Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2) (7 page)

“OK,” Johnson said, “I’ll talk to the admin secretary about getting you admitted and your AI should get something about it soon. You’ll be expected to teach one lab for my elementary physics class but, mostly you’ll be working in the research program. I certainly hope you can shine like Smythe thinks you can.”

“Yes sir.”

“I’m going to assign you some prep work. Smythe says you’re interested in that crazy paper by the gymnast, Donsaii?”

Ell felt goose bumps on her neck. “Yes sir, I’ve been quite interested.”

“Well, personally, I think it’s a load of crap. This “math” the girl invented is just bizarre. Even if she has successfully massaged it until it fits with current experimental data, the chances that it will correctly predict anything are microscopic.”

Ell’s heart sank as she heard this appraisal, but Johnson hadn’t asked for a comment so she didn’t respond.

Johnson went on, “
But
, that is what we experimentalists do. We test crazy predictions by hare brained theorists
just in case
one of them is actually correct. Personally, I’m going to enjoy proving that this ‘wunderkind gymnast’ is an idiot. She’s gotten entirely too much attention at way too young an age. Probably thinks her crap doesn’t stink like everyone else’s.”

He paused, so Ell said in a small voice, “Yes sir.”

“All that aside, for you to be able to do experiments on her predictions, you’re going to have to understand her math backwards and forwards. So, in your spare time the rest of this summer, get yourself chin deep in that paper she wrote and learn how to work her math for actual testable predictions. Smythe thinks that the ‘low hanging fruit’ for a testable hypothesis is her absurd prediction that you can ‘spin bump’ an entangled molecule’s outer shell electrons and measure an instantaneous ‘quiver’ in the electrons of the distant molecule of the entangled pair.”

Bemused to be told she had to “study up” on a paper that she had written herself, Ell nonetheless said, “Yes sir.” with a straight face.

“Unfortunately, ‘spin bumping’ is a hypothesis that might be possible to prove correct
if
it worked. But, when it
doesn’t
work we won’t be able to be sure that it was because the theory is hogwash. There will still be the possibility that the ‘spin bumping’ apparatus we came up with didn’t work right. So, what I want you to do is look for other testable hypotheses that will be easier to prove wrong.”

“Yes sir.” Ell said quietly, immeasurably disappointed that she wouldn’t be allowed to try to prove that spin bumping did work.

“Now, I know you don’t know squat about experimental methods, so you’ll have to talk to me about what you think her theory predicts would happen and I’ll help you figure out whether we can test it. I suppose we’ll have to make a few runs at this ‘spin bumping’ crap too but, even though it’ll be a waste of time, it
will
be good practice for you setting up apparatus.”

“Yes sir.” Ell said, cheered.

“OK, head on over to admin, they should know about you by the time you get there.” He turned back to his screens without shaking her hand or saying goodbye.

“Yes sir.” Ell turned and left, not at all sure she wanted to work with this man? Maybe she could transfer somewhere else after a semester?

***

Hands on his hips Mr. Li looked critically around the basement of the house his team had rented in Goldsboro, North Carolina. “OK, it will do. We need desks to work at and some large monitor screens. Set up cameras at her father’s and grandmother’s houses in Morehead City and at the arrival areas in the RDU and ILM airports. At the airports we will have to rely on facial recognition software, but at her homes I want one of us to inspect the image of each person who comes or goes.

“Hao, you drive the roads here until you know them well.

“Xian, you rent us a house on the barrier island with a dock. Then rent a boat to put in that dock and practice taking the boat out to the various rendezvous points.

“Cho, you will obtain weapons, and a net jammer, and equipment to immobilize her. I know she is ‘just a girl’ but remember that she not only is said to have dealt successfully with those Arab terrorists, but that the team that preceded us was captured while trying to remove her from the country.

“We will over-plan and over-prepare so that we do not fail like that incompetent Chin.”

