by Ulf Wolf
Neither girl answered their mother.
Nor did Alex Lawson answer is son, he was still too stunned to assimilate what his son was saying. Longing was not the word he himself had assigned to the theta variable in his current equation, the word he had used was yearning. Splitting hairs though. And how on earth?
Julian, unaware of the always-to-be-expected sisterly taunting and of his father’s silent bewilderment, continued to look out the car window, and said nothing more. Really, he had only been thinking aloud, hardly aware of having spoken.
That same evening—everybody safely back in a far drier Brooklyn, spread out through their two story brownstone and very happy to be back in civilization, as Alice liked to put it—Alex knocked on Julian’s door.
When Julian didn’t answer, Alex eased the door open. Julian, bent over a book at his desk, didn’t notice. Alex knocked again, harder, on the now mostly open door, hard enough to disturb his son, who turned around.
“Dad,” he said, a little surprised to see him, a little worried even. Was something the matter?
“Julian.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No, not at all.” Alex stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “What you said today,” he began.
“When?”
“In the car.”
“What did I say?”
“About longing. Gravity, and longing.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Julian, remembering. A little embarrassed. “I was just talking.”
“What made you think of it?” said his father.
Julian shifted in his chair, a little uncomfortable about being put on the spot. “I wasn’t really thinking,” he said. “Or, more like I was just thinking aloud.”
“Yes, but where did the longing come from?”
“When I’m away,” he said. “I sometimes long for my room. Sometimes I even long for Alice and Sally. I know that might be hard to believe, but I kind of like having them around.”
“Believe it or not, I used to long for our cabin when I was your age.”
“Yeah, you told me.”
“But why gravity? Do you think matter has that capacity?”
“Of longing, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“You mean because it’s inanimate?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Well, how can something inanimate have the power to pull? If it can pull, it can probably long as well.”
Again, his son’s perspicacity rocked him momentarily speechless. “Good point,” was all he eventually managed.
A long, and a little awkward silence settled upon the room. Alex didn’t know what else to say and Julian—still not certain why his father had come in the first place—wanted to get back to his reading, but did not want to be impolite.
“Well,” Alex finally said, “I’ll let you get back to, to your book.”
Julian smiled and turned back to the text, father almost forgotten by the time he found is place again.
:
Not only did Julian skip the third grade, he skipped the seventh grade as well, graduating high school at sixteen. Yes, he was aware of his brilliance, but he was never conceited about it. In fact, he was too busy researching, figuring, finding, thinking, postulating—and discussing-slash-arguing with his father about the researched, figured, found, thought, and postulated—to be conceited.
Alex, himself a Cal Tech graduate, had little problem arranging for a generous Cal Tech scholarship for his son, who, as a result, arrived there as the youngest freshman in the school’s history to delve further into particle physics.
He made it well known that he intended to be—was, in fact—an experimenter, not a theorist (like his father). Nobody tried to disabuse him of that approach.
Ten years later he is still in Pasadena. He had not really intended to stay in California, but the prestigious school offered him both tenure and several grants to continue his research and he (as his father put it) would have been an idiot to turn down such an opportunity.
:: 71 :: (Pasadena)
The year was 1998, the season was late fall, and the event was a donors’ dinner held at the Athenaeum—the time honored Cal Tech building dedicated to the goddess of wisdom. Julian Lawson was there to thank as many donors as possible, Kristina Medina was there because her father’s company, Cortez Construction, was a generous Cal Tech sponsor. Her parents were away on vacation, so the task fell on her to represent the company. Naturally, the invitation had read “Mr. and Mrs. Medina,” but her husband had regretfully to decline the invitation. There were depositions to take in New York, and they were more pressing than a night of Cal Tech appreciation. Besides, it was Kristina’s family money that were being appreciated, anyway. Did she mind going by herself?
No, not really.
So, Kristina Medina, in her flowery and colorful best arrived for the both of them, conspicuous as a Rose Parade float among the grays and blacks of the conservative donor community. She even caught Julian’s attention.
As he pressed her palm in thanks, she pressed right back—sign of life, thought Julian, weary after thanking so many weakly past-their-prime palms for their invaluable support of science and progress.
Pressed right back, she did, and said, reading his name tag, “Julian Lawson.” Looked up, “I think I’ve heard of you.”
“I didn’t do it,” said Julian.
“Pity,” said Kristina.
They were not seated together at dinner, not even close, but—bored to tears by their respective dinner neighbors—sought each other out in its aftermath.
“So, Mr. Lawson, what do you do, actually?”
“Actually,” said Julian, sensing that she did in fact want to know, “when it comes to particle physics, there are two breeds of scientists: the theorist and the experimenter. Well, there is also the materialist, and he comes in the theorist and experimenter flavors as well.”
