Chapter 67: More Converts

The following week was the beginning of April and was an extremely busy time. Tamara’s attorneys—since she was in the process of setting up two corporations, she now had a legal practice on retainer to manage the legal aspects of those businesses and her foundation too—wanted to meet with her to go over the incorporation process and the licensing arrangements for her inventions. A major application of one of her discoveries was frictionless bearings and she planned for one of the companies she was setting up to develop and manufacture small- to medium-scale generators to be used in G-force-powered turbines. The name she had chosen for the company was AlWin Systems Corporation, combining her and Peter’s names. She planned to keep control of this operation because she had hopes of locating some of the manufacturing facilities in third-world countries, where she could provide both jobs and low-cost electrical power. Some of the G-force-turbine designs she had envisioned were small units, suitable for providing local power to towns and villages. Tamara told herself that she’d need to remind President Gerston of his agreement with her.

The second corporation was to be organized to manage transportation system applications using the G-force principle she had discovered. Some of its applications would be licensed, such as one involving high-speed levitating trains. For other related applications, such as personal vehicles with levitating capabilities, she wanted to keep control of that area’s research and development. That company would also continue development of her communications device and the methods of power transmission which used the related technology. This company would also continue development of the chemical chromatography analyzer she had developed to work on her pheromone project. All of those applications were based on her G-coil invention.

She had a third idea that she wanted her attorney team to investigate, one involving a pharmaceutical application to commercialize the development of medications based on her pheromone work. By using the MRI techniques she had developed, Tamara had learned from the data that there were possible nerve-cell receptor targets for pharmaceuticals which could potentially mimic the effects that she could achieve mentally. She wanted her legal team to look into licensing those patents.

And finally, she was to meet with the new board of directors for her charitable foundation. Werner had worked with her attorneys to get the board set up, and Tamara, using Emma’s idea for a corporate name, came up with “TNA Foundation.” This entity had been set up to receive all of the funds from Tamara’s licensing contracts and used that revenue to issue research grants and pay Tamara a stipend.

The feedback which Tamara—and Emma too as her mentor—had been getting on Tamara’s dark matter and energy theory was loud and varied. A preprint of the paper she had submitted to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences covering her theory and the mathematics supporting it had come out the previous week and, like any new theory, its critics and supporters were in full cry. The media took notice, especially at comments from some scientists that this new theory was the most important since Einstein’s relativity theories—special and general.

As a result of numerous requests from the press, the university decided that Tamara must give a press conference. She agreed to do it and one was scheduled for that Thursday, to be held in one of the university’s large auditorium-like classrooms. The university’s public relations director balked at the idea of accepting only written questions, but Tamara convinced him to allow the chairperson of Physics and Astronomy, Dr Chester Montern, to moderate and rule on each question’s merit.

Tuesday and Wednesday were lab days at the APL. Her little group was working on the levitating force principle, learning all they could about its characteristics. Their current project was scaling the device down to a size small enough to be used in bearings for shaft sizes smaller than about 2 centimeters. If they could produce bearings for shaft sizes of about 6 to 8 millimeters, roughly a quarter inch, then most small motors could be made frictionless.

The press conference was on Thursday.

The auditorium was packed; several TV crews were also present; it reminded Tamara of the Cambridge event—fortunately without the violence. She had elected to use two podiums, one for Montern and the other for her, about ten feet apart. Montern agreed to introduce her. When the time came to begin, Tamara and Montern took their places and Montern announced that they were starting and the room quieted.

“Greetings, members of the media. I’m Dr Chester Montern, chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department here at Hopkins and I’d like to introduce Miss Tamara Alexandre, a doctoral candidate in our department. Miss Alexandre has made a number of discoveries that have revolutionized physics and we’re here today to discuss her latest one, a theory that attempts to explain the nature of the dark matter and energy in the universe. Miss Alexandre will give you a brief intro and then I’ll explain how we’ll handle your questions, so please hold them until we’re ready. Miss Alexandre?”

“Thanks, Dr Montern. When I began the work that led to this theory, I had no idea that it would lead to where we are with it today. I was simply working on methods to try to improve the spatial resolution of MRI scans and building electronic circuits to accomplish that goal. But one of the devices I built did very strange things. When I tried investigating what was happening, current physics had no explanation. So I began looking for solutions to the problem, and since physics is based on math, I found the proper mathematics which could explain our observations. The best interpretation of that math is that it describes dark energy and dark matter.

“Physicists have long known that most of the mass in the universe exists as dark matter—and what dark matter is, exactly, has been one of the biggest scientific puzzles since Fritz Zwicky, who in 1933, calculated that the dispersion speeds of seven of the galaxies in the Coma cluster, in the direction of the constellation Coma Berenices, far exceeded the expected amounts, based on the sum of the masses of the individual galaxies. Those of you with science backgrounds may know that the dispersion speeds of galaxies are directly related to the galaxies’ masses. In fact, a large group of clusters of stars—galaxies—behaves very much like a gas, where the individual particles are the galaxies. To account for his finding of such high velocities, Zwicky knew that it would require significant amounts of additional matter to be present in the observed galaxies, but no such matter could be seen, so he called this missing matter ‘non-luminous.’

