How does this work?
With anything as violent as a nuclear explosion, you must bear in mind that the bang you're timing started out from a hypersonic blast front. The source is initially moving far faster than sound and it takes a while before the sound wave decouples from the blast wave. So if you start timing the instant you see the light from the explosion, you will find that the sound is arriving sooner than you calculated it should. By the time the sound wave is 15 miles out, it's moving at the normal speed. In short, the sound wave gets an initial high-speed kick in the butt.
The implications of this are clear. Put another OPERA detector twice as far away, and if the neutrinos show up 20 nanoseconds early at both of them, then we know they're not tachyons.
Some scientists have complained that the FTL result was made public too soon. I find this position to be both timid and foolish. CERN has the biggest and best accelerator facility on Earth, staffed with some of the best physicists in the world. They have already done all they can to find some kind of mistake, yet still they measured neutrinos moving faster than light. If it turns out that there is a mistake and their measurement is invalid, we will find out sooner by letting everyone in the world mull it over, rather than by having the guys who've already looked it all over look it all over again. If the finding holds up, then the sooner everyone knows about it the sooner we can start rewriting the textbooks.
Over ten years ago I predicted in an Alternate View ("Five Predictions for Century 21,” July/August 2000) that “(f)aster-than-light travel will not only be recognized as possible, but recognized as feasible and within reach of twenty-first-century science.” Since there is no limit to the speed at which “aether can move through aether” I expected that sooner or later this fact would begin to show up in our experiments, whether we were looking for it or not. It's too early to know if the OPERA experiment is the first of these. It may be, it may not. But I sincerely hope we've finally found that chink in Einstein's armor.
One big enough to drive a starship through.
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* * *
Probability Zero: TO SERVE ALIENS (YES, IT'S A COOKBOOK)
by Eric James Stone
APPETIZER
Deviled Berundi Slug Eggs
Ingredients:
1 cluster of Berundi slug eggs (thawed)
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon Berundi slug urine (melted)
1 teaspoon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
Paprika
Directions:
Approach the Berundi slug nest at least thirty-six hours after local sundown, to ensure all local wildlife is in hibernation. Carefully raise the brooding Berundi slug from the nest and remove a cluster of 6-8 eggs from its underbelly. Store them in a padded container, as you don't want them shattering before they thaw.
Near the nest, you should find frozen Berundi slug urine (brown crystals with about a 10% concentration of acetic acid). Scoop up enough for at least a teaspoon of liquid.
Allow the eggs and urine to thaw/melt at room temperature. (Using too much heat will ruin the flavor.)
Slice each egg in half and remove the blue pit from the clear of the egg. Crack the shell of the pit and scoop out the yolk, which should be aqua in color and gelatinous in texture. (Warning: If the yolk is red, discard all eggs and set the kitchen to give itself a Level IV Decontamination, then go to MedLab and take a generic anti-toxin nanocap.)
In a small bowl, mash the yolks with a fork. Add the mayonnaise, sugar, urine, mustard, and salt; mix well. Stuff the mixture into the egg clears. Sprinkle with paprika to taste. Refrigerate until serving.
Diners should be advised that consumption of Deviled Berundi Slug Eggs does not violate Consolidated Federation laws regarding mind-altering substances, but will produce a mild euphoria.
* * * *
ENTREE
Berundi Cucumber Cordon Bleu
Ingredients:
1 skinless, de-spiked Berundi cucumber
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
6 slices Berundi tiger larva
4 slices cooked imported Earth pig ham
1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs
Directions:
During daylight hours, use a stunner to shoot down a Berundi cucumber. (Take extra care that its trajectory will not bring it down on top of you, as with enough momentum the spikes can pierce an envirosuit.) Finding a cucumber at night will do you no good, as hibernation ruins the flavor. Refrigerate at least 12 hours in a sealed metal container, after which the spikes will be loose enough to be plucked.
Approach a Berundi tiger at least thirty-six hours after local sundown, to ensure all local wildlife is in hibernation. Pluck a larva from behind one of its ears.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Coat a 7x11 inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray.
Slice cucumber into quarters. Pound to 1/4 inch thickness.
Cut off the ends of the larva and thinly slice the rest. Keep the slices separated by at least an inch or they will try to rejoin.
Sprinkle each piece of cucumber on both sides with salt and pepper. Place 1 larva slice and 1 ham slice on top of each cucumber piece. Roll up each piece, and secure with a toothpick. Place in baking dish, and sprinkle cucumber evenly with bread crumbs.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until cucumber is no longer green. Remove from oven, and place 1/2 larva slice on top of each piece. Return to oven for 3 to 5 minutes, or until larva has melted. Remove toothpicks and serve immediately.
Diners should be advised that consumption of Berundi Cucumber Cordon Bleu does not violate Consolidated Federation laws regarding mind-altering substances, but they should feel relaxed and uninhibited after eating.
