Lu Zhou realized he had become famous.
And famous in a very thorough way.
Though this was not the first time, it had completely caught him by surprise. He had thought that paper would at most cause a stir in the Physics community, but he had not expected to make the front page of the Washington Post.
Not only that.
Columbia Television had even invited Professor Susskind of Stanford University to do a science-popularization interview program specifically for this news.
As one of the founders of String Theory, Professor Susskind could be considered one of the old guard in Theoretical Physics. Although research on Z Particles was not his specialty, his work on General Relativity and spacetime curvature was still highly representative.
Facing the Columbia Television interviewer, Professor Susskind, seated in his laboratory, thought for a moment before pulling out a sheet of blank scratch paper from his desk.
"Do you see the paper in my hand?"
The interviewer said, "I see it... but Professor Susskind, what is so special about it?"
"Let's assume it represents three-dimensional space. Point A is Earth, and B is Proxima Centauri, 4.22 light-years away from us. Now, I'll connect them with a straight line..."
As he spoke, Professor Susskind used a ballpoint pen to draw a line and mark points A and B on the paper.
Seeing the interviewer's puzzled expression, he continued.
"Under normal circumstances, traveling from the Solar System to Proxima Centauri—from A to B—even if we ignore all the complicated orbital changes and move along a line straighter than the Golden Gate Bridge, we are actually still taking a very long route. That is because our universe is warped, like this..."
As he spoke, the elderly professor crumpled the sheet of paper into a ball and held it out before the