Ball Lightning

by Cixin Liu

  We began conducting a large number of animal tests. The procedure was simple: take animals similar to human targets, such as rabbits, pigs, and goats, place them into the target area, and then release and excite ball lightning. If the ball lightning blast killed an animal target, then that macro-electron was selected for the weapons stockpile.

  It was impossible for your spirit not to be affected by watching ball lightning turn group after group of test animals to ash every day, but Lin Yun reminded me that dying from ball lightning was far less painful for the animals than dying in a slaughterhouse. She had a point, and my heart was steadier after that. But as the tests went on, I realized that things weren’t quite so simple: the target selectivity of the ball lightning’s energy release was so precise that oftentimes a macro-electron discharge would incinerate an animal’s bones, or vaporize its blood, but not harm its muscles or organs. Animals suffering those attacks died in a horrible fashion. Fortunately, Ding Yi made a discovery that put an end to that nightmarish experiment.

  Ding Yi had been studying ways of exciting ball lightning through means other than lightning. His first thought was lasers, but that was unsuccessful. Then he thought of using high-powered microwaves, to no success. But during the course of a subsequent experiment, he discovered that microwaves were modulated into a complex spectrum after passing through a macro-electron, different spectra for different macro-electrons, like a fingerprint. Macro-electrons that discharged into like targets had like spectra. And hence, recording the spectra of a small number of macro-electrons with a suitable target selectivity made it possible to find many more similar macro-electrons using spectral recognition, without excitation experiments. And so animal testing became unnecessary.

  Work on a ball lightning emitter for use in combat was proceeding at the same time. In fact, using previous work as a foundation, the technological fundamentals were basically in place. The thunderball gun consisted of several parts: a superconducting battery to store the bubbles; a magnetic field accelerator rail, which was a three-meter-long metal cylinder with EM coils set at regular intervals that could invert the instant the bubble passed, using the magnetic field created to push and pull it along the series of coils and accelerate it to speed; an excitation electrode, a row of discharge electrodes that would produce lightning to excite the thunderball as it passed; and subsidiary mechanisms, including a superconducting battery to power the system, and a machine gun targeting system. Since it used existing test equipment, the first thunderball gun required only two weeks to assemble.

  Once the spectral recognition technology was in place, the search for weapons-grade macro-electrons proceeded much more quickly, and soon we had more than a thousand of them. In an excited state, their energy only discharged into organic life. This quantity of macro-electrons was enough to kill all of the defenders of a small city, without the need to break so much as a dish in a cabinet.

  “Doesn’t your conscience bother you even a little?” I asked Ding Yi. We were standing in front of the first ball lightning weapon, which looked not so much like an attack weapon as a radar or communications device, since the acceleration rail and excitation electrode looked like a sort of antenna. Atop it were two superconducting batteries, meter-high metal cylinders in which those thousand-odd weapons-grade macro-electrons were stored.

  “Why don’t you go ask Lin Yun?”

  “She’s a soldier. You?”

  “I don’t care. What I study is on a scale of less than a femtometer, or more than ten million light-years. At those scales, the Earth and human life are insignificant.”

  “Life is insignificant?”

  “From a physics perspective, the form of matter movement known as life has no more meaning than any other movement of matter. You can’t find any new physical laws in life, so from my standpoint, the death of a person and the melting of an ice cube are essentially the same thing. Dr. Chen, you tend to overthink things. You should learn to look at life from the perspective of the ultimate law of the universe. You’ll feel much better if you do.”

  But the only thing that made me feel better was that the ball lightning weapon didn’t seem as fearsome as it did at first. It was possible to defend against it. Macro-electrons could interact with magnetic fields, and if they could be accelerated by fields, they could also be deflected. It was quite possible that the weapon’s power would be exhibited only briefly after its introduction in combat, so the military worked hard on the project’s secrecy.

  *

  Not long after the birth of the ball lightning weapon, Zhang Bin came to the base. He was in much weaker health, but he still stayed the entire day. In a trance, he watched the macro-electrons confined by the magnetic field, and watched as each was excited into ball lightning. He was thrilled, as if an entire lifespan was concentrated in that one day.

  After meeting Ding Yi, he said excitedly, “I knew that someone like you would solve the riddle of ball lightning. You and my wife, Zheng Min, graduated from the same department. She was a genius like you. If she were still alive today, these discoveries wouldn’t have been yours to make.”

  Before leaving, Zhang Bin said, “I know I don’t have much time left. My only wish now is to be cremated by ball lightning when I die.”

  I wanted to say some words of comfort, but, realizing that he didn’t need any, I just nodded silently.

  Observers

  A ball lightning weapons force was established, only a company at first, under the leadership of an unflappable lieutenant colonel named Kang Ming. The force was code-named Dawnlight, a name Lin Yun and I came up with, since the first excitation of ball lightning had been an unforgettable moment, when it turned the surrounding wisps of clouds red like a miniature sunrise.

  Dawnlight began intensive training immediately. The core of the training was live fire target practice. To get as close as possible to actual combat conditions, training was conducted outdoors, but it had to be carried out on overcast days to prevent satellite detection. For this reason, several target ranges were chosen in the rainy south, and exercises switched constantly among them.

