Ripped Apart: Quantum Twins – Adventures On Two Worlds (17 page)

Late on the evening of December the twenty-sixth Professor Romain was sitting on his patio on the island of Raiatea gazing out at a world divided in two. A black dome full of twinkling stars above the unbroken black expanse of the South Pacific. Wearing cream chinos and a brightly coloured, island shirt, he was savouring a fine cognac and looking back on a satisfactory year’s work.

David Beauregard Romain was a tall slim Englishman in his late fifties with a neat moustache. One of the world’s leading quantum scientists, he had left CERN to pursue his own research. Using his personal fortune he had built the complex on Raiatea. Mathematics indicated that there had to be at least ten and possibly twenty-six other dimensions in order for the observable three to exist. His passion, he refused to accept the word obsession, was to prove their actual, physical existence.

He had an inquisitive and inventive mind. Ever since a teenager he had produced commercially viable ideas. Since having learnt early on that his father’s approach to business was all take and no give, everything was legally wrapped up, tightly. The royalties together with dividends from his steadily increasing shareholdings in his father’s companies, his own identity hidden though a variety of shell companies, provided him with the necessary money to fund his research into the quantum field.

Financially, the previous year had been good. He had been right to engage the couple, the three of them made a good team. Between them in that year alone they had produced two ideas with definite commercial prospects, sold as was customary to one of his father’s many companies.

His musings took him back to his decision to engage assistants.

*

During the course of refining his equipment, inexplicable anomalies arose. It seemed that interference was being caused – by a source that was not there. No matter how hard he tried, he was not able to detect what was causing the problem. One evening he remembered the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat.

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics required that the theoretical cat in the box was simultaneously alive and dead. Yet if one were to look in the box, the cat would be seen as either alive or dead. The act of looking having caused the observable reality to collapse the quantum superpositioning into one possibility or the other. With that possibility being dependent upon the viewer’s preconception of the outcome of the experiment.

That took him to the previous interpretation known as the EPR Paradox concerning entanglement, named after a paper produced in 1913 by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen.

In exploring the Earth’s quantum field Romain had slowly and very reluctantly come to the conclusion that his thinking about his experiments seemed to be influencing the results far more than was considered the norm for the acknowledged “observer effect” as epitomised by the famous double-slit experiment. At the back of his mind hovered the thought that it was precisely because he believed in the EQF that he had discovered it.

He pondered on the alternative paradoxes of Copenhagen and EPR, and that quantum entanglement across dimensions was his ultimate goal. The result was that he decided to follow what he termed the “excessive observer effect” in looking for the anomaly: was he somehow creating the anomaly, and why?

Eventfully, that approach led him to discover a fourth neutrino. Like all “particles” it was paired with its anti-particle. The crucial difference was that it was uniquely pair-bonded. As a result each half cancelled out the other making it undetectable, except by the interference it was causing. And implying that it had not even the minuscule mass attributed to other neutrinos or photons.

Creating a beam of neutrinos normally required a massive amount of energy and large physical structures. Inspired by the success of several young teenagers in creating miniature Colliders, he chose graphene for the container and designed and built what was in essence a miniature particle accelerator – that produced a stream of the new neutrinos.

Once again he was left with the thought – because he believed that he would succeed. Or rather, he slowly came to the even more outrageous conclusion: that those neutrinos “wanted” to be found. He knew he was verging on – even had overstepped – the boundary into psychosis. But. He was producing those new neutrinos in his laboratory!

It was as he was questioning his sanity that he knew he needed to engage doctoral assistants. And they had to be the right ones. He remembered being impressed by a postgrad student who had attended several of his lectures at the university in Los Angeles where he was Visiting Professor of Quantum Mechanics. There had been a quiet determination and an energy of subdued intensity about her and her probing questions.

Satisfied with the enquiries he made, he decided to follow his intuition. His contract required him to give a series of lectures every semester. At his next visit he took the opportunity afforded by the various dinners which he enjoyed attending to ask about the progress of specific past students, including a petite Japanese-American. He mentioned to one particular professor that he was looking for two assistants who would need to be able to work in a small team in a somewhat isolated location. Shortly thereafter that professor contacted him with the names of a married couple who might be interested.

*

A few days later, after the obligatory initial exchanges, Romain met the two applicants at the Uturoa airport in Raiatea and drove them along the coast road to a little patisserie where they relaxed and soaked up the feel of the island.

Miki Tamagusuku-Jefferson was the petite Japanese-American who had impressed him. She explained that her unusually dark skin came from an unknown mixture of races in her family’s history. At one time fisher-folk living on a small island off the coast of Japan, more than one of her distant ancestors had been the result of liaisons with passing sailors.

Honouring the sacrifices her parents had made for her education, Miki had kept her family name on marriage to Dr Tyler Jefferson. A solidly built man of average height, he liked to say that he was a very genuine Jamaican-American, as the unusual reddish cast to his skin was due to one of his recent ancestors being a Native American.

After a while, Romain pointed out the laboratory complex high up on the mountainside.

‘All camouflaged, it’s like something out of a James Bond movie,’ Miki had said.

‘All steel and glass reflecting the sun would have been a monstrosity,’ Romain snapped his reply. ‘One of the many reasons for its location is peace and quite. Essential for relaxation. I do not want my home to be an attraction for gawping tourists.’

They returned to the Ranger. ‘Think of Raiatea like a hat,’ Romain explained as they travelled the road up the side of the mountain. ‘Odd Job’s perhaps.’ Annoyed with himself for his over-reaction he tried to lighten the atmosphere in the four-by-four.

‘The brim is the coastal rim, heavily occupied by the small population, and the tourist trade. The rest is the mountain. Up here we are away from all that fuss and bother, the vibrations of traffic and the variety of electromagnetic waves being received and generated.’

