James P. Hogan - The Genesis Machine

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The Genesis Machine -- James P. Hogan
(Version 2002.04.02 -- Done)
Every child is a born scientist.
This book is dedicated to DEBBIE, JANE, and TINA -- the three young
scientists who taught me to distinguish reality from illusion by asking
always:
"Who says so?"
"Who's he?"
and, "How does he know?"
Chapter 1
The familiar sign that marked the turnoff from the main highway leading
toward Albuquerque, some thirty or so miles farther north, read:
ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH ESTABLISHMENT
GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS
SHOW PASSES -- 1 1/2 MILES AHEAD
Accompanied by the falling note of a barely audible electric whine, the
Ford Cougar decelerated smoothly across the right-hand traffic lane and
entered the exit slipway. Without consciously registering the bleeped warning
from the driver's panel, Dr. Bradley Clifford felt the vehicle begin
responding to his touch as it slipped from computer control to manual drive.
The slipway led into a shallow bend that took him round behind a low sandy
rise, dotted with clumps of dried scrub and dusty desert thorn, and out of
sight of the main highway.
The road ahead, rolling lazily into the hood of the Cougar, lay draped
around the side of a barren, rock-strewn hill like a lizard sunbathing on a
stone. In the shimmering haze beyond and to the right of the hill, the rugged
red-brown bastions that flanked the valley of the Rio Grande stood row behind
row in their ageless, immutable ranks, fading into layers of pale grays and
blues that blended eventually with the sky on the distant horizon.
The road reached a high point about halfway up the shoulder of the hill,
and from there wound down the other side to commence its long, shallow descent
into the mouth of the barren valley beyond, at the far end of which was
situated the sprawling complex of the Advanced Communications Research
Establishment. At this time of the morning, the sun shone from the far side of
the Establishment, transforming the jumble of buildings, antenna towers, and
radio dishes into stark silhouettes crouching menacingly in front of the
black, shadowy cliffs that marked the head of the valley. From a distance, the
sight always reminded Clifford of a sinister collection of gigantic mutant
insects guarding the entrance to some dark and cavernous lair. The shapes
seemed to symbolize the ultimate mutation of science -- the harnessing of
knowledge to unleash ever more potent forces of destruction upon a tormented
world.
About a mile farther on and halfway down to the valley floor, he came to
the checkpoint where the road passed through the outer perimeter fence of
ACRE. A black Army sergeant, in shirtsleeves but armed and wearing a steel
helmet, walked forward from the barrier as Clifford slowed to a halt beside a
low column. Nodding his acknowledgment to the guard's perfunctory "'Morning,"
Clifford extracted the magnetically coded card from his pass folder, inserted
it into a slot in the front of the box that surmounted the column, and handed
the folder to the guard. Then he pressed the ball of his thumb against the
glass plate located adjacent to the slot. A computer deep beneath ACRE's
Administration Block scanned the data fed in at the checkpoint, checked it
against the records contained in its files, and flashed the result back to
another soldier who was seated in front of a display console inside the
guardhouse. The sergeant returned the pass folder to Clifford's outstretched
hand, cast a cursory glance around the inside of the vehicle, then stepped
back and raised his arm. The Cougar moved through and the barrier dropped into
place behind.
Fifteen minutes later, Clifford arrived at his office on the third floor of
the Applied Studies Department of the Mathematics & Computer Services
Building. On the average, he spent probably not more than two days a week at
ACRE, preferring to work at home and use his Infonet terminal, which gave him
access to the Establishment's data bank and computers. On this occasion he
hadn't been in for eight days, but when he checked the list of messages on his
desk terminal, he found nothing that was especially pressing; all the urgent
calls had already been routed on to his home number and dealt with from there.
So no unexpected panics to worry about before his eleven-o'clock
meeting.
No sooner had he thought it, when the chime sounded to announce an
incoming call. He sighed and tapped a button to accept.
"Clifford."
The screen showed a momentary frenzy of color, which stabilized almost
immediately into the features of a thin, pale-faced individual with thinning
hair and a hawkish nose. He looked mean. Clifford groaned inwardly as he
recognized the expression of righteous and pained indignation. It was Wilbur
Thompson, Deputy to the Deputy Financial Controller of Mathcomps and self-
appointed guardian of protocol, red tape, and all things subject to proper
procedures.
