desk."

Zhao Yang picked up his computer's webcam, allowing Shin-chan to use visual capture to begin high-speed reading of everything he had written on the A4 paper.

"Perform LaTeX formatting conversion, establish a logical table of contents, and check the contextual consistency of formula references."

Zhao Yang issued the commands.

"Understood, Master. Estimated time: forty-five minutes."

Shin-chan's reply popped up on the screen.

With Shin-chan's help, Zhao Yang finished all the formatting work by 6:40 AM, generating a highly standardized PDF document. It totaled one hundred and twenty-seven pages.

Zhao Yang scrolled the mouse to quickly browse through it.

There were no formatting errors; all mathematical symbols and diagrams corresponded precisely.

The paper was a bit long, involving top-tier cutting-edge tools from various fields such as Analytic Number Theory, Algebraic Geometry, and Topology, and even included his own original Dynamic Topological Weighted Sieve Method.

Zhao Yang knew very well that if the mathematicians attending the congress hadn't seen the preprint of this paper beforehand to familiarize themselves with it, they would be completely lost listening to him at the report session—even if they were tenured professors at Princeton. There was a massive knowledge gap involved.

Exactly 7:00 AM.

Zhao Yang logged onto arXiv, the world's largest preprint academic website, and officially uploaded the paper titled "On Goldbachs Conjecture and its Topological Weighted Sieve Method."

He clicked submit.

The screen displayed a successful upload.

By the time everything was settled, it was already 8:00 AM.

Zhao Yang picked up his phone, found Terence Tao's number, and dialed it directly.

Terence Tao was also in this hotel, just on a different floor.

The phone rang for a long time before being answered. Terence Tao's somewhat groggy voice came from the other end; he was clearly still asleep.

"Zhao? What is it so early?"

"Professor Tao."

Zhao Yang spoke in a calm tone.

"I have solved Goldbachs Conjecture. The paper has just been uploaded to arXiv. You can go take a look."

The other end of the line suddenly fell into a deathly silence.

A full five seconds passed.

"What did you say?!"

Terence Tao's voice instantly jumped an octave, his sleepiness vanishing without a trace.

"You solved that error convergence? Are you sure the logic is closed?!"

"Positive. I utilized the non-trivial zeros of the Zeta Function to perform hedging within the Modular Form Space. Look at page eighty-five of the paper."

"I'm going to look right now!"

Terence Tao hung up immediately.

In less than half an hour.

This Shin-chans, like a magnitude-twelve academic tsunami, completely swept through the entire Hyderabad International Convention Centre.

The top mathematicians who were still having breakfast in the restaurant or preparing to attend other breakout sessions all received the Shin-chans immediately.

The Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) immediately called an emergency meeting.

After a brief consultation, the congress organizing committee officially announced: the closing time of this International Congress of Mathematicians would be unconditionally postponed by one day.

All scheduled itineraries were set aside.

A group of the world's most prominent 'living fossils' of the mathematical world, including Professor Faltings, Professor Deligne, and Shing-Tung Yau, canceled all social and academic activities for the day.

They locked themselves in their hotel rooms and had their assistants print out Zhao Yang's 127-page paper, beginning the most rigorous word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence review.

Meanwhile.

The paper Zhao Yang uploaded to arXiv was, in a very short time, transported to the domestic internet by Chinese students abroad and academic institutions.

Public opinion boiled over again, directly crashing the servers of major portals and university forums.

"Holy crap! Holy crap! Holy crap! He really solved Goldbachs Conjecture!"

"Damn! God Zhao is amazing! He said he'd solve it and he actually did!"

"What does 1+1 equal? God Zhao will tell you the answer! This is an ultimate puzzle that has troubled humanity for over two hundred years!"

"Is this for real? It's only been a few months; didn't he just pass his thesis proposal? He proved it just like that? He didn't just rush out a flawed, half-finished product just to show off at the ICM, did he?"

The online discussion showed an extremely severe polarization.

Some ordinary netizens were incredibly fanatical.

"The pride of the Chinese people! The unfinished work of the late Mr. Chen Jingrun has finally been completed by Zhao Yang! We must have a feast to celebrate today!"

"Where are those haters who said Zhao Yang's proposal was just a show? Come out and take a few steps! The man just threw the complete paper in your faces!"

While those on the opposing side maintained a strong attitude of skepticism.

"Don't get excited too early. arXiv is just a preprint site; uploading a paper doesn't require any peer review. I could upload a bunch of random code if I wanted to. Until an authoritative journal officially accepts it and it's verified by top peers, none of this counts."

"Exactly. Goldbachs Conjecture isn't that easy to solve. Big shots like Faltings and Wiles haven't said a word yet; why are the netizens having an orgasm here?"

"Zhao Yang is too young and too eager for fame. A conjecture of this level—how can it yield results without ten or eight years of immersion? I bet this paper of his has a fatal logical error."

"Heh, you guys are nothing. The closing ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians has been postponed by a day because of this, and you dogs are still barking here? Truly hilarious!"

The two sides engaged in fierce verbal battles across major forums and comment sections.

However, in stark contrast to the noisy arguments online.

The entire academic world, both domestic and international, was eerily quiet.

Not a single heavyweight mathematics professor published a long-winded post on social media, nor did any research institute rush out to capitalize on the hype.

Because everyone with a certain level of mathematical literacy knew that when facing a paper of this magnitude, any statement not based on rigorous deduction would be a massive blow to one's own academic reputation.

Everyone was reading the paper Zhao Yang had uploaded to arXiv.

An entire day passed.

In the global mathematical community, not a single authoritative mathematician stepped forward to make a public statement. Whether in affirmation or denial, everyone maintained an extreme silence.