“Who?”
“Me and my dad.”
“Really?” Eisner was torn between thinking of this like a school child whose parent did their homework for them and remembering that Marlowe had said Tiona’s father was a very odd man.
“Yes. My dad has a PhD in physics. He’s become very interested in this phenomenon.”
“Wait a minute. Where are you working on this? Have you got him coming into the lab here?”
“Oh. No, my dad has a lab set up in his basement. We’ve been working on it there, it being Christmas break and all.”
A basement lab? I thought those were just urban legends, Eisner thought, picturing a dank and dark basement with sparks flying. “Okaaay,” Eisner said, dragging the word out. “So, what’s going on?”
“Well, like I was saying, my dad was really interested in the fact that the membranes move around when they’re energized.”
“Wait a minute. What do you mean, ‘move around?’”
“Well, when I’m running just a low-power gigahertz circuit to test our theory on high frequency superconduction, the membranes just tend to lift up out of the dish a little bit. With more power, they can actually kind of flop around.”
“Okaaay,” Eisner said again. “So is it some kind of heating effect? Makes the membranes deform?”
“Um, no Sir. They still move even if we glue them to a rigid substrate.”
“They bend the substrate? What are you using?”
“Two millimeter thick acrylic discs. Maybe I could just tell you about the phenomenon?”
Eisner had actually been getting frustrated himself at pulling it out of her one question at a time. Now he realized she’d been getting irritated herself. “Sure, go ahead.”
The girl proceeded to tell him how, if they fastened the membranes to rigid plastic discs, they moved around, especially if there was some space between the two membranes. She told him how it required an unbalanced gigahertz current and worked better with round discs than with ones that had corners.
Eventually Eisner couldn’t stop himself from interrupting again, “You’re saying these membranes are generating thrust?!”
“Yes Sir,” she said quietly.
“They must be interacting with some kind of field!”
“We’ve checked Sir. No fields present. Besides it works anywhere in the lab.”
Eisner shook his head even though he realized she wouldn’t be able to see it. Tiona was missing something, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Still, he shouldn’t dash her hopes. “Well, it sounds pretty interesting. I’ll be excited to look at it when you get back from break. Hopefully we can figure out what’s going on.”
Though Eisner was about to sign off, Tiona interrupted him, “Um… do you mind if we talk to Dr. Weitzel about it?”
Startled, Eisner frowned, “Weitzel! Why?”
“Well, um,” Tiona said, sounding very uncertain, “We have this theory that the discs are accelerating dark matter. Then we’d be following Newton’s laws rather than postulating some kind of ‘reactionless drive.’ We’d like to see what Dr. Weitzel thinks since he’s an expert on dark matter.”
Slowly, Eisner said, “You realize that it’s a lot more likely you’ve missed something than that you’ve somehow found a way to interact with dark matter, don’t you?”
“Yes Dr. Eisner, but we’ve been thinking about this and doing every test we can imagine. It’s the only explanation we’ve been able to come up with so far that fits the phenomenon.”
“This is you and your dad?” Eisner said thinking about Marlowe’s assessment of Tiona’s father as a failed and unemployed physicist.
“Yes Sir.”
After a little more conversation, Eisner found himself reluctantly agreeing to go into the lab tomorrow to meet Tiona and look at the phenomenon. He didn’t want to, but he did actually have a couple of other things he could take care of while he was in at work. He couldn’t understand why it couldn’t wait until they got back from the break but apparently Tiona’s dad was really excited about this.
Eisner thought about it and realized that an unemployed, essentially failed physicist might be pretty excited about following up a bizarre new finding in hopes of making a name for himself.
***
When Tiona got up the next morning she was a little disappointed to find her dad already down in the basement. No fancy breakfast this morning? She headed down the stairs. Her dad was settling a copper disc about a meter in diameter into a large flat tub she hadn’t seen before. He’s trying to precipitate a huge membrane! “Hey, it’s time to go if we’re going to get over to the lab in time.”
“Um, you don’t really need me to be there, do you?”
“Come on Dad! This is our project, not mine. You’ve worked harder on it then I have!”
He gave a shy grin. “I’m just more interested in it than you are. But you don’t need me to show it to your professor.”
“Don’t you think it would do you some good to get out of the house and talk to another physicist?”
Vaz shook his head, “You know I don’t like going strange places and meeting new people.”
Tiona snorted in resignation, “Yeah, I know.”
***
Eisner arrived at the lab expecting to quickly recognize what was causing the discs to appear to generate thrust. His first surprise was that Tiona was there by herself. From their conversation the day before he had thought that her father was going to show up as well.
His second surprise was that the discs really generated thrust!
They didn’t just generate a tiny bit of thrust like he’d been expecting, they generated a substantial push when the power was turned up. And, she was right, they did it anywhere in the room. Unless the entire room had some kind of powerful electromagnetic field present in it, they were generating thrust that had nothing to do with their environment. He even had her try it in a Faraday cage to block any electromagnetic fields. It still worked!
He found himself sitting there, staring at the disc pressing on his palm, long after he had expected to be back home. He couldn’t think of a better explanation than the “dark matter acceleration theory” himself.
