In the previous chapter, "Future Speculations", I discussed a number of possible new sources of energy using future technologies that today would be indistinguishable from magic. In this fiction story, I describe a potential new source of energy that is literally "strange", but it is not magic. The theory of strange matter is highly developed and well accepted by the scientific community. There are even experiments being planned to search for drops of strange matter generated by the high speed collision of heavy nuclei on heavy metal targets. (See "The Search for Strange Matter" by Henry J. Crawford and Carsten H. Greiner, in the January 1994 issue of Scientific American, Volume 270, Number 1, pages 72-77.)
In the story, I describe what such a search would entail from the viewpoint of the researchers involved. To put a little drama in the plot by creating a deadline date that put the researchers under pressure, I postulated that the Super-Conducting Supercollider was in imminent danger of being canceled in the year 1998. Little did I realize that my prediction would come true five years before that date.
This story was published in the table-top book Microverse published by Byron Preiss Books in 1988.
Matt knew there was trouble ahead.
He had been summoned to the office of the Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory. Director Stevens normally never bothered to talk to the visiting scientists that came to use his facility, except perhaps at parties. Matt stared at the picture on the opposite wall as he waited in the reception room. It showed Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger at Brookhaven in 1961, shortly after they had proved that there were two kinds of neutrinos.
"Those were the days," Matt thought, soothing his anxiety by stroking his neat beard, flecked with strands of prematurely grey hair.
The secretary finally ushered him in, and Calvin Stevens introduced him to Congressman James Deal, the Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, and Secretary of Energy "Billy" Hurley, formerly on the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and now President Peterson's newly appointed "hatchet man" at the Department of Energy.
"Professor Shaw is Principal Investigator of the 'S-Drop Experiment' ", said Director Stevens. "It's an attempt to find evidence for a new state of matter called 'strange' matter."
" 'Strange' matter?" queried Billy Hurley, looking at Matt.
Matt started the set speech he used to explain his experiment to lay people. "All massive particles, like the protons and neutrons that make up the atoms in your body, are in turn made up of more basic particles, called quarks. Quarks come in six different types, labeled quixotically, 'up', 'down', 'strange', 'charm', 'top', and 'bottom'. A proton can be imagined as a bag containing two 'up' quarks and one 'down' quark, while a neutron is one 'up' and two 'down' quarks. All known particles can be represented by some combination of two or three quarks. Quarks have never been seen individually. They always seem to come in 'bags' of two or three.
"If you get enough quarks together at one time, however," continued Matt. "Say, fifty or more, and some of them are strange quarks . . . then you can form large bags, or drops, of a new type of matter, called strange matter. The purpose of our experiment is to slam the heaviest ions Brookhaven can accelerate into a heavy metal target, and search the resulting debris for S-drops—drops of strange matter."
"What are the chances of success?" asked Billy, critically.
"It's hard to say," Matt replied. "Although the theory suggests that large drops of strange matter should be stable, the smaller drops we can produce at Brookhaven may only be marginally stable. Then, there is the problem of identifying the few S-drops produced from all the other particles coming from the target."
"What is the probability of success?" persisted Billy. "Give me a number."
Matt couldn't force himself to lie. "Less than one percent," he finally admitted.
Billy leaned back. He didn't like this job Peterson had asked him to do—but at least he wouldn't feel bad about canceling this marginal experiment. He turned to the Director of Brookhaven. "Tell him the bad news, Cal," he said.
Calvin Stevens squirmed. "By the direction of President Peterson, Brookhaven National Laboratory is to be closed down at the end of this fiscal year," he said.
"What!" Matt exclaimed in disbelief.
"Can you get your experiment completed by September thirtieth?" continued the Director. "If not, you might as well shut it down right now."
"Every cent saved means that much more for the scientists trying to complete the Superconducting Super-Collider," said Congressman Deal.
"Peterson's new budget for 1998 has zero dollars in it for the SSC," explained Secretary Hurley. "He is determined to balance the budget—and he isn't going to do it by stripping the ragged shirts off the backs of the poor. I've consulted with the chief scientist types at the Department. They all agree that real breakthroughs in high energy physics come only from those machines at the highest energy—and in the USA, that machine is the SSC. To save the SSC, the rest of the machines have to go."
"But there is good science going on at those smaller machines," protested Matt.
" 'Gap filler' science," said Chairman Deal, almost sneering. "We've got poor who need our help to make it through these belt tightening times. We can't afford a welfare program for second rate scientists."