  Across those target ranges flew lines of ball lightning fired from thunderball guns, in lines or fanned out toward their target. The balls made noise as they flew, like a shrill trumpet, or a gale across the wilderness. The sound of the thunderball explosion was very peculiar, with no directionality, as if it came from all of space, or even from within your own body.

  One day, we followed Dawnlight as it moved to a new target range. Ding Yi had come; but as he was in charge of theory, there was nothing much for him to do here.

  “I came to prevent you from making an error, and to demonstrate something weird,” he said.

  As the force was preparing for live firing, Ding Yi asked us, “Do you often engage in philosophical speculation?”

  “Not much,” I said.

  “Never,” Lin Yun said.

  Ding Yi glanced at Lin Yun, and said, “Not surprising. You’re a woman.” When she glared back at him, he added, “It doesn’t matter. Today I’m going to force you to think philosophically.”

  We looked around us. The target range was a damp forest clearing under an overcast sky. At the other end were temporary buildings and junked vehicles that served as targets. We couldn’t see anything that could be connected to philosophy.

  Lieutenant Colonel Kang came over dressed in camos, and asked Ding Yi about his requests for the shooting.

  “They’re simple. First, shut down all monitoring equipment at the site. Second, and most importantly, during the firing, close your eyes as soon as you aim at the target, and don’t open them until my command. This applies to everyone, including the commanders.”

  “You... may I ask you why?”

  “I will explain, Lieutenant Colonel. First I’d like to ask you a question. At this distance, what is the target hit rate of the ball lightning you fire?”

  “Nearly one hundred percent, Professor. Since thunderballs aren’t affected by ai
r movement, their paths are steady after acceleration.”

  “Very good. Now begin. Remember, after aiming, everyone must close their eyes!”

  When I heard the shout “Target set,” I closed my eyes. Soon afterward, I heard the crackle of the excitation arcs in the thunderball acceleration rails, which caused my flesh to crawl. Then the thunderballs started whistling. It felt like they were being fired at me, and my scalp tightened, but I fought to keep my eyes closed.

  “Good. Now you all can open your eyes,” Ding Yi choked out through the ozone produced by the ball lightning explosions.

  I opened my eyes and felt a momentary lightheadedness, and listened to the target reporter’s voice on the radio: “Shots fired: ten. Hits: one. Misses: nine.” Then in a softer voice, “What the hell!” A number of soldiers, I noticed, were scrambling to put out brush fires started by the errant ball lightning explosions.

  “How did that happen?” Lieutenant Colonel Kang demanded of the shooter behind the thunderball weapon. “Didn’t you aim properly before you shut your eyes?”

  “We did! The aim was dead-on!” the sergeant said.

  “Then... inspect the weapon.”

  “That’s not necessary. There’s nothing wrong with the weapon or the shooter,” Ding Yi said with a wave of his hand. “Don’t forget, ball lightning is an electron.”

  “You mean it exhibits a quantum effect?” I asked.

  Ding Yi nodded. “Indeed it does. In the presence of an observer, its state collapses to a determined value. This value is consistent with our experience in the macro-world, so it strikes the target. But without an observer, it exhibits a quantum state where nothing is determined, and its position can only be described as a probability. In such circumstances, all of this ball lightning exists in the form of an electron cloud—a probability cloud. And a strike on the target location is very improbable.”

  “So you mean that the thunderballs can’t strike anything we can’t see?” the lieutenant colonel asked in disbelief.

  “That’s right. Wonderful, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a little too... anti-materialistic,” Lin Yun said, shaking her head in confusion.

  “See, now that’s philosophy. It may have been forced, but you’ve done it.” Ding Yi made a face at me, and then said to Lin Yun, “Don’t try to school me in philosophy.”

  “Right. I’m not qualified. The world would be a terrible place if everyone shared your ultimate line of thinking,” Lin Yun said, shrugging.

  “You surely know a little bit of the principles of quantum mechanics,” Ding Yi said.

  “Yes, I do. More than just a little. But...”

  “But you never expected to see it in the macro-world, right?”

  The lieutenant colonel said, “Do you mean to say that if the thunderballs are to strike a target, we must watch them from start to finish?”

  Ding Yi nodded, and said, “Or the enemy could watch them. But there must be an observer.”

  “Let’s do it again, and see what a probability cloud looks like,” Lin Yun said excitedly.

  Ding Yi shook his head. “That’s impossible. The quantum state is only exhibited in the absence of an observer. Once the observer appears, it collapses into our experienced reality. We will never be able to see a probability cloud.”

  “Can’t we just put a camera onto a drone?” the lieutenant colonel said.

  “A camera is an observer, too, and will likewise collapse the quantum state. This is why I had all of the monitoring equipment shut off.”

  “But the cameras don’t have consciousness,” Lin Yun said.

  “Now who’s being anti-materialistic? The observer doesn’t need consciousness.” Ding Yi grinned devilishly at her.

