by James Flynn
Vittorio walked slowly around the room, letting her take in the detail. Running down the centre of the space was a giant table, its surface jet black. In one dragging motion Vittorio ran his hand across the table top, and the surface lit up, transformed into a screen. Chung Su walked up and peered down; the background was the CERN emblem, a design based on a particle synchrotron.
Vittorio had manoeuvred behind her right shoulder. “Modern technology is a wonderful thing. This is my own little war room; all elements of the experiment can be piped into here at the touch of a button.” With that he began tapping away on the screen, selecting various folders and playing the surface like a piano. He enlarged one screen to fill the whole surface. The image was pitch black, but as Chung Su looked closer she could just make out a faint shape outlined in the darkness.
“What you are looking at on the screen, Miss Chung is 200 metres below the floor of the chamber. It is our detonation site.” He judged her reaction. “I feel as though you have more information than I first thought so I shan’t labour the point. You are looking at a two-kiloton-yield nuclear bomb. Above this nuclear bomb is exactly 121 metres of heavy water.”
Chung Su looked at the professor and then back at the screen. Her mind wheeled back to the half-design Luke had found at Vittorio’s flat. That was what was covering the detonation site … heavy water. Heavy water was used a lot in experiments involving neutrinos. The Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan had first used it to detect neutrino patterns and directions. It was rare but heavy water did occur in nature. It occurred where both hydrogen atoms in a water molecule were replaced with deuterium. This difference – this heavy nature – allowed more neutrino interaction and observation.
The professor continued: “You see, once I had discovered that the neutrino moved faster than the speed of light, I suppose you could say that everything was off. If the basic principle of relativity was flawed then it opened up a world of possibility. If I am honest with you, Miss Chung, I was not certain what my next move would be, but I knew I had to really study the neutrino in a way that had not been done before. I could feel it held the key to something extraordinary. I knew that my next step would need to be ultra-secretive; security was paramount. Perhaps the Western ability to spend does have a purpose,” he laughed. “CERN threw money at me once they had seen the OPERA findings on the neutrino. Within the short space of two years I had devised and set up what we are now stood in.”
“What are we stood in?” Chung Su asked.
“We are in a multiple neutrino gallery of wonders.” Vittorio smiled at his own explanation. “Everything we do here is focused on harnessing the neutrino … I am not interested in mere hypotheticals or exploration for exploration’s sake. I wanted to use the neutrino. I don’t have to tell you the sheer magnitude of being able to harness the most abundant particle in the entire galaxy.”
Vittorio walked around and positioned himself opposite Chung Su. “We began a range of further experiments with neutrinos, tucked away down here. We were allowed a level of secrecy even I was amazed at. “e fed CERN snippets but they believed we were at the cutting edge of particle physics so they did not care. But what angle could we find to explore? We examined things in many areas, but there was one particular philosophy that has fascinated me for many years in physics, and it is so simple … balance.”
Chung Su listened in silence, feeling sicker with every glint of Vittorio’s eye. She remembered Brun’s words: Yin and Yang.
“Everything should have a balance, an opposite force to equal it out … why not the neutrino? That is where the bomb comes in.”
“Fission …” Chung Su whispered.
“Yes, quite right, Miss Chung. Fission is the key.”
Chung Su was desperately trying to get her brain ahead of Vittorio. What is it in the fission? Her mind ran through the nature of a fission reaction, the splitting of atoms, the doubling of the release of neutrons … balance … what am I missing? “Why a fission bomb?”
“Beta decay … the very thing that drew us to discovering the neutrino in the first place. Let me ask you, Miss Chung, what is emitted upon beta decay?”
Chung Su was confused. Was it a trick? “In beta decay a neutron becomes a proton, and an energetic electron is released.” She did not know what the point was, it was physics 101.
Vittorio nodded. “Almost, Miss Chung.”
Almost? What is he talking about? Vittorio began tapping at the screen. He pulled in a new file and enlarged it. It was a spectrum graph. There were a jumbled mass of lines running from bottom left to top right. It was an energy wave graph.
“Miss Chung, here is a standard energy emission from a nuclear fission explosion. I will not take you through the minutiae out of respect, I know you are familiar with it, but I will say that there is the correct level of energy output in the decay.”
The principle of conservation of energy, thought Chung Su.
“I can see you are not impressed, so let me show you this.” With a few more taps at the screen he brought up two more windows and expanded them out. One looked like a reworking of the energy wave graph, this time with coloured lines.
“Miss Chung, people all over the globe had been working to John Bahcall’s theory on neutrino numbering and volume. As you know, this seemed to solve the age old problem of radioactive decay adhering to the conservation of energy principle … the three neutrino flavours accounted for the missing energy released from decay. The neutrinos carried it. Do you agree?”
“Yes. Where is this leading?”
Vittorio smiled. “Let’s look at this graph.” He played the screen with his fingers and brought up a single graph that filled the whole surface. “What we have done here is isolate energy output from fission bombs.”
Chung Su scanned the complex energy spectrum, her eyes flicking over the array of coloured lines and broken dots, each with a different symbol. Her mind was fuzzy. She was looking for a discrepancy; she could see the neutron breakdown and absorption rates, the heat output … what am I missing?
