As for dark-matter beams self-interacting, well that is sort of correct, as far as we currently know. However, I have taken some liberty here in the sense that self-interaction of dark matter is likely to be rather weak, otherwise we would see evidence of it in astronomy. But then if the beams are intense and energetic enough when they collide …
The other business of decay of heavy neutralinos into charginos and back again to light neutralinos – all that stuff necessary for the bending magnets to work – is, well, not wrong, just oversimplified. Theoretical physicists around the world are currently working on speculative mathematical models with such technical names as the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model with complex parameters (or cMSSM) and the cosmological concordance model, ΛCDM, which is read ‘Lambda-CDM’, standing for Cold Dark Matter plus the Cosmological constant. Well, you did ask! What’s that? You didn’t? Oh, OK.
Acknowledgements
Well, that was an adventure! over the past three years, whenever I was able to prise open a sufficient block of free time – a day here, a weekend there, evenings and long journeys – I would immerse myself in an exciting world of my own creation. Escaping from my familiar, solid reality of academic teaching and research, broadcasting and, crucially, non-fiction writing, I would shut myself away in my study at home in Southsea, shake off the deterministic shackles of having to understand the real world and soar over a universe where I got to play God, proactively deciding for myself where the dice would fall.
Don’t get me wrong – imagination and creativity are just as important in my scientific research as they are in storytelling, so it’s not as though I had to flick a switch in my brain every time I sat down and teleported myself into this new reality I was building. It’s just that, well, I’d not been used to such freedom.
As an academic scientist, I have always been at ease with facts and mathematical truths, with theories and hypotheses that describe some aspect or mechanism in the natural world, tested and checked against empirical data and observation. I am also an explainer – what I have understood about the nature and workings of the physical universe, I have endeavoured to transmit and describe as best as I can through my broadcasting work and non-fiction writing over the past twenty years.
So, making stuff up? Really? Was I allowed to do that? Would I be thrown out of the Royal Society of London for besmirching the good names of Newton, Darwin and Faraday? Would my students believe anything I tell them ever again?
Well, to hell with it. I have discovered that writing fiction is just as exhilarating as scientific research. And by freeing myself from the fetters of describing the world ‘as it is’, I can take the smallest of sideways steps into a world that ‘could be’; one, by the way, in which no laws of physics are violated – I could never bring myself to invent bad science – and one that our own world could easily become in the near future. Indeed, Sunfall is our world. Of course, I have speculated – here and there I have pushed what we currently know a little beyond the comfort zone of established science – but I reckon I can still look my colleagues in solar physics, particle physics, dark-matter physics, computer science and nanotechnology (it’s a long list) directly in the eye. And I am indebted to all those who have reassured me that everything I describe in the book is utterly plausible. I am also grateful to the nearly two hundred remarkable scientists and engineers that I have had the privilege of interviewing over the past seven years on my BBC Radio programme, The Life Scientific. These men and women have not made me a polymath – my brain couldn’t possibly retain all the information that I have picked up – but they have opened my eyes to the vast range of exciting science across so many different fields being carried out at the moment, and I have tried to include as much of it as I can in this book.
As for my leap into fiction writing itself, with all the aplomb and subtlety of a swimming-pool dive bomb, well, it turns out there’s more to the craft than mere storytelling. And so, for all his patient guidance, advice and tutelage, I have to thank, first and foremost, my editor at Transworld, Simon Taylor. When I first started the book, I came clean with Simon that I had never even taken a basic creative-writing course. He reassured me that he was prepared to roll up his sleeves and guide me throughout the process. He has been true to his word. So, thank you Simon; I am sure that the word count of all your notes and comments that have helped me shape Sunfall over many drafts must come close to that of the book itself.
As always, and as I have done repeatedly over the almost two decades we have worked together, I would like to thank my literary agent, Patrick Walsh. As all those many authors under Patrick’s wing will attest, he is far more than just an agent. His encouragement, advice, comments, suggestions and amendments to the story meant that I actually had two excellent editors to guide me.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to both Charlotte Van Wijk and Julie Crisp who went through early drafts of the manuscript so carefully and offered so many brilliant suggestions that have vastly improved and tightened the storyline and plot.
Among friends and colleagues who also read early drafts and offered suggestions and advice, the two that stand out are Richard Millington and Mark Richardson. Thank you both for indulging me, and I hope you enjoy reading the final product. I must also thank my Surrey University colleagues, Justin Read for his advice on dark matter, and Alan Woodward for his words of wisdom on cybersecurity.
I am indebted to Elizabeth Dobson, a wonderful (and incredibly thorough) copy-editor, for all her corrections and suggestions for tightening up, smoothing over and making the various plotlines consistent. Thank you also to Vivien Thompson at Transworld who looked after the copy-editing and proofreading stages of the book.
I am immensely grateful to, and hopefully forgiven by, the many people I know – friends, colleagues and family members – from whom I have stolen names, identities and personality traits. Particular thanks to my sister, Shireen Al-Khalili (here it really was just your name that I borrowed), to my friend, solar physicist Lucie Green, to my ex-postdoc, particle physicist Qiang Zhao, and of course to CERN director-general, Fabiola Gianotti.
Last but not least, of course, I must thank my wife, Julie, who, as ever, is always there to steady the ship. Her calm, organized mind compliments my chaotic, flitting one. Whenever I’m asked how I have managed to fit writing a novel into my schedule, I always say that I have Julie to thank for maintaining order and sanity in my life and for helping me slot the different pieces neatly together. She’s always been good at jigsaw puzzles.
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Bantam Press
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Copyright © Jim Al-Khalili 2019
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