Indeterminate Granular Space-time Mechanics sees Ψ as fluctuations in the curvature of space-time undergoing Brownian Motion. Here, the ‘points’ of space-time are replaced by ‘grains.’ In IGSM, in the absence of mass, spacetime becomes, not flat as Special Relativity posits, but undefined (stochastic or chaotic). Einstein believed this as well [9].
A problem common to all the interpretations is at what scale does superposition go away? While one might have an electron simultaneously here or there, we most likely cannot have a live and dead cat. IGSM deduces that quantum superposition ceases for masses greater than the Planck mass (about 2 × 10-8 kilograms) while the other models use ‘decoherence’ [10] ideas to attempt to solve the problem.
What will turn out to be the ‘right’ (or at any rate, the most compelling) model? Who knows? One tends to hang on to the model one started out with. As Max Planck said, “Physics makes progress one funeral at a time.” So we may need to wait for the next generation or two of theoreticians before being able to answer the question.
Now, as to my story: I was working on a physics paper titled, ‘Ψ: a Toy- Model, Collapse, and The Schrodinger Brat Paradox.’ I’d expanded the Cat Paradox (rather in the way described in the story) in order to argue against the Multi-world Interpretation. (I’d considered MWI to be a ‘map is not the territory’ issue and a misuse of probability theory.) When I thought of the name ‘Brat Paradox,’ I thought it would make a good name for a science fiction story. Shortly thereafter, I was invited to submit to this anthology, so I wrote the story. Aside from the central ideas of the story, I tried to keep the science (and comments about some of the scientists) accurate.
Finally, as to the byline: I write my science papers under my actual first name, Carlton, and my fiction under the shortened form, Carl. As I’m not sure if this submission is predominantly science or fiction or both, in the spirit of quantum superposition, I’ve used both names.
References
1.
P. Byrne, The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013). Reprint Edition
2.
L. Rozema et al., Phys. Rev. Sett. 109, (2012)
3.
D. Bohm, Phys. Rev. 85, 166–193 (1985)CrossRef
4.
E. Nelson, Derivation of the Schrodinger equation from Newtonian mechanics. Phys. Rev. 150(4), 66
5.
C. Frederick, Stochastic space-time and quantum theory. Phys. Rev. D 13, 12, 3183 (1976)
6.
C. Frederick, Indeterminate Space-Time Quantum Mechanics: A Computer-Augmented Framework Using Wiener-Like Processes, ArXiv:1601.07171 (2016)
7.
J.S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004)CrossRef
8.
T. Szabados, An Elementary Introduction to the Wiener Process and Stochastic Integrals, arXiv:1008.1510vl
9.
A. Einstein, Relativity: The Special & General Theory, 15th edn., p. 155
10.
W. Zurek, Decoherence, Einselection, and the quantum arguments of the classical. Rev. Mod. Phys. 75, 715–775 (2003)CrossRef
© The Author 2017
Michael Brotherton (ed.)Science Fiction by ScientistsScience and Fiction10.1007/978-3-319-41102-6_12
Fixer Upper
Eric Choi1
(1)Toronto, Canada
The International Space Station was dead.
From afar, the ISS outwardly looked much as I had remembered it, a long truss structure with four pairs of massive solar arrays and the stacked cluster of dull silver and off-white pressurized modules. But its attitude, its orientation, was wrong. The main truss was tangent to the limb of the Earth, but the gradient of gravity had pulled the stacked modules into a line pointing towards the surface of its planet of origin. As we approached, I saw insulation blankets that had once been pristine and white were now cracked and stained a yellowish brown. The solar panels looked drab and were pockmarked with ragged holes in various places. There were no lights in the windows.
I had been expecting to see this, and in fact the station was in somewhat better shape than I had feared, yet I could not help but be sad. Once upon a time, a lifetime ago it seemed, the ISS had been my home in orbit for five months. To see it like this was heartbreaking.
“Shénzhōu J-8, kāi shiˇ fēi chuán duì jiē,” intoned Shěnyáng Mission Control over the radio, indicating clearance for approach and docking.
