Discovery: Proton Field #1

by Laurence Dahners

  Miller frowned, “Why not just blow some hydrogen at the focal point?”

  “We wouldn’t be able to see what happened to it.”

  Miller shrugged, acknowledging the point, “Wouldn’t it have been easier to put it in a balloon?”

  “Balloons are made of rubber. Rubber’s got hydrogen in it and we already know it’s attracted to the focal point. Glass, being silicon dioxide, doesn’t have any hydrogen. Even the fluxes and stabilizers in glass are hydrogen free.” He shrugged, “Besides, we’d already tested glass and knew it wasn’t attracted.”

  “Ah… so what’d you find?” Miller asked, leaning forward in anticipation.

  “It, uh…” Vinn stopped as if uncertain how to proceed.

  Miller tilted his head curiously, though with a tinge of apprehension, “What happened?”

  “You know how we were suspending our test samples from a wire to see if they were attracted?”

  “Yes,” Miller said, a little impatiently.

  “It jerked the glass so hard that it unwound the wire.”

  “Oh,” Miller said, relaxing a little. “So, hydrogen is strongly attracted.”

  “You don’t understand. The globe flew to the focal point and imploded, shattering the glass.”

  Miller tilted his head curiously, “Why would that happen?”

  Vinn said slowly, “Remember how we’re thinking that all the water vapor in the room got pulled to a point up in Myr’s ceiling?” At Miller’s nod, he continued, “But we couldn’t see the water up there, at least until her machine got powered down, at which point it reappeared with a thump and quickly frosted into snowflakes suggesting a rapid reexpansion.” Vinn looked up at his own ceiling, “When the machine was powered up it was hot up there, Myr thought because the water vapor was being compressed.” He looked at Miller, “She thought a liter of water was being compressed down to a point so small we couldn’t see it. Which,” Vinn cleared his throat as if a little embarrassed, “is supposed to be impossible.”

  Miller said slowly, “But she was thinking that her field suppressed the electrostatic force that normally holds atoms apart, letting them get closer together, right?” At Vinn’s nod, he said, “So if the globe only had hydrogen in it, which all got compressed down to a point and the walls of the globe were thin, the vacuum could have imploded it?”

  “Yeah,” Vinn said, gusting the air for the word out in a big sigh. “But I think it has to be more than that.”

  “More, how?”

  “First you should know that we got back the chemical analysis on the snow she caught in the beaker that first day?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was really pure water that had reduced levels of deuterium. About half as much DHO as it should have had, and absolutely no D2O.”

  “What?” Miller frowned, “Why would that happen?”

  “Myr thinks it’s because the field attracts protons. Not hydrogen, but protons that don’t have neutrons associated with them. Obviously there are neutrons nearby in the oxygen of H2O, but if there are neutrons in the atomic nucleus then there’s no attraction. Thus, H2O is attracted but D2O isn’t. DHO has an intermediate attraction.”

  “Whoa!” Miller said thoughtfully. “All of this is… almost impossible to believe, but… I guess it fits your data.” He looked at Vinn, “You guys have any theories to explain this?”

  “Um, I’ve spent the weekend running numbers.” Vinn shrugged, “I’m working on the idea that the field’s warping space as far as protons are concerned.” He looked at Miller, “You know those graphical representations of how Einstein’s calculations show space-time being warped by gravity?”

  “What, you think that Myr’s creating some kind of black hole for protons?!”

  “Not all the way down to a black hole, but equivalent to a pretty crushing amount of gravity.”

  “That’s crazy. With a ‘crushing amount of gravity’ and the electrostatic effect suppressed so that the protons can get closer together you’d have fusion.” Miller looked at Vinn expecting him to look embarrassed, but the young man just stared right back at him.

  Then Vinn gave him a little nod. “Right after that glass globe full of hydrogen imploded, an alarm went off. I didn’t know what the hell it was, but thank God Myr recognized the Geiger counter and immediately shut down her equipment.”