"You might have told me." The voice, shrill with outrage, grated on
Clifford's ears like a hacksaw on tungsten carbide. "There was absolutely no
reason for you to keep quiet about it. I would have thought that the least
somebody with my responsibilities could expect would be some kind of
cooperation from you people. This kind of attitude doesn't help anybody at
all."
"Told you what?"
"You know what. You requisitioned a whole list of category B equipment
despite the fact that your section is way over budget on capital procurement
for the quarter, and without an SP6 clearance. When I queried it, you let me
go ahead and cancel without telling me you'd gotten a priority approval from
Edwards. Now the whole thing's a mess and I've got everybody screaming down my
throat. That's what."
"You didn't query it," Clifford corrected matter-of-factly. "You just
told me I couldn't do it. Period."
"But...You let me cancel."
"You said you had no alternative. I took your word for it."
"You knew damn well there'd be an exception approval on file."
Thompson's eyes were bulging as if he were about to become hysterical. "Why
didn't you mention the fact, or give me an access reference to it? How was I
supposed to know that the project director had personally given it a priority
1 status? What are you trying to do, make me look like some kind of idiot or
something?"
"You manage that okay without me."
"You listen to me, you smart-assed young bastard! D'you think this job
isn't tough enough already without you playing dummy? There was no reason why
I should have checked for an exception approval against that requisition. Now
I'm being bawled out because the whole project's bottlenecked. What the hell
made you think I'd want to check it out?"
"It's your job," Clifford said dryly, and cut off the screen.
He just had time to select some of the folders lying on his desk and to
turn for the door, when the chime sounded again. He cursed aloud, turned back
to the terminal, and pressed the Interrogate key to obtain a preview of the
caller without closing the circuit that completed the two-way channel. As he
had guessed, it was Thompson again. He looked apoplectic. Clifford released
the key and sauntered out into the corridor. He collected coffee from the
automat area, then proceeded on to one of the graphical presentation rooms
which he had already reserved for the next two hours. Since the meeting
demanded his presence at ACRE that day, he thought he might as well make the
most of the opportunity presented to him.
An hour later Clifford was still sitting at the operator's console in
the darkened room, frowning with concentration as he studied the array of
multidimensional tensor equations that glowed at him from the opposite wall.
The room was one of several specifically built to facilitate the manipulation
and display of large volumes of graphical data from ACRE's computer complex.
The wall that Clifford was looking at Was, in effect, one huge computer
display screen. In levels deep below the building, the machines busied
themselves with a thousand other tasks while Clifford pondered the subtle
implications contained in the patterns of symbols. At length, he turned his
head slightly to direct his words at the microphone grille set into the
console, but without taking his eyes off the display, and spoke slowly and
clearly.
"Save current screen; name file Delta Two. Retain screen modules one,
two, and three; erase remainder. Rotate symmetric unit phi-zero-seven.
Quantize derivative I-vector using isospin matrix function. Accept I-
coefficients from keyboard two; output on screen in normalized orthogonal
format."
He watched as the machine's interpretation of the commands appeared on
one of the small auxiliary screens built into the console, nodded his
approval, then tapped a rapid series of numerals into the keyboard.
"Continue."
The lower part of the display went blank and a few seconds later began
filling again with new patterns of symbols. Clifford watched intently, his
mind totally absorbed with trying to penetrate the hidden laws within which
Nature had fashioned its strange interplays of space, time, energy and matter.
In the early 1990s, a German theoretical physicist by the name of Carl
Maesanger had formulated the long-awaited mathematical theory of Unified
Fields, combining into one interrelated set of equations the phenomena of the
"strong" and "weak" nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and gravity.
According to this theory, all these familiar fields could be expressed as
projections into Einsteinian space-time of a complex wave function propagating
through a higher-order, six-dimensional continuum. Being German, Maesanger had
chosen to call this continuum eine sechsrechtwinkelkoordinatenraumkomplex. The
rest of the world preferred simply sk-space, which later became shortened to
just k-space.
Maesanger's universe, therefore, was inhabited by k-waves -- compound
oscillations made up of components that could vibrate about any of the six
axes that defined the system. Each of these dimensional components was termed
a "resonance mode," and the properties of a given k-wave function were
determined by the particular combination of resonances that came together to
produce it.
