Lindl’s eyes went back to the horizon as they kept walking, “You know how you’ve been badgering Kiri to tell you who developed the tunneling theory?”
“Uh-huh,” Morgan said, his stomach sinking. If Lindl thinks I’m “badgering” when he hasn’t even been there for most of my conversations with her, I must be really obnoxious. He said, “Maybe I’ve been pushing her too hard?”
“Well, yeah—” Lindl said, looking over at Morgan. “You really are bugging her about something that doesn’t matter, like she says.”
“But it does matter,” Morgan said, feeling a little irritated. “If we try to license the technology and the guy who developed the theory everything’s based on decides to sue us—”
Lindl put a gentling hand on Morgan’s shoulder. The fact that it settled on top of his shoulder suddenly reminded Morgan of how tall his young nephew was. He turned to look up into Lindl’s serious eyes. Speaking quietly, Lindl said, “Uncle Morgan, it’s her theory. Nobody’s going to sue.”
Morgan stared. His mind raced through his knowledge of the situation, trying to find evidence with which to reject what seemed a patently absurd assertion. He realized with some embarrassment that one of the things that’d kept him from considering this possibility was his assumption that a mature man must have come up with the theory. “But— What. Really?”
Lindl nodded solemnly. “My little sister’s astonishing in a lot of ways, but with math and physics she’s just— ungodly.”
“But,” Morgan said, about to protest that a fifteen-year-old girl couldn’t possibly have come up with the complex math in the theory, but then remembered her father’s brilliance at a young age. Rather than saying something asinine, he said, “Why didn’t she just tell me?!”
Lindl shook his head, “She despises braggarts. Besides, Dad told her to keep it a secret.”
“It wouldn’t be bragging. It’s just a simple fact. Something I need to know to manage the assets Daryn left you.”
“Now you know,” Lindl said softly.
“But— But—”
“Nobody’s going to sue,” Lindl said calmly, “You can simply accept Kiri’s assurance on that issue and do business without worrying about it. Then, there won’t be any reason to keep bothering her about it and… you guys can get along better.” He didn’t say anything for a couple of steps, then, looking out at the horizon, he said, “But for God’s sake, don’t tell her I told you!”
Thunderstruck, Morgan didn’t say anything for a while. Then he realized they were getting near the car. He touched Lindl’s arm and said, “My friend Satya, the particle physicist, he thinks it’s really important for the world, for everyone, that the theory be published so other scientists can start working on it.”
Apparently unperturbed, Lindl only shrugged, “Just suggest to Kiri that ‘Dad’s friend’ should publish the theory under a pseudonym, you know, ‘for the benefit of science.’ I’m pretty sure she’d go for that.”
The End
Hope you liked the book!
Author’s Afterword
This’s a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I’ve always been partial to science fiction that posed a “what if” question. Here I ask, what if it was possible to markedly affect the frequency of quantum tunneling events.
Quantum tunneling refers to the ability of quantum sized particles to tunnel their way through barriers of various types. This phenomenon is very important in everyday life, from the way the sun fuses hydrogen to the way chlorophyll captures sunlight to store energy. It’s a problem with current transistors and might allow the creation of a new type of transistor in the future. If you want to look at a video of walking droplets acting like quantum particles, including tunneling, you could go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIyTZDHuarQ
The ability to modify tunneling would be incredibly valuable, though unfortunately it’s unlikely to be as easy as it’s portrayed in this story. A problem I’ve glossed over as the fact that (although fusion of small molecules like hydrogen releases energy) fusion of molecules larger than iron typically requires a lot of input energy. Presumably, even if you made tunneling easier, you’d still need to inject that extra energy with your device.
Alpha capture with loss of a proton is what Rutherford actually did in 1919 when he transmuted nitrogen into oxygen by hitting it with alpha particles emitted by a radioactive material. Thus, he added one proton and two neutrons to the nitrogen nucleus, transmuting it into oxygen. However, this becomes more and more difficult as you march up the elements, and when the nucleus gets larger than the iron nucleus, even stars have a hard time (thus you may have heard that much of the universe’s supply of the bigger elements is created in supernovas).
But what if you figured out a way to do it? One of the interesting things I learned while studying the periodic table for this story was how few places in it you can bump an element up with one proton and two neutrons and wind up with something more valuable than you started with (that isn’t radioactive). It’s also difficult to create the valuable radioactive isotopes with alpha capture. In the entire periodic table, rhenium> osmium> iridium> platinum is about the only good place to bump elements up and get more valuable products. Rhenium>> iridium is the only place where you wind up with a natural ratio of isotopes in the product (not that an unnatural ratio of platinum isotopes would keep your product from being valuable).
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Nora Dahners, Gail Gilman, Jack Hudler, Philip Lawrence, Billy McCorkle, and, Scott McNay, each of whom significantly improved this story.
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