Chapter 1555 Energy Revolution

half a month later.

Ithaca, New York.

The early morning sun shines through the brand new glass curtain wall onto the smooth floor of the new office lobby of the arXiv editorial department. The air is also filled with the faint smell of decoration and coffee.

Editor Joanne Simon walked into the bright and spacious office building with a relaxed smile and met several colleagues who had been waiting in the lobby.

They held champagne glasses in their hands and their faces were filled with genuine joy.

"We can finally say goodbye to that suffocating basement!" a senior editor exclaimed.

He raised his glass and clinked it with everyone. The crisp sound of clinking glasses echoed in the hall.

Today is the first day that the arXiv editorial team officially moved out of the basement of Cornell University Library and moved into this independent modern office building.

This is not only a leap forward in the working environment - brighter space, more comfortable workstations, but also means that they have server rooms and bandwidth resources sufficient to support future development and better serve scientific researchers around the world.

After a simple celebration ceremony, Joanne, satisfied with her new environment, took the elevator to the editorial office on the third floor.

The huge curved display, the ergonomic chair, everything is so pleasant.

She put down her small bag and skillfully logged into the backend management system of the arXiv website.

Although arXiv is not a traditional peer-reviewed journal, in order to avoid pseudoscience and spam flooding the platform, each submission still needs to undergo the most basic manual review by the editorial team - mainly to determine whether it is serious academic research and assign it an appropriate subject category label.

The move initially sparked heated debate, as reviewing seemed contrary to the role of a preprint server.

Finally, it was the site's founder, Paul Ginsparg, who stated that if the site was filled with content such as "Einstein was wrong" or "I built a theory of everything", the entire platform would lose its meaning, so at least a basic threshold needed to be set.

Joanne's job is to guard this threshold.

The list of manuscripts awaiting review scrolled on the screen, and her eyes were quickly caught by an article at the top of the list.

Light field programming of atomic arrays to achieve ultrastable electrochemical interfaces

What made her feel a little strange was that the title of this article was not only bolded, but also in a striking red color.

What's even stranger is that, according to the submission timestamp sorting, it shouldn't appear in this position.

Joanne frowned slightly, but didn't think much about it, thinking it was just a small bug in the background display.

Cornell University, the company behind arXiv, is strong, but it is not a commercial company like Microsoft or Google.

As usual, she clicked on the manuscript details page.

As a review editor, her job is not to judge the academic depth or innovation of the paper, but to confirm that its basic framework conforms to academic standards.

She quickly scanned the abstract, introduction, and conclusion.

"Light field programming? Single atom array? Electrochemical interface?" Joanne muttered the key words.

The abstract has clear logic, the conclusions are supported by data, and the references are standardized.

Although she was not very clear about the specific technical details, she could judge that this was a rigorous paper in the field of materials science/electrochemistry and was fully qualified to be published on arXiv.

The only thing that made her curl her lips was that in order to maximize exposure, the contributors checked almost all subject classification labels related to physics and chemistry, from condensed matter physics, nanotechnology to materials chemistry, electrochemistry, catalytic science, and even optical engineering.

"Here we go again, typical abuse of labels." Joanne whispered to herself, accustomed to this kind of occupation of public resources.

She moved the mouse skillfully, preparing to keep only the two most core labels of "electrochemistry" and "catalyst", and then clicked the "pass review" button.

However, when I clicked the mouse, the page did not respond.

She clicked twice more, but the "pass" button fell on deaf ears.

Confused, she pressed F5 to refresh the page. The page reloaded, but the "Pass" button still stubbornly refused to respond.

"The new server had problems on the first day?" Joanne was a little annoyed, and her mood for moving into the new office was overshadowed by a layer of cloud.

She stood up and walked to the independent office next door, where she found the department editor, Paul O'Neill.

"Paul, my backend seems to be stuck. I can't approve any manuscript." She complained.

"Stuck?" O'Neill was checking the server's operation status. Upon hearing this, he immediately checked the background data: "The system shows that the review operations of other editors are proceeding normally, and the load is also very low... It shouldn't be a server problem." He stood up and said, "Take me to have a look."

The two quickly returned to Joanne's workstation.

At this moment, a concise prompt box suddenly popped up on the computer screen:

[The manuscript review authority has been taken over by user [000]. You can exit the current page and continue to review other submissions. ]

"..." Qiao Anni was stunned and pointed at the screen: "I have never encountered such a situation, and I have never seen this number in the background permissions?"