Matt winced internally, but held his temper. "It's not me or the other scientists I'm worried about," he said. "The people who'll get hurt will be the graduate students. I've got two who are counting on my experiment to get their Ph.D. degrees."
"They had better change their majors to something more practical," said Billy. "By next year, the only place that will need particle physicists will be the SSC. Unless, of course, they go to work for the Department of Defense. The Air Force will be turning most of the particle accelerators into antimatter factories as soon as you scientists leave."
Calvin brought the discussion back. "Can you get your experiment done in time?" he persisted.
"We were planning on three months of beam time to produce conclusive results," replied Matt. "But we can make do with one month if we have to." He thought for a while. "If we work twenty-four hour days, we can get the experiment ready a month before the end of the fiscal year." He got up abruptly. "You give me no other choice, so I'd better get busy," he said, and left without shaking hands.
Working day and night, Matt and his two graduate students, Yong-Shi Wu and Patti Morrison, struggled to get their experiment operational. Yong-Shi was the computer and software whiz, while Patti was the electronics and hardware expert.
One evening, Matt dropped in unexpectedly at the experimental building after midnight. The downstairs control room was empty. He went upstairs—no one in the offices or the lounge. Then he heard voices and the noise of a powerful electric motor echoing back through the long corridor that led from the control building to the experiment floor proper. He checked the indicators above the door to the corridor. The beam was off and the radiation monitors were green. He made his way through the narrow walkway until he was on top of the wall of concrete blocks that shielded the control room from the experimental area. The gate on top of the meter thick wall was open, and someone had taken the safety key with them down into the experimental area. The voices were clearer now. He descended the circular staircase that spiraled down the other side of the six meter high wall, and walked through the zig-zag portal into the experimental area. He looked up in shock.
"Patti!!! What the hell are you doing!" Matt roared. His voice echoed back from the twenty meter high ceiling of the gigantic metal shed that covered the experimental area. Yong-Shi Wu, and some people that Matt recognized as Patti's friends, were trying to look inconspicuous in the far corner.
High above, hanging from the overhead crane, was a forty ton block of dense concrete. Standing on top of the block, one hand casually holding the steel suspension cable and the other hand holding the crane controls, was a thin young woman with long, bushy red-brown hair pulled back into a pony-tail. She was dressed in faded blue jeans, scruffy fluorescent-red jogging shoes, and a bulky white sweat shirt that said, "North Pole University".
"Oh! Hi, Professor Shaw," said Patti down from above. "I was hoping to have this done before morning."
"When I usually show up," said Matt, disapprovingly.
Patti's eyes dropped, her shoulders hunched forward, and she seemed to shrink, as she went into her "mooching" pose.
"What are you up to?" Matt asked again, sternly.
"Well . . ." started Patti. "The other experiments in the hall had to stop because they couldn't be finished before the shutdown. So, instead of having our experiment crowded into the small area we were originally allocated, I was just rearranging things to take advantage of the extra room."
"There's got to be more to it than that," replied Matt, still frowning. "All we need for the first phase of the experiment is the target for the heavy ion beam to collide with, the bending magnet to separate out the S-drops from the rest of the particles, and the time-of-flight detector that shows the particle is really an S-drop. They fit into our area just fine."
"But since there is more room," said Patti. "We can bring in our equipment for the second phase—where we capture the S-drops."
"If the S-drops exist," reminded Matt. "Remember . . . First we have to prove they exist. Second, we try to capture them and grow them large enough that they are stable."
"But we have only one month of beam time," said Patti. "I was just trying to make the most of it."
"Well . . ." hesitated Matt.
"It's our last chance!" persisted Patti.
"Let's see what you have in mind," said Matt, giving in.
"I'll meet you on top of the right shield wall," said Patti, perking up. She pushed buttons and started to lower herself down. Matt found a ladder and climbed to the top of the thick wall that shielded one experiment from another.
"The block I was lifting came from the wall at the end of our area, right behind the beam dump that absorbs everything that comes through the S-drop detector," said Patti, pointing as they walked along. "Instead of throwing the S-drops away in the beam dump, I was planning to take them through a hole in the wall into the next area. There I was going to set up the decelerator, the holding ring, and the storage bottle."
"There is certainly room for them there," admitted Matt, stroking his grey-flecked beard.
"And the equipment is just waiting for us in the storage annex," said Patti, eagerly.
