Chapter 48: Viking Spirits Too

The inspiration came when she was working in Emma’s APL lab the following day. She had a vision of how her calculations might fit the physical reality that the magnetic force experiments revealed. She began sketching her idea in her lab notebook, working on it for most of the morning. Being the winter break, many of the engineers and techs were off. But Marty Fox, the engineer who she had worked with on the magnetic coil scale-up attempt, came into the lab during the afternoon and she told him what she had come up with.

“Well, that’s an unusual concept,” he told her. “Reminds me of the radial engines used in some prop aircraft. The cylinders are in a circle instead of a linear geometry. You said you did some calcs?”

Tamara showed him the computer’s output from the simulation that she had calculated based on the scaled-up coils without the superconducting effects.

“Okay, that looks good. Only thing, those 2-centimeter coils produced a field of about a thousand-fold greater than those calcs show.”

“Right, so I used that data and plugged it into my model for this new geometry, taking into account the superconducting elements and ran the simulation again this morning,” she told him. “See the results? The three orders of magnitude difference you saw gets corrected. So it seems the math theory is valid; the difference is because of the superconducting effect, and the modification I made to the Biot-Savart law needs that empirical correction to account for the superconducting circuit behavior. Oh, hi, Emma.”

Emma had come in while Tamara was talking to Fox.

“What’s this about modifying the Biot-Savart law, then?” she asked.

Tamara explained how she had thought of using the coils in a different way. Then she went on.

“I also did some thinking about monopoles. Occam’s Razor says that the simplest explanation for something is most likely the right one. So the magnetic effect being the result of a fundamental particle is likely the correct one. That means searching for an unknown additional fundamental force would be wasting time. I decided that if monopoles do exist, then the universe’s symmetry would suggest that magnetic monopoles should have an internal structure, just like quarks make up hadrons. When I tried to use math to check the validity of that idea, I came up with some mind-boggling numbers for the monopole’s mass. And that suggests the reason why particle accelerators haven’t detected monopoles—we’re nowhere close in achieving the energy needed.

“Using current theories based on the standard model of particle physics, I tried estimating the possible mass for the magnetic monopole. Even making the most liberal assumptions, it seems that its mass could range from 10¹⁰ to 10¹⁴ TeV/c². That’s huge, the smallest mass I calculated it to be is ten billion TeV/c². The Geneva accelerator, the LHC, can only get to 13 TeV, and its ring is enormous, it’s 27 kilometers around. So far, the largest particle mass produced in a collider is the top quark, whose mass is approximately 0.17321 TeV/c².”

“Refresh my memory, Tamara,” Fox said. “I’m an electrical engineer, not a physicist. What do those numbers mean in real life?”

Tamara chuckled. “Yeah, engineers prefer to think in SI energy units. Particle physicists are a snooty breed, they prefer electron-volts. That’s a single electron moving through a potential difference of one volt—it’s a very tiny number, but very useful at the atomic scale. You do know that the ‘T’ in TeV is for ‘tera’ and means one trillion. Oh, another thing—you’ll hear particle physicists using electron-volts for mass too, but what they’re really referring to is the mass-equivalent unit eV/c², where the speed of light, c, is understood. For an engineer, in joules, if the LHC can develop 13 TeV ... then to joules ... let me get a calculator ... that’s a 1.6 factor ... okay. It’s 2.08×10^–6 joules. To compare to real life, let’s see, gravity force is 9.8 newtons per kilogram, so a mass of 1 kilogram falling a distance of 1 meter gives a force of 9.8 joules. An electron-volt is tiny, as I said. One joule is equivalent to 6.242×10⁶ TeV. So the minimum force needed to produce a monopole, as my calculations showed, would be 1600 joules. Jeez, that much energy at the atomic scale would only have been available just after the Big Bang, I think.”

Emma had been listening with a faint smile.

“I see you’ve taken my advice to heart and you’re using maths for guiding your engineering planning, rather than your gut feeling,” she said, approvingly. “So you still believe that you’ve captured the elusive monopole?”