“And you are a non-materialist experimenter?”
“Precisely.”
“What is a materialist?”
“Oh, that’s a question.”
“I know.”
“Well, the short answer is that a materialist is a scientist who does not believe in nonlocality. And nonlocality is defined as an instantaneous influence or communication without any exchange of signals through space-time. Locality, on the other hand is the idea that all interaction or communication among objects occur via fields or signals that propagate through space-time obeying the speed-of-light limit.”
“Should that make sense to me?”
Julian found himself laughing, and heartily at that. Then said, “I don’t see why not.”
“And what does the non-materialist believe?”
“He believes in nonlocality.”
“And what does the non-materialist particle physics experimenter do, actually?” She wanted to know, again, actually.
“He, in a word,” then groped around for the next word, the right one.
“Experiments,” she suggested.
As simple as that, yes. “Precisely.”
“How, though?”
Julian took a good look at Kristina and saw that there was more than politeness behind that short question. “You do want to know, don’t you?”
“I do want to know, yes,” she confirmed.
Still he hesitated. Instead he said, “Do you want something to drink?”
“No, I’m fine,” she replied.
So, instead of drifting towards the open bar, he answered her question: “Right now, I hope to establish nonlocal synchronization between coordinated quantum particles.” And added, “Beyond any doubt.”
Kristina said nothing, but he had her attention.
“Quantum particles—and don’t ask me to explain them, for they are not really particles and not really not particles—often form bonds, and once they do they tend to act like identical twins, one does precisely what the other does, no matter the distance between them, and instantly.
”
Kristina—she appeared tremendously awake, holding the younger man’s eyes steadily—still said nothing.
“We call these twin quantum particles correlated. And one of the two correlated quantum particles can, and often—under certain circumstances—does, shift polarity, and in that same instant,” he stressed same, both with his voice and with his hands, “no matter what the distance apart—it can be light-years, literally—it’s twin will change polarity as well.”
“That sounds impossible.”
“I agree.”
“But it happens?”
“It happens.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s been proven.”
“But not,” she said, apparently remembering what he had said, “beyond any doubt?”
He took a long look at her before he answered, “It is proven to the experimenter’s satisfaction.”
“But not to the theorist’s?”
“But not to the theorists,” he confirmed. “We have no doubt, and when I say we, I mean the doers. But the thinkers, at least some of them, and some of the leading ones at that, like to poke holes—sometimes I think just for the sake of poking holes.”
“But how can you doubt the outcome of an experiment. Isn’t that the very purpose of the thing, to dispel doubt, because your eyes see?”
Julian nodded. Yes, that’s true. That’s true. Then said, “The trick with quantum experiments is that we’re dealing more with traces and effects of things than with things themselves. No one’s ever seen an atom, you know. They’re too small. And quantum particles are magnitudes smaller. But even the smallest thing casts a shadow, and we’re very good at catching and reading shadows.”
“And?”
“And the shadows show the instant correlation.”
“But that’s not good enough,” began Kristina’s suggestion. But Julian cut her off.
“One thing the thinkers like to point out is that we have never traced two paired quantum particles heading out into space in opposite directions, for, say, a light-week, and then change the polarity of one and see the instant polarity-change of its twin, now two light-weeks away.”
Kristina said nothing, but may have stopped breathing.
“The thing is,” said Julian. “The thing is that according to Einstein, nothing in this universe can travel faster than light. Nothing. So, even if these twinned particles had a means of communicating locally—and by that we mean, through this, the physical, universe—and this communication traveled at light-speed, the message would never reach its twin, for their separation is growing at twice the speed of light, heading off in opposite directions.”
Kristina nodded, yes, she could see that.
“What we have proven, in our experiments, is that this instant communication does indeed occur within the micro-time frame of billionths of seconds. But here, and this is what the theorists like to point out, the time span is so infinitely short that the particles don’t have a chance to separate very far, and who can really be sure of anything a couple of billionths of a second apart.”
Kristina nodded that she was following what he said.
“Of course,” said Julian, “it has to do with our equipment, and at this point our apparatus can only trace the flight—and polarity—of both twins in journeys this short. But in this scenario, yes, every time the change is indeed instant, and yes, even within these minute distances a physical message cannot reach a twin going at speed of light in the opposite direction, it will never catch up.”
“So what is the theorist’s objection?”
“Reliability of measurement. How do you tell, for certain, that one billionth of a second has passed, as opposed to two, or three—which would make all the difference?”
“A good watch?” said Kristina, smiling.
“We think the watches we have are good enough, but that may be an opinion.”
“So,” said Kristina. “What do you propose to do? How are you going to prove this? What is your experiment?”
“I am going to perform the experiment in the macro-time frame of tenths rather than billionths of seconds.”
He could see that she didn’t quite follow.