The crane was soon busy. The remaining blocks in the wall were removed, opening up a hole. Yong-Shi set up a laser beam that passed through the center of the S-drop detector and simulated the path that the S-drops would take. The red beam went through the break in the wall, six feet above the floor, and passed down the length of the adjoining area.
Soon Patti was flying back again. This time she was balanced on a ten meter long segment of the S-drop decelerator. It was a particle accelerator that had been redesigned to run backwards. As Patti slowly lowered the thick cylinder with its banks of RF generators hanging off the sides, Matt, Yong-Shi, and the others pushed and pulled on the ends until the laser beam threaded through the five centimeter bore of the long tube. The support feet were lowered to the floor, and Patti went flying off to get the next section, while final adjustments were made on the feet until the laser beam was exactly centered in the bore. Soon all three segments were in place and the thirty meter long decelerator was ready for vacuum checkout.
Next came the holding ring. The major component was an old magnet salvaged from the Brookhaven "junk" yard. It was ten meters in diameter and a meter thick. There was a ten centimeter gap between the top coil and the bottom coil where the magnetic field was strong and constant.
Between the poles of the magnet was a new vacuum chamber, especially designed for holding and growing S-drops. The magnetic field passing through the chamber kept the S-drops moving in a circle. Once every revolution they would pass through a container of liquid deuterium—hydrogen atoms with an extra neutron in their nucleus. The rapidly moving S-drops would absorb the neutrons and grow heavier.
The remainder of the chamber contained an S-drop accelerator that made up for the speed lost by the S-drop as it passed through the liquid deuterium. The whole thing was designed to keep the S-drops circulating through the liquid deuterium again and again, growing heavier and larger with each passage. Around the ring was a cluster of gamma ray detectors, for as the S-drops grew, they gave off energy in the form of soft gamma rays.
Finally, there was the storage bottle. An electronic switch in the ring could divert an S-drop from its circular path and send it off into the storage bottle. There it would be suspended in the center of a vacuum chamber by a combination of electric and magnetic fields. Associated with the bottle was an accelerator that could shoot deuterium atoms at the stored S-drop, and more gamma ray detectors to monitor the energy given off as each deuterium atom was swallowed by the S-drop and converted from normal matter into strange matter.
As Patti had planned, they were through before morning came. There was a lot of work to do, however, baking out the vacuum systems, aligning the various pieces of equipment with charged particle beams instead of laser beams, and making the software play with the hardware, but finally they were ready—just forty days before the end of the fiscal year.
There was great excitement when the high energy beam of heavy gold ions was first switched into their experimental area. Everyone was gathered around the control console, watching the indicators intensely.
"All we need is just one S-drop," muttered Patti. "That would show that Tennessee hill-'Billy' he was wrong!"
Hour after hour, massive nuclei of pure gold slammed into the tungsten target and created a profusion of particles. Some of the particles made it through the bending magnet and passed through the detector, but none of them had the right mass, speed, and charge to be an S-drop.
The hours passed into days—the days passed into weeks—but no 'strangers' dropped in for a visit. Finally, they all had to admit that their experiment was going to be just one more experiment that had looked for something new—and had failed. Still they pressed on, working around the clock, hoping against hope that the next golden nucleus would produce the long-sought drop of strange matter . . .
It was late on September 30 when Matt pulled off the William Floyd Parkway and drove for the last time onto the grounds of Brookhaven. He saw a familiar car ahead of him, driving slowly along the side of the road. It was a chauffeur-driven stretched Cadillac, with a microsatellite dish in addition to the carphone antenna. In the headlights of the slowly moving car was Patti, long thin legs encased in peacock blue spandex, feet in fluorescent-red running shoes, and her upper body protected from the light Long Island fog by a sweatshirt with a picture of Einstein on the back, sticking out his tongue. Her long red-brown pony tail brushed across Einstein's tongue with every other step.
Patti was on her way to her shift—escorted by her boyfriend, Charles Harris, a wealthy Wall Street stockbroker. Matt beeped his horn as he passed and continued on to the parking area outside the experimental building.
Yong-Shi Wu looked up from the control console as Matt entered the room. The almond eyes in the pudgy face were blinking and red from lack of sleep.
"Any luck?" asked Matt, with little hope that the answer would be different this time.
"Nothing unusual from the detectors, Prof. Shaw," replied Yong-Shi.
"When does your plane leave for Beijing?" asked Matt.
"Eight in the morning from Kennedy," replied Yong-Shi.