  “The old analog counters we have here don’t have alarms,” Miller said weakly.

  “Yeah… but when they’re detecting lots of radiation, the little popping noise they normally make gets to be a buzz that sounds like an alarm.” He shrugged, “Or at least the one in Myr’s lab sounded like an alarm to me.”

  Miller sagged back in his chair, “Holy crap!” Vinn didn’t say anything, apparently giving Miller time to process what he’d just heard. Finally Miller said, “So we’re getting the same kind of fusion that happens on the sun?”

  Vinn shook his head, “In the sun, two protons fuse to make a diproton which is unstable and comes back apart, but then sometimes one of the protons beta decays into a neutron to give you deuterium which is stable. The deuterium then fuses with another proton to become helium-3. After a few more steps you’ve got helium-4 and a couple of protons. And, of course, a hell of a lot of energy.” Vinn shrugged, “But if Myr’s right about a neutron in the nucleus nullifying her field’s attraction, then as soon as those two protons become a deuterium, the deuterium gets squeezed out of the focal point and doesn’t participate in any more fusion.” He shrugged again, “So, presumably what’s happening only replicates the first step of stellar fusion—which means a lot less power… but still plenty.”

  Stunned, Miller just stared at Vinn. After a moment, he said, “And the radiation?”

  “Fusing the two protons releases a neutrino and a positron. The antimatter positron annihilates with an electron and releases two gamma photons.” He tilted his head, “This whole thing generates a lot of heat too. The room was hot and there was a burn on the end of the table.”

  Miller suddenly widened his eyes, “Oh crap! Do you think you guys got a significant radiation exposure?”

  “Can’t be sure, but I don’t think so,” Vinn said slowly. “We were pretty far away from what had to be a point source and we were behind a concrete block wall that should’ve soaked up about fifty percent. Besides, Myr slapped the power off in about a second.” He shook his head, “She’s really fast.”

  Miller frowned, “What about neutrons?”

  Vinn shrugged, “What I’ve found doesn’t describe any free neutrons released by proton-proton fusion. Deuterium-tritium fusion certainly releases neutrons. Neutron bombardment of the fusion vessel making the vessel radioactive is a significant problem for those types of fusion. My understanding so far is that, even though proton-proton fusion converts one of the two protons into a neutron to make deuterium, those neutrons don’t fly off to bombard anything because they all stay in the deuterium nucleus. But, even if I’m wrong about that, proton-proton fusion due to Myr’s apparatus might or might not generate neutron bombardment because it’s happening under very different conditions than what people have studied so far.” He shook his head, “We need a neutron detector before we run her apparatus again… Especially if there’s any free hydrogen available.”

  Miller said, “I doubt anyone here at Miller Tech has one, you’ll probably have to buy one.” He sank back in his chair, thinking for a bit, then said, “We’ll need to get you guys hooked up with Bill Araujo, he’s developing a plate that converts gamma rays into electricity.” Miller looked at Vinn to be sure he understood, “Like a solar cell does with visible light. It’d be great if you could harvest the energy from the gammas directly without having to use them to generate heat.”

  Looking doubtful, Vinn said, “Is that really even possible?”

  With a little snort, Miller said, “I was pretty surprised myself. But it’s been around for a while, Araujo’s just improved the efficiency. He’s thinking they could be used to generate pow
er for satellites. Out there they’d be harvesting cosmic gammas or gammas released by radioactive materials.” Miller gave Vinn a quizzical look, “I don’t know how they’d hold up to heavy bombardment from your fusion reaction, especially since there’d be a lot of heat.”

  “I was thinking we’d be using that heat to generate steam for a turbine. Maybe the steam generation could keep the temperatures down low enough that the plates don’t melt,” Vinn said, “depending on what they’re made out of?”

  “They’re made out of metal, but they have some kind of insulator between them. I’ve been told what the components are, but I’ve forgotten… Oh! And Jim Mickelson is working on a new TEG chip that’ll directly convert heat into electricity.”

