Chapter 348: Everything Is Ready
On the first day of September, the latest issue of Arcana was released.
As they were working for Atom Institution, Lazar, Rock, and Jerome could now afford to buy every month's Arcana, and they did not need to go to the library to borrow the journals to save money anymore.
"This assumption is completely beyond my imagination! But I have to say that the formula indeed can be explained based on the assumption." In the meeting room, when the institution members were waiting for Lucien's arrival, Lazar exclaimed. However, because of his arcana knowledge in thermal radiation was not adequate, and also because of most arcanists' attitude toward Lucien's assumption, Lazar believed that this assumption would sooner or later be replaced by another explanation which made sense.
Only those arcanists who had once derived the formula in person and who had seen that all the possible explanations failed to serve the formula could see the rationality of Lucien's assumption, which could push their cognitive world into a great chaos since the assumption conflicted with the fundamental belief of the arcana world and the theory of Mr. Brook. Meanwhile, for those who did not have this profound understanding of this topic, on the contrary, they would not be affected in the same way.
Rock stood up and walked back and forth excitedly in the classroom, "Lucien's awesome! He's the only person who could make this incredible assumption! I love the subversiveness! I shall hug him when he arrives! I shall hug my idol! The study of arcana should not be like a stagnant pond, but full of storms!"
It seemed that Rock wished that he was the one who came up with the assumption.
Jerome's face looked a bit pale, but soon he calmed down, "This is just an assumption, and we don't have put too much thought into it for now. Just use the formula. Leave the tough problem to the grand arcanists."
"That's very typical of Jerome. Always calm." Lazar grinned. He did not really mind the assumption, maybe purposefully.
Meanwhile, the apprentices were sitting on the other side of the meeting room. They did not really understand what the arcanists were talking about.
At this time, Lucien walked in with a thick pile of paper and a copy of Arcana. He smiled and said to the institution members, "Now let's see what we have done in the past week."
...
In Allyn, be it in the magic towers, under the trees, in the grand coaches, or any other place, countless arcanists were greatly shocked when encountering Lucien's bold assumption in the latest issue of Arcana.
However, soon, the same comment—"This is just an assumption"—could be heard in every corner of the city. When they were saying so, there was fear and worry in their voice. They would only need the formula and the constant for improving the spells...
And they also wondered what the term, cathode ray, mentioned in the paper, meant.
...
In Rentato, the royal magic tower of Holm, the headquarter of the Will of Elements.
K was reading Arcana carefully, and his hands were shaking slightly. There were already three silver stars on his arcana badge, and the tiny silver dots surrounding the stars were quite numerous, which meant that he was close to becoming a level four arcanist.
The citation of the theory of valence and ionization had brought him a good amount of credits.
"Evans is really a genius without restraint," said someone next to the door after releasing a heavy sigh. The words woke K up from his nightmare.
"If it was me, I would never be able to put forward such an assumption. I would never be able to jump out of the fundamental arcana system," Larry said to K and entered the office. There were five silver stars on his arcana badge.
K responded in his deep voice, "Although it's just an assumption, it's still beyond thrilling. If somehow the assumption can be proved as correct, there will be a great storm in the Congress. And I dare not imagine how great a pressure Lucien would be put under if that was the case..."
"Don't think too much. We shall focus on our own research." Larry knew what K was talking about. He was well aware of the fact that even the most open-minded middle-rank arcanist still had to spend a long time to accept Lucien's idea, not to mention the grand arcanists up there, "By the way, the grand arcanists have decided to grant me the Holm Crown Prize for my contribution to the theory of valence and ionization, and the name of the ring will be Ionization. K, I'm sorry that I failed to persuade them to let you share the prize with me."
Because the improvement of the theory of valence and ionization was a process over time, Larry first did not recognize their value. Thus, he did not mention K's name in many of the related papers. On the contrary, K, as Larry's student, strictly stuck to the tradition and always put Larry's name before his.
But what was more important was that Morris, the president, was being cheap again as the budget of the Will of Elements became quite tight again after giving out Holm Crown prize three times in succession. There was no way that Morris would agree on spending more money on another ring.
K did not mind it. After all, it was just a special case that Isabella and Rachel could share the honor. He scratched his head a bit and grinned, "It's okay, sir. What is confusing me the most is why the different ions can carry electrons and positrons... What's the explanation behind it?"
"You also start to ask why now, like the person who has the same name as yours." Larry touched his brownish-yellow beard and joked, "What's bothering you is going to be our next research focus, and also, we can reproduce Lucien's cathode ray experiment."
...
In the far northland, in a crystal clear, ice palace.
As if the palace was in a totally separate world, it was not affected by the heavy storm at all. Meanwhile, it seemed that the palace was connected to some other strange dimensions.
In one of the studies in the palace, the elf-looking beauty, Hellen Price, was reading a letter. Beside her was the latest issue of Arcana.