"Then you'd better get some sleep," said Matt. "Add today's data to your thesis tape and get on your way."
"Shall I shut down the experiment, Prof. Shaw?" Yong-Shi asked.
"No," said Matt. "I saw Patti coming in to take over her shift. We might as well keep collecting data until the beam goes down at midnight."
"I will wait until midnight, then," said Yong-Shi, putting his data tape back.
"No!" said Matt, gruffly. "Another four hours of null data won't make any difference to your thesis results. Get your data and get out of here. I don't want you missing your flight."
Yong-Shi put the tape on the drive and was busy at the control console when Patti mooched in. Shoulders hunched over, hands stuffed in the pockets of her sweatshirt, she went around the control room looking at all the dials.
"Everything OK, Yong-Shi?" Patti asked. She took a pair of blue-jeans off the wall and pulled them over her spandex tights.
The tape drive started whirling. Yong-Shi leaned back in the comfortable console chair, rubbed his eyes, and yawned. "Number eight gamma ray detector is intermittent," he reported.
"Must be that damn connector, again," said Patti. "But I'll check in here first." She walked behind some cabinets and started wiggling the wiring.
The outside door opened and a young business executive dressed in a black Homburg, shiny black shoes, grey silk scarf, and expensive grey wool topcoat timidly entered the control room.
"I just wanted to ask Patti when I should pick her up," explained Charles.
Patti came out from behind the cabinet. "The 'Final Count-Down' party starts at eleven thirty in Beam Operations," said Patti, brushing the dust off her hands. "Pick me up ten minutes before then and we can drive over. You coming, Yong-Shi?"
"I think I had better pack and hit the sheets," said Yong-Shi.
"He's leaving for Beijing in the morning," explained Matt. Yong-Shi took the tape off the drive, crammed it into his back-pack, and started for the door.
"You're leaving!?!" exclaimed Patti. "I didn't realize it would be so soon." She grabbed Yong-Shi and gave him a hug. She was slightly taller than the chubby Chinese and he squirmed in embarrassment.
"I'm going to miss all those long nights we spent working together to make this kludge operational," she said, looking down at him.
Matt noticed a perturbed frown on Charles's face. Patti saw it too, frowned back at Charles, and deliberately planted a kiss on Yong-Shi's forehead. She gave him another hug and let him go. As Yong-Shi went through the door, she waved goodbye and called out, "Give my regards to Sui-May and let me know when you get married."
Patti turned back to the apparatus. "The problem isn't in the cabinets," she said. "So it must be in that connector." Ignoring the ladder propped in the far corner, Patti slipped off her blue jeans and Einstein sweatshirt, leaving her clad only in her peacock blue spandex body suit and fluorescent-red running shoes. Matt noticed that she was getting fat. That was very unlike Patti, who had always been skinny—but the pressure she had been under these past months was enough to make anyone fall off their diet.
Patti walked over to the chalk board, ran her fingers down the rail until they were white with chalk, and started to free climb the huge concrete blocks between the control room and the experimental area.
"Patti!" exclaimed Charles, moving under her. "Don't take chances!"
Patti halted in mid-climb, sides of her shoes jammed into a thin seam four meters off the floor and a finger through a lifting ring. "I've done this dozens of times, Charles," said Patti. "Stop worrying."
Finding a clear place between the bundles of cables going over the six meter high wall, Patti hoisted herself until she had a firm grip on the top edge. A few more moves and she was facing outward. A quick flip, and she was lying flat on the top of the wall, dark-brown eyes glowing with accomplishment. Matt and Charles stopped holding their breath.
"Be back in a few minutes," she said. Matt and Charles watched as the blue spandex-covered fanny moved off—following the cables in the narrow crawlway.
"An amazing young woman," said Matt, quietly.
"That's why I've been in love with her ever since high school," said Charles. "She is light-years ahead of me in intelligence and talent. All I can do is make money."
"That takes talent, too," said Matt.
"All it takes is a pleasant personality and a convincing line to sell stock," said Charles. "I hope my line has been convincing enough for Patti." He looked at his watch. "The Tokyo exchange has just opened," he said. "I'd better keep on top of the first few hours to protect my clients. Tell Patti I'll be back before eleven-thirty." He went out the door.
Matt went to the control console. The main screen had slowly growing bars showing the amount of data collected. The "S-drops" column was blank. Up in the right corner was an engineering display monitoring the high voltage supplies to the gamma ray counters. The indicator for counter eight was erratically shifting from a green OK to a yellow LOW. Suddenly it changed to a steady green OK.