Chapter Four

While she was at home over the summer, Ell had found herself constantly looking over her shoulder, especially when she encountered people of Asian extraction. When she registered at NCSU in August her feelings of sadness at leaving home again were mixed with quite a bit of excitement to begin a life testing her theories as Ellen Symonds and significant relief that she no longer felt she had to worry so much about kidnappers.

Reading the syllabus she decided that setting up labs for the introductory physics class looked like it would fun. When she reported to Dr. Johnson’s office on her first day, he walked her down the hall to introduce her to another grad student in jeans and running shoes. “Ellen Symonds, This is Roger Emmerit, he’s worked in the lab for three years now and can show you the ropes. I’ll see you at the lab meeting this afternoon at 3.” Johnson turned and left without saying good bye.

Ell found herself staring at Johnson’s retreating back. Roger cleared his throat. Ell turned back to the tall young man. He had a bushy shock of dark hair standing straight out from his head. Ell wondered if he was cultivating Einstein’s wild haired look. The look seemed to fit him, creating a wild, but improbably, kind of handsome appearance.

For his part, Roger looked askance at the odd looking young woman Johnson had left in his charge. He thought to himself that she could be cute if she didn’t have such a beak of a nose. And her tummy and backside were way big for his taste,
too bad she doesn’t work out a little.
He said, “Don’t worry; Johnson’s bark is worse than his bite. I hear he wants you to work on that crazy paper by Donsaii?”

Ell grimaced internally, “Yes sir.”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me, I work for a living… Uh, that’s what my dad always said. He was a sergeant in the Marines.”

“OK, but, yes, I’m to work on Donsaii’s ideas and see if we can test any of her predictions.”

“Oh Jeez, I
feel
for you. When you’re trying to prove something and it doesn’t work, critics always blame your deficient experimental setup.”

“What if we do confirm some of her predictions?”

“Hah! Have you read her paper yet? Fat chance on that one. This math she’s proposed is incomprehensible! I mean she’s undoubtedly some kind of genius to work out a math that
seems
to correlate with existing results, but I don’t think there’s any way it’s gonna work. I’d love for her to be right but this stuff she’s proposing is just too counterintuitive.”

At the 3PM lab meeting that day Johnson quizzed each of his grad students about their research progress. When he got to Ell he said, “So, do you understand the math in that paper?”

“I believe so sir.”

“Believe?”

“Sir, I
do
understand it.” Ell tried to project confidence with her second answer.

“OK, if you understand it, then explain that second equation that purports to show how entangled but separated particles can connect through this 5th dimension of hers.”

Ell took a deep breath and had her AI throw up the equation on the wall screen, then begin solving it as two “manifestations” of a particle were separated farther and farther in physical space, demonstrating that using the conventions of her own math, the particles could remain connected through an additional “fifth” dimension.

Roger listened in growing astonishment as “Ellen” responded to question after question thrown at her by Johnson. At any moment he expected her to break. He’d seen other grad students crumble under less punishing barrages of questions than the ones Johnson was pounding her with. She not only didn’t become flustered, she answered every question as if she’d already considered it herself. Johnson was asking them in a very pointed fashion, readily showing his doubt that she would be able to answer. At first Johnson almost seemed frustrated that she didn’t stumble, and then seemed to be listening carefully to her explanations, almost as if she was the teacher and he the student. Roger’s opinion of the young woman skyrocketed. He’d been thinking of her as a clueless new grad student with an impossible assignment, but if she could understand the Donsaii math this thoroughly and this quickly she
must
be pretty smart!
It’s a shame that she has a project with so little chance of success,
he thought to himself.

“Well?” Johnson rasped, “You do realize that this ‘spin bumping,’ if true, would violate relativity?”

“Yes sir. If it worked you would be able to transmit, information at least, instantaneously. Uh, I assume that you are referring to the fact that that would be faster than the speed of light and thus violate relativity?”

“Yes, and relativity has stood up to a lot of testing in the past without even a quiver.”

“Um, yes sir. But, because the purported fifth dimension is small, distances within it are tiny and therefore information transmission there can be slow and still appear to be faster than light in the dimensions that we are aware of.”

