New Eden

by Kishore Tipirneni

  “If the plasma was too hot, why did you want to increase the fuel rate?” Rachael asked.

  “The fuel starts out at room temperature and is heated in the tokamak to create the plasma,” Joshua explained. “Adding more room temperature fuel will actually decrease the temperature of the plasma.”

  This made perfect sense to Rachael. It was similar to adding tap water to a boiling pot of water, causing the boiling to stop. Rachel was impressed by how quickly and confidently Joshua had handled a potentially disastrous situation.

  Joshua turned back to his staff. “Status?”

  All five technicians and Rodrigo relayed that operations were continuing within normal parameters.

  “Hope we didn’t scare you, Rachael,” Joshua said without turning around.

  “No problem,” Rachael replied. “My heart always beats in my throat. Was there really a chance that the tokamak would explode?”

  “No chance of explosion, but definitely a chance of implosion. Remember that the inside of the torus is now a vacuum, and if there was some catastrophic structural failure, it would have imploded from the atmospheric pressure differential.”

  “What happens next?” Rachael asked.

  “Now that we have stable plasma, we start pulsing it with the high energy laser.”

  “Laser warming up now,” the female technician reported. “Pulses commencing in five seconds at two-second intervals.”

  On the monitor showing the inside of the torus, neon-blue laser light emanated from multiple sources. The lasers converged at a single point in the purple plasma cloud hovering over the cylinders. The lasers pulsed at two-second intervals.

  “Those laser bursts into the plasma are creating spookyons?” Rachael asked.

  “Hopefully,” Joshua replied. “We have to wait up to ten minutes. That’s how long the nuclei will remain stable and collide with each other. If a spookyon pair is created, magnetic fields in the torus will separate the spookyon pair and direct each to one of the cylinder lids. Spookyons are drawn to heavy metallic elements, and the lids sealing the tops of the cylinders are coated with a specific combination of heavy metals which should attract them. We’re trying out a new combination today. Once they make contact with the lids, gravity should funnel them through the small hole at the top of the spheres.” Joshua glanced to his rear. “Apparently spookyons like heavy metal.”

  “Sounds like a friend of mine,” Rachael quipped.

  “If we’ve created a pair, we’ll know in short order.”

  “Good luck,” Rachael said.

  Joshua grinned and turned back to his monitors.

  Rachael sat quietly as the technicians spoke to each other in soft voices. A green digital LED clock above a glass panel at the front of the room showed that four minutes had elapsed. At the five-minute mark, the room was silent, the technicians sitting back in their chairs, waiting with folded arms. After five minutes and thirty-two seconds had elapsed, a bright green circle appeared on three computer screens.

  “Sphere 1, positive capture!” Rodrigo announced. “Starting laser sealing.”

  “Yes! We got one!” Joshua shouted while pumping a fist into the air. A new red laser beam was shining on the top of sphere 1. “We’re using the red laser to seal the top of the sphere.”

  More tense minutes passed, and a second green circle appeared on the computer screens. “Sphere 0 positive capture,” Rodrigo said. “Commencing laser sealing.”

  The technicians broke into a round of applause as a red laser glowed on the top of sphere 0.

  “We have a pair of spookyons,” Joshua announced excitedly as he accepted a high-five from Rodrigo.

  “You sound like a proud father of twins,” Rachael said.

  “An apt analogy.”

  “Think they’re going to be telepathic like some biological twins?”

  “As in entangled? That’s the million-dollar question. We rarely ever get this far. Most times we get no spookyons, and sometimes we only capture one. Only four percent of the time are we able to capture two, but none of the previous pairs were entangled.” Joshua turned back to look at Rachael with a grin. “Definitely lucky today.”

  The sounds from the tokamak ceased.

  “Powering down,” a female technician said.

  The LED clock had reset to zero and was now counting minutes and seconds again.

  “When do you retrieve the spheres?” Rachael inquired.

  “Not for twenty-four hours.” Joshua headed toward Rachael and took a seat next to her. “First, we have to evacuate the plasma and then slowly allow the spheres to cool so that they don’t crack from thermal contraction. Then we slowly re-pressurize the torus. The tokamak stays sealed for that long unless there’s either contamination or degradation of the particles.”

  “Degradation?”

  “Sometimes they disappear even when there’s been no obvious sign of contamination,” Joshua explained. “Not even Henry was entirely sure why they could just vanish, although his working theory was that they were ephemeral because they theoretically inhabit more than one physical reality at the same time.”

  “As in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle?” Rachael asked.

  “Precisely.”

  “Then the sooner you measure them the better, right?”

  “You would think so, but we’ve found that immediate measurement can also cause degradation during the first twenty-four hours. It’s almost as if they have a mind of their own and want to acclimatize themselves to their new home.”

  “So if these guys like our universe, they may stick around for a while. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Essentially, yes. Once they calm down, they stick around permanently and are very stable at that point. We’ve also found that moving them too soon can be risky. Relocating spookyons subjects them to a host of other particles, and since they have to be separated at a great distance before we can reliably test for entanglement, we like to wait twenty-four hours.”