The four low-order modes corresponded to the dimensions of relativistic
space-time, the corresponding k-functions being perceived at the observational
level simply as extension; they defined the structure of the empty universe.
Space and time were seen not merely as providing a passive stage upon which
the various particles and forces could act out their appointed roles, but as
objective, quantifiable realities in their own right. No longer could empty
space be thought of as simply what was left after everything tangible had been
removed.
Addition of the high-order modes implied components of vibration
occurring at right angles to all the coordinates of normal space-time. Any
effects that followed from these higher modes were incapable, therefore, of
occupying space in the universe accessible to man's senses or instruments.
They could impinge upon the observable universe only as dimensionless points,
capable of interacting with each other in ways that depended on the particular
k-functions involved; in other words, they appeared as the elementary
particles.
The popular notion of a particle as a tiny, smooth ball of "something" -
- a model that, because of its reassuring familiarity, had been tenaciously
clung to for decades despite the revelations of quantum wave mechanics -- was
finally put to rest for good. "Solidness" was at last recognized as being
totally an illusion of the macroscopic world; even the measured radius of the
proton was reduced to no more than a manifestation of the spatial probability
distribution of a point k-function.
When high- and low-order resonances occurred together, they resulted in
a class of entities that exhibited a reluctance to alter their state of rest
or steady motion as perceived in normal space, so giving rise to the quantity
called "mass." A 5-D resonance produced a small amount of mass and could
interact via the electromagnetic and weaker forces. A full 6-D resonance
produced a large amount of mass and added the ability to interact via the
strong nuclear force as well.
The final possibility was for high-order modes to exist by themselves,
without there being any component of vibration in normal space-time at all.
This yielded point-centers of interaction that offered no resistance
whatsoever to motion in space-time and therefore always moved at the maximum
speed observable -- the speed of light. These were the massless particles --
the familiar photon and neutrino and the hypothetical graviton.
In one sweeping, all-embracing scheme, Maesanger's wave equations gave a
common explanation for the bewildering morass of facts that had been
catalogued by thousands of experimenters in a score of nations throughout the
1950s to the 1980s. They explained, for example, why it is that a particle
that interacts strongly always interacts in all possible weaker ways as well,
although the converse might not be true; clearly the 6-D resonance responsible
for the strong nuclear force had, by definition, to include all possible lower
modes as subsets of itself. If it didn't, it wouldn't be a 6-D resonance. This
picture also explained why heavy particles always interact strongly.
Theory predicted that 5-D resonance would produce particles of small
mass, unable to participate in strong interactions; existence of the electron
and muon proved it. Further considerations suggested that any heavy particle
ought to be capable of assuming three discrete states of electric charge, each
of which should be accompanied by just a small change in mass; sure enough,
the proton and neutron provided prime examples.
If an interaction occurred between two resonances whose respective
components on the time axis were moving in opposite directions -- and there
was nothing in the theory to say this couldn't happen -- the two temporal
waves would cancel each other to produce a new entity that had no duration in
time. To the human observer they would cease to exist, producing the effect of
a particle-antiparticle annihilation.
As a young graduate at CIT in the late 1990s, Bradley Clifford had
shared in the excitement that had reverberated around the scientific world
after publication of Maesanger's first paper. K-theory became his consuming
passion, and soon uncovered his dormant talents; by the time he entered his
postdoctoral years, he had already contributed significantly to the further
development of several aspects of the theory. Driven by the restless,
boundless energy of youth, he thrust beyond the ever-widening frontier of
human knowledge, and always the need to know what lay beyond the next hill
drew him onward. Those were his idyllic days; there were not enough hours in
the day, days in the year, or years in a lifetime to accomplish all the things
he knew he had to do.
But gradually the realities of the lesser world of lesser men closed in.
The global political and economic Situation continued to deteriorate and
fields of pure academic research were increasingly subjected to more stringent
controls and restraints. Funds that had once flowed freely dried to a trickle;
vital equipment was denied; the pick of available talent was lured away by
ever more tempting salaries as military and defense requirements assumed
priority. Eventually, under special legislation, even the freedom of the
nation's leading scientists to work where and how they chose became a luxury
that could no longer be allowed.
And so he had come to ACRE, virtually as a draftee...to find more
effective methods of controlling satellite-borne antimissile lasers.