“Shì,” replied Commander Yuán Lìxúe. She turned to me. “Kristen, jì xù jiān kòng duì jiē mù biāo fāng xiàng.”
As I watched the range and range-rate numbers count down on the control panel, Commander Yuán grasped her hand controller and brought our spacecraft to within two hundred meters of the sprawling, lifeless complex. The rear thrusters fired, and we begin to ease towards the docking port at a snail’s pace of a few centimeters per second. At ten meters, a proximity alert flickered on the screen. I overrode the warning, and we continued forward. Lìxúe aligned the white crosshairs on the screen squarely with the alignment target on the docking port.
Our spacecraft contacted the station with the slightest bump. Nothing happened.
I glanced at Lìxúe, expecting her to call down to Shěnyáng for instructions. Instead, she simply pulled us back a few meters from the port, fired the aft thrusters again, and rammed us home harder. This time, mechanical hooks and latches swung into place and locked the vehicles together.
Yuán Lìxúe and I were the first people to visit the International Space Station in over two years.
***
We were docked to the Poisk research module in the former Russian segment of the International Space Station. After going through the post-docking checklist, Lìxúe and I unstrapped ourselves and floated to the hatch at the end of the Shénzhōu’s orbital module.
Lìxúe asked Mission Control if they were receiving any telemetry from the station on environmental conditions. They said there was none. This was not surprising considering the station had no power, but it meant we were flying blind. There was no way to know what the environment was like on the other side of the hatch.
We adjusted our launch and entry suits, put on woolen hats, and donned oxygen masks. I threw the switch on my tank, breathed in deeply — and got nothing. The mask just collapsed around my face. I double-checked to ensure the switch was thrown. It was. I sucked in again, harder this time. The mask collapsed further around my face.
“Zěn me le?” Lìxúe asked. Her round open face was wrinkled and her black hair was streaked with grey. Unlike many Chinese her age, she did not dye her hair.
I told her my mask was not working. We went back to the Shénzhōu to look for a spare, eventually finding one in the descent module. I put on the new mask and flung the switch. This time, oxygen flowed.
Returning to the hatch, I grasped a small star-shaped valve and turned it. Holding up a finger, I felt air rushing into the station. The pressure in the Shénzhōu began to fall. Then, the flow stopped. The ISS was still airtight.
We opened the hatch. I dove ahead, but unexpectedly bumped into Lìxúe. We looked at each other. My startled annoyance quickly gave way to embarrassment as I realized my mistake. On this expedition, I was not the commander. I gave way, then followed Lìxúe into the station.
When the air hit my face, I realized how bitterly cold it was. Moisture from my exhalations froze in a tiny cloud around my face. I played my flashlight along the darkened bulkheads of the Russian research module. The beige walls and grey electronics boxes were covered with a thin coating of ice. Mold from past occupations was frozen on the panels.
My gas detector did not register any toxic fumes. I lifted my mask and took a cautious sniff, followed by a deeper breath. The air was very cold, but it seemed to be all right.
“Zhiˇ huī yuan huì bào wēn dù?” Mission Control wanted to know the temperature.
We looked at our thermometers, and I was surprised to dis
cover that the scale only went to zero degrees Celsius.
Lìxúe suddenly turned, and spat on the wall. I tried to hide my disgust. She looked at her watch, timing how long it took for her saliva to freeze. Twelve seconds. “Líng xià shí dù,” she declared. Minus ten degrees Celsius — a rather bracing Minnesota winter, I thought to myself.
We continued into the station, floating through the Poisk module into a small connecting node, where we did a ninety degree turn through a hatchway into the Zvezda service module. I opened the window shades to admit a little sunshine, but it was still terribly cold. With the interior lights out, the narrow fields of illumination from the windows and our flashlights created stark and eerie shadows behind the angular equipment. Sunlight streaming through the small windows lit up myriads of dancing motes and drifting rubbish. A small photograph tumbled by, and I reached out to grab it. The cherubic face of a little boy, perhaps three or four years old, smiled out at me.
