Chapter 37: A Discovery and a Resort Visit

Early July

The next two weeks passed in a blur. After her visit to Emma’s, Tamara began working on her chip fabrication. She spent four days at Emma’s lab at the APL and used the APL’s engineering facilities to build several double-sized prototypes of the patient coil’s signal-generator and receiver circuit assemblies on a chip. She started by preparing the IC chips’ base substrate, thin slivers of material cut from an ingot of pure silicon, and polishing them to receive the first layer of superconductive media. She then photoetched the first circuit layer, the base layer of the array of SETs, and continued the fabrication steps to build several dozen small RF emitter-receiver coils on each chip. By Friday, she had the somewhat crude prototype coil chips completed; then she mounted the sets of coils-on-chips on a circuit board affixed to a testing jig. The jig was set up so that she could measure the device’s RF output and the received return signals.

She spent a quiet weekend since Peter and Barbara had gone with their parents to visit an out-of-state aunt and uncle who couldn’t come to the August gathering of the whole clan. Terence had gone to his home in Austin for two weeks and would be returning in time for their visit to Peter’s resort.

On Monday, she was back again at the lab and testing her device; by midweek she was getting very odd results and it took close to a day to track down the problem. If she was correct and if what she had seen was a result of her chip design, the implications could be far-reaching. By noon on Friday, she had completed her calculations and was thoroughly confused by the results. She had to speak to Emma. Gathering up her notes, photos, and printouts, she called Emma to be sure that she would be in her office, and then called her car service; she couldn’t wait an hour or more for the scheduled shuttle.

“Well, hello there, and what’s the bleedin’ hurry, Tamara?” Emma asked as Tamara came bursting into her office.

“I ran into a really weird problem, Emma. I was running the coil device setup through several different discharge patterns, firing individual coils and then groups of coils, watching the RF output, and look at this.”

She laid out several graphs on Emma’s desk, showing the signal intensities from the device.

“This is RF output versus time. See the dropoff?” she pointed. “And then when I checked the single-coil operation again, those measurements were really degraded from the initial runs. I looked for the reason on the chips themselves with that magnifying viewer that we use to examine chips and checked the alignment of the RF coils in the device. Here are the photos.”

“So tell me what I should be looking for here,” Emma asked.

“Here’s the ‘before’ image. It’s from when the chips were finished. Now look at these ‘after’ images. See, the entire substrate area surrounding these coil pairs is disturbed. The coils actually tried to move out of place, even though they were embedded in the substrate.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible. That silicon substrate isn’t at all elastic. It would fracture if disturbed,” Emma said.

“So here are a few photos through a microscope. Those coils did move; they kinda pushed the substrate away, and they twisted a bit too. You can see that here.” Tamara pointed. “And here. All the coils where that happened were adjacent to each other and were energized at the same time, and you can see that the coil movement happened in pairs, each moving away from each other.”

“You mean that those coils were repelling each other?”

“Uh huh. There’s more than just RF being generated here. There’s some kind of very strong repulsion and there’s no force in the electromagnetic spectrum that can repel that strongly. That’s actually a misnomer, electromagnetic, because there’s no ‘magnetic’ frequency, it’s just that the passage of an electrical current creates a magnetic field. But those coils, when they create a magnetic field, it would be toroidal according to the Biot-Savart law, and the magnetic field would be strongest in the coil’s center. These coil pairs are oriented side-by-side and when I used the Biot-Savart law and Lorentz force law to calculate the resulting magnetic fields and electric fields, there’s nowhere enough force being generated to move those coils. The coil orientation is wrong too, to generate any opposing force.”

Emma was listening to her and nodding as she was looking at the calculations and photos.

“I don’t see anything wrong in your calcs,” Emma said. “And as well, you’re correct about the coil orientation.”

“Emma, I had to race to get here because I couldn’t think of anything else to explain how such a tremendous force was produced by such a tiny source. ‘Cause the only thing that could explain it is magnetism; that’s the only force with sufficient strength to have the effect here. But see, the force is acting as a point source and all magnetic forces are aligned between the poles of a dipole. There’s no dipole here; the force is radially oriented and that implies a magnetic monopole. But at a macro scale; that’s impossible! Monopoles are only theoretical fundamental particles, aren’t they? But the calcs I did show that if a monopole existed, it could have that effect.”

Emma was looking at her in amazement. “Bloody hell, Tamara, that’s a blindin’ brilliant interpretation! But we really don’t know if macro-scale monopoles are impossible, even though Gauss’ law of magnetic fields says that monopoles don’t exist. And you’re correct in that the existence of monopoles has only been theorized. In fact, Dirac suggested that the reason that electric charge is quantized and only comes in discrete units could be explained by the existence of just one single magnetic monopole in the universe. The quantization of electrical charge is still one of the major problems of physics. You’re also correct in that the monopole is theorized to be a fundamental particle, carrying a unit of magnetism, analogous to the electron, which carries a unit of charge.”