But though they had commandeered his body and his brain, they could
never commandeer his soul. The computers and facilities at ACRE surpassed
anything he had ever dreamed of at CIT. He could still let his mind fly free,
to soar into the realm of Carl Maesanger's mysterious k-space.
It seemed to him that only minutes had passed when the reminder began
flashing in the center of the wall screen, warning him that the meeting was
due to commence in five minutes.
Chapter 2
Professor Richard Edwards, Principal Scientific Executive and second-in-
command at ACRE, contemplated the document lying on the table in front of him.
The wording on the title sheet read: K-Space Rotations and Gravity Impulses.
Seated around the corner of the table to the professor's left, Walter Massey
thumbed idly through his copy, making little of the pages of complex formulae.
Opposite Massey, Miles Corrigan leaned back in his chair and regarded Clifford
with a cool, predatory stare, making no attempt to conceal the disdain that he
felt toward all scientists.
"The rules of this Establishment are perfectly clear, Dr. Clifford,"
Edwards began, speaking over the top of his interlaced fingers. "All
scientific material produced by any person during the time he is employed at
ACRE, produced in the course of his duties or otherwise, automatically
qualifies as classified information. Precisely what are your grounds for
requesting an exemption and permission to publish this paper?"
Clifford returned his look expressionlessly, trying hard for once not to
show the irritation he felt for the whole business. He didn't like the air of
an Inquisition that had pervaded the room ever since they sat down.
His reply was terse: "Purely scientific material of academic interest
only. No security issues involved."
Edwards waited, apparently expecting more. After a few, dragging
seconds, Massey shuffled his feet uncomfortably and cleared his throat.
Massey was Clifford's immediate boss in Mathcomps. He was every inch a
practical, hard-applications engineer, fifteen years in the Army's Technical
Services Corps having left him with no great inclination toward theoretical
matters. When he was assigned a task, he did it without questioning either the
wisdom or the motives of his superiors, both of which he took for granted. It
was best not to think about such things; that always led to trouble. He
represented the end-product of the system, faithfully carrying out his side of
a symbiotic existence in which he traded off individual freedom for collective
security. He felt a part of ACRE and the institution that it symbolized, in
the same way that he had felt a part of the Army; it provided him with the
sense of belonging that he needed. He served the organization and the
organization served him; it paid him, trained him, made all his major
decisions for him, rapped his knuckles when he stepped out of line, and
promoted him when he didn't. If he had to, he would readily die fighting to
defend all that it stood for.
But Clifford didn't find him really a bad guy for all that.
Right now, Massey wasn't too happy about the way in which Clifford was
handling things. He didn't give a damn whether the paper ended up being
published or not, but it bothered him that somebody from his section didn't
seem to be putting up a good fight to speak his case. The name of the platoon
was at stake.
"What Brad means is, the subject matter of his paper relates purely to
abstract theoretical concepts. There's nothing about it that could be thought
of as having anything to do with national security interests." Massey glanced
from Edwards to Corrigan and back again. "You might say it's kinda like a
hobby...only Brad's hobby happens to involve a lot of mathematics."
"Mmm..." Edwards rubbed his thumbs against the point of his chin and
considered the proposition. Abstract theoretical concepts had a habit of
turning into reality with frightening speed. Even the most innocent-looking
scraps of trivia could acquire immense significance when fitted together into
a pattern with others. He had no idea of the things that were going on in
other security-blanketed research institutions of his own country, not to
mention those of the other side. Only Washington held the big picture, and if
they went along with Clifford's request, it would mean getting mixed up in all
the rigmarole of referring the matter back there for clearance...and
Washington was never very happy over things like that. Far better if the whole
thing could be killed off right at the beginning.
On the other hand, his image wouldn't benefit from too hasty a display
of high-handedness...must be seen as objective and impartial.
"I have been through the paper briefly, Dr. Clifford," he said. "Before
we consider your request specifically, I think it would help if you clarified
some of the points that you make." He spread his hands and rested them palms-
down on the table. "For example, you make some remarkable deductions
concerning the nature of elementary particles and their connection with
gravitational propagation..." His look invited Clifford to take it from there.
Clifford sighed. At the best of times he detested lengthy dissertations;
the feeling that he was pressing an already lost cause only made it worse. But
there was no way out.
"All the known particles of physics," he began, "can be described in
terms of Maesanger k-functions. Every particle is a combination of high-order
and low-order k-resonances. Theory suggests that it's possible for an entity
to exist purely in the high-order domain, without any physical attributes in
the dimensions of the observable universe. It couldn't be detected by any
known experimental technique."