Our first priority was to restore power, and with it heat, light, and full life support. Lìxúe and I removed a bulkhead panel and located Zvezda’s ancient nickel-cadmium batteries, replacing them with modern solid-state electrolytes. Connecting the new batteries to Zvezda’s power bus was a difficult task because we had to take off our gloves, and our hands soon become painfully cold and stiff. The silence was oppressive. With no motors or ventilators whirring, this frozen nook in space was the quietest place I had ever been.
My oxygen mask suddenly collapsed against my face. Startled, I looked down at the tank and saw the display still showing around 40 %. I tapped the tank and flipped the switch back and forth, but no more air flowed. Resigned, I took off the mask and continued working. But without ventilators to circulate the air, exhaled carbon dioxide hovered about my face. My head began to ache, my arms and legs grew sluggish, and I started feeling drowsy.
“Niˇ méi shì ba?” Lìxúe said, asking if I was all right. Seeing my mask off, she handed me hers.
I brusquely told her I was fine. It really irritated me, this attitude that Westerners in general and Americans in particular were weak and needed looking after.
The ISS creaked and groaned under thermal stresses as it passed from sunlight into the Earth’s shadow. Lìxúe and I retreated back to the relative warmth of the Shénzhōu to ride out the orbital night. Forty-five minutes later, we emerged to resume our work.
The first battery was hooked up, and I saw Lìxúe smile as the voltage rose. The job went quicker for the other seven units. After a final check of the connections, I switched on the main power. Suddenly, the dead module sprang to life. Fans began to whir and the ventilation system kicked in with a low hum. Displays illuminated on several pieces of equipment. The interior lights came on.
“Shěnyáng, diàn lì huī fù chéng gōng!” Lìxúe smiled broadly as she reported our success to Mission Control.
A moment later, everything went dead again.
***
We eventually managed to restore partial main power. This took the better part of a day, by the end of which we were simply exhausted.
But there was one more obligation. Shěnyáng Mission Control told us to standby for a media event in twenty minutes. In my former life at NASA, press conferences were actually something I enjoyed. Outreach and education had been important parts of my job, and I relished sharing the wonders of spaceflight with the general public.
Lìxúe unrolled her tablet and set up a camera and lights on the bulkhead. She said I looked tired and told me to let her do the talking.
I nodded curtly. Because nobody is interested in what the dumb Red Card American has to say, I thought to myself.
“Huānyíng lái dào CCTV,” the interviewer began. “Woˇ shì zhuˇ chi rén Dù Tíngfāng. Jīn wǎn, woˇmen… chǎng…jiǎng tàikorén Yuán Lìxúe hé Kristen Bartlett…”
The rapidly spoken Chinese, exacerbated by the poor quality communications link, was hard for me to follow. Lìxúe spouted platitudes about the importance of our mission, how the station was in great shape (even though we had only been here two days and had not yet ventured into the other modules), and how much she enjoyed working with me (even though the feeling was not necessarily mutual). The interview lasted about fifteen minutes, but it was rough because the comms kept dropping out. Through it all, I stayed quiet with a forced smile plastered on my face. There were no questions for me.
Finally, the interviewer signed off. My fatigue returned with a vengeance, and I was expecting to head back to the Shénzhōu for some much needed sleep when Mission Control called up again. We were told to standby for a message from Liuˇ Diānrén, CEO of the Xīn Shìjiè Corporation and the financial backer of our expedition,
Dismayed, I turned to Lìxúe. She didn’t appear surprised.
Liuˇ Diānrén appeared on the screen. He looked to be in his late thirties with slicked black hair, a pale square face, and an angular beard. Our sponsor was speaking from his office at Xīn Shìjiè’s headquarters in Sharjah. I found his Chinese even harder to follow than the CCTV host. He congratulated me and Lìxúe for a job well done, and reiterated his dream of bringing the station back to life and creating a new heavenly dynasty or words to that effect. By the time he started babbling about something called Cháng’é Bèn Yuè, he had pretty much lost me. But I caught the last bit, in which he announced that henceforth the module we had successfully reactivated would be known by its new, proper Chinese name — Dōngxīng, the Eastern Star.