“Further work on a similar problem by others found that the orbital velocities of stars which were located at large distances from their galactic nucleus, were unexpectedly high, meaning that the galaxy had much more mass than could be observed. This finding, together with other observations, gave convincing evidence that most of the matter in the universe is invisible, and much of it is clumped around galaxies. Thus the term ‘dark matter’ came into widespread use.

“Current theory says that dark matter is composed of an unknown type of non-baryonic particle. Non-baryonic matter is simply matter which isn’t composed of neutrons and protons. You may have heard one of the theories of dark matter; that it’s composed of hypothetical particles called WIMPs—that stands for ‘weakly interacting massive particles.’ My paper shows that this theory is correct; the dark matter, as my calcs show, will interact weakly with ordinary matter under normal conditions, and the particles are massive, on an atomic scale, that is. We’ll get to the dark energy part in a bit. Dark-matter particles haven’t been detected experimentally. Neither collider experiments nor other detection experiments, like deep underground chambers set up to capture dark-matter particles, have directly detected it. The reason colliders haven’t been able to find dark matter is simple: the most powerful of them lack sufficient energy because the particles are too massive, as my paper shows.

“The data obtained so far indicates that the total amount of all kinds of matter in the universe is about five times greater than the amount of baryonic matter, and it also shows that dark matter is largely concentrated in giant halos around galaxies and within clusters of galaxies.

“The theory of dark energy is much more recent. It was during the late 1990s that astronomers discovered evidence that gravity wasn’t slowing down the universe’s expansion as was expected—its speed of expansion was actually increasing. What was causing this to happen? Following the naming of the unobservable dark matter in the universe, the cause of the expansion was called ‘dark energy.’ You may know that Einstein had initially introduced a ‘cosmological constant’ into his relativity equations because it appeared that his theoretical universe would collapse without that modification. Then, when the expansion of the universe was discovered, he retracted the idea of that constant. But we know now that using such a constant is valid, since the existence of dark energy is actually consistent with the slow, steady force that’s causing the universe’s expansion, and it’s dark energy that is pushing matter outward to expand the universe ever faster and faster.

“So what we know now is that baryonic matter, plus the leptons—that’s all of the fermions and bosons that comprise visible matter, plus the particles which mediate the universe’s energy, only constitutes about 4 percent of the total mass and energy density of the universe. That’s the part we can see; we can’t see what makes up the rest of the universe. Dark matter can’t be directly observed because it emits no radiation and it makes up another 24 percent of the universe, and finally, the largest share of the universe is dark energy, comprising about 72 percent.

“That’s the background. As I said when I began, my work started by looking into the use of microwaves to improve MRI resolution. Along the way, some of the devices I designed produced anomalous results and one of those results made it appear as if energy was being created out of nowhere. Obviously that was a violation of the laws of physics; that energy had to come from somewhere, so I began trying to account for its appearance using math. The results of those calcs are in the PNAS paper, and the math stands on its own. It’s the interpretation of what the math means is what’s giving some physicists fits. My own interpretation of those results is that the source of the energy I’ve detected and can reliably produce is related to dark matter and energy. I’ve showed how the model fits into the standard model of physics and meets all of its predictions. And the devices I’ve developed all use that energy to do useful things, like make frictionless bearings, for example. That will result in producing energy far more cheaply. And a new form of levitating transportation, which will greatly reduce the costs of moving products.

“I can take questions now. Dr Montern will moderate, so please wait for him.”

The group applauded,

Montern went to the podium. “Miss Alexandre has done some of the most remarkable things any of us at Hopkins have ever seen, and she’s yet to finish her doctoral program here. But for this work alone, our faculty believes that she’s more than qualified to be granted that degree.”

Applause.

“But she insists that she needs to complete all of her course objectives. As she told me, ‘I want my degree to be a proper one, earned like anyone else.’”

Laughter.

“So that means we get to keep her here for another year, which is great for Hopkins’ reputation.”

More laughter.

“So it’s time for your questions. I’ll ask you all to please keep them to professional and scientific topics. I will decide if a question is appropriate—like ones asking her if she has a boyfriend or how she gets her ideas at her age are not appropriate. And please, no shouted questions; we have a dozen wireless mikes available. Get one from a staff member roaming the aisles and then raise your hand to be recognized.”

The questions were mostly general.

The first one was: “A number of physicists have said that this is the most important theory since Einstein’s relativity. Do you agree?”

Tamara answered: “I have no opinion on that. The importance of a scientist’s work is not the work itself, but how that work influences the work of others. A very good measure of this influence is how many times that original work is cited in the papers of other researchers. So I will let my peers determine the significance of my work.”

Question: “What kind of device did you build that gave those unusual results and what was unusual about it?”

Answer: “It was a kind of RF-generating coil using superconducting circuitry. And I mentioned that we observed energy flowing into what should have been a closed system. This was not possible, meaning that the system wasn’t closed and the energy source being tapped had to be the result of the coil somehow pulling energy from outside the natural, visible world. The calcs showed that the most likely source was dark energy.”