Vittorio was enjoying the methodical reveal. “Let me help.” He touched the top corner of the screen and gradually each line dissolved, leaving three lines, a single letter next to each; T, E, M.
“Tau, electron and muon,” Chung Su whispered, the three neutrino types. A dotted line appeared above each neutrino line on the graph; the dotted lines had a shallower curve than their solid counterparts. Vittorio flexed with excitement, skirting around the table, positioning himself opposite Chung Su.
“The solid line is the energy output that should be seen, based on Bahcall’s neutrino numbering. The dotted line …” Vittorio stared into her eyes, “is the actual energy carried by neutrinos.”
Chung Su could feel her heart beating. But that can’t be. “But … how? I don’t understand.”
“It is very simple … we accurately measured the energy output, and then we matched that with the volume of neutrinos produced, and the dotted line was the output.” Vittorio rapidly tapped the surface. He brought up a range of overlapping oscilloscope double pulses, using them as evidence that they had been measuring neutrino interactivity extensively. He also brought up a range of input screens from the supermodules.
Chung Su felt her knees go weak. What Vittorio was saying didn’t make sense. The graph was showing that there was energy being carried away and no explanation as to what was carrying it … the neutrinos did not carry away as much as they should. But that means …
Neither of them spoke. Thoughts were firing around Chung Su’s head. She had so many questions but they wouldn’t sit still long enough for her to formulate them.
‘But they must carry away the energy? If they don’t…’ a lump caught in her throat.
“If they don’t then the whole thing violates the principle of conservation of energy,” Vittorio completed.
Chung Su knew theories were made to be broken. The laws of physics were built on shifting sands by their very nature. She had already
seen the neutrino destroy the general theory of relativity, but could it also now be playing a part in destroying another founding principle?
“Relax, Miss Chung.” Vittorio spoke like a man in control. “The principle remains intact. We have advanced measuring equipment here for the neutrino. The supermodules, magnet and heavy-water calibration are being used for the smallest of detections, and are able to help us predict far more accurately the amount of neutrinos produced in the explosion. A fission experiment is like a giant petri dish. In fact, we can pick out all elements involved … what I show you on this graph is accurate. There is a shortfall in the energy output versus particle emission.”
“But you just said the principle stays intact?”
“Quite right,” Vittorio nodded.
Then what the hell is carrying the energy away?
“A shortfall is impossible; your results are wrong”’ She tried to sound defiant.
“Is it impossible? Six years ago we would have said it was impossible for a particle to travel faster than the speed of light … but we now know that it does. What will we discover tomorrow that redefines our knowledge of the impossible?”
Chung Su had no words. She could feel the sweat building under her arms with the tension and excitement; her stomach was doing somersaults.
Vittorio continued, “As you can appreciate, we stumbled upon this quite by accident, we were merely trying to find new ways to examine the neutrino, and then this problem arose, a very big problem indeed … but a problem we solved.” Vittorio took a deep breath. Very slowly he pressed the screen, a taskbar came up and he selected another image. This one was of a black background with a brilliant white light shooting across it. “Behold, Miss Chung, an anti-neutrino … the balance.”
The world slipped; everything began to fall away, as though Chung Su were disappearing down a corridor. She felt she may pass out. It’s impossible … impossible.
Vittorio clapped his hands. “Ha, yes, believe it, we isolated the anti-neutrino. Its rotation is slightly different to that of a neutrino … a nuclear fission experiment sends them sprawling in their trillions every millisecond. No one could prove it because no one had this laboratory, and no one had gone this far.” Vittorio voice was rising. “A neutrino does indeed have an anti-neutrino, and we discovered it. Its mass oscillates just as a neutrino’s does.” Vittorio was as excited as a schoolboy.
Chung Su had no words. It can’t be.
“I can read your mind, Miss Chung. You wear the same look that I and Brun had. I can assure you it is true. Everything has its opposite.”
Chung Su felt like a rug had been pulled from under her feet. The very principles she had let govern her life were being torn up … it was despicable but she felt hurt, her pride damaged beyond repair.
Vittorio’s smile returned. “If that amazes you then I suggest you sit down … I have yet to show you how we used this knowledge … practical application.”
Practical application? The room was swirling. Chung Su could feel her body heat rising. Her eyes focused on the screen to try and stave off the sickness.
“Without realising, we brought together a perfect recipe. It is God’s intervention. Discovering the anti-neutrino is not what is going to change the world as we know it …” Vittorio lowered his voice and in a grave tone spoke. “It is this that will.” Out of nowhere the screen flipped to a video frame with a grey background; the video was paused at the start, and there was nothing else visible on the screen.
The screen reflected in Chung Su’s eyes; her already pale skin had almost become translucent in the grey light. “What is this?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
Vittorio sounded emotional. “This is what Allah gave us to rescue his disciples … a brand new particle … its reference name is QY66-BH5, but I call it As-Salam, the source of peace and safety. This is what we have striven for, and it is what will free my people all over the world.”