They came to the end of the metalled road. ‘As you can see we are almost isolated here. A four-by-four is not really necessary but it makes easy going of this track. And that may be improved if the planned observatory is ever built. Social concourse with other scientists will be a welcome diversion.’

He pulled up outside a long, low building on their right. ‘There is the communication mast,’ he said, pointing to the left at the sheltering mountain crest. ‘Permanently in line of sight with one of the several telecommunications satellites. Essential for my international travelling.’
And crucial for my secret link with CERN
.

As they entered the building, then the lift, he pointed to the buttons and explained. ‘This is the first floor, then numbered down to four. I am not going to say that I live on the ground floor and work in the basement! Not after all the years underground at CERN.’

Exiting the building on the fourth floor, stepping onto the large patio with its swimming pool, both visitors gasped at the beauty of the view across the Pacific Ocean some seven hundred metres below. Turning to face the building they saw that the front was almost entirely glass. The windows and doors in varying shades of green, the supporting structure in shades of brown and the dark blue-grey of the mountain rock, and the whole edifice crowned off by a large conservatory that ran across most of its width, but was not apparent to anyone entering the first floor.

‘The whole building is my own design. What I call the securaglass in the windows, one of my inventions. From inside: a completely clear view with solar filtering as necessary.

‘This floor: a stretch of modular accommodation. Currently including guest rooms and facilities where you will stay tonight.

‘To the right, the steps leading up to that small balcony, domestic staff accommodation and main kitchen. To the left, the steps to the small patio, accommodation for my assistants. Specifically designed for a couple, of whatever persuasion. Further to the left the emergency stairs. Caged in for safety if it has to be used in high winds.

‘Above, third floor, the main research laboratory. Behind that, tunnelled into the rock for the same reasons of shielding as at CERN, the key to all my research. It contains my equipment which is unique, in the true meaning of that word. I call it the Fifth Room.’ He paused for a moment. Silly maybe, but a little test.

‘The four dimensions of space-time-consciousness, then another one you want to prove is as real,’ Miki said.

Romain smiled as he nodded. ‘Shielding and security is so much better and easier to create here than digging down into the exorbitantly priced land of the coastal strip, even if I could have found the right location.

‘Above, second floor. What I call the working laboratory where ideas with commercial potential are developed. To the left, the West room: fully equipped for work outside the main labs. To the right the East room.’ He turned to make eye contact with both, momentarily lingering on Miki. ‘Also with equipment that is truly unique.’ A decade younger than her husband, it was not long since she had been awarded her doctorate, yet he sensed she was the driving force of the pair.

‘Finally, top floor, my own suite. As you can see, the roofs are almost entirely covered with solar panels. Back up generators of course. Never been needed.

‘The design. Not ideal perhaps, but it works. The gently curving facade and several levels largely determined by the shape of the mountain face and the outcroppings of solid rock. No need to dig down and lay foundations.

‘Enjoy the view,’ he said and walked a few paces away, giving them time to discuss their initial reactions.

He disagreed with Professor Eysenck about interviews not being necessary. In this particular situation they were essential. Whoever he chose, the three of them would be living and working closely together with little outside socialising. With no intention of revealing his mutually beneficial negotiations with the Island’s President and the High Commissioner, he realised that he had spoken abruptly in making it clear that the whole edifice and its location had been designed for practical reasons.

He liked their CV’s. He needed to sooth the initial contact before they settled down for serious discussions. As he walked up to them, Dr Tamagusuku was standing nearer to him than her husband.

‘Well, what do think, Miss Moneypenny?’ he had asked with a slight smile.

As she had turned to face him he had seen her blink her eyes in surprise. A momentary pause.

‘It is impressive, Mr Bond,’ she replied with a straight face.

After a short break to allow the couple to unpack, freshen up and change, they met for a light lunch and the commencement of serious questioning and discussions.

Satisfied that their scientific background was what he needed, Romain found himself more than content with the philosophical exchanges with Miki as she was happy to speculate outside conventional boundaries. Tyler’s rigidly practical responses were causing him concern. How could he cope with where Romain’s thoughts had taken him?

The following morning he offered them a tour of the laboratories, subject to completion of tightly worded non-disclosure agreements. Tyler was clearly excited to see the miniature linear accelerator. When Romain was questioned by Tyler on his reasoning, and the possibility of constructing an equally miniature collider, the professor was guarded with his replies and said nothing about his discovery of a new neutrino.

Sure about engaging Miki, unsure about Tyler, yet impressed by the obvious enthusiasm for the practical side of quantum mechanics he had shown during the tour, Romain offered an unusual trial engagement. They would take the maximum holiday period they were permitted that summer and come to Raiatea where they would work with him.

During those few weeks they ran a series of trials using the linear accelerator. Tyler failed to produce any of the new neutrinos whilst, working together, Romain and Miki succeeded – as long as Tyler was not in the same room.

The key element in the experiments with the psien was that they had to believe in what they were seeking to achieve. Romain had slowly come to that realisation over the years. With Miki’s personal philosophy she had been willing to suspend a hard, practical scientific approach, give it a go – and succeed.

Tyler was too good a scientist to ignore the evidence, especially when it passed the essential test of being regularly repeated. He accepted Romain’s definition of an ‘excessive observer effect’ as a neat description to cover the fact that he really could not accept that he was mentally influencing sub-atomic particles.

Most quantum scientists believed that too many sub-atomic particles existed for the ultimate building block or blocks of the universe yet to have been discovered. When Tyler eventually achieved limited success and produced a few of the new neutrinos, he became excited by the prospect that he might actually have seen the first particle at that level. Were they exploring sub-quantum mechanics? Was there a whole new set of ‘rules’ to be discovered? Could he and Miki be part of that adventure?