A real-life analogy would be that A and B are two magnetic blocks that can attract each other, and they want to slide on an ice surface, but the distance between them cannot be too close.

For example, they must be separated by three or five meters.

But the particles derived by Xu Yun are different.

The trajectory of these particles and the 4685Λ hyperon is equivalent to only five or six centimeters in the real world, yet they do not interfere with each other, which is a very rare situation.

Thinking of this.

Zhao Zhengguo immediately sat up straight, pulled out a pen and a piece of paper from his body, and began to do calculations seriously.

Scribble, scribble—

The sound of the pen sliding was like a natural white noise in the silent conference room, inexplicably calming the mind.

Xu Yun and Academician Pan sat quietly by the side, waiting for Zhao Zhengguo's calculation results.

As the saying goes.

Knowledge comes from diligence, and expertise comes from specialization.

Zhao Zhengguo, being one of the leading figures in the field of particle physics in the country, has much higher expertise in this area than Xu Yun and even Academician Pan.

It's like a pulse.

An ordinary person might only feel the thump of the pulse, but an experienced traditional Chinese medicine doctor can assess your health status, when to start treatment, etc., from it.

Twenty minutes later.

Zhao Zhengguo exhaled a long breath, gently set down his pen, and picked up a cup of water to sip.

At this moment, Xu Yun noticed that his fingers seemed to tremble slightly.

A few seconds later.

Zhao Zhengguo put down the cup, turned to Academician Pan, and said with emotion:

"Xiaopan, after Xiaolu, you've brought in another good student."

Academician Pan glanced at Xu Yun, understood the implication, and asked:

"Academician Zhao, is Xiaoxu's deduction correct?"

"I'm afraid it's not just correct."

Zhao Zhengguo took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb, then said:

"According to Xiaoxu's calculations, there is likely a special particle in that trajectory, and the relationship between it and 4685 probably conforms to..."

"Meson exchange theory."

"Meson exchange theory?"

Upon hearing this term.

Academician Pan was slightly stunned, then his pupils shrank suddenly.

Meson exchange theory.

This is a theory that was proposed a long time ago, but has not yielded substantial results in recent research.

The explanation of the meson exchange theory is actually quite simple:

A single pi meson exchange produces a long-range attractive force between nucleons.

A double pi meson exchange produces a saturated medium-range attractive force.

While ρ and ω molecular exchanges produce short-range repulsive forces.

The spin of the pi meson is zero.

It is called a scalar meson.

The spin of ρ and ω mesons is 1.

These are called vector mesons.

Their rest masses are not zero, which ensures the short-range nature of the nuclear force.

The non-scalar nature of the vector meson further guarantees the spin dependence of the nuclear force.

It involves the relativistic single-boson exchange potential, non-covariant perturbation theory of nuclear force meson exchange, and energy-independent N-N meson exchange potential and Paris potential, among others.

Quite simple, right?

However, despite its conceptual simplicity, it hasn't led to significant practical results.

The best evidence for the meson exchange theory currently is the K meson, plus a D0 particle with a bottom quark.

Even for mesons.

Superions, which are also hadrons, should not even be mentioned.

As for the usefulness of this theory?

The theoretical value is primarily in nuclear force research—here, nuclear force refers not to the conventional meaning of nuclear power, but the force within an atomic nucleus, which is a type of strong interaction.

Those who didn't frustrate their physics teacher should remember.

The four fundamental forces are gravity, electromagnetic force, and strong and weak forces—the latter two's real meanings are strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force.

More crucially.

All the forces discovered thus far are different forms of these four forces, without exception.

Thus the unification of the four forces is one of the most important matters in the scientific community, known as the eighth unification in physics. (Play a small game here: Can someone write down the previous seven unifications completely? If you can, there will be an extra chapter added this month.)

If someone could unify gravity with the other three forces, their status would be on par with that of Einstein.

The exchange theory of mesons/hyperons involves extensions of the strong and weak forces, which is just two or three steps away from the spacetime model.

And gravity is a distortion of spacetime, so this is a difficult but theoretically viable path towards unification.

That speaks for its theoretical value.

As for the practical aspects... There are mainly two points.

The first is that meson exchange theory... or rather Λ hyperon research, can aid in the study of neutron stars.

When the first-ever image of a black hole in human history was taken, the spectral data collected used hard disk drives that employed related technologies.

Besides.

Λ hyperons can also play a crucial role in optimizing the Milky Way model—this is somewhat common knowledge; we can currently observe many extragalactic systems, but the shape of the Milky Way is derived through simulation optimization.

Because we are within the Milky Way, it's impossible to observe its shape from the outside.

It wasn't until 1918 that humans determined the center of the Milky Way in the direction of Sagittarius.

It was only a little over a decade ago that we pinpointed our Solar System's location on the second arm of the Milky Way.

Meanwhile.

Related optimizations of the Milky Way model are carried out annually. For example, we still don't know exactly how many black holes exist in the Milky Way—based on the initial mass function, or IMF, it's deduced that there are about 100 million stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way, but only about 50 are known.