"Did that work?" echoed Patti's voice from the crawlway.
"Yes!" yelled Matt. Patti reappeared and soon was back down on the floor. She shivered slightly as she put on her faded jeans and Einstein sweatshirt.
Patti took over the control console while Matt went upstairs to his little "Professor's Office" to plow through his grant paperwork. A little after eleven, he came back down. Patti was sitting back in the chair, bare feet up on the console, looking at a small object.
"Any 'strangers' show up?" Matt asked.
"Afraid not," said Patti. She tapped a key with a big toe and the screen changed. She put the object on her finger, and Matt realized it was a ring, a huge diamond solitaire.
"That's some rock you have there," said Matt, admiringly.
"Charlie gave it to me last night," said Patti. "And asked me to marry him—again." She patted her rounded tummy. "I guess he wants to make me an honest woman."
"Oh!" said Matt, flustered. "I thought you were gaining . . ."
"Weight?" said Patti, giggling. You might say that. Except that I expect to lose it all in five months." She suddenly turned pensive. "I'm normally very careful. But I got careless during that depressing period right after the bottom fell out of particle physics. I sometimes wonder if it was really carelessness or just Mother Nature playing tricks on me with my own hormones. I thought seriously about having an abortion—you can't be a post-doc and raise kids at the same time—but I kept putting it off." She looked at the clock display on the screen. "Almost time for Charlie to come." She tapped her big toe on the keyboard again and the tape drive across the room started to rewind. She bent over, slipped on her shoes, and stood up.
Matt went to the tape drive and removed the reel of tape. He walked over to Patti.
"Here's your Ph.D. thesis," he said, handing it to her.
Patti took the reel that symbolized ten years of her life. Four grinding years getting her B.S. in Physics at CCNY, another four grinding years getting her Masters and passing the Ph.D. qualifying exams at SUNY-Stony Brook, and two years with Matt Shaw, designing, building, and operating this experiment. But the grind wasn't over. It would take the good part of another year to turn the null data on that tape into an acceptable thesis. And when she was done and had received her doctorate, it would have been for nothing. She had sent out literally hundreds of job applications all over the world, and had received not one positive response. No one wanted another average female particle physicist when there were hundreds of men and women, some better than she was, clamoring for the few post-doc positions left open in the field.
She shrugged, tossed the reel of tape into a nearby trash can, mooched over to her work desk, and started stuffing her back-pack with her personal belongings.
"Patti!" exclaimed Matt.
"I'm tired," said Patti in a discouraged tone. "I quit."
Matt fished the reel of tape from the trash and took it over to her. "You can't quit now," he said. "You've almost got your Ph.D.! Think of your future. Think of your career!"
The door opened and Charles walked in. Patti perked up and greeted him with a big kiss. Supporting herself by holding onto his arm, she turned to face her Professor.
"My future is with Charlie," she said. She patted her tummy. "I'm going to make a career of being a wife and a mommy . . ." A defiant look came on her face, "A damn good wife and mommy," she added. "With Charlie I'll be happy and wanted and loved. Which is more than I can expect from a life as a scientist." She grabbed her backpack. "Goodbye, Professor Shaw."They left, leaving Matt still holding the reel of tape.
Dejected, Matt returned to the console and collapsed in the chair. He looked at the screen clock. "2327 TUE 30 SEP 1997," it said.
"Only thirty-three minutes left, then the beam goes off . . . forever," said Matt to himself. He leaned back in the large comfortable chair and let his tired eyes close.
The early morning sun sent a bright shaft of light through a window and woke Matt up. It was six a.m. He had fallen asleep and the beam had been off for six hours. There was a voice coming from upstairs—it had an urgent tone—but whatever was being said was being repeated in an automatic manner. Puzzled, he made his way up the stairs. There, on a shelf, was a small television monitor sitting on top of a video recorder. It was repeating a scene from "Star Trek", Yong-Shi's favorite television program. The picture showed Mr. Spock speaking over the intercom.
"Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! We have a 'stranger' on the lower deck."
Matt went quickly down the corridor, let himself through the safety gate, and taking a portable radiation monitor with him, clambered quickly down the circular staircase. Slowly he entered the experimental area, radiation monitor held out in front of him.