"This isn't part of Maesanger's original theory," Edwards checked.
"No. It's new."
"This is your own contribution?"
"Yes."
"I see. Carry on." Edwards scribbled a brief note on his pad.
"I've termed such an unobservable entity a 'hi-particle,' and the domain
that it exists in, 'hi-space' -- the unobservable subset of k-space. The
remaining portion of k-space -- the space-time that we perceive -- is then
termed 'lo-space.'
"Interactions are possible between hi-particles. Most of them result in
new hi-particles. Some classes of interaction, however, can produce complete
k-functions as end-products -- that is, combined hi- and lo-order resonances
that are observable. In other words, you'd be able to detect them in normal
space." Clifford paused and waited for a response. It came from Massey.
"You mean that as far as anybody can tell, first there's no particle
there -- just nothing at all -- then suddenly -- poof! -- there is."
Clifford nodded. "Exactly so."
"Mmm...I see. Spontaneous creation of matter...in our universe anyway.
Interesting." Edwards began stroking his chin again and nodded to Clifford to
continue.
"Since all conventional particles can be thought of as extending into
hi-space, they can interact with hi-particles too. When they do, the result
can be one of two things.
"First off, the interaction products can include k-resonances -- in
other words, particles that are observable. What you'd see would be the
observable part of the k-particle that was there to begin with, and then the
observable part of the k-products that came later. What you wouldn't see is
the pure hi-particle that caused the change to take place."
Massey was beginning to look intrigued. He raised a hand to stop
Clifford from racing ahead any further for the moment.
"Just a sec, Brad, let's get this straight. A k-particle is something
that has bits you can see and bits you can't. Right?"
"Right."
"All the particles that we know are k-particles."
"Right."
"But you figure there are things that nobody can see at all...these
things you've called 'hi-particles.'"
"Right."
"And two hi's can come together to make a k, and since you can see k's,
you'd see a particle suddenly pop outa nowhere. Is that right?"
"Right."
"Okay..." Massey inclined his head and collected his thoughts for a
moment. "Now -- in idiot language -- just go over that last bit again,
willya?" He wasn't being deliberately sarcastic; it was just his way of
speaking.
"A hi can interact with a k to produce another k, or maybe several k's.
When that happens, what you see is a sudden change taking place in an
observable particle, without any apparent cause."
"A spontaneous event," Edwards commented, nodding slowly. "An
explanation for the decay of radioactive nuclei and the like, perhaps."
Clifford began warming slightly. Maybe he wasn't wasting his time after
all.
"Precisely so," he replied. "The statistics that come out of it fit
perfectly with the observed frequencies of quantum mechanical tunneling
effects, energy-level transitions of the electron, and a whole list of other
probabilistic phenomena at the atomistic scale. It gives us a common
explanation for all of them. They're not inexplicable any more; they only look
that way in lo-order space-time."
"Mmm..." Edwards looked down again at the paper lying in front of him.
The administrator in him still wanted to put a swift end to the whole
business, but the scientist in him was becoming intrigued. If only this
discussion could have taken place at some other time, a time free of the
dictates of harsher realities. He looked up at Clifford and noted for the
first time the pleading earnestness burning from those bright, youthful eyes.
Clifford could be no more than in his mid to late twenties -- the age at which
Newton and Einstein had been at their peak. This generation would have much to
answer for when the day finally came to count the cost of it all.
"You said that there is a second possible way in which hi- and k-
particles can interact."
"Yes," Clifford confirmed. "They can also interact to produce hi-order
entities only." He looked at Massey. "That means that a hi plus a k can make
just hi's. You'd see the k to start with, then suddenly you wouldn't see
anything at all."
"Spontaneous particle extinction," Edwards supplied.
"I'll be damned," said Massey.
"The two effects of creation and extinction are symmetrical," Clifford
offered. "In loose terms you could say that a particle exists only for a
finite time in the observable universe. It appears out of nowhere, persists
for a while, then either vanishes, or decays into other particles, which
eventually vanish anyway. The length of time that any one particle will exist
is indeterminate, but the statistical average for large numbers of them can be
calculated accurately. For some, such as those involved in familiar high-
energy decay processes, lifetimes can be very short; for radioactive decays,
seconds to millions of years; for the so-called stable particles, like the
proton and electron, billions of years."
