Millions of people are "following the show", Tencent has accumulated high-quality science popularization data for nine years

Yang Jingyuyang from Aofei Temple
Quantum Bit Report | Public Account QbitAI

Do you know that there is such a situation in China's science popularization circle?

The world's top scientists gather together for a very pure purpose: to share the most cutting-edge scientific information with the general public.

When quantum computing had not yet become a hot topic, Turing Award winner Yao Qizhi once shared that "the advent of quantum computers is in the last mile."

Hawking and Penrose, the 2020 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, also took the podium here one after another to share the legendary story of human exploration of the universe.

In the public's impression, science is something that only a few people can do when they climb Mount Everest. But when these "very few people" do science popularization, the outside world's evaluation of their content is not "professional and difficult" or "out of touch with reality", but mostly "interesting" and "clear and easy to understand".

What is even more special is that this "high-quality science popularization event for mankind" is now being held free of charge to audiences across the country for the 9th year, and has become a "event" that more than 20 million science enthusiasts routinely wait for.

The first weekend of November is their annual Science Dream-Fulfilling Day.

Over the past 9 years, the insights therein have gradually been connected into a line, linking up the most valuable Chinese science popularization network in the fields of physics, astronomy, aviation, brain-computer interfaces, etc.

Don’t believe it? Let’s take a look at one of the clues.

A shining star in brain science

The buzzword "brain-computer interface" may have only become known to the outside world in recent years.

But in fact, human exploration of the brain has a history of nearly a hundred years.

Among them, brain-computer interface related technologies have also gone through nearly half a century.

Moreover, as far as China is concerned, long before the recent wave of enthusiasm arose, some people had already taken the lead and became evangelists of "brain-computer interface" in the Chinese world.

In 2014, in Beijing, Jose Carmena , an expert on brain-computer interfaces and a professor at UC Berkeley , used experiments on mice and macaques to prove that controlling machines with the mind is not exclusive to science fiction movies, but is also feasible in the real world.

At the time, they were working on developing brain implants Neural dust - using ultrasound to control micron-sized particles, sensing neural activity in the brain, and then using the different frequencies of the particles to transmit information out. Such particles can remain in the brain for a long time.

At the end of his speech, he also expressed his hope: He hopes that BMI (brain-computer interface technology) can be applied clinically and extended to the field of mental health, and ultimately realize mind-controlled devices.

The audience at the time did not know that just a few years later, these visions would gradually become a reality and be presented to the public on the same stage by other top scientists:

In 2015, Efi Cohen Arazi, co-founder and CEO of Ribo Medical Devices, introduced at the bureau that they had developed an artificial iris chip that can help the blind regain their sight by stimulating neurons through implantation in the body and transferring optical signals to the brain.

In 2017, Tony Wyss -Coray, a professor of neurology at Stanford University, presented his experimental results: he established a blood circulation system between old mice and young mice and found that repeated infusion of young plasma could make the brains of old mice younger.

This discovery was named Breakthrough of the Year by Science magazine. Based on this, he is also trying to launch clinical trials to provide solutions for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease or delaying aging.

The latest progress in domestic brain science research was also unveiled by frontline experts and scholars in this high-quality human science popularization event.

In 2018, Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Pu Muming took the stage to popularize the Chinese Brain Project to the public.

In the same year, two brain science and brain-like research centers were established in Beijing and Shanghai, which can be said to be the beginning of the China Brain Project.

Academician Pu introduced that the brain project is divided into one body and two wings. The one body is basic research, that is, understanding the structure of the brain; the two wings are two application directions: diagnosis and treatment, and brain-like research.

In the second year, a major brain-like research progress was reported in China. Professor Shi Luping of Tsinghua University came to the audience with his brain-like chip.

The "Tianji Chip" released by his team appeared on the cover of Nature, achieving a breakthrough in China's publication of Nature papers in the two major fields of chips and artificial intelligence.

Standing at the center of the stage of this science popularization event, he was full of confidence:

The intelligence that can be achieved on a carbon-based system can certainly be achieved on a silicon-based system.

If we extend the timeline further, in addition to the preachers’ sharing and predictions on the cutting-edge of the field, confrontations and collisions also spark sparks here.

For example, the father of brain-computer interface Miguel Nicolelis and Musk.

Nicolelis, the dreamer who connects the brain and the machine, spoke frankly to the audience who believe in science in the popular science bureau and blasted Musk, saying: I don't agree with a single word he said.

In particular, Nicolelis expressed doubts about the safety of Musk's Neuralink "craniotomy" and other implantable solutions: it is a dead end.

At this point, I believe you have also noticed that in the past 10 years, when it comes to the topic of "brain-computer interface", the most forward-looking views, the most groundbreaking scientific research results, and the most incisive rational discussions have all been accumulated in this science popularization bureau.

And it is still continuing——

As the clock goes up to this year, the most eye-catching development in the field of brain-computer interface is the appearance of mind typing on the cover of Nature.

A 70-year-old paraplegic patient who had been paralyzed from the waist down for more than a decade, with the help of the team of brain-computer interface expert Krishna Shenoy , successfully "handwrote" a passage with his mind.

Krishna Shenoy also came to this forum this year and shared his research team's research on "How to Listen and Read the Language of the Brain" -

Just seven years after José Carmena outlined his ultimate vision for brain-computer interfaces.

90-year-old Penrose joins the group chat

In fact, such a high-quality science conference, which has been going on for 9 years, is called WE Conference.

Tencent hosts the annual global science conference.

Brain-computer interface is just one of the topics in the game.

In the past eight years, the topics ranged from black holes to gravitational waves, and from particles to neutrinos. Hawking came, Barry Barish, the discoverer of gravitational waves, Steven Weinberg, the master of particle physics, and Wang Yifang, a high-energy physicist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, came...