“If I did, with its apparent mass, that could go a long way to account for the amount of dark matter in the universe. Couldn’t it?” Tamara asked.

“Perhaps, but your idea’s still missing a few technical details,” Emma sniggered, and then broke out laughing.

“This isn’t the place for art appreciation, Emma,” Tamara smirked back, and at Fox’s confused look, told him, “Private joke.”

“Okay. Now then, let’s go over what you’re planning, shall we?” Emma said.

Good, Tamara thought. Maybe she can find something I did wrong.

Tamara pulled her notebook over and handed it to Emma, who began working through Tamara’s calculations. She didn’t find any mathematical errors but she was interested in how Tamara used Dirac’s comment about the quantization of electrical charge as the inspiration for her starting point.

Tamara explained, “So I was thinking of the idea that the quarks and leptons that make up the universe’s visible matter, together with their associated force particles, could have a counterpart involving the magnetic monopole, which would have a similar internal structure. That’s kind of an extension of the supersymmetry idea, in a way. The standard model predicts that antimatter should exist, but only fleeting traces, short-lived, have been detected, so the standard model still has its shortcomings. I wanted to see what kind of mass a theoretical monopole should have, so I began by playing with Maxwell’s equations and extended them to quantum field theory and that’s where my monopole mass calc came from.

“We previously observed that huge repulsive force in my coil, and I had assumed that the only possibility was magnetism. But then I recalled that the dark force itself is repulsive. All forces have a particle counterpart; that’s the duality of matter and energy. What if monopoles make up dark matter and dark energy is carried by a structural particle of monopoles? Or dark energy is anti-gravity, and its mediating particle is an anti-graviton?

“One result from my calcs made no sense; in the real-world magnetic dipole, the lines of force connect the poles. Cut a dipole in half, separating its poles, and you get two dipoles. My field calcs for the monopole show that the field extends out radially from the source but the field strength dropoff doesn’t obey the inverse-square law like electric monopoles, which have a spherical symmetry. Magnetic forces have a dipole symmetry and field decay follows an inverse-cube law. But even though this possible magnetic monopole appears to exhibit a spherical symmetry, it appears to follow the same field characteristic that the dipole does. So that implies that the magnetic lines of force connect to something, somewhere.

“We need to build an apparatus with the coil assembly to test the field shape because much of the math results imply strange behavior. In fact, I got so bogged down in the math that the only reasonable numbers I could come up with was for the potential field strength of the 2-centimeter coils that we built; the calcs for the super-coils make no sense. And even those calcs need an empirical adjustment to compensate for the superconductivity of the components.”

“So I’m looking at your numbers but nothing I see looks like a glaring error,” Emma said thoughtfully. “Why don’t you and Marty assemble one or two of your ... erm ... super-coils? Interesting name choice, innit. Oh, another thing. I’ve been meaning to ask you if you’ve thought about my suggestion that you hire an engineer and tech of your own—not that I mind having Marty and my group work with you. Having your own people will keep development issues properly separate in both of our work.”

“Yeah, I did discuss that with the lawyer who handles the trust I had set up to manage the royalties and licensing income I’m getting,” Tamara said. “He told me that I could go ahead and have him do that and there would be some tax advantages, especially if he set it up as a grant to Hopkins for use at the APL for technical support of a research program. I told him what I needed and he’s worked out the grant amount.”

“That’s ace. And running it through the APL, the way I’ve done with my own people, means that they’ll be vetted for a security clearance. You should go to Admin and talk to the HR—the human relations—blokes there and they can do the recruiting. If you want, I can help interviewing candidates.”

During the next few days, that was how Tamara occupied her time. She got a recruiting process underway and also worked with Fox and by week’s end, two coil arrays were finished. She had taken care that the sub-coil orientation was arranged to avoid the mutual repulsion that she had seen when she had tested the original 4-millimeter coil assembly chip. In their testing of the 2-centimeter coils, the engineers had observed that the field the coils produced repelled ferro-magnetic materials, such as iron and nickel, but had no effect on nonmagnetic materials. Interestingly, though, the field weakly attracted diamagnetic materials but the effect was small.

