"Burstein, Michael A - Broken Symmetry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burstein Michael A)

of it is operational. Not the magnets, not the detectors -- and most of all, not
the injectors! The SSC was never turned on. The project was killed long before
we even got to the stage where we could generate one proton-antiproton beam, let
alone five! I admit that your calculations indicate that the SSC has been turned
on, but how? If there are in fact antiprotons in the ring, where are they coming
from?"
Harold eyes twinkled. "That is the big question, isn't it? Not, 'Who's running
the collider?' but 'Where are the beams coming from?'"
"I don't understand."
Harold's voice took an a sober tone. "Look, Roy, I know as well as you do that
the SSC isn't operational. There is no way that those beams are being generated
by our SSC. But maybe -- just maybe -- they're being generated by some other
SSC."
"Some other SSC?"
"In another universe."
#
It took all night, but Harold finally convinced Roy of the logic of his theory.
It had been difficult, at first, as Roy was a strong supporter of the standard
Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
But the equations were incontrovertible.
"At least it gets rid of all those bizarre paradoxes," Roy said.
Harold blinked. "Understated, as usual."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't seem to appreciate the magnitude of what I've proven here, Roy. Ever
since the theory of quantum mechanics was developed, no one has been able to
settle on one