Question: “How are those coils made that they can do that?”

Answer: “That’s too technical to go into detail here. The coils are based on an array of single-electron transistors, or SETs, which are electronic devices that have superconducting properties. We now have patents pending on the devices and you can pick up a handout after this session. It has the patents’ details. We’re in the process of licensing some of the applications of the coil devices.”

Question: “This one is for Dr Montern. Why don’t you give her the damned degree already?”

Laughter.

Montern: “I did mention about that. But Tamara’s been stubborn about wanting to go the full course, as she put it.”

Tamara: “Look at it this way. If I keep doing just fine, I keep getting all of this great support from a world-class university and access to wonderful facilities and people. If I mess up, well, then I’m just a dumb student. Right?”

The audience erupted in laughter and then applause.

Tamara: “Seriously, being a student gives me time to explore options and be creative before I leave this nurturing environment and have to assume more rigid professional responsibilities. Nobody’s holding me back from getting a degree. There are a few more things I want to do before I take the degree.”

Applause again.

Question: “What kinds of real-world applications does your theory have?”

Tamara: “The science part is probably self-evident. Commercial applications of the devices that appear to use the energy from the dark-energy source seem to be many. You already must be aware of Dr Clarke’s work on energy storage; one application of my devices allows for highly efficient energy storage and her company and my own team are working on wireless power transmission applications. We’ve got batteries for EVs—electric vehicles—under development. I mentioned levitating transportation devices. I’m thinking of trains similar to the mag-lev ones used in Europe and Asia, although my device works great without the ‘mag’ part. No magnetism is involved; it actually uses something like ground effect. We’ve already built shaft bearings that use that same repulsive principle. Magnetic bearings exist; they have good efficiency, but need complicated circuitry to correct for wobble caused by shaft loading. Our bearings don’t have those issues and use just tiny amounts of power. We’re preparing to design high-efficiency G-force turbines and working on making the bearings small enough to use them in small motors. There’s much more in the works; some of it is still confidential. Is that enough?”

Applause.

Question: “Are you leaving any problems for other physicists to work on? Sounds like you’re solving all of the open problems.”

Laughter.

Tamara: “No way could I do it all; there’s still lots more to work on. Emma—Dr Clarke—once told me of a quotation by the famous physicist Wolfgang Pauli. He said, ‘The best that most of us can hope to achieve in physics is simply to misunderstand at a deeper level.’ In other words, the more we learn, the more we learn that there’s much more to learn.”

Laughter again.

Question: “Does your theory suggest any ideas for you about understanding the nature of the universe?”

Tamara: “That’s a deep question. Some of the implications of the math I worked on suggests ideas on the quantum nature of gravitation itself. Physicists joke about seeking the ‘theory of everything,’ kind of an extended unified field theory. I think that some of my math may give insights into linking general relativity to quantum mechanics. That’s been a very elusive goal. But I’m not a computational physicist like Dr Clarke is; I’m an engineering physicist and my imagination leads me to want to solve physics questions by building devices that the mathematics suggest. So one thought I had when working out this theory is how gravitation works and what kind of fundamental particle would be the carrier of the gravitational force. If we can answer that question, then that would open an entirely new area of possible applications, even extending to space flight without the need for enormous launching facilities. But that’s all speculation now.”

There were many other questions, some of them restatements of previous questions or requests for clarification of Tamara’s answers. And of course there were a few that were ignored, ones of the nature of “how did you get to be so smart.”

Tamara was curious to see how the press conference would be treated on the local evening news, since there had been two TV camera crews there. There was a brief spot of coverage, about ninety seconds long, that had two snippets of her speaking and the rest was a simple report that she had introduced a new theory in cosmology that had the scientific community all excited about how it fit into current knowledge. She thought that it was a reasonable report.

All that week, her email in-box had been collecting messages inviting her to visit campuses all over the world to present her work. Damn, she thought, if I accepted just a small fraction of those invites, I’d be on the road most of the year. Emma says she gets a lot of invites too and has a very polite way of turning them down. My own excuse will still work, but not for much longer.

On Saturday afternoon, Tamara and Peter, together with Tamara’s parents, went to Greta’s and Werner’s home for a visit and dinner. After they arrived, they all spoke for a while together before Tamara took Greta aside for a private discussion.

“I’ve come up with several ideas about how the spirit world fits into what we know about science, Greta,” Tamara said when they were alone. “Part of what I’ve theorized is based on the observation that the cultures where spirits are venerated are very similar in their basics. It’s probably no coincidence that so many different cultures have the same kind of spiritual leaders—wise man or woman, medicine man, whatever the clergy name may be. When we first met and discussed religions, you called those people shamans, so I did a little research and found that the idea of shamanism covers many characteristics of a number of religious practices of cultures from around the world. There are two major things that kind of link the shamans of all of those different cultures—first, rituals based on achieving a trance and second, mediation in general. Other things in common are veneration of ancestors and the existence of helping spirits.