“But where did the force that moved those coils come from?” Tamara rejoined. “The silicon has a compressive strength of 3200 megaPascals and an elastic limit of 165 megaPascals. That’s about 33,000 kilograms of force per square centimeter in compression. That’s almost a half-million pounds per square inch! And the deformation showing in those photos needed more than 1600 kilograms per square centimeter of force.”

Emma grinned at her. “Remember what I told you last year? Sometimes when physics can’t explain an experimental finding, we need some new physics.”

“Yeah. But here we’d need some pretty weird new physics. So, on the way over, I tried to think of what could be happening. I know that superconductors can do weird things, like their ability to expel an applied magnetic field—when exposed to the magnetic field, superconductors induce a countercurrent which completely opposes the magnetic field. You know, the Meissner effect. Superconductors showing the Meissner effect behave like a perfect diamagnet and repel. But I could easily rule that out in this case.

“So I had this crazy idea. That kind of force doesn’t exist with the known elementary particles in the universe. So maybe somehow, the coils opened a portal to—like, the universe’s dark energy? Maybe some of the 95 percent of the universe that is dark energy and dark matter is monopoles? Possibly something in the superconducting coil circuit, when it was powered, let a monopole send a huge repulsive force through and it repelled the force coming through the adjacent coil. So that’s what I fantasized—that’s my overall picture. It’s just missing a few technical details.”

Emma stared at her in disbelief and then started to laugh. She began laughing so hard that tears began to form in her eyes and she almost fell off her chair, alarming Tamara greatly.

“Emma, did I say something wrong? Are you okay?”

Emma, laughing, just waved her hand feebly at Tamara.

“Just ... ha ha ... a bloody ... ha ha ... second...” she gasped, trying to catch her breath, but then broke out laughing again.

Tamara “pushed” a calming taste to Emma, who caught her breath, giggled a few times, then wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

“Crikey, I haven’t had a laugh like that in donkey’s years. No, my dear, you just quoted something that happened way back years ago involving Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli. Pauli didn’t like something Heisenberg had said in an interview, so he wrote letters about it to some of his physicist friends. I read the quote in a book. Let me find the book ... um ... ah, here. It’s a quote in this book, ‘The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-century Physics’; it’s by Crease and Mann. I so loved this quote that I tabbed the page. Here, page 411. I’ll read it.”

Heisenberg launched, two decades later, a unified field theory that started as a collaboration with Pauli. When Pauli withdrew, Heisenberg pressed on. To Pauli’s fury, Heisenberg claimed during a radio broadcast in February 1958 that a unified Heisenberg-Pauli theory was imminent, and only a few small technicalities remained to be worked out. Rumors swept the press. Pauli responded by mailing his friends a letter consisting of a blank rectangle, drawn in pencil, with the caption, “This is to show the world that I can paint like Titian. Only technical details are missing.”

Then Emma began to laugh again and Tamara giggled.

“Emma, don’t make me out that I can paint like Titian too, please,” she said, and Emma began laughing harder.

The laughing attracted a few faculty members, including Dr Montern, who popped his head into her office.

“What’s so funny, Emma? Everyone’s out here in the hall wondering.”

“Get in here, Chet,” Emma ordered. “See what our resident genius has done now.”

“You mean besides her circuit that has the rest of us trying to figure out why water can sometimes run uphill?” Montern chuckled while Tamara blushed.

“Yeah. Why that oddball circuit of hers allows electrons to flow against a charge gradient. That’s easy compared to what her new circuit here does. Look at these numbers,” Emma said, giving him Tamara’s elastic limit calculations.

He looked for a minute, then, “Okay, that’s a force of 16.8 kilograms per square millimeter. Tamara, what’s the area of the force application?” Montern asked.

“The coil is about 4 millimeters in diameter, so, um, 12.6 square millimeters.”

“That’s ... ah ... over 200 kilograms. Are you saying that somehow this tiny coil circuit developed over 200 kilograms of force? Where was it applied?”

“Yeah, repulsion actually, but it was probably closer to 100 kilograms each ‘cause those two adjacent coils pushed against each other,” Tamara said. “The range of action seems to be small—these are small coils. Look at these photos. See how the areas around the coils are deformed? The coil pair’s combined force was about 212 kilograms for their sizes, acting against each other.”

“Are you sure there wasn’t anything nearby—electrical or magnetic—that could have contributed to their forces?” Montern asked.

“Nothing nearby,” Tamara confirmed.

“As well, she told me that she had ruled out the Meissner effect,” Emma put in.

“Yeah, that’s right. But diamagnetism is really weak anyway. So, at the macro scale, the only forces which act at a distance are electrostatic, gravitational, or magnetic. At the atomic scale, the strong and weak forces. Leave out the weak force; that doesn’t apply. The residual strong force, which binds hadrons, would be powerful enough to explain what happened but of course it’s only active at the scale of an atomic nucleus. Electrostatic forces can’t produce a field strength of this intensity but gravitational forces can, if you’re near a supermassive object like a neutron star or black hole. Otherwise not. That only leaves magnetism, right?”