Johnson grunted, “That is
so
unlikely you’d just as well buy tickets for the lottery. Are you sure you want to beat your head on that wall?”

“Yes sir. I’m fascinated by the theory.”

“OK, Seems like you understand this crazy Donsaii math and as you’ve run us through it, so far it does agree with existing physical evidence. However, let’s assume that the ‘faster than light’ part of her theory is as ridiculous as it appears and that no one else in physics is taken in by it. Some theoretician is going to poke a hole in her math any day now. But, there might be, just might be, some people believing other parts of Donsaii’s theory. Do you see any other testable phenomena that we can attack?”

Attack?
Ell thought to herself,
that’s pretty prejudicial.
“Sir, I’ve been thinking about the observer phenomenon in the double slit experiment where single photons act like waves if no observer determines which slit the photon goes through and like particles if there is an observer?”

“Yes, yes, we’re physicists, we know about the double slit experiment.”

“Well, if Donsaii’s theory is right, the methods used so far to ‘observe’ the photon interfere with the connection of her ‘cloud’ of ‘photon manifestations’ through the postulated 5th dimension.” Ell found it weird to be referring to herself in the third person.

“Come on Symonds! I suppose you think we should find a way to ‘observe’ that doesn’t interfere with that connection?”

“Uh, yes sir.”

“But I’ll bet you don’t have
any
ideas as to just how you are accomplish that little miracle?”

“Uh, no sir.”

“I was afraid of that. We need proposals that have some possibility that there’s a mechanism that we can build to test them. Even if you don’t know how to build a mechanism, you at least need to propose an observable physical phenomenon and then we can figure out whether it is feasible to construct a means to examine that phenomenon.

Ell said nothing and Johnson sighed, “Do you understand how we might build something to test ‘spin bumping’?”

“Uh yes sir. In broad terms anyway.”

“OK, then stay after the lab meeting and we’ll talk specifics.”

After the meeting Dr. Johnson brusquely took Ell through the lab pointing out some of the equipment that he thought might be useful in testing spin bumping, then gave her a list of equipment that she could check out from the department’s supply room. “Now, you’re going to need to read through the manuals and documentation on this equipment and find some published papers that used the equipment so you can see how other investigators have used these types of equipment for similar studies in the past. Figure out how you might assemble something to test this ‘spin bumping’ crap. And, sure, spend some time thinking about how you could observe double slit photons without disturbing this ridiculous “5th dimension connection” too. But, what you really want is a prediction that can be tested robustly enough that detractors won’t be able to criticize our testing apparatus when Donsaii’s predictions don’t pan out.”

“Yes sir.” Ell said quietly.

“You may feel like I’m throwing you in the deep end here.” Ell nodded. “But that’s where great physicists are born, they learn to swim.”

He turned abruptly and, as usual, left without saying goodbye, leaving Ell cross-eyed over the mixed metaphor of being born by learning to swim.

Ell returned to her tiny apartment, cooked a frozen pizza and spent the night familiarizing herself with the manuals for the equipment Dr. Johnson had suggested. The next day after running the “Intro to physics” lab, she searched the literature for publications where other physicists had used the lab equipment she now had at her disposal. It turned out that reading those studies really did help her understand how the equipment could be used, though not necessarily how it could be used for her own experiment.

Over the next few days she began trying to set up an apparatus to test spin bumping. As Professor Smythe had suggested she intended to attempt it using entangled carbon 60 buckyballs in order to have a large symmetrical molecule which she could immobilize and then “bump” the spin on the shell electrons of one of the carbons according to the predictions of her new math. Roger came over and watched her a moment. Her concentration appeared fierce, “Hey Ellen, what’cha doin’?”

“I’m trying to figure out how to immobilize a buckyball so that I can probe it with the atomic force microscope.”

“Hmmm, aren’t you just trying to perturb the electrons on a carbon molecule that is part of a symmetrical large carbon molecule?”

“Yes.”