“If my experiment works, and I am certain that it will, I will show that a twinned set of quantum particles will instantly coordinate even if too far apart for a light-speed message to synchronize them. I want to rule out the crudity-of-time-measurement argument.”
“And how are you going to do this?” she said.
“With difficulty,” said Julian.
Again, Kristina said nothing, waiting for more.
“Firstly—and, believe me, this is no small challenge—we will shoot two wide laser beams rising in parallel at about a respective thirty-degree angle above the horizon from opposite points of the equator. One in southern Colombia and one on Borneo, Indonesia. These beams will rise from roughly 12,750 kilometers apart—that’s the diameter of the earth—to about 30,000 kilometers apart at a 15,000 kilometer altitude. That means that there they will be about one tenth of a light-second apart.”
Kristina, nodded, yes. “But you still not talking seconds,” she pointed out.
“I know. But the theorist has no problem with measuring tens or even hundredths of a second. Hell, they do that at the Olympics, and no one’s arguing.”
“I see.”
“One of these beams is capable of changing particle polarization, the other is set up to only read polarization. We will then fire a twinned pair of quantum particles from our sister lab in Cambridge, England, aimed directly at our respective beams at 15,000 kilometers altitude—well, one particle, the one whose polarization we will change, will hit his beam slightly lower than that in order to hit it before his twin.”
“How much before?”
“Oh, a couple of millionths of a second, somewhere in there.”
“Wow.”
“And, of course, we’ll know with the scientific certainty that the theorist likes with what polarity they leave Cambridge.”
“Of course.”
“So after about one-twentieth of a seconds travel the one twin will hit his beam and change polarity in the ultra-microscopic instance.”
“And his twin, hitting the reader-beam a couple of millionths of a second later will have changed polarity too, before hitting his beam?”
He looked at her for some time without answering. Then, “You get it, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.” Julian nodded, and smiled, and nodded some more. “And since the two particles are one-tenth of a light-second apart when the first one hits his beam and changes polarity, there is absolutely no way that a local, physical, communication can reach the twin in the two or three millionths of a second before it hits the reading beam. And in this scenario, the time frame now being macro, there is no disputing, none whatever, that the communication between the two is not communication as we know it. Rather, the way I see it, it is a knowing, an instant knowing between the two twins.”
“Wow,” said Kristina. Then she frowned a little and said, “How can you be sure to hit the beams?”
“We aim well. We know how to do that.”
“And change the polarity?”
“We know how to do that, too.”
“And all of this just to bring the experiment into the macro-time frame, as you put it.”
“That is, in fact, the only reason.”
“Bet you that’s costing a bundle.”
“And we thank you,” said Julian with a perfectly straight face.
“When?” she asked. “Your experiment.”
“In a few months,” he answered. “We don’t have a precise date yet. Some will depend of weather conditions and, believe it or not, on the activities of the sun, there may be interference.”
“I can believe it,” said Kristina. Then, after a brief silence, she said:
“And when you’ve proven this. What have you proven, really?”
“We’ve pr
oven the existence of instant communication, or knowing, between two particles. A knowing independent of distance, of space, and energy. What else we will have proven, I am not too sure, for I honestly don’t know how this can take place, only that it does. Perhaps there is a field or a zone, or a space, or a knowing non-space, beyond the physical where communication, if we can call it that, is instant, is co-knowing.”
“And proven well enough for the theorist to agree.”
“And proven well enough for the theorist to agree.”
Kristina was shaking her head, slowly, as if not knowing what to make of this. “But that would mean, wouldn’t it, that these particles are alive?”
“In a sense, yes. I’ve thought the same thing.”
And then Kristina said the fatal thing. She said, “You know, I always thought that gravity was alive. You know, all that pulling. That things just longed to be together.”
Not that Julian grew up uninterested in girls, he was as amazed by the fairer sex as the next guy, it’s just that his priorities were different. The problems of gravity, or of particle polarity had first claim.
But now, here in the Cal Tech Athenaeum, going on ten o’clock at night, a marriage of sort took place within him: this girl, this woman, standing not two feet away, nodding that yes, she understood, and yes, gravity had always seemed to her to be alive.
How could she possibly be?
Kristina Medina stopped nodding and her face took on a shade of concern. Was he okay? Julian then realized that he had said nothing for quite some time, and that he was—well, there was no better word for it—staring at her.
He finally found his tongue: “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that, it’s just that that is precisely, what you said about gravity, is precisely what I have often thought, and is what I hope to prove one day, though I dare tell no one about that.”
“You mean longing?” said Kristina Medina, who apparently had a clear view directly into his head by now.
“Yes, I mean longing.”
The silence that followed was mutual, but not uneasy. Kristina was the one that broke it, “What are you doing tonight?”