Emma came to the lab to see the resulting apparatus when it was ready to test. Tamara fed the assembly with a tiny amount of current and slowly began to increase it, while they watched a two-gram iron pellet suspended by a nylon monofilament string in the center of the super-coil. There was no effect for a trickle of current, but when she advanced the rheostat a slight amount more, the pellet suddenly shot straight out, away from the coil assembly; its string stretched and snapped, and the pellet flew a foot or two more, falling to the floor.

The group watched in awe.

“We need to calculate the force exerted on that pellet,” Emma ordered. “Let’s get the tensile strength of the string. We can calculate the length of time the force was applied from the high-speed video recording, so Marty, please get that from the camera. We know the current delivered to the system and can get the power to the system from that, while the pellet was accelerating. Oh, and check the pellet for remanence—residual magnetism.”

“That was impressive,” Fox commented. “In our tests of the small coil, we noticed a threshold effect where the magnetic field dropped off significantly a few feet away. We did clear this area of any magnetic materials but anyway, I was trying to watch the other metallic items nearby. Nothing appears to be affected. I’ll get the techs to put this coil geometry through the whole set of tests but that won’t be finished until after the holidays.”

“That will be fine,” Emma said. “Tamara needs to get back to the MRI study anyway; she’ll be starting with her subject testing when the spring term begins. Is that correct, Tamara?”

“Yep. All the phantom tests are complete. Davy will be our MRI tech for the study and he’s working on the conversions of the imaging programming for the old coil parameters to the new one.”

“Tamara, I’m going to go over your numbers really carefully,” Emma said. “There’s a whole lot here that I need to understand theoretically. Marty, please get me the timings from the video and the power settings. When you get them, get me the field strengths too. And have the techs run the coils with samples of differing magnetic permeability and some diamagnetic materials as well. We need to fully characterize the physical properties of this phenomenon.”

“Will do, Emma.”

“Blimey, with the holiday starting, nothing more will be happening till after, will it,” Emma sighed. “Now then, the afternoon is almost over, so let’s close up and leave.”

As Tamara walked away with Emma, she asked Emma, “I’m getting all these contacts from a bunch of university physics and engineering departments asking if I could visit to give a talk about my work, Emma. I don’t know how to answer them.”

Emma smiled. “That’s good news, innit. It shows that they’re reading your papers. I’m getting requests too. How do you feel you should reply?”

“Um, I’d rather hold off—I’m way too busy to prepare a presentation and with this spring’s research and class schedule...”

“There’s your answer, then, dear,” Emma told her. “Thank them for their interest in your work but politely decline for those reasons.”

“Sure. Thanks, Emma.”

Late December

During the Christmas and New Year’s holiday break, Tamara finally got to meet the Richardsons, Mason and Angela, Claire’s parents. Tamara was at Peter’s home for their Christmas eve dinner and the Richardsons and the Winsbergs, senior, were there too. Of course Mason and Angela had been looking forward to meeting her and Mason was not shy about grilling her. Peter had told Tamara to expect it.

“I’m delighted to finally get to meet you, Tamara,” Mason told her after Peter introduced her to him and Angela.

Angela smiled and greeted her. “It’s so nice to meet you at last.”

Mason went on, “It’s such a cliché but I’ll use it: Angie and I have heard lots of good things about you, right, Angie?”

“Yes, indeed, what you’ve done for Peter and others in our family.”

“Oh, Peter, could you give us a few minutes with Tamara?” Mason asked.

“Oh, come on, Pops,” Peter complained. “You don’t need to go into your third degree now.”

He chuckled. “No, son, it’s not about her being good for you, it’s more like are we worthy of a woman like her in the family. We just want to talk privately for a few minutes.”

Tamara found out that Mason simply wanted to be certain that she knew about Peter’s problems in high school.