  Vinn frowned, “All that stuff sounds pretty sexy, but why not just use steam turbines? They’re proven technology.”

  “Yeah,” Miller said, lifting an eyebrow. “But they’re big. If you wanted your car to run on fusion directly, wouldn’t it’d be great to just have a small version of Myr’s fusion bottle surrounded by gamma collector plates and TEG chips sending power directly to an electric motor?”

  “Maybe?” Vinn said doubtfully.

  Miller stood up, “I’m gonna go talk to those guys and see what their latest is. I’ll try to feel them out on whether their devices would work in the kind of environment we’re talking about.”

  Vinn watched as Miller walked down to the corner. Then Miller called back to him, sounding a little excited, “Myr’s light’s on.”

  Vinn felt a little leap in his own heart. He got up and started down the hall after Miller, wanting to run, but not wanting to seem too eager. When Miller turned the corner into Myr’s lab, Vinn did trot a few steps then slowed to a fast walk after he’d turned the corner just before he arrived himself.

  When he arrived, he heard Myr saying, “You were right about the hydrogen. Some pretty astonishing things happened after you left.”

  Vinn had just poked his head around the corner of Myr’s door when Miller said, “Yeah, Vinn’s been telling me about it. Fusion, huh?!”

  Myr glanced at Vinn with some distaste, “Yeah, fusion. Has the boy genius there worked out the math for it yet?”

  Miller looked at Vinn, “I didn’t know he was working on it.”

  “Isn’t that what you hired him for?” Myr asked.

  With Miller and Myr both focused on him, Vinn felt uncomfortable. “I need measurements of field strength…” he began.

  Myr interrupted with a disdainful tone, “I didn’t think so.”

  Miller began irritatedly, “Now look you two…”

  Myr interrupted him as well, “What? You want us to play nice or you’re going to fire me?” She lifted an eyebrow, “Now? That’d be like shooting yourself in the foot.”

  Miller stared at her for a moment, then said slowly, “The agreement you signed gives Miller Tech certain rights to your invention even if you leave us, so it wouldn’t be the end of the world for us if you picked up your toys and left. I certainly don’t want you to leave us. I think your new results are incredibly exciting, and I want us to figure out what’s happening as quickly as possible, using all the resources the company can bring to bear… Okay?”

  A little reluctantly, Myr nodded.

  Miller said, “One of the resources the company can bring to bear,” he waved at Vinn, “is this young man here. I think you guys’ll make an awesome team, but you’ve got to give him a chance.”

  Myr looked away and mumbled something.

  Miller said, “Sorry, I didn’t understand that.”

  Myr still didn’t look at either of them, but this time she spoke a little louder. “I said, I’ll try to give him a chance, but he’s got to stop acting like such a jerk.”

  Miller looked at Vinn. Vinn shrugged, “I am trying.” Then with resolve, “And I promise to try harder.”

  Miller turned back to Myr, “I think we all recognize that Vinn can be abrasive, but you need to recognize that you’re a little thin-skinned. Now that he’s gotten on your bad side, you have a tendency to immediately think the worst of anything he says.” Miller paused, waiting for her to comment. After about twenty seconds, she merely gave a little nod. Miller decided that was probably about as good as he was going to get out of her that day.

  “Okay!” Miller said rubbing his hands together, “Let’s go to the conference room and plan out some experiments!” He turned to Myr, “I’ve got to tell you about a couple of other developments here at the company that might bear on harvesting energy from low energy fusion. Also, we can bring over some technical people to help you guys start studying…”

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Myr felt exhausted when she got home that night, but still incredibly excited. She desperately wanted to talk to somebody about what’d been happening but she was restrained by all of Miller Tech’s nondisclosure agreements. For a moment, she considered calling to tell her mom the news.

  No, Myr decided, she isn’t going to believe her daughter’s done anything important until I can show her incontrovertible proof in the form of widespread acceptance.