Montern nodded. “Okay. Go on.”

“So I calculated the field strength produced in the coils when current was flowing; it was in the nano-tesla range. To cause the coil to deform the substrate it was embedded in, I calculated that a field strength of at least 17 teslas would be needed to develop the necessary repulsive force.”

Emma broke in, “Tamara, are you aware that the world record, as of 2019, for a continuous magnetic field, is 45.5 teslas? That was an electromagnet about the size of a toilet-paper core. A magnet, even at a third of that field strength, would need to be bigger than four millimeters.”

“Sure. That’s why I conjectured what I did. Since you love quotations, Emma, how about this one? ‘When you’ve eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ I probably don’t have the exact words Arthur Conan Doyle used, but I think somehow that circuit somehow generated a monopole.”

“And, Chet, when she told me that, she said it was ‘just missing a few technical details,’ just like Pauli wrote when he said that ‘I can paint like Titian,’” Emma chuckled.

“I know that quotation,” Montern grinned. “Tamara, you do know that producing free elementary particles, and the monopole is conjectured to be one of them, takes extremely high energy?”

“Sure. But I told Emma that possibly my circuit opens a portal or somehow enables dark energy or dark matter to interact with the physical universe. Maybe monopoles and gravitons make up some of the dark matter.”

Montern got very thoughtful. “Well, absent this physical evidence, Tamara, I’d say you were talking science fiction. But to explain this? Maybe science fiction has the answers. Emma, I know you’ll want to explore this new crazy finding of Tamara’s. Hell, I’m still trying to figure out her electron flow problem.”

“As we all are,” Emma laughed. “Can you imagine if we could develop that much magnetic power with the use of so little energy?”

“Sure,” Montern said. “A science-fiction world. Magnetic levitation vehicles. Frictionless motors and turbines. More efficient frictionless bearings, in fact. Well, I’m sure I’ll hear about what you find.”

He left and Emma turned to Tamara.

“I’ll need to get out to the APL with you and have a few of my boffins from the battery project work with you on examining that circuit. First, we’ll need to replicate your findings. Then we’ll need to dissect those IC chips to analyze how their layers were deposited. When we have that information, we can figure out how to proceed. Now show me how you built that chip.”

They spent several hours discussing the chip’s construction and doing further calculations; then Emma had to leave. During the following weeks, Tamara was busy with Emma’s engineers, working on the circuit design and chip structure. They found that the composition of the superconducting coil wires was one critical factor; another was the configuration of the SETs comprising the RF generating circuit, and a third was the thickness of the tunnel junctions in the SETs. They were able to reproduce the extremely strong repulsive field that Tamara had first observed, but the fields they generated were transient and erratic. Both Emma and Tamara knew that more theoretical work would be needed to show how to stabilize the effect, and Emma spent a lot of time with Tamara going over the further testing from the lab and working out ways to isolate the individual subsystems of the device. At this, Tamara showed that she was a master, having an intuitive grasp of the behavior of the circuits she worked with.

Arundel Nature Society, Davidsonville, Maryland: early August

Tamara’s visit to Peter’s family’s resort would be a welcome break during August. All of Emma’s APL research group members took off at least two weeks in August; the European members customarily took off a month. Tamara would be spending about three weeks with Peter and Barbara and Terence would also be there.

The four friends had decided to take Jay’s advice and get to the resort two days before the rest of Peter’s family arrived; they all would arrive on the first August weekend. Peter’s great-grandparents had been among the resort’s founding members; his grandfather, along with his grandfather’s three children, were minority part-owners. Their family’s “cabin” was actually a rustic four-bedroom house and the site their house was on also contained three small cabins, each having two small bedrooms—each just large enough for a queen bed and a bunk bed, attached to a common area with a kitchenette, sitting area, and tiny bathroom.

The four friends arrived at the resort about 10 a.m. on Thursday, and when Barbara drove the car through the security gate and past a small but dense belt of trees which hid the grounds from prying eyes, Tamara gasped at the sight that lay before her. The landscape was dominated by a broad field of lush grass surrounded by a stand of beautiful mature trees. She could see a playground close by, and further past that, volleyball courts, a tennis court, and a group of picnic tables. A large, low building stood to the right and sounds of splashing water could be heard coming from that direction. To the left, Tamara could see rows of camper trailers and RVs; further away she saw some large tents and a number of small cabins.

But what really caught her eye were the people. There were people everywhere. Playing on the courts, sitting at the picnic tables, walking across the lawn. A teen group was tossing a frisbee around over there, and a number of young kids were using the playground equipment closer by. All were nude. There were men and women of all ages. Children, tweens, teenagers, all were here, and not a scrap of clothing could be seen. But, Tamara noticed, all the walkers were carrying towels.