Eventually, he’d called Weitzel himself. Weitzel couldn’t meet right then, but did agree to come in to work the next day to observe the phenomenon himself. Meanwhile, Eisner and Tiona described what was happening to Weitzel so he could be thinking about it.
Eisner looked up at Tiona, “Write up everything you know so far. We’re going to need to submit this to the tech office for a patent just like Marlowe’s precipitation method.” Struck by a thought, Eisner said, “You said your dad was the one who really pushed the importance of this phenomenon?”
Watching Eisner play with the disc, she distractedly said, “Uh-huh.”
“That was a good call on his part. We’ll need to list him as a co-inventor.” He glanced over at her, “This should really help you guys out.”
Tiona frowned, “Help us out?”
Eisner shrugged, hoping he wasn’t about to embarrass her, but thinking it was important for her to realize what was going to happen. “Yeah, financially. I know you guys can use some help.”
She blinked, “Why do you think that?”
“Well,” he shrugged again, “it’s not too hard to figure out… with your dad being unemployed and all.”
“Oh!” she said, a surprised look on her face. After a second a look of understanding spread across to her countenance, “Did Nolan tell you my dad didn’t have a job?”
Eisner nodded, a solemn look on his face. “Yes. You may not know it, but Nolan thinks the world of you. He’s worried about you.”
Tiona stared at him for a moment as if what Eisner had said was difficult to process. “Worried?”
“Yeah, you know, that you have financial troubles.”
“Oh…” Tiona said, frowning like she was trying to figure something out. Then she smiled, “It’s nice that he’s concerned, but I’ll be
okay.”
Eisner would have sworn that she smiled indulgently as if she were somewhat amused by the whole thing. Once again he found it a little irritating that she wasn’t more concerned about her financial situation. Maybe she thinks this phenomenon will solve all their financial problems? “Anyway, it could be that this thrust phenomenon could result in a financial windfall, but don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. All kinds of problems could still crop up.”
This time she grinned broadly, “Okay, I won’t.”
***
Stunned, Leo Weitzel leaned back in his chair and stared at Eisner and his grad student Tiona Gettnor. They’d said they wanted to show him an experiment that might have a bearing on dark matter.
Even after watching their disks move, feeling the force exerted by them, and seeing the thrust registered on a lab scale, he still found it extremely hard to believe. They’d shown him some old results for claimed “reactionless drives” that emitted microwave radiation into closed chambers and produced weak thrust. They thought that those “drives” might have accelerated dark matter as well.
Weitzel had to admit that he couldn’t come up with any other explanation for the apparent thrust delivered by the discs. He looked back and forth from Eisner to Gettnor, “So… you’re thinking… that this might work as some kind of dark matter detector?”
They smiled at one another, then Eisner shrugged and said, “Sure, though everyone but you is probably more interested in the thrust than the dark matter detection. We mostly wanted to know what you thought about the possibility that the effect does have something to do with dark matter acceleration.”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying you think that these will produce enough thrust to be useful?”
“Oh yeah! Even our cobbled together lab model here delivers more thrust than the ion thrusters they use on satellites for station keeping. It’s more efficient in its use of electricity, and most importantly, doesn’t need any reaction mass. A thruster like this would substantially extend the lifespan of satellites.” He shrugged, “The more power we give it, the more thrust it generates, right up to the maximum output of our current generator. I’m sure there’s a limit to how much thrust it can put out, but we haven’t reached it yet.”
Weitzel frowned, “Admittedly, we believe there is a lot more dark matter than there is ordinary matter in the universe, but we don’t know how dark matter is distributed.” He shrugged, “If you’ve really got a dark matter detector here, that’s one of the most important things we could try to figure out. But one of the things I’m having trouble coming to grips with is that there’s no reason to believe there are large amounts of dark matter in this region of space. If you think of your devices as acting kind of like a jet engine, sucking in dark matter on one side, accelerating it and squirting it out the other, it shouldn’t work very well in a region of space that is sparsely populated with dark matter. I mean, just like a jet won’t work in a vacuum.” He raised his eyebrows interrogatively, waiting to see if they grasped his concept.
Eisner lifted an eyebrow and glanced at Tiona, “I hadn’t thought about that. The density of the medium should have a large effect on the thrust generated.”
Tiona shrugged, “My dad thought of this problem. Of course we don’t know where the dark matter is, so there might be a lot of it in this region of space. But, he thinks that it might be that the thruster accelerates whatever’s in it to higher speeds if there isn’t very much of it. As opposed to a jet engine, which depends on having enough air to compress, burn and then expand; the field might be able to take whatever amount enters it and accelerate it even more if there isn’t very much of it. In other words the field accelerates the dark matter according to how much energy the field has.” She looked back and forth between the two men, “If there’s a lot of dark matter, the field accelerates it by meters per second. If there isn’t very much, it accelerates it kilometers per second.”
Weitzel frowned, “What if it’s like normal matter in outer space, where there is only a few molecules per cubic meter?”