"You mean the stable particles aren't truly stable at all?" Edwards
raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Not permanently?"
"No"
Silence reigned for a short while as the room digested the flow of
information. Edwards looked pensive. Miles Corrigan continued to remain
silent, but his sharp eyes missed nothing. He smoothed a wrinkle in his
expensively tailored suit and glanced at his watch, giving the impression of
being bored and impatient. Massey spoke next.
"You see, like I said, it's all pure academic stuff. Harmless." He
shrugged and showed his empty palms. "Maybe this once there's no reason for us
not to have Washington check it out. I vote we clear it."
"Maybe isn't good enough, Walt," Edwards cautioned. "We have to be sure.
For one thing, I need to be certain of the scientific accuracy of it all
first. Wouldn't do to go wasting Washington's time with a theory that turned
out to be only half worked out; that wouldn't do ACRE's image any good at all.
There are a couple of points that bother me already."
Massey retreated abruptly.
"Sure -- whatever you say. It was just a thought."
Clifford noted with no surprise that Massey had been simply testing to
see which way the wind was blowing. He would go along with whatever the other
two decided.
"Dr. Clifford," Edwards resumed. "You state that even the stable
particles possess only a finite duration in normal space-time."
"Yes."
"You've proved it...rigorously...?
"Yes."
"I see..." A pause. "But tell me, how do you reconcile that statement
with some of the fundamental laws of physics, some of which have stood
unchallenged for decades or even for centuries? It is well known, is it not,
that decay of the proton would violate the law of conservation of baryon
number; decay of the electron would violate conservation of charge. And what
about the conservation laws of mass-energy and momentum, for example? What
happens to those if stable particles are simply allowed to appear and vanish?"
Clifford recognized the tone. The professor's attitude was negative. He
was out to uncover the flaws -- anything that would justify going no further
for the present and sending Clifford back to the drawing board. The mildly
challenging note was calculated to invoke an emotive response, thus carrying
the whole discussion from the purely rational level to the irrational and
opening the way for a choice of counterproductive continuations.
Clifford was on his guard. "Violation of many conservation laws is well
known already. Although the strong nuclear interactions do obey all the laws
listed, electromagnetic interactions do not conserve isotopic spin.
Furthermore, the weak nuclear interactions don't conserve strangeness, nor do
they conserve charge or parity discretely but only as a combined product of C
and P. As a general principle, the stronger the force, the greater the number
of laws it has to obey. This has been known as an experimental fact for a long
time. In recent years we've known that it follows automatically from Maesanger
wave functions. Each conservation principle is related to a particular order
of resonance. Since stronger interactions involve more orders, they obey more
conservation laws. As you reduce the number of orders involved, you lose the
necessity to obey the laws that go with the higher orders.
"What I'm saying here..." he gestured toward the paper "is that the same
pattern holds true right on through to the weakest force of all -- gravity.
When you get down to the level of the gravitational interaction -- determined
by lo-order resonances only -- you lose more of the conservation laws that
come with the hi-orders. In fact, as it turns out, you lose all of them."
"I see," said Edwards. "But if that's so, why hasn't anybody ever found
out about it? Why haven't centuries of experiments revealed it? On the
contrary, they would appear to demonstrate the reverse of what you're saying."
Clifford knew fully that Edwards was not that naive. The possibility
that conservation principles might not be universal was something that
scientists had speculated about for a long time. But forcing somebody to adopt
a defensive posture was always a first step toward weakening his case.
Nevertheless, Clifford had no option but to go along with it.
"Because, as I mentioned earlier, the so-called stable particles have
extremely long average lifetimes. Matter is created and extinguished at an
infinitesimally small rate -- on the everyday scale anyway; it would be
utterly immeasurable by any laboratory experiment. For matter at ordinary
density, it works out at about one extinction per ten billion particles
present per year. No experiment ever devised could detect anything like that.
You could only detect it on the cosmological scale -- and nobody has performed
experiments with whole galaxies yet."
"Mmm..." Edwards paused to collect his thoughts. Massey sensed that
things could go either way and opted to stay out.
Clifford decided to move ahead. "All interactions can be represented as
rotations in k-space. This accounts for the symmetries of quantum mechanics
and the family-number conservation laws. In fact, all the conservation laws
come out as simply different projections of one basic set of k-conservation
relationships.