“Claire did tell us that Peter mentioned to her that he told you about that bad time he had,” Mason said after Peter walked away. “But did he tell you any details?”

Tamara nodded. “He was very open about what happened—even told a group of us about it, and then told me lots more in private. Why is this important for us to talk about it privately? Peter’s open about it, really.”

Angela smiled. “That’s wonderful. It’s because he’s had a lot of difficulty talking about it to others, including in the family, and we didn’t want that problem time to become something that came between you two in the future.”

Tamara had been trying to “read” them emotionally, but all he could get from Mason was that he had an intense, direct, and focused personality with a very strong moral sense.

Why is he in politics, then? Tamara wondered. Wouldn’t what he sees greatly trouble him?

Angela, by comparison, had an open and loving personality that was almost totally focused on Mason but her will seemed as strong as iron. Her family was also there, but Mason was the focus.

The thought occurred to Tamara, Behind every strong man stands a strong woman? That so-called proverb is so wrong. These two are a team, really, so it should be ‘Beside every strong man...

Her thoughts drew back because Mason was speaking.

“Yes, I had spoken to Werner about the Winsbergs meeting you and how you had impressed them, especially Greta. They’re here today too, somewhere around. I just wanted to tell you that everyone’s noticed the difference in Peter; he says it’s because of you, so we’re so grateful that he met you.”

He reached for her hand but Tamara drew him into a hug; then she hugged Angela.

“I can’t take all of the credit, obviously,” Tamara told them. “You guys in his family did the best part of helping him. The love I feel from all of his family members tells me a lot about you folks.”

“Yes, my dear,” Angela said. “That’s what Greta said about you—that you were sensitive to how people feel. Peter’s like that too, also Barbara.”

And you really don’t have the full sense of that, Tamara thought.

She was able to tell that they both had a small ability at empathic sensing, slightly greater than average, but nothing even close to Peter’s or Barbara’s ability. But she could tell that Mason was a shrewd observer of body language.

“All right, let’s let this lovely young lady go now so she can go back to her guy,” Mason said, grinning. “It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Tamara.”

“Likewise,” she said and then she went looking for Peter.

Tamara spent the afternoon and evening talking with Peter’s family members and even got to spend some time with Greta. She told Greta that her mom would be coming to Baltimore for a visit starting on Thursday and she’d try to find a way to get them together then.

Tamara spent a lot of social time during the day following Christmas, visiting with Peter’s family. Terence had gone back to Austin for the Christmas week, so it was just the three friends. Tamara had mentioned to Emma that her parents would be in town after Christmas, and Emma had invited her and her parents to her home on that Saturday. On Thursday afternoon, Peter and Tamara drove to the airport to pick up her parents. When they met Peter, Nadine had to stifle a gasp.

“Tamara,” she whispered to her as Wilson was talking to Peter, “do you sense anything from Peter?”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“There’s a presence about him, just like your dad has that presence of Ogorin always nearby.”

“I don’t feel that, except when Erzulie went to him with her message. I felt the presence then.”

“This is different, sweetie, it’s a feeling similar to yours. Oh dear. That’s it; he’s probably a focus as well. A pwen, like you, I think. He seems to be a focus of spirituality—and he isn’t from our culture and ancestry. I’ve never heard of something like that before...”

“Manman, there are other cultures and...”

“Oh dear, yes. With my education, I should have realized that,” Nadine said.

“What I was going to say—Peter’s granmanman, Greta, on his father’s side, has spirits the way we do but her ancestors are Danish. Or Norse, actually. Their cultures have lwa too but of course their words for them are different. I felt a presence in her ... oh, wait; I suddenly got a memory of Manman Tamara that just appeared. Oh, I see now how you are seeing Peter. I...”

Their whispered discussion was interrupted by Wilson.

“Honey, Peter and I got our bags. The kids are parked in the short-term lot, so we need to get a move on. Let’s get to the hotel and check in.”

They set off for the parking lot and Peter said, “You do remember that my folks are making dinner for all of us. Do you want me to drop you off and pick you up later?”