She shrugged, “Then it accelerates those molecules close to light speed? They gain apparent mass and the action of accelerating those massive particles still drives the disc with an ‘equal and opposite reaction.’” She tilted her head curiously, “Of course we don’t know that that’s what’s happening. We just know that we are seeing a lot of thrust. Either there’s a lot of dark matter in this region of space, or the discs can generate a lot of thrust from very little dark matter.” She shrugged again, “Or, of course, maybe some completely different phenomenon is responsible for the thrust we’re measuring.”
Weitzel stared at Tiona for a minute; then turned to Eisner, “Can I borrow your rig for a while? Run some tests of my own?”
Eisner shrugged.
Tiona said, “I can let you have a pair of the membranes to work with, but it would sure be nice if you got your own current generator by the time the break is over. I’d like to keep doing my own studies.”
Eisner glanced at the current generator. “Of course. I can order my own, but are you saying you don’t need it right now?”
Tiona shook her head. “My dad has a couple in his lab. He’s really interested in this and we’re having a lot of fun working on it together so I’ll just be using his.”
Eisner and Weitzel quietly walked out together, each lost in his own thoughts. As they exited the building Weitzel turned to Eisner, “Her dad has a lab? What’s he do?”
Eisner shrugged, “I don’t know. She says he’s got a PhD in physics, but apparently he’s unemployed.” After a pause he resumed, “Obviously this isn’t for public consumption, but you should know—because it might affect some of your interactions with her—that they must have some significant financial problems.”
Weitzel frowned, “How did you come to find out about that?”
“One of the other grad students has seen her eating at the homeless shelter.” He put up a hand as if to fend off whatever Weitzel might say next, “We don’t think she’s homeless. Apparently you don’t have to be homeless to eat at the shelter, and Marlowe has seen her leaving the shelter after she has her dinner, but presumably she’s pretty low on funds if she has to eat there.”
“Oh… that’s sad. Let me know if there’s something I can do to help? Throw in a few bucks for some kind of an aid package?”
Eisner grunted, “I can’t think of a way to give her any money that wouldn’t be embarrassing. Besides, I told her about how you had some temporary paid work in your lab over the Christmas break and she didn’t want it.” He glanced at Weitzel to see how he took that; then continued, “To be honest, I found it a little frustrating. You know, that she’s accepting charity at the shelter, but won’t take on a little extra work to help her own financial situation?”
They walked a little further in silence; then Weitzel said, “Well, she’s a brilliant girl who probably has a good career in front of her. I hope she isn’t so far into debt that she can’t ever dig herself out.”
The two men went their separate ways.
***
When Tiona got home she found her father fidgeting in the kitchen, apparently making himself some lunch. “What did Dr. Weitzel think?” he asked.
Tiona shrugged, “He was pretty doubtful. However, he couldn’t think of an out and out proof that it isn’t dark matter. Neither he nor Dr. Eisner have been able to come up with a better explanation though.”
Lisanne came out of the pantry with a box of crackers. “It’s fun seeing the two of you working together, but what are you working on?”
Tiona looked at her dad, “You haven’t told her what we’re working on?”
Lisanne laughed, “You must be kidding. Your dad hardly ever talks about what he’s doing.”
Tiona frowned, “You’re keeping secrets from Mom?”
Vaz looked upset, but Lisanne came to his rescue. “It’s not that he’s keeping secrets, he just never thinks anyone else would be
interested. Except, now of course, his daughter who’s getting a doctorate in physics.”
Vaz looked more upset, “But… usually you don’t want me to tell you what I’ve been doing!”
Lisanne giggled, “He’s got me dead to rights there. Sometimes I ask him about what he’s working on and before he gets very far into the description I’m completely bored and usually pretty cross eyed too.” She smiled fondly at him; then turned to Tiona. “However, I am interested in whatever it is you two have been working on together. I can tell you’re both pretty excited about it.”
“Well, we’ve got these membranes, that when you use them in pairs seem to accelerate dark matter from one to another…” Tiona went on to explain what they thought was going on and how they thought that the thrust might be useful for station keeping in satellites.
Lisanne frowned, “But if these discs are sucking dark matter in on one side and spraying it out on the other, why doesn’t the blast of dark matter coming out the other side knock things around? Surely you’d be able to see that happening?”
Tiona’s brow knit as she explained. “That’s one of the big issues with dark matter. It doesn’t really interact with normal matter so that’s why it’s so hard to detect. Dark matter can pass right through us without our even noticing it. Many think that untold billions of dark matter particles pass through you every second.”
“Wait, you’re saying that if one of your disks was making a jet of dark matter and I held it up to my hand here,” Lisanne held her hand up like a paddle, “that the jet of dark matter would just blow right through my hand without hurting it? Or pushing on it? Like I’m a ghost?”
Tiona nodded.
“But… how can it do that? Aren’t the… atoms or whatever of dark matter going to hit the atoms in my hand and bounce off?”
Tiona frowned again, “You know our atoms are mostly empty space, right? One analogy that’s made points out that if you blew up an atom to the size of the inside of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, the nucleus of the atom would be the size of a grain of salt. So if particles of dark matter were similar in size, you can imagine how they would blow right through normal matter as long as they didn’t react electrically or magnetically or otherwise to the nucleus or the electrons.”
Tiona_a sequel to Vaz Page 11