"Every rotation results in a redistribution of energy about the various
k-axes, which we see as forces of one kind or another. The particular set of
rotations that correspond to transitions of a particle between hi-space and
normal space -- events of creation and extinction -- produces an expanding
wave front in k-space that projects as a gravitational pulse. In other words,
every particle creation or extinction generates a pulse of gravity."
There were no questions at that point, so Clifford continued. "A
particle can appear spontaneously anywhere in the universe with equal
probability. When it does, it will emanate a minute gravity pulse. The figures
indicate something like one particle creation in a volume of millions of cubic
meters per year; utterly immeasurable -- that's why nobody has ever found out
about it.
"On the other hand, a particle can vanish only from where it already is
-- obviously. So, where large numbers of particles are concentrated together,
you will get a larger number of extinctions over a given period of time. Thus
you'll get a higher rate of production of gravity pulses. The more particles
there are and the more closely they're packed together, the greater the total
additive effect of all the pulses. That's why you get a gravity field around
large masses of matter; it isn't a static phenomenon at all -- just the
additive effect of a large number of gravity quanta. It appears 'smooth' only
at the macroscopic level.
"Gravity isn't something that's simply associated with mass per se; it's
just that mass defines a volume of space inside which a large number of
extinctions can happen. It's the extinctions that produce the gravity."
"I thought you said the creations do so, too," Massey queried.
"They do, but their contribution is negligible. As I said, creations
take place all through the universe with equal probability anywhere -- inside
a piece of matter or way outside the galaxy. In a region occupied by matter,
the effect due to extinctions would dominate overwhelmingly."
"Mmm..." Edwards frowned at his knuckles while considering another
angle.
"That suggests that mass ought to decay away to nothing. Why doesn't
it?"
"It does. Again, the numbers we're talking about are much too small to
be measurable on the small scale or over short time periods. As an example, a
gram of water contains about ten to the power twenty-three atoms. If those
atoms vanished at the rate of three million every second, it would take about
ten billion years for all traces of the original gram to disappear. Is it any
wonder the decay's never been detected experimentally? Is it any wonder that
the gravity field of a planet appears smooth? We have no way of even detecting
the gravity due to one gram of water, let alone measure it to see if it's
quantized. You could only detect it at the cosmological level. At that level,
totally dominated by gravity, conservation laws that hold good in laboratories
might well break down. Certainly we have no experimental data to say they
don't."
"That means all the bodies in the universe ought to decay away to
nothing in time," Edwards pointed out. "They've had plenty of time, but there
still seem to be plenty of them around."
"Maybe they do decay away to nothing," Clifford said. "Don't forget that
spontaneous creation is going on all the time all over the universe as well.
That's an awful lot of volume and it implies an awful lot of creation."
"You mean a continuous process in which new bodies are formed out of
interstellar matter by the known sequences of galactic and planetary
evolution; the newly created particles provide a source to replenish the
interstellar matter in turn."
"Could be," Clifford agreed.
At last Edwards had drawn Clifford into an area in which he was unable
to give definite answers. He pressed the advantage.
"But surely that requires some resurrection of the Continuous Creation
Theory of cosmology. As we all know, that notion has been defunct for many
years. The overwhelming weight of evidence unquestionably favors the Big
Bang."
Clifford spread his arms wide in an attitude of helplessness.
"I know that. All I can say is, the mathematics works. I'm not an
astronomer or a cosmologist. I'm not even an experimental scientist. I'm a
theoretician. I don't know how conclusive the evidence for Big Bang is, or if
there are alternative explanations for some parts. That's why I need to
publish this paper I need to attract the attention of specialists in other
areas."
The string of admissions gave Edwards the moment he was looking for, a
moment of weakness that could be exploited. It was time to move in the hatchet
man. He half-turned toward Corrigan.
摘要：

TheGenesisMachine--JamesP.Hogan(Version2002.04.02--Done)Everychildisabornscientist.ThisbookisdedicatedtoDEBBIE,JANE,andTINA--thethreeyoungscientistswhotaughtmetodistinguishrealityfromillusionbyaskingalways:"Whosaysso?""Who'she?"and,"Howdoesheknow?"Chapter1Thefamiliarsignthatmarkedtheturnofffromthema...

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