Location from three-body-problem by
Wang Miao's lab in Beijing where the Flying Blade nanofilament is being developed — a building full of vacuum chambers, nitrogen tanks, and one researcher whose photographs have started counting down.
The Center is a serious place — government-funded, well-secured, ventilated to the point of sterility. The work is delicate: stacking molecules one at a time with nanoscale probes is, by Wang Miao's own metaphor, like bricklaying with grains of sand. Most days are grindingly methodical. The current project is a catalytic short-cut that would let huge numbers of molecules self-assemble into the Flying Blade material — the lab is days away from its first successful run. Under the fluorescent lights, with the hiss of nitrogen and the click of the reactor, it is also the most ordinary possible place for a haunting to begin.
A modern industrial-research complex of glass and steel on the outskirts of Beijing, with low blocks of clean rooms behind security airlocks. Inside: a spherical primary reaction chamber the size of a small apartment, plumbed with dozens of pipes; rows of HP RX8620 workstations; a small darkroom Wang Miao quietly maintains for his own film.
Also known as: the Research Center