And this year, such "cross-time" dialogues among top scientists are still continuing.

Among the guests of the 2021 Tencent Science WE Conference, there are two 2020 Nobel Prize winners who studied black holes. One is Roger Penrose , a good friend of Hawking who won two Nobel Prizes for mathematics .

He once used a three-page mathematical paper to calculate the existence of black holes, and collaborated with his old friend Hawking to extend the description object of the "singularity theorem" from black holes to the entire universe.

At the WE Conference, Penrose talked about the story behind the cooperation:

In 1964, when Penrose's views on singularities were still being questioned, he met Hawking at a lecture he gave at Cambridge University.

At that time, Hawking was still a graduate student, but unlike most people at the time, he gained a lot of inspiration from Penrose's new ideas.

So, after the speech, Penrose had a long talk with Hawking, John Ellis, Brandon Carter and others, discussing Penrose's views in detail.

Since then, Penrose and Hawking have become lifelong friends and partners.

The non-periodic mosaic scheme of "Penrose tiles" he proposed inspired Daniel Shechtman to discover quasicrystals and win the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Although he is already in his 80s, Penrose still continues his research, focusing on the "conformal cyclic universe hypothesis" and trying to rewrite the origin of the universe.

The other is Reinhard Genzel , the first person to "see" a black hole in a hundred years .

The search for black holes has consumed a whole century of research by countless scientists since 1916.

Due to the presence of interstellar dust, stars appear very small, so it is not easy to observe the central region of the Milky Way even with the world's largest telescope.

Genzel used the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, and continuously improved observation methods, developing new adaptive optics technology to correct errors caused by the Earth's atmosphere.

Based on the evidence of stellar dynamics accumulated over more than 20 years of observations, in May 2018, his research team finally observed the star S2 orbiting Sagittarius A*, further proving the existence of supermassive black holes.

This year, he condensed the achievements of the past 40 years into a speech at the WE Conference.

In addition to the above-mentioned scientific giants, Professor Wang Chaoyang, who opened the "fast charging era" of new energy vehicles, John A. Rogers, an authority in the field of flexible electronic skin, and Li Tiefeng, a scientist of soft robots and intelligent equipment... also joined the group chat to talk about the world of science.

And although this year's conference is held online, the audience can still experience the immersive fun of scientific "chasing" through VR panoramic live broadcast.

Long-termism for basic scientific research

Having said so much, it is actually just a corner of the Chinese popular science information network that the WE Conference has woven over the years.

It can be said that after Tencent's full investment for 9 years, this popular science activity with a high content of top scientists has become a "science carnival" that is difficult to replicate.

If we further explore the stories outside the circle, we will find that such large-scale basic scientific research "promotion" activities have already brought about many "silent" changes.

Stories like this are not uncommon:

Some people come here for scientific idols like Hawking, and end up watching them every year, and are determined to devote themselves to scientific careers; some people bring their children to participate in it every year, seeing it as an opportunity to plant the seeds of science in the new generation...

What more people may not have noticed is that, in fact, it is not just individuals who are affected by this radiation.

If we regard the Tencent WE Conference as a landmark starting point in the past decade, we will find that after solving initial development problems, Chinese technology companies are beginning to invest more and more resources in paying attention to and supporting basic science.

Under the guidance of the pioneers, some people organized science popularization, some set up major awards to encourage basic scientific research, and some donated money to run schools and provide scholarships...

Take Tencent as an example. In addition to the WE Conference, it also established the "Science Exploration Award": 50 winners are selected each year, and the winners will receive a prize of 3 million RMB in the next five years.

There are also the China Future Science Award, the Alibaba Young Orange Award, etc., all initiated by companies and entrepreneurs, aiming to encourage more people to pay attention to and devote themselves to basic scientific research.

In terms of running the school, the Southern University of Science and Technology was founded, and Tencent and DJI both donated money.

West Lake University was founded, and entrepreneurs such as Ma Huateng, Wang Jianlin, Zhang Lei, and Deng Feng took the initiative to initiate donations.

There are also people like Yu Renrong, the richest man in China’s chip industry, and Cao Dewang, the “Glass King”, who donated tens of billions to establish new research universities in their hometowns…

Whether it is popular science, awards or donations to support education, what they seek is not short-term commercial returns, but reflects a trend of "basic scientific research will be known only when the granaries are full". It is a kind of long-termism that Chinese companies are increasingly paying attention to in the new era and new challenges after tasting the fruits of pragmatism:

Attract talents to join the scientific cause, encourage talents to stick to scientific research, and create a good social environment for basic scientific research. When all of this takes root, sprouts, blooms and bears fruit, it will undoubtedly feed back to the development of enterprises and social progress.

Therefore, it is not difficult to explain why commercial companies like Tencent can continue to invest in "popular science" and "basic scientific research" that do not seem to have direct benefits for a long time.

On the one hand, from the perspective of the company's own long-term development, a virtuous circle is established between academia and industry, and between talents and enterprises.

On the other hand, as key players in the development of the digital economy, technology companies also shoulder social responsibilities.

Perhaps this is why world-class scientists are willing to gather here one after another to jointly weave a star-studded scientific feast.

The next Musk or Bezos who looks up at the stars, the next Hawking or Penrose who amazes the era, may be enlightened and growing in this romantic encounter with science.

The High-Quality Science Popularization Bureau was initiated and continuously supported by Tencent, and it has been 9 years in the making.

It seems unexpected, but it is actually reasonable.

After all, before becoming an entrepreneur, wasn’t Pony Ma’s dream to become a scientist who looked up at the stars?