Five eminent speakers, including Nobel laureates and the top Chinese physicist Qi-Kun Xue, share groundbreaking insights at the Tencent WE Summit in Chengdu.
SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 3, the 12th Annual Tencent WE Summit took place at the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum. Five world-renowned scientists took the stage, including Qi-Kun Xue, President of Southern University of Science and Technology, and professor at Tsinghua University; Kip S. Thorne, Nobel laureate and Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology; May-Britt Moser, Nobel laureate and professor of neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Jiang-Lai Liu, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute (TDLI) and Chief Scientist of the PandaX experiment for dark matter detection at Shanghai Jiao Tong University; and Donald E. Ingber, Founding Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Together, they captivated the audience with discussions on cutting-edge discoveries and breakthroughs, ranging from the quantum world, gravitational waves otherwise known as spacetime ripples, the search for elusive dark matter, and how brain cells comprise a GPS-like grid, and microchipping human organs.
Guided by the vision of "Tech for Good", Tencent has hosted the WE Summit for twelve consecutive years to showcase frontier technological insights and trailblazing scientists. Tencent has also provided long term support of fundamental scientific research through several initiatives.
Standing at the Forefront of a New Technological Revolution
This year's summit, themed "Tech Tree ? Tipping Point", opened with a monologue from Guo Fan, director of The Wandering Earth film series, who took the audience on a journey, traveling through time to pivotal historical moments: the quantum world, the warped spacetime, and the neural networks of the brain… "Those seemingly far-fetched ideas told by stories eventually became tipping points of transformation," he said. "Yesterday's science fiction may be tomorrow's reality."
Quantum technology stands at the forefront of an imminent technological revolution. Academician Qi-Kun Xue and his team have, after preparation of more than one thousand samples over a four-year period, created a new material that combines magnetism, topology, and insulating property, and was found to exhibit the quantum anomalous Hall effect. At the event, Xue introduced the audience to the microscopic quantum world and showcased the fruits of their most recent experiments. He noted, "Achieving breakthroughs at the forefront of science demands absolute perfection in each and every detail of each and every experiment."
Unraveling the Ultimate Mysteries of the Universe
How did our universe begin? What is the fate of matter that falls into a black hole? Is time travel possible? Returning to the WE Summit after a hiatus of six years, Nobel laureate Kip S. Thorne shared his 62-year explorations of our warped universe. He guided the audience through black holes to experience the dynamics of space and time, traveled through wormholes to distant galaxies, and envisioned the limitless possibilities of time travel. Kip Thorne predicted, "By the 2030s or maybe 2050s there will be a fourth great tipping point—the discovery of gravitational waves from our universe's big bang birth… So this tipping point may trigger a new quest: To extract, from the waves, information about both our universe's birth and those mysterious quantum gravity laws."
Kip S. Thorne, 2017 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, and scientific advisor and executive producer of the film Interstellar, delivering his speech. (PRNewsfoto/Tencent)
Dark matter and dark energy comprises 95% of the universe, with the invisible and elusive dark matter accounting for 27%. Capturing dark matter particles could trigger a seismic leap in humanity's understanding of the cosmos and spark a new revolution in physics. Jiang-Lai Liu likens dark matter to cosmic smog and the Earth a car traveling through it. Particles in this "smog" collide with the car, producing "sounds" that can be captured by novel experimental detectors. Liu shared his team's experimental findings from the China's Extremely Deep Underground Laboratory – Jinping Underground Laboratory, located 2,400 meters deep within a mountain. Liu expressed his optimism that a "tipping point" for dark matter detection is imminent.
Leveraging Science to Benefit Humanity
The purpose of scientific progress is to improve human well-being. Apart from exploring the frontiers of physics at both the macroscopic and microscopic level, WE Summit also highlighted the latest achievements in neuroscience and bioengineering. Nobel laureate May-Britt Moser, one of the discoverers of the brain's "GPS," has dedicated her research to exploring how the human brain generates behavior, emotions, and thoughts. She explained at the Summit how place cells, grid cells, speed cells, and boundary cells coordinate in the brain so as to enable us to better recall specific locations, understand our spatial positioning, monitor movement speed, and perceive boundaries. Her research not only reveals how the brain processes spatial information but also provides insights into potential treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Developing new drugs is crucial for treating diseases. While the traditional drug development model is time-consuming and costly, the "organ-on-a-chip" technology, developed by Donald E. Ingber's team, offers an innovative approach to disease treatment and drug development. An organ-on-a-chip is a device lined with live cells from human patients to mimic the human organ functions. Ingber's team has designed various organ-on-a-chip models, proving that they can replicate organ functions. The team has also successfully created a "human-on-a-chip" that integrates multiple organ chips, including brain, heart, intestine, liver, and kidney chips. These breakthroughs are expected to make the drug development process be faster, safer, and more cost-effective. In the future, scientists may customize human organs-on-chips for different patient groups to test drugs, shorten testing cycles, and ultimately achieve precision medicine.
At this year's WE Summit, Tencent also unveiled its "Tech Tree" online product, which is empowered by its Hunyuan-powered AI model. People can access the online version of the "Tech Tree" through the Tencent Yuanbao app or mini-program and learn about epic milestones in history of human technology. While they explore how these events are intricately correlated and dependent upon one another, they will also be amazed by their hidden links unfolded by the app. In the near future, a physical version of this "Tech Tree" is set to be a permanent exhibit at Tencent's Science Museum in its new Qianhai headquarters, offering visitors an immersive, hands-on experience. This interactive exhibit is designed to allow the general public to have a more intuitive understanding of scientific achievements and enhance their scientific literacy.
Over the past 12 years, Tencent WE Summit, as one of Tencent's long-term, key initiatives supporting basic science, remains committed to sharing the most groundbreaking scientific discoveries and cutting-edge ideas with the general public. It has brought together nearly one hundred top scientists and technologists all over the world, including cosmologist Stephen Hawking, mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, Turing Award winner Andrew Chi-Chih Yao. They have shared scientific advancements in more than a dozen fields, such as cosmology, theoretical physics, life sciences, earth sciences, aerospace technology, information technology, and intelligent manufacturing.
