Twenty Unusual Short Stories. Dr. Donald D. Hook
on the big particle accelerator, or atom smasher, as such machines used to be more commonly known. For a reporter with a college major in the humanities, it was a task she dreaded, yet she knew her career at the paper would be enhanced by a clear and concise write-up.
“I know I am asking a lot, because nuclear physics is a complex field, but could you tell me in language that my readers can follow what a collider is,” gingerly began the reporter, a young woman named Sarah Goldberg.
“Well, I’ll try,” said Professor Williams. “I’ll pretend I am back in the classroom and you are one of my students.”
“One of your slower students, I am sure,” quipped the diffident Miss Goldberg.
“Nonsense,” replied the good professor. “We’ll sort of write your article together so that things will be clear to everybody. Stop me if you get lost.”
“Thank you. I’ll try to keep up with you, but I may have to ask for clarification here and there.”
Dr. Williams then began without further ado.
“Back in the early part of the 20th century we discovered the structure of the atom, which included smaller pieces, subatomic particles called the proton, neutron, and electron. By about 1950, however, when I was just entering graduate school, newly developed particle accelerators could take an electron, that is, a negatively-charged particle, for example, and increase its speed up to close to the speed of light and cause it to collide with an atom and thereby reveal its internal structure. Are you with me?”
“Yes, I think so. But it is hard to conceive of such things as atoms and electrons.” Sarah was writing furiously. “Maybe when you tell me what a collider looks like, it’ll all become clearer.”
“The most basic collider we have is the video signal in an old-style cathode-ray tube TV set. It shoots a beam of electrons, which, as you will remember, are fast-moving, negatively-charged particles, down a long cathode-ray tube. As the beam flies down the tube, electromagnets steer it from side to side so that it scans systematically back and forth, sort of ‘painting a picture’ on your screen. Research colliders are essentially much bigger tubes.”
“What is the collider like in Switzerland, where you are going next February?”
“It’s going to be the most impressive collider in the world,” assured Dr. Williams. “Right now construction is almost complete, and the first beams will soon be injected. Some colliders are straight tubes, like the TV tube I just described; but it takes up so much space for a single tube—we are talking several miles—that we have found it much more economical in lots of senses to construct them in a circular fashion. The Large Hadron Collider, known usually by the initials LHC, is contained in a circular tunnel with a circumference of about 27 kilometers at a depth ranging from 50 to 175 meters underground. The concrete-lined tunnel is 3.8 meters in diameter and crosses the border between Switzerland and France at four points. There are buildings on the surface containing ancillary equipment—for example, compressors, ventilation machinery, and plants to control electronics and refrigeration. The tunnel contains two pipes, each containing a beam and each traveling in the opposite direction around the ring, with magnets throughout to keep the beams focused. There are four intersection points at which the two beams will cross. I’ll spare you the details of the energy of the protons, but we are talking about a huge amount of energy.”
“Very interesting,” said Sarah. “I think I actually get the picture. But what are hadrons and strangelets? You haven’t mentioned them.”
“Now it gets pretty complicated, I have to admit. Anyhow, a hadron is any of a class of subnuclear particles, some of which are called baryons and mesons, that interact strongly. They are thought to be made up of quarks, which are hypothetical particles and antiparticles assumed to be the building blocks of hadrons. As for strangelets, we are not even sure they exist, but if they do, they contain roughly equal numbers of up, down, charm, bottom, and strange quarks. If produced by the LHC—something we are very much hoping for—they could conceivably initiate a runaway fusion process—this we are not hoping for—in which all the nuclei in the planet would be converted to strange matter. I mean, that would be the end of everything on earth in a matter of days. But let me hasten to add that I do not think for many good and scientific reasons that it will happen. Undoubtedly, micro black holes will be produced, but that is happening all the time in other ways as well, so I don’t predict any catastrophe next February.”
Sarah could feel the hair rise on the back of her neck and her lower face as she contemplated this odd planetary destruction that could theoretically take place. She asked whether anyone had defined the risks or entered legal challenges to the operation of such a collider.
“Oh, by all means,” replied Dr. Williams. “There have been safety concerns from the start, and legal challenges as well. However, so many of these kinds of violent collisions can be found regularly in nature that our worries are slight. Sir Martin Rees was, I think, the first to indicate a possible doomsday scenario, but he assured us his calculations showed only a 1 in 50,000,000 chance. Another professor—I think his name is Frank Close—has claimed that the danger from strangelets is no more likely than your chance of winning the major prize on the lottery three weeks in succession. As for those black holes, they are so small they wouldn’t eat more than a leg or so before you scrambled to safety.” And with that remark, he chuckled in an assuring, grandfatherly way, both for Sarah’s sake and his own (which he would not have admitted in a million years). Ms. Goldberg was not amused, but she did not reveal her anxiety.
“Good-bye, Dr. Williams, have a good trip to Switzerland, and thank you very much,” sang out Sarah Goldberg, as she shuffled her notes together, slipped them into her briefcase, and rose in preparation to depart. “I’m pretty sure I can put together something of considerable interest to our readers. If I get stuck, I’ll call you, if I may.”
“Of course, my dear,” said the good doctor as he opened the door for the inwardly shaken rookie reporter.
The day of departure for Geneva duly arrived in February, and William Williams took a seat in first class that Princeton had paid for and ordered a double martini straight up. Sarah Goldberg’s article had appeared within a week after the interview and netted many letter responses in the paper and almost as many notes and phone calls to the Williamses’ house. William’s wife, who was not accompanying her husband on the trip, was reaching a point of annoyance. Almost all of the letters dealt with the risks inherent in colliders, often ending with phrases like “Stop messing around in God’s creation,” “You are going to blow us all up, you damned fool,” “Why don’t you just take a seat in a rocking chair, old man, and quit thinking so much.” None of these missives seemed to have an effect on Dr. Williams, who was drinking his martini not out of nervousness but pure pleasure.
The flight across the Atlantic was uneventful and, wonder of wonders! on time. Professor Lamont was at the airport in Geneva to welcome his colleague, whom he had not met until that day, though he shared the world’s admiration for William Williams’s achievements in physics. In fact, so enthusiastic was Williams about his work that he became known—although no one dared address him that way—as “The Accelerator.”
Taking him by the arm, Professor Lamont drove his colleague to the five-star hotel where he could rest up before his—what shall we call it, “inaugural run”?—on Friday, taking his leave while assuring his guest he would be by the next day, Thursday, to show him about the beautiful city of Geneva. Williams was charmed and thought this was going to be not only an interesting and profitable professional encounter but quite a nice vacation as well.
And indeed, Thursday came and went and brought with it fabulous sights and good food. He liked the Frenchy aspect of Geneva as opposed to the stricter Germanic side of most of Switzerland. He marveled at the high mountains in the country, many of which he had observed close up as his plane was making its final approach, and gave silent credit to the engineers who created, underneath such towering, uneven earth, that long, circular tunnel housing the LHC. He was getting very anxious to see what his peers had put together.
And what a sight it was, he thought, as