Science,
[MIT Research Team Presents Core Structure of Minimum Energy Theory]
-The first case to demonstrate existence and convergence simultaneously.
-This publication plans to convene an international verification panel in dynamics, analysis, and control theory for independent validation.
Nature,
[Completing LaSalle, Once Only a Principle, as a Structure]
-If this proof is found to be true, countless engineering models that have been treated as assumptions for the past half century will have to be rewritten.
The New York Times,
[Engineering World in the Grip of the “Yu Seoha Shock”: Common Sense in Energy Theory Overturned]
-A major crack has appeared in a theory that had been stagnant for decades. The engineering world is now in extreme turmoil.
Less than two hours after the broadcast ended, the names of Seoha and Team Apex occupied the top spots in real-time search rankings around the world.
But the most violent reaction erupted within academia.
MIT’s mail servers were on the verge of paralysis.
Inquiries poured in from Asia, Europe, South America, and every corner of the world.
At first, they were polite requests such as seminar invitations, closed-door briefings, and proposals for joint research.
But as the days passed, the contents of the emails grew urgent, as though they could no longer wait.
“Could you share the definition of the time-integral term used in the proof?”
“Please clarify whether there are any additional assumptions regarding the closure condition of the invariant set.”
“Were there any intermediate steps omitted from the live broadcast? According to our own verification...”
MIT’s administrative team briefly turned off the automatic sorting system. It was impossible to sort them by subject line alone.
[Urgent: Request for Additional Explanation on LaSalle’s Dimension Theorem]
[Inquiry Regarding Availability of Full Materials from Live Proof]
[Request for Official Position on Interpretation of LaSalle Invariant Set]
[Request for Additional Explanation on Scope of Convergence Proof]
Perhaps because of the time differences, the emails kept coming day and night without pause.
When Europe fell asleep, North America woke up, and when North America rested, Asia took up the baton.
Whirr—
The printer in the mathematics department office ran without rest.
Photos of the board, captured notes, and every frame of the recorded broadcast were printed out and piled up on the floor.
“Looks like everyone’s more interested in the spoils than in verification.”
Whitman muttered, stroking his chin.
The mechanical engineering department was now operating in wartime mode. Every professor and researcher had stopped what they were doing and was discussing what could be done with Seoha’s theory.
Seoha’s own remarks had played a part in the situation reaching this point.
At the urgently convened faculty meeting,
Thomas took the lead and spoke.
“...We need to file an extremely powerful patent.”
As if his throat were dry, he gulped down water.
“If we sit on our hands now, derivative patents will start pouring in from all over within a month. Control, energy, machinery, aviation, semiconductors—there isn’t a field that won’t be affected.
The licensing fees will be beyond imagination. They could be comparable to all the patents MIT owns combined.”
He lightly tapped the stack of documents on the table.
“We need to lock down the structure itself.
The method of constructing the invariant set, the convergence conditions including the time axis, even the application framework—everything.”
Everyone fell silent at the sheer scale of it.
The members of Team Apex, who had been summoned on short notice, looked dizzy.
Then Seoha opened his mouth.
“Professor.”
“Go ahead. Your thoughts matter most.”
Seoha slowly raised his head.
“Did Newton patent calculus?”
His words instantly changed the air in the conference room.
“If he had, mathematics and engineering today wouldn’t have developed even half as much as they have.”
Thomas narrowed his brow.
“Times have changed, Seoha.
This is a theory capable of moving dozens of industries at once.”
But Seoha was firm.
“That’s exactly why.
Minimum energy theory is something someone would have reached eventually, even if it hadn’t been me. But the moment we bind it with a patent, everyone will start trying to work around it. They’ll be unable to use the most efficient weapon.”
Thomas slowly exhaled.
“Then are you saying we should release it all? Without any restrictions?”
Seoha nodded.
“The theory should belong to everyone.
Implementation is different, though. Algorithms, control logic, physical devices, new materials... Those can be secured first depending on effort.
I believe this is the right choice.”
Nngh—
“You’re giving us quite the headache.”
Thomas pressed a hand to his forehead.
But soon after, he looked at Seoha and smiled kindly.
“Still, I couldn’t be prouder that people like you are students of our MIT.”
This was something that had already been agreed upon within Team Apex.