"... I think Lucien Evans' contribution to the field of thermal radiation research well deserves Ice & Snow Medal. Although his assumption that energy comes in potions has not been verified, it can still be regarded as an explanation. His formula and constant are so accurate that they can for sure improve the researches in thermal radiation... Of course, I have to admit that I like how they call every potion of energy - quantum.
"Your friend, Derrick Douglas"
After reading the letter, Hellen pondered for a while and then picked up the quill,
"... As far as I know, Lucien's explanation has not been accepted by the public, or, I should say, barely anyone would agree with the explanation. Right now many will not agree on granting Lucien Evans Ice & Snow Medal, or the reputation of the award would be severely damaged. Also, because Evans was Fernando's student, we should be even more cautious... In ten years, if no new explanations can be found, and when Evans' formulation and constant are widely applied, at that time, it wouldn't be too controversial to give him the honor..."
...
In the meeting room of Atom Institution.
"... So, from the previous experiments, I found that cathode ray can only march a few centimeters in air, and that's why we ignored its existence before." Lazar's face was glowing with excitement when sharing his findings with the other members. Behind him was the piece of glass reflecting green light.
Under Lucien's instruction, in this month, Lazar, Rock, Jerome and the apprentices had all devoted themselves to the study full of passion. Every single one of the sorcerers had finished at least seven papers, and the apprentices also did four. As four Lucien himself, he had developed ten papers. The papers were about the absorption of the ray, its penetrating property, and the change of the shadow positions in the strong magnetic field and electric field.
Their conclusion was that cathode ray was probably a negatively charged particle stream. And they had figured out the design of an isolation device for casting pure rays to determine the charge mass ratio through the ray's trajectory in the electromagnetic field. So they could tell what kind of particle they were.
Since the cathode ray could penetrate the foil, Rock and Jerome also put forward their opinion that it might not be some kind of particle stream, but they currently still had no idea what it should be. The measurements of the velocity of the cathode ray shattered their initial thought that the ray was a kind of electromagnetic wave, as it was proved that the speed of the ray was much less than that of light.
When Lazar finished, Rock also shared his work, "...No persistent deflection of the cathode ray has been found in the strong electromagnetic field, and thus we might be wrong in saying that it is charged. As for the previous experimental results, they are probably misunderstood by us because of the complex gas environment within the magic circle..."
Both Jerome and Lazar agreed.
Although the apprentices were capable of doing the specific researches and developing the experiment reports, when the arcanists were talking about serious arcana knowledge, they were still having a difficult time understanding their words.
"I think there might be some other interference factors... I need some time to redesign the experiment." Lucien expressed his opinion.
The pressure from the thin air would make it impossible for small particles to deflect, which would require the vacuum environment. And so far, Lucien was well aware that none of the congress's magic circles could do this. As cathode rays were in fact streams of electrons, they were still some distance away from the discovery of electrons and seeing the internal structure of an atom.
The belief that an atom was an indivisible unit would remain unshakable for a while in the world of arcana.
The grand gate of the world of microcosm was looming, but it had not been pushed open yet!
Lazar, Rock and the rest of the arcanists were all happy hearing that Lucien was going to handle the challenging, theoretical task himself. They would rather focus on conducting the specific cathode ray experiments because these experiments could bring them the real arcana credits. They did not want to waste their time on such a vague topic that they could not find a direction at all!
After submitting the paper announcing the discovery of cathode ray, Lucien got thirty arcana credits and each of the arcanists got five. The apprentices were not yet qualified to put their names on the paper.
Although the reward was already very decent to most of the junior-rank arcanists, what the institution members got was even more than that. On average, each of their paper had brought them four arcana credits. Among them, Lazar was the most outstanding one—in the past month, Lazar had got thirty credits in total with the papers he published, which made him only ten credits away from becoming a level three arcanist. Rock and Jerome were also level two arcanists now.
And they would also be expecting more citation credits later. They loved their experiments so much!
The apprentices also had thirteen to fourteen credits now. Although they had not found the time to get the badge, or they would have already become real arcanist.
Most arcanists would drop their chin at how fast the institution members made the progress.
...
In a monastery in Rentato, Holm.
A bishop was introducing the foundation of divinity modified and improved by the popes to the several pastors in training.
"The Lord first created different atoms, and they are the tiniest units in the world that cannot be further be divided. The Lord then created all the things with the atoms..."
...
Today's discussion of cathode ray was over. Jerome started to share the progress they had made in their ultralow temperature experiment.
Jerome looked quite cheerful, "Lucien, we've found that at minus 185 Degrees Celsius, the property of charcoal changes dramatically and it becomes very easy for it to absorb air."
"Excellent." nodded Lucien. Although there were other ways of creating a vacuum environment, using charcoal was the best way for sure.
And their next step would be redesigning the magic circle to measure the charge mass ratio of cathode ray!