* * * *
DESSERT
Berundi Elephant Mousse
Ingredients:
1 Berundi elephant dropping
Whipped Earth cow's cream
Directions:
The Berundi elephant is classified as sentient, so eating them is against Consolidated Federation law. However, eating their dung is not prohibited, and local elephants will provide all the droppings needed.
Thaw one Berundi elephant dropping in the microwave.
Blend dropping at high speed until it is smooth and a consistent orange color.
Pour into individual serving dishes and chill for at least 15 minutes.
Top with whipped cream just before serving.
After eating, wait for hypnoparalysis to affect diners. Generic anti-toxin nanocaps will be useless, and no specific anti-toxin nanocap exists.
Implant the suggestion that after the drug wears off and they return home, they recommend the cuisine on Berundi to all highly placed and influential humans.
Explain that the Berundi elephants will make wise and benevolent rulers, but that they cannot extend their leadership to the Consolidated Federation until enough humans are ready to serve them.
Copyright (C) 2012 Eric James Stone
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* * *
Short Story: YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION
by Jerry Oltion
It's so easy to know what's right for other people. . . .
I was reading the news from the Sol System when Hakam VanDerWendt, the fishmonger from Lesser Orly, set his morning porridge down opposite mine in the starship's grand dining hall and took a seat. “Have you heard the latest?” he asked excitedly.
“I'm reading it right now,” I replied, neither expecting him to get the hint, nor really caring. Distraction is the sole pleasure on a long journey, and I was happy enough to have it delivered in person if that was the form it took.
“Ceres has joined the revolution,” he said.
I had been reading about Mars, which had lost one of its three skystalks to sabotage. “Ceres?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as one can be with a com
mercial media feed,” he replied. “They say fighting has broken out in Piazzi, and is spreading around the Rim.”
I looked up and past him to the starry deep. Between us and infinity, several other diners read their morning news or conversed quietly with companions. A lone Hronan near the window nodded its reptilian head to me, tacit admission that it had overheard VanDerWendt's news. Or perhaps it was confirming it. I shuddered a bit at the sight of the creature, its ochre scales and toothy visage like a fever dream among the familiar accoutrements of a passenger liner cafeteria. I hoped it hadn't noticed my reaction, or if it had, had attributed it to the news my breakfast companion had delivered.
Ceres is the largest of Sol's asteroids. It apparently rotated faster when it condensed from the primordial cloud than when humanity thawed it out to terraform it, for it is thicker at the waist than along its axis. Consequently, it has two great oceans that cover the poles. The single ring-shaped continent that encircles its equator is called the Rim, and it's no wonder a fishmonger would be concerned with political instability there. Outside of Earth, the crenellated Rim presents the longest stretch of coastline in the Sol system. VanDerWendt had hoped to start a hatchery there with one or another piscine delicacy from his homeworld, or failing that at least franchise the rights for said delicacy to an existing operation.
Ceres. It was hard to believe. “Ceres is governed by a hereditary monarchy,” I said. As I spoke, my newspad flickered next to my empty bowl, delivering a photo of Queen Alinn the Fourth, a comely woman of perhaps a hundred and thirty. I ignored the rest of the data that filled the page, already familiar with the political situation there. “The populace seems perfectly happy to leave the governance to a royal family, and the family seems content to govern benevolently. It has persisted thus for centuries, if not millennia. What could they conceivably rebel against?”
“Taxation,” said VanDerWendt. “The Libertines have convinced the populace that they're being overtaxed.” He laughed, and dug into his porridge.
“You seem more cavalier about this than I would expect,” I said. “A revolution is a poor time to start a new business.”
“You're joking. At the right moment, I can buy the entire coastline.”
“And lose it to counterrevolutionaries in the next,” I pointed out.
“That would make it the wrong moment, then, wouldn't it?”
I laughed softly. “Assuredly so. How, pray, do you intend to know when the correct moment is at hand?”
“Intuition,” he replied. “And a good look at where the money is coming from. When the revolution starts costing the rich, it will stop.”
“Indeed,” I agreed. Wars undoubtedly cost money, and it stood to reason that one could predict which way a conflict would resolve itself if one could examine the coffers of the combatants. This was entirely theoretical, of course. I had never actually witnessed a revolution, nor had most of humanity. We were all watching Sol system carefully, no doubt each for our own reasons.
“You and I should share intelligence,” I said, though Ceres was not my primary target. I had boarded our starship with a briefcase full of credit that I hoped to exchange for antiquities when conditions became harsh enough for their owners to part with them. Most of my quarry would be on Old Earth itself, or Mars.
I had no intention of actually staying on any of the planets or habitats in revolution. Rather, I would visit them as conditions permitted, sweeping through behind the revolutionaries and ahead of the inevitable “peacekeeping” forces that would do the real damage. I would make my home base on one of the stable worlds. I had planned for that world to be Ceres.
A new voice said from behind VanDerWendt, “You look like you've swallowed a bad sausage. Should I get the porridge instead?”
I looked up to see Daden Ernu, the journalist from Rignan. She carried a plate of eggs and links.