At the professor’s words, Theo, Sri, and Sujeong all looked choked up.
Whitman rose from his seat.
“You should hurry and begin preparing the paper. At least as far as the theory is concerned, we absolutely cannot let anyone else touch it. This must be your achievement alone.”
“Yes!”
Thomas asked with a worried expression.
“But will you really be all right? Your teammates should be compensated too.”
Seoha grinned.
“I’ve thought of something for that.”
For Sri, who needed money, and for Theo and Sujeong, who had worked hard all this time, they needed a plan.
Seoha had already conceived of one large patent to leave with the team.
The meeting ended that way.
And when the rumor spread that MIT would not lock down the theory, the inquiries began to pour in.
***
By order of the dean, several warning notices were posted on the door to Team Apex’s lab.
[Strictly No Entry Except Authorized Personnel]
[No Visits or Meetings Without Prior Approval]
[No Photography or Video Recording]
[No External Storage Devices Allowed]
[No Entry with Companions Other Than the Researcher Themself]
[No Contact with the Press]
Students passing by would stop out of curiosity, read the notices, and quietly move on.
Beneath the notices, someone had attached playful Post-its.
-Hang in there! We’re proud of you.
-The strongest undergrad team in the world!
-Shh! History is being rewritten here.
Theo found them, chuckled, and went inside without removing the Post-its.
Seoha was currently taking a short rest due to the aftereffects of the proof.
“This is where people are going to pick a fight first.”
Theo pointed to the center of the board.
The place his finger stopped was the part Seoha had passed over during the live broadcast without explaining in detail.
“You mean the step where the time-integral term is absorbed into the invariant structure?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded at Sujeong’s words.
“Seoha’s intuition is incredibly accurate. But proving it clearly is another matter.”
Sri was already making a simulation of that part at the workstation.
“It’s going to take quite a while to finish verification. First of all, even understanding it won’t be easy, will it?”
Seoha’s proof required not only mathematics and engineering, but also a physical interpretation of energy and the geometry of invariant sets, all at once. It was a structure that could not possibly be understood through a single major alone.
However, the three of them had spent countless nights together researching the theory.
On the days they failed, on the days they completely changed the direction of the theory, and on the days Seoha stood silently before the board all day, they had been together.
Rattle.
The door opened, and Seoha came inside.
“Huh? You’re here already? You should’ve rested more.”
Seoha had been running a fever after the live broadcast.
They had agreed he would rest for a few days, but Seoha could not sit still at home.
“My mom told me to bring this to you.”
Seoha untied the cloth bundle on the table.
Glossy galbijjim, colorful and beautifully shaped gimbap, and various jeon and namul. Warm steam rose from the food, as though it had just been cooked and brought from home.
Gulp.
Growl.
Sujeong, who had already begun missing Korean food, could not take her eyes off the table.
“Let’s eat first and then start.”
“Y-yeah, let’s!”
“We have to eat!”
“Tell your mother thank you!”
A small party opened in the lab.
It had been a time like war. At the small happiness that came after all their hardship, the tension slowly melted from everyone’s faces.
“Sujeong, aren’t your chopsticks moving too fast?”
“I’m Korean. Of course they are. Sri can just eat with his hands, can’t he?”
“That sounds right, so why does it feel offensive? Isn’t that racial discrimination?”
“Be quiet and just eat.”
At Sujeong’s scolding, everyone laughed at once.
After the meal ended and the place was being cleaned up, Seoha quietly rose from his seat and bowed his head to them.
“Thank you all so much. I was the one who gave the proof, but no matter how I think about it, I don’t think it would have been possible alone. And most of all...”
Seoha stopped speaking and met each team member’s eyes one by one.
“Thank you for believing in me to the end instead of dismissing it as some absurd story.”
It was an attempt anyone would have considered reckless. But they had poured every bit of strength and passion they had into it without the slightest doubt. Seoha felt deeply grateful for that.
But their reaction was different from what Seoha had expected.
Theo gave him a sullen look, as if wondering what he was talking about.
“I never once thought it was absurd.”
“Huh? Me neither.”
“Me too.”
Seoha looked flustered, then laughed together with them.
“So, about that. I’d like this paper to go out under the team’s name fairly. How about co-first authors?”