O'Neill looked at the prompt box, a hint of surprise flashed across his face, and then he showed an expression of understanding.

"Oh... this should be Steven taking over."

He explained, with a barely perceptible hint of respect in his tone.

"Professor Strogatz, the scientific director...he directly interfered with the review of a manuscript?" Joanne was even more surprised. "But I was just deleting the classification label?"

She wondered if she had violated any of the laws of heaven.

O'Neill shook his head and leaned over to take a closer look at the manuscript page. He hovered his mouse over an option that Joanne had previously overlooked. "Look here, the contributor checked the option of 'broadcasting and pushing to the entire site.' This function has a very high level of authority, and ordinary editors and reviewers do not have the authority to operate it."

Joanne blinked blankly: "Does our website have this function?"

O'Neill shrugged. "This feature has only been available to two people since the inception of arXiv... In fact, this is the first time I've seen it."

"But..." As a graduate of Cornell University, Joanne identified with this job very much. "Will such privileges... affect the reputation of arXiv?"

Their audit practices have already faced criticism for inconsistent standards or errors in classification, and the current operation seems to confirm these accusations.

"In fact, it was their key work that completely established arXiv's authoritative position in the academic community, making our influence enough to compete with those top journals..." O'Neal paused, looking across the bright and clean new office, "By the way, it also attracted key investments for us, part of which became this office building."

Joanne opened her mouth, but ultimately did not argue.

She quietly exited the page of that manuscript and began to review the next one.

But the title "Light Field Programming Atomic Array to Achieve Ultra-Stable Electrochemical Interface" and the mysterious [000] account number have left a deep impression on her.

……

At the same time, in another office on the top floor of the new building, arXiv's scientific director, Steven Strogatz, a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University, was staring intently at an LCD screen that displayed the paper that he had personally approved and triggered a site-wide broadcast.

Although his work as an editor had been completed, the title "Light-field programmed atomic arrays to achieve ultra-stable electrochemical interfaces" itself was very impactful, and the name of the first author made him unable to take it lightly, so he decided to spend a few hours reading the article carefully.

Strogatz is not an expert in catalyst synthesis or electrochemistry, but he has top-notch mathematical intuition and analytical skills.

His focus was on the part of the paper that described theoretical calculations - about how to use a modified quantum chemistry model to accurately calculate the dynamic energy level changes and interface interactions of metal phthalocyanine molecules under a laser field, thereby guiding the optimization of laser parameters to achieve "light field programming."

"Exquisite..." Strogatz muttered to himself. He could understand the complex mathematical derivations and model constructions, and was impressed by their rigor and innovation.

Chang Haonan was impressed by his ability to apply profound mathematical theories to solve specific material science problems. The calculation results and subsequent electrochemical performance data also showed a seamless correlation.

The core data of the paper is shocking: the new electrode material based on cobalt single atom chains/arrays shows an ultra-high initial capacity of 1680 mAh/g in lithium batteries, a capacity retention rate of up to 600% after 84.6 cycles, and an extremely stable voltage platform. This undoubtedly heralds a huge leap forward in energy storage technology.

The only shortcoming, in Strogatz's opinion, is that the paper does not elaborate on the design ideas and optimization process of the light field programming synthesis route.

It directly gives the final optimized laser parameters and synthesis conditions as if it were a black box.

Of course, in a field with such fierce competition, necessary technical confidentiality is the rule of survival.

He nodded in understanding, which did not detract from the great value of the results presented in the paper.

Strogatz read the entire article a second time and was even more shocked.

This isn't just a good paper; it could ignite a revolution in energy storage.

He picked up the phone on the table and dialed a familiar number.

Professor Strogatz would never have thought that his unintentional action would actually change the direction of the entire world in the following half month.

"Jeff, it's me, Steven." Strogatz got straight to the point when the call was connected. "Sorry to bother you, there's an article I'd like you to read."

"Steven? It's rare that you took the initiative to call." The cheerful voice of Jeff Dahn, a professor at Dalhousie University in Canada and an international leader in lithium battery research, came from the other end of the line. "Tell me, what article is it?"

"The preprint just published on arXiv is titled "Light Field Programming of Atomic Arrays to Achieve Ultrastable Electrochemical Interfaces"... It triggered a site-wide push, so I guess it should have appeared in your mailbox."

There was silence for a few seconds on the other end of the phone, then a light laugh came from Dan, who seemed not surprised by the request at all.

"Okay, I'll take a look right away..."