The first experimental area was quiet. As he moved through the breach in the shield wall into the second experimental area and started to walk down the long length of the decelerator tube, the ticks from the radiation monitor became more active. The needle was still in the green area, however, so he continued on. As he approached the holding ring, the needle on the monitor dial began to creep into the yellow area. The radiation was especially intense near the segment of the chamber that contained the liquid deuterium.
Matt activated the auxiliary control console in one corner. The bars on the screen indicated no data had been lost while he was asleep—but most importantly, the column labeled "S-drops" was no longer empty. Sometime in the last few minutes of beam operation, a drop of strange matter had been formed. For the last six hours it had been circulating around in the holding ring, feeding on the liquid deuterium and growing fatter and heavier.
"I'd better get it out of there before it gets too heavy and flies out of the holding ring!" said Matt. Holding his breath, he activated the switching circuit. If everything had worked correctly, the heavy drop of strange matter should have been transferred from the holding ring into the storage bottle. Grabbing the radiation monitor, Matt ran back. The gamma radiation from the holding ring was gone. He went over to the storage bottle and waved the monitor around it . . . Nothing. Had he lost it?
Then he remembered that S-drops only gave off radiation when they were being fed. He ran back to the auxiliary console and turned on the gun that shot deuterium atoms across the center of the storage bottle. Instantly, the four gamma ray detectors surrounding the bottle started to indicate cascades of low energy gamma rays as the neutrons in the deuterium penetrated through the electron clouds around the drop of strange matter and became one with it. He called up a computer routine that calculated the total amount of energy being emitted in gamma rays for every neutron swallowed.
"Over three percent!" exclaimed Matt. "Three percent of the mass of the neutron is being converted into energy! That's better than fusion energy! And 'Billy' Hurley thought that new physics only came from the highest energy machines."
He turned off the deuterium gun and the drop of strange matter stopped emitting gamma rays. "Best of all, there is no residual radioactivity when you turn it off," he gloated. "And when it gets too big, you just hit it hard with a large, high-speed nucleus, and you can break it into two S-drops and start up another power plant."
"How big did it grow during those six hours, anyway?" he asked himself. He pulled down another routine that used the electromagnetic fields in the storage bottle as a "spring" to weigh the S-drop.
"It's over a trillion times heavier than a uranium nucleus!" he exclaimed. "It's almost big enough to see!" He remembered they had a borehole telescope for inspecting the inside of beam lines. He found it and took it to the storage bottle. It took a long time to arrange the floodlights and the telescope just right. Then, a final twist of the focus knob brought a tiny speck of silver into view.
"There it is," whispered Matt to himself—a thrill running through his body. "A Nobel Prize for me . . . Instant Ph.D.'s for Patti and Yong-Shi . . . And perhaps salvation for Brookhaven, its researchers, and all the other 'second-rate' facilities in the country . . . But best of all, its a new source of radiation-free nuclear power for the world . . ."
Suddenly he became concerned. Nuclear fusion had once promised to be free of residual radioactivity, but secondary reactions had made fusion reactors almost as dangerously radioactive as fission reactors. Would there be something about strange matter energy conversion that would negate its advantages?
Then, from the back of his mind came the memory of an article he had read on "strange stars". According to the article, if a single drop of strange matter fell into a neutron star, the whole star would turn into an ultradense ball of strange matter. Yet, according to the same theorists, nothing like that should happen with normal matter. Since a drop of strange matter has a cloud of electrons around it, it would interact with normal matter in much the same way as a normal atom, which also has a cloud of electrons around it. The electron clouds would act as barriers to keep the strange matter from getting to the protons and the neutrons in the nuclei of the normal matter.
"But suppose . . ." muttered Matt to himself. "That the strange matter drop were allowed to get too large—like almost happened to me—and it got too heavy to hold and fell down into the Earth. Would the S-drop go all the way to the center of the Earth? And are the pressures at the center of the Earth high enough to crush the clouds of electrons shielding the strange matter and allow it to eat up the Earth?"
He didn't know the answer. And even after the theorists had repeated their calculations and showed that even large drops of strange matter would not eat up the Earth—could you be sure their calculations were correct?
"I am the only one that knows we were successful," Matt said to himself softly, right hand stroking his beard as he pondered. "I could break up this S-drop into smaller ones that would evaporate away into harmless alpha particles and no one would be the wiser. Yong-Shi would still get his Ph.D., Patti would get what she wants, and no one else would bother to try the same experiment if I reported a failure."
He paused to sigh deeply—his mind churning over the positive and negative options.
"Is the world ready for this?" he asked himself.
"What shall I do?"