Theo shook his head.
“Thanks for considering us. But that wouldn’t be a good choice for us either.”
“What?”
“Think about it. Wouldn’t anyone who saw it think we were just riding on your back? And to some extent, that’s true.”
Sri and Sujeong nodded as well.
“Definitely...”
“I think I’d see it that way too.”
Seoha thought hard for a moment, then proposed a compromise.
“Then let’s make it co-first authors, but clearly specify each person’s role. I really want to do it this way.”
Seoha opened his laptop and wrote the four names side by side in the author section. Then he began writing what each of them had done.
[Theodore Lanford]
-Reviewed the logical consistency of all major theorems and proofs and coordinated mathematical coherence. Also contributed to constructing lemmas and supplementing logically vulnerable points.
[Srinivasa Krishnan]
-Based on the proposed theory, performed numerical simulations and computational experiments to verify the theory’s practical applicability.
[Im Sujeong]
-Conducted mathematical review of closure conditions in high-dimensional state spaces and the handling of time-integral terms. Checked the stability of the proof with a focus on possible counterexamples.
“I’ll write yours.”
Theo pulled the laptop toward himself.
[Yu Seoha]
-Presented the core idea of the research and designed the overall theoretical framework for the minimum energy structure.
-Extended LaSalle’s invariance principle and completed the core proof that simultaneously guarantees convergence in time-dependent dynamics.
The team members read and reread what Seoha had written about their contributions.
It was work they had actually done, but the important thing was that he had personally acknowledged it.
“Ah! Seoha, about the time-integral term. If we’re going to put that in the paper, shouldn’t we write it out in more detail? It’s one of the key theorems.”
At Theo’s question, Seoha wore a nonchalant expression.
“What? Isn’t it enough as it is? I think I’ve opened the path to the proof sufficiently.”
“Ah, again!”
Theo pressed a hand to his forehead.
Seoha had always been like this. Once he had proven a theory, he lost interest in it with astonishing speed.
‘For anyone else, it’d be an achievement they’d brag about for a lifetime...’
“Ah! Let’s do this!”
Clap!
Seoha clapped his hands as if a good idea had occurred to him.
“Theo, Sri, Sujeong—the three of you should write an independent paper on that topic together! I’ll leave it in your hands!”
Without even properly waiting for an answer, Seoha left the lab, humming to himself.
“Huh?”
“......”
“W-wait!”
When the door closed, silence flowed through the lab.
He had entrusted them with one of the elements that formed a core logical step in proving the theory.
“We’ll have to do well.”
“We really will.”
“Everyone, brace yourselves. Let’s be more thorough than ever!”
If this was not trust, what was it?
The three of them looked at one another and made their resolve.
But Seoha had simply wanted to boast that he had three wonderful mathematicians, more outstanding than anyone, on his team.
***
Seoha’s live proof was a massive bomb dropped on the engineering world.
Quick-witted universities and research institutes were already treating his theory as an established fact and beginning their research.
At MIT as well, a dedicated task force was swiftly formed around the mechanical engineering department, and researchers dispatched from each department began gathering at a single table.
“It feels like the festival has started, but we’re the only ones who didn’t get an invitation.”
Jane, a postdoc in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, said in a gloomy voice.
“Given the nature of our field, it can’t be helped.”
“Everyone’s making such a fuss about it being a jackpot... Will our lab be all right next year too?”
What materials science and engineering did was neither proofs nor system design.
The time for them to appear was always when theory turned into practical requirements. So for now, they had no choice but to simply watch the others’ research.
Knock, knock!
Suddenly, there came the sound of knocking.
Jane opened the door with an indifferent expression.
“Huh?”
The moment she saw the person standing before the door, Jane forgot what to say.
A young, gentle-looking face.
But he was now the person drawing more attention than anyone else on campus—no, in the scientific world.
“Hello. I’m Yu Seoha from the mathematics department. I came because I was wondering if this could become a patent.”
He rummaged through his bag and pulled out a bundle of papers.
Jane’s eyes widened. And a moment later, she shouted so loudly the lab rang.
“Seoha came to our department!! Seoha from the math department!! The real Yu Seoha!!”
“Huh?”
Though he had come to ask for help, Seoha seriously wondered whether he ought to run away from this place even now.