  “This can’t be right,” I said, feeling like I’d found a flaw in his thinking. “If it’s as you say, then wouldn’t anything in the vicinity of ball lightning be an observer? Just like they leave an image of themselves in the camera’s photoreceptive system, ball lightning also leave ionized traces behind in the air. The light they give off causes a response in the surrounding plants, and their sound vibrates the sand.... The surrounding environment retains traces of them to some extent. There’s no difference between this and the images taken by the camera.”

  “Yes. But there’s a huge difference in the strength of the observer. A camera recording an image is a strong observer. Sand vibrating in place on the ground is a weak observer. Weak observers can also cause the quantum state to collapse, but it is very unlikely.”

  “This theory is too bizarre to accept.”

  “Without experimental evidence, it would be. But the quantum effect was proven at the microscopic level early on in the last century. Now we’ve finally observed its macroscopic manifestation.... If only Bohr were alive, or de Broglie, or Heisenberg and Dirac...” Ding Yi grew emotional, and paced back and forth as if sleepwalking, muttering to himself.

  “It’s a good thing Einstein is dead,” Lin Yun said.

  Then I remembered something: Ding Yi had insisted on installing four surveillance systems in the lab where macro-electron excitement had been carried out, in addition to the high-speed cameras. I asked him about it.

  “Right. That was out of safety concerns. If all of the systems failed, the ball lightning would be in a quantum state that would engulf a good portion of the base in an electron cloud. Ball lightning could suddenly appear at any location.”

  And then I understood why, in so many eyewitness accounts throughout history, ball lightning had appeared mysteriously and drifted randomly, always popping up out of nowhere, with no nearby lightning to excite it. This quite probably was because the observer was within a macro-electron probability cloud, and the chance observation caused the ball lightning’s quantum state to collapse.

  I exclaimed, “I thought I already more or less understood ball lightning. I never imagined—”

  “There’s lots you haven’t imagined, Dr. Chen. You can’t imagine the sheer oddity of nature,” Ding Yi said, cutting me off.

  “What else?”

  “There are things I can’t even bring myself to discuss with you,” Ding Yi said in a low voice.

  This didn’t sink in at first, but after a second of thought, I shuddered. I looked up at him, and saw him staring at me with a snakelike gleam in his eye that made my whole body shiver. Deep in my consciousness was a dark and shadowy place that I had striven to forget, and had nearly succeeded—a place I did not now dare to touch.

  *

  In the next two days of experiments, ball lightning’s macro-quantum effect received further confirmation. When observers were removed, the ball lightning shot from the thunderball weapon missed by wide margins, and hit targets at a rate of only one-tenth of that when an observer was present. We brought in additional equipment and performed more complicated tests, chiefly in an attempt to determine the size of the probability cloud of a macro-electron in a quantum state. Using a strict quantum mechanics definition, this terminology wasn’t entirely correct, since an electron (whether macro or micro) has a probability cloud the size of the entire universe, so it was possible that ball lightning in a quantum state might appear in the Andromeda Nebula, although the probability of that was infinitesimally small. We used “probability cloud” in engineering terms, to refer to a fuzzy boundary beyond which the chance was so low as to be insignificant.

  But on the third day, the unexpected happened. Without any observer present, the ten shots from the thunderball gun all struck the target. They were a class of macro-electrons that released energy into metal and had been excited into a high-energy state. A third of the junked armored vehicle serving as the target was liquefied.

  “Something must have been overlooked and left behind an observer. Maybe one of the cameras wasn’t turned off. Or, more likely, some soldier snuck a peek, to see what a macro-electron cloud looks like,” Ding Yi said decisively.

  And so before the next test, the two cameras were dismantled, and all of the pers
onnel on the target range were removed to a shielded basement cut off from the outside world. With the range empty, the already-aimed thunderball guns were switched to automatic fire mode.

  But every one of the fifteen shots of ball lightning struck the target.

  I was pleased that something had stumped Ding Yi, even if it was only a momentary difficulty. Looking over the results, he did seem worried, but his worry was different from what I imagined, and he didn’t seem overly perplexed. “Stop all tests and live fire training immediately,” he told Lin Yun.

  Lin Yun looked at him, and then glanced up at the sky.

  I said, “Why do we have to stop? There was no quantum effect this time despite the complete absence of an observer. We have to find the reason.”

  Lin Yun looked up and shook her head. “No, there was an observer.”

  I looked up at the sky, and realized that at some point the clouds had parted, and a thin strip of blue was visible through the crack.

  Burnt Chips

  We returned from the south to a Beijing autumn where the nights were already chilly.

  The temperatures dropped, and with them the military’s enthusiasm for ball lightning weapons. Back at the base, we learned from Colonel Xu that the General Staff Department and the General Armaments Department were not planning on equipping troops with these weapons in large numbers, and Dawnlight would not be expanded in size. This attitude on the part of the higher-ups was primarily motivated by the probability that the enemy would build defenses against ball lightning weapons. The weapons we had come up with were their own nemesis: ball lightning could be both accelerated and deflected in a magnetic field, so the enemy could use a reverse magnetic field to defend against it. Once the weapon made it into a combat situation, it would quickly meet an effective defense.