Strangely, we didn’t lose comms once during the entire rambling monologue. After what seemed an eternity, Liuˇ Diānrén finally shut up and the screen went dark.
Within seconds, so did the rest of the “Dōngxīng” module.
***
Dōngxīng was only the start of the name game. As Lìxúe and I reactivated modules, Liuˇ Diānrén called up to personally rechristen each with Chinese monikers. The Zarya functional cargo block became Shuˇguāng (“New Epoch”), the Unity node was now Níngjìng (“Serenity”) and the former U.S. laboratory module Destiny became Wángcháo (“Dynasty”). I found this creeping Sinofication — a cultural appropriation as much as a technological one — quite upsetting, all the more so with the knowledge that I was abetting it.
Power, life support and communications had been more or less stable over the past week, enabling Lìxúe and me to prepare for the arrival of the last three members of our expedition. The lights were dim and the station smelled like a musty old wine cellar, but we tried our best to clean up. We stuffed excess gear and broken-down equipment behind panels, mopped up globs of floating water, scrubbed down the bulkheads with fungicide wipes to remove the mold, and installed new filters in the air cleaning system. It was a far cry from the ISS that I remembered, but things were at least in better shape than what had greeted me and Lìxúe just over a week ago.
From a scarred window in the Dōngxīng service module, I watched the approach of the Shénzhōu J-9 spacecraft to the docking port of the Kēxué laboratory. A momentary shudder reverberated through the station at the moment of contact.
I swam into the Kēxué module. Lìxúe opened the hatch, and the final three members of our expedition emerged.
“Zīchéng! Wénxìn! Chéngfēi!” I called out.
“Kristen!”
The commander drifted aside, apparently allowing me to greet the newcomers first. Fàn Zīchéng was a burly giant of a man with jet-black crew cut hair. It always amazed me that he was able to fit his immense frame into the cramped Shénzhōu. Next was Cài Wénxìn, a graying bespectacled man who in every way appeared the physical opposite of Zīchéng. Last was Zhāng Chéngfēi, a middle-aged man of medium build with a round, puffy face. I had worked with these guys in Shěnyáng for months with the original mission commander, whom Lìxúe had replaced in the final weeks of our training.
They each gave me a hug as they exited the Shénzhōu, before floating over to Lìxúe to shake her hand and exchange a few words. We all then migrated in single file — heads closely
following feet — into the Wángcháo laboratory, where we alighted to endure another video message from Liuˇ Diānrén.
When this guy talked the comms never failed, much to my disappointment. Liuˇ was either speaking slower or the long solitary confinement with Lìxúe had improved my Chinese, because I actually made out most of his rambling monologue.
“First you were two, and now you are five. I wish you were eight, for that would be of good fortune, but my engineers tell me the station cannot sustain more than five. Perhaps I will fire them! But five it is now, and you must work together as one, like the white shadow that moves unseen across the heavens. You must succeed, for if you do not, the fault will be yours. Work well, you five heavenly shadows!”
I blinked and shook my head. Perhaps my Chinese hadn’t improved as much as I thought, because nothing Liuˇ said made sense to me. I glanced over at Zīchéng, Wénxìn and Chéngfēi. The three guys looked excited, occasionally exchanging quiet words and pointing at the screen and nodding. Lìxúe just stared ahead with her arms crossed, her face an expressionless mask.
***
Docked to the aft port of the Dōngxīng service module was Progress MS2-1C, the last in a series of Russian expendable cargo spacecraft that had delivered supplies to space stations since the late 1970s. This particular vehicle had been heavily modified with a larger engine, extra fuel tanks, and the ability to draw residual propellant from the station itself. Its mission had been to deorbit the International Space Station following its abandonment. But in a final act of reckless optimism, the original international partners agreed instead to use the Progress to boost the ISS into a higher orbit, with the hope that a future crew might someday reactivate the station.
It had always been my dream to command such a crew and revive the ISS. Not being in charge was bad enough, but being the minion of a Chinese expedition was something I never would have guessed and don’t think I’ve quite gotten over.
Science Fiction by Scientists: An Anthology of Short Stories (Science and Fiction) Page 22