“Professor, I do not understand. There is so much … neutrinos are their own anti-neutrinos.” But there was no conviction in her words; she had seen the brilliance of Vittorio before. The room they were stood in, the chamber they were connected to, the tonnes of rock and earth that sat above them … she knew Vittorio was not lying. He and Beltrano had been willing to kill for the data they had, it must be true. But how has he done it? A new particle … then a thought that had been tapping at her subconscious came into focus. She had been wondering where the supermodules, magnets and redirected neutrino beam from CERN fitted in. The explosion was an outward force, why direct neutrinos in? The sudden realisation was almost too much.
“Neutrino annihilation,” she gagged on the words.
Vittorio dropped his head, then looked to the ceiling. “Ah Miss Chung … how I wish we had met in a different time on a different plain. You are so very close, but not neutrino annihilation … neutrino fusion.”
Neutrino fusion … what the hell is he talking about?
“This particle could not exist without the coming together of anti-neutrinos and neutrinos.”
Her heart began beating out of her chest again. She was transported back to her laboratory, to the endless hours of research, the mission of solving problems. It could not exist without anti-neutrinos … that’s why it must use fission … the neutron multiplication and emission is what produces the anti-particle.
“How?” was all she could muster.
“That three-letter question is what will hold us all in fiery damnation for all time. This whole thing is so simple, but completely accidental, a perfect recipe. The specific energy of fission lies in its neutron emission and its atom split. It is that outward energy configuration that creates the platform for what we need. This pushes out anti-neutrinos from its core, but what we really care about in this is tau anti-neutrinos and tau neutrinos. This is another reason why fission is key. As you know, electron neutrinos are only produced in fusion reactions, so we can already produce a higher number of tau. So we now have tau anti-neutrinos being produced.” Vittorio again played with the screens. He brought back up the image of the white line anti-neutrino energy output to prove his point. “And then with our unique OPERA set-up we could focus a beam of neutrinos, including tau neutrinos, directly toward the heart of the nuclear reaction. But of course we had no idea of any of this … we had no idea we were creating the most magnificent contained experiment. Then through God’s eternal grace we placed a vast amount of heavy water above the explosion site.”
Her mind again went to the blueprint. The two magnets were focusing the neutrino beams from CERN. What the hell has heavy water got to do with it?
Vittorio continued, “We were not to know that the perfect mix of all elements would lead to the production of QY66-BH5. You see, Miss Chung, producing anti-neutrinos in such high-energy reactions and then firing neutrinos into that reaction itself was not enough to cause any form of reaction, that I am sure is obvious, as we would have seen the outputs on countless experiments over the years; neutrinos are flying through us at an awe-inspiring rate.”
Chung Su nodded, able to do little else.
“We needed one more element … deuterium.” Vittorio said the word like a magician revealing a card trick. He searched Chung Su for a reaction.
“I need to know, Professor! Just tell me!” The frustration and fear overflowed.
Vittorio was taken aback with her harshness. “In very rare cases the tau neutrino and the tau anti-neutrino, empowered by the vast fission expulsion, reacted and fused with the deuterium to create what we see in front of us.” He gestured at the screen.
“You are a liar, Professor!” she snapped at him, desperate for it not to be true, hurt that someone else had been so superior to her. Yet the rational side of her brain replayed the death and destruction from the past week, the lengths they were going to to keep it secret.
“It is true. We observed the energy output.” The professor flicked up a small screen to overlay the video frame; it was an oscilloscope output, this tim
e showing not two but three energy pulses. “This is the signature … so simple, so beautiful.”
Chung Su felt like crying. “Professor, you have killed innocent people for this? I do not even see anything. What is it about this … this … particle?” She did not know what to call it. “How does it behave? What does it mean?”
Vittorio nodded slowly. “Practical purpose, it must always be about practical purpose.” This time, when he touched the screen he moved his fingers slowly, seemingly savouring the moment. He minimised the triple pulse oscilloscope output, and again left the video frame with the grey background.
“I don’t see anything,” Chung Su said sharply.
“You cannot see it, but there in front of you is one single particle of QY66-BH5, held nice and comfortably by our magnet. What you are about to see is a very low hundred-watt current we are going to pass through the small chamber.” He tapped the play button.
Chung Su shook herself. This was all ludicrous. What the hell would a lowly hundred watts do? So much suffering all over a scientific discovery. It was a great discovery in pure scientific terms if it was true, but only inside the scientific community. She watched the screen in disgust. But as the ten-second clip played, her mouth dropped open and she felt her knees begin to give way … God save us.
89.
Label on framed picture … label on leather chair … label off leather chair … label on green lamp … label off framed picture … label on armchair … label off armchair … label on armchair … label on vase …
Luke sat in a darkened corner, watching. He had been crouched unnoticed for a short period of time noting the comings and goings of several men. It was easy to distinguish scientists from Iranian soldiers; the scientists wore dark blue overalls, slung casually around their waists, whereas the soldiers wore black boots, black jumpers and ferocious-looking mini Uzis. The positive was that it seemed the five men were the only ones coming and going which denoted routine.