“It's the news from our destination you should avoid,” I told her.
So of course VanDerWendt immediately said, “Ceres has joined the revolution.”
Ernu sat at the end of the table, facing both of us over her breakfast. “You'd think planets as separate as Sol system's would keep their own politics,” she said. “Why should Mars's problem spread to Ceres? Or even Earth?”
VanDerWendt laughed, but it was an unhappy laugh. “It's a single economy, that's why. We'll be lucky if this confines itself to the Sol system. This is a real populist uprising.”
“There are no populist uprisings anymore,” Ernu said. “Everything is choreographed. Managed for maximum profit. This revolution will end when the rich have fleeced the poor for as much as they can stand. Then they'll let the revolutionaries try to govern for a few years with a wrecked economy, and when prosperity fails to reach the masses the rich will blame it on the revolutionaries and return to power just as before, only richer.”
I winced a bit at her remark about fleecing the poor, and was working up a protest about preserving antiquities for posterity when I noticed the Hronan from the table nearer the window, the one who had nodded at me earlier, approaching ours.
“Your opinions are loud enough to hear across the ship,” it said, “but volume doesn't make them correct.”
We three humans sat momentarily stunned by its effrontery, but I recovered enough to say, “If we've offended you with our conversation, you have my apology.”
“It's not your conversation, but your ignorance that offends,” said the Hronan.
I felt my pulse quicken. “In what way are we ignorant?” I asked.
“Motives,” it said flatly. “Motives for revolution are much more complicated than mere finance. Even among humans.”
“You're an expert on human motives, are you?” asked Ernu.
“I am an expert on revolution,” said the Hronan.
A long and tedious journey had made me more tolerant than I might otherwise have been toward a potential argument. And my uncertainty about the situation into which we were traveling lent me the urge to learn whatever I could to prepare me for the months to come. So rather than send it away, I said to the Hronan, “Would you join us, then, and enlighten us?”
“I will attempt to,” it said. It pulled out the remaining chair from the end of the table opposite Ernu, but rather than sit on it normally it spun the chair around and leaned forward against the chair's back. I suppose it was more comfortable that way, given its tail.
“I will tell you a story,” it said. “A story of the Hronan homeworld.”
“And this will teach us about human politics?” Ernu asked dubiously.
“If you're smart enough to see the connection,” the Hronan replied. “How many children have you nurtured?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything.” The Hronan reached up with a scaly hand—a hand with four equally opposable digits—and pulled at a protrusion on the right side of its head. The protrusion stretched outward like a flap of underarm skin. “I have nurtured six.”
I could see six little bumps on the skin flap. Eggs? Nipples? Testicles? I glanced at my newspad, which displayed the phrase “bud scars” inconspicuously in the footnote space.
“Perhaps you aren't aware,” the Hronan said, “that Hronans grow more intelligent with each child we nurture.”
VanDerWendt said, “Are you sure of that? It works the other way for us, as a rule.”
“No,” said the Hronan. “It doesn't.”
VanDerWendt looked to me. “No sense of humor. Check.”
The Hronan ignored him. “A Hronan is just another animal until it nurtures its first child. Even then it's barely able to speak, and its motivations are simple and direct. Food, shelter, and sex. With subsequent children come foresight and wisdom. By the fourth child or so, a Hronan is considered mature.”
It paused, no doubt to let us consider the ramifications. “I would think you'd face overpopulation in short order,” I said.
“If everyone strove to be wise, that would be true,” the Hron
an said. “Fortunately, we are much like humans in that regard. Only a few seek wisdom. The rest are content to be entertained.”
I began to protest, but stopped with the speech still forming on my tongue. Even my homeworld of Uvo, renowned galaxy-wide for its high standards of education, held a substantial population of layabouts and vagabonds.
The Hronan said, “We urge our leaders to reproduce as much as possible, even nurture grandchildren, which provides an even greater boost to one's intelligence. A dozen rulers each with a dozen children and several dozen grandchildren will have a negligible effect on the total population, at least directly. Indirectly their accumulated wisdom helps the rest of us manage it very effectively.”
“How?” asked Ernu. “By imposing birth control? Taxation? Or some other form of punishment for overbreeding?”
The Hronan tilted its head to the side. “By concocting new recipes, actually. That's the traditional method.”
“Recipes?”
“For children.”
“Ah,” said Ernu. “You sterilize them chemically so they can't reproduce. We consider that a violation of individual rights.”
The Hronan tilted its head again. I suspected that was its equivalent of our shake. “We have no need of sterilization,” it said. “We eat them long before they breed.”
VanDerWendt had just taken a spoonful of porridge. He coughed it back into his bowl, then dabbed at his mouth and his tray with his napkin. While he recovered, I said, “I would think that would be considered an even greater violation of individual rights.”
“Does a pig have rights?” the Hronan asked. He pointed at the sausage and eggs on Ernu's plate. “A chicken?”
Analog SFF, April 2012 Page 11