  Chapter 3

  Tired, Vinn rubbed his eyes, then stared at his screen some more. He and three of Miller’s technicians had staked out a room in the basement of Miller Tech’s research building. The room had the advantages of being large, with high ceilings and heavy concrete walls. To Vinn’s surprise, Myr had frowned but hadn’t objected when he’d asked if he could move her set up down there to do some testing on the shapes and gradients of her field under different conditions.

  She’d apparently reconciled herself to the necessity of letting Vinn learn the settings of her equipment. He had to know them, after all, so he could modify them and learn the effects of the modifications on the field. She did, however, insist that he not let the techs see the settings and that he zero the dials and switches every time he left the room.

  And she wouldn’t let him open up the cylinder that actually emitted the field.

  The first thing he and the techs had done was to design a fixture to hold Myr’s field-emitting cylinder. The fixture also held a two-inch diameter glass rod, ten feet in length, coaxially out in front of the cylinder. Each time they began a new series of field strength measurements, the first thing they did was determine where the focus was at the new settings and that it’d be inside the rod for the rest of their tests. Then they mounted the glass rod and tested to make sure the rod didn’t affect the field strength at the new settings. So far, having glass at the focal point hadn’t affected the field in any of their testing. It did, however, have the benefit of keeping things safer. So far they hadn’t had any injuries, but Vinn couldn’t help but shudder when he remembered the day an ink pen fell out of his front pocket and got sucked into the focal point of the device.

  Where it whirled around and disappeared, ejecting the metal clip, spring, and point to bounce on the floor.

  He didn’t know for sure what would happen if his finger got into the focus, but he had a pretty good idea from what’d happened when he’d put a chicken wing in the focus. He’d had a firm grip on the wing with a pair of pliers but still had a difficult time pulling his end of the wing away. It felt like what he would imagine he’d feel if he’d fed the end of the wing into a high-speed sausage grinder. When he pulled the wing back with the pliers, two thirds of it had disappeared into the focus. When they turned the field off, a glutinous mass of flesh with no residual organization fell out of the focus to splat onto the floor.

  Therefore, they tried to keep the focus positioned inside of the glass rod at all times except for some very careful testing at each new setting. The glass rod also had the benefit of preventing water vapor from being sucked out of the room and concentrated at the focus. Dew did form on the rod after they’d had the field on for a while, but with the glass rod they could run the field for hours of testing without creating a snowstorm when they shut it down.

  The machine shop built Vinn several steel rods with v
arious gauges mounted incrementally along their length. Some were strain gauges that measured the strength of attraction of little balls of polyethylene—polyethylene being loaded with hydrogen—to the focal point. Some gauges measured the static suppression effect. Others measured heat, which was only generated when something like water vapor got compressed down to a point at the focus of the field. Thus, heating didn’t happen when the focus was within the glass rod. Of course, they had their Geiger counter and neutron detector running for every experiment, but so far, presumably since they weren’t releasing any pure hydrogen that could reach the focus, they hadn’t detected any radiation.

  What they’d learned was that the field always seemed to be spherical and centered on its focal point. That focal point was always coaxial with the cylinder, but could be moved further away or closer to the end of the cylinder by varying the voltage. Unsurprisingly, increasing the current enlarged the size and strength of the field. Below the 950-gigahertz range, the field only suppressed electrostatics. It was above this frequency that it began to create the “proton field,” as they were calling the effect that seemed to warp space for protons. In the lower terahertz range a graphic representation of the gradient of the field was nearly linear, or in three dimensions, cone-shaped, but at higher terahertz ranges it became geometric or horn-shaped.

  The 10,000 volts that Myr’d been using when Vinn had started working with her placed the focal point a hundred and forty-eight centimeters from the end of her cylinder. 1000 volts put it at seventy-four centimeters, 100 volts put it at thirty-seven centimeters and ten volts put it at 18.5 centimeters. The field collapsed below nine volts and above 12,000 volts so they could only form the field between about six inches and a little over five feet from the end of the cylinder. Vinn wondered whether a modification of the electronics might let them generate it closer or farther, but testing that theory would have to wait.