  Rachael cocked her head. “What you’re telling me is that once they’re stabilized—accustomed to this universe—the interference doesn’t bother them.”

  “That appears to be the case. Then again, Miss Miller, maybe they’re just fans of heavy metal and want to listen to the complete playlist before being handled.”

  Rachael laughed. “Just educated guesses. Where does the test for entanglement occur?”

  “In the bat cave,” Joshua said nonchalantly.

  “Oh, I’m sure it does, Mr. Wayne.”

  Joshua’s expression didn’t change.

  “Seriously? The bat cave?”

  “It’s a nickname, of course, but it actually bears some resemblance to the one people saw at the movies. It’s an abandoned mine about four hundred feet below us.”

  Joshua glanced at his wristwatch. “Well, Miss Miller, you wanted an hour and got quite a bit more. I take it that you have enough material for your article, so I’ll call Charlotte and have her escort you to the front entrance. I’ll be here all night to keep an eye on things.”

  Rachael was determined not to abandon what she considered a killer story for which she had only the opening paragraphs. Joshua Andrews had made the strategic mistake of whetting her appetite, and she wanted to learn more about spookyons—a lot more.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Doesn’t seem like you have much more to do today, and I have a few questions I didn’t get answered. Besides, if you’re going to be here all night, you’ll need a massive infusion of caffeine. My treat.”

  “You’re pretty persistent, aren’t you?”

  “I learned a long time ago that being a little pushy is the only way to get a great story.”

  Joshua was surprised at his guest’s chutzpah, and yet he admired it. One didn’t go treasure hunting for subatomic particles that would change the destiny of humanity without a little audacity and attitude. “You’re right about not much more for me to do today. You’ve got a littl
e spooky action going on in your brain. Is it entangled?”

  “Come to coffee with me and you’ll find out,” Rachael said with a smile.

  “Go ahead boss,” Rodrigo offered. “We’ve got this covered.”

  Joshua threw up his hands. “All right. Coffee it is.”

  The rain had not let up as Rachel and Joshua exited the front entrance of the center.

  “Shit, it’s raining,” Joshua said looking at the gray sky.

  “So?”

  “I rode my Harley here.”

  “It’s been raining all day. When did you arrive at the center?”

  “What day is it?”

  “Never mind. We’ll take my car.”

  Rachael quickly tossed her briefcase onto the rear seat and climbed behind the wheel while Joshua rushed into the passenger seat to avoid getting too wet. The car sped off. Rachael thought that Joshua was almost a different person from the man she’d spoken to in the particle center. Without his lab coat on, he seemed more at ease. She also thought that he wore his untucked shirt and faded blue jeans well. As she drove through traffic, she knew that she needed to come up with more questions and witty banter—and fast.

  7

  Billions and Billions

  “So what got you interested in particle physics?” Rachael asked, seated opposite Joshua in a booth at Yali’s Cafe, a coffee house on the Berkeley campus. Because of the weather, the cafe only had a few individuals in the corners, faces hidden behind their MacBooks. Baristas polished chrome dispensers and set muffins in glass cases flanking the counter. The atmosphere was informal and intimate.

  “Hard to say,” Joshua replied, sipping a latte. “It was a matter of evolution. I was always good at math, and that led to my doing well in all of the sciences. I was especially good at chemistry, which deals with the bonding of various elements depending on their electron count, but going into chemistry—what was I going to do with such a major? Work for a pharmaceutical company? Wasn’t for me. Over time, I became engrossed with particle physics and the work being done by super colliders. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was such a thing as the smallest particle—the smallest building block of matter.”

  “And now we know, thanks to string theory, that maybe the smallest unit may not be matter at all, just vibrating loops of energy,” Rachel commented.

  “A lot of my colleagues went into string theory, but when I met Henry Bowman, who told me that he was working on entangled particles, it was game, set, and match. I knew in my gut that I had to follow his work. Einstein himself had thrown down the gauntlet with his EPR Paradox, and Henry wanted to solve the riddle.”

  “In the long run, he did,” Rachael commented. “And on a macrocosmic scale that extended to the orbit of Mars.”

  “He was in it to win it. From the time he entered the field, he wanted to demonstrate entanglement beyond the confines of the laboratory. He’d read The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra.”

  “Hmm. That’s way out there,” Rachael replied. “Capra talked to Heisenberg about the manuscript before it was published. Turns out Heisenberg had worked on some of his equations while in India. Wasn’t Capra part of those hippie physicists that were here at Berkeley?”

  Joshua grinned and rubbed his jaw, which was covered by a five o’clock shadow. He knew of the group Rachael was talking about. They were infamous at Berkeley in the seventies, a group of physicists that called themselves the Fundamental Fysics Group and tried to make a connection between quantum mechanics and eastern mysticism.

  “Yeah, he was part of that group. Those guys were out there all right. Henry never got into eastern mysticism like those guys and Heisenberg and Bohr, but he definitely felt that quantum theory would one day explain how the entire universe works, from subatomic particles to galaxies. If he could demonstrate that matter communicated with itself, he thought it might revolutionize how mankind regarded creation and the cosmos.”

  “In what way?” Rachael asked, taking a sip from her mocha.

  “He never told anyone, not even me. Maybe he put his musings in one of his notebooks, but I haven’t a clue as to what he thought the big picture was.” Joshua took another sip of his latte. “We’re getting pretty deep here. Let’s change the subject.”

  “To what?”

  “You.”

  “I’m the reporter, and I ask the questions,” said Rachael, somewhat taken aback.

  “I indulged you with this coffee break, so I get to break the rules and ask a few questions of my own.”

  “I guess that’s fair. Shoot.”

  “Why did you become a science writer?”

  Rachael leaned back against the pleated green leather of the booth. “I loved to read as a kid. I’d blown through Hamlet, Jane Eyre, and dozens of other classics before I graduated from middle school. In high school, I read the science fiction of Arthur C. Clarke. Everything he wrote. I loved the way Clarke tried to incorporate real and accurate science in his stories. By the time I was a junior, I wanted to be an astronomer. The first exoplanets had been discovered, and my mind was reeling.”

  “So how come you’re not working at the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea? Or at the VLA or Hat Creek looking for ET?”

  “I started reading Carl Sagan’s nonfiction books and realized that he was the liaison between science and the average guy on the street. He made science cool with all of his talk about billions and billions of stars, so I thought I’d write about science and have the best of both worlds.”

  “Very laudable,” Joshua said, spreading his arms wide and resting them on the back of the booth.

  A student of body language, Rachael knew that the young professor was relaxed, open, and receptive.

  “I’m no Carl Sagan,” she said, “but I do what I can.”

  “Astronomy, huh?” Joshua said with a faraway look in his eyes.

  “I love it.”

  “Then I have a scoop for you. You can’t write about it yet, at least not for a few years, but it’s big. Really big.”

  “Do tell,” Rachael said as she leaned forward, elbows on the table, her chin propped on the palm of her right hand.

  “Ever hear of Project Breakthrough Starshot?” Joshua asked.

  Rachael’s eyes widened. “Hell yeah! Stephen Hawking proposed that a thousand small spacecraft the size of credit cards be launched from high earth orbit and powered by photon thrusters and laser beams. They could attain one fifth the speed of light and reach the Proxima Centauri system in twenty years, which is a blink of the eye when talking interstellar travel. Astronomers believe that Proxima Centauri b is an Earthlike planet orbiting the star in the habitable zone. But communication between all those spacecraft and Earth would take—”

  “Would take a long time,” Joshua interrupted, “unless they carried spookyons. The university is willing to partner with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory—for a hefty fee, of course. It’s just as Henry envisioned in his final words onstage, when he was beginning to describe future applications for his discovery.”

  “Simply amazing,” Rachael remarked. “Instant communication from Proxima Centauri.”

  Joshua’s brows furrowed.

  “What’s the matter?” Rachael asked. “You’ll be considered a hero, a pioneer.”

  “Once NASA gets in on the act, the military won’t be far behind. That makes most academics cringe. The government has a way of appropriating technology it deems useful. But the whole thing is still on the drawing board, so it’s one step at a time.”

  Rachael’s hands were cupped around her mocha espresso as she gazed out the broad front window.

  “Think anyone’s out there?” she asked.

  “I dunno. The rain’s let up for the moment.”

  “No, silly. In the galaxy.”

  Joshua raised his head in understanding. “Probably not orbiting Proxima Centauri b, but as Mr. Sagan said, there are billions and billions of possibilities. With so many galaxies out there and so many stars in each galaxy, there must be
other intelligent life. But on the other hand, there is the issue of the Fermi paradox.”

  Rachael was familiar with the Fermi paradox. Enrico Fermi was a physicist that had stated that if intelligent life existed beyond the solar system, then we should have already detected it. The current lack of evidence for intelligent extra-solar life led Fermi to conclude that it didn’t exist outside the Earth.

  “Despite the Fermi paradox,” Joshua continued, “I feel that the universe is vast with billions of galaxies and that if life was able to establish itself here, it must have taken hold in other areas as well.”

  “I agree,” Rachael said, refocusing her gaze on the dressed-down director across the table. “What time does the experiment resume?”

  “About this time tomorrow. Wait—you’ve already got a pretty big scoop, Miss Miller. Getting greedy?”

  “Yes, and it’s Rachael.”

  Joshua sighed and cocked his head, a smile crossing his face. “I’m not going to get rid of you, am I?”

  “Not tomorrow.”

  Joshua drained his latte. “Well, you’ve already seen the really secret stuff, so watching the testing should be no big deal. There’s nothing really classified about the testing process. Come back around three o’clock. I’ll make sure Charlotte is expecting you.”

  “Thanks. It means a lot. And I’ll make sure to bring some luck with me.”

  “That we’ll definitely need, and I’m expecting a glowing article from you about this process.”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be more glowing than a Bowman sphere speaking to a Martian rover.”

  “Cute.”

  Joshua rode with Rachael back to the center, not quite sure what to make of the pert, intrepid reporter from Scientific American. As he returned to his office, he felt that he’d been manipulated by the young woman. Not that he was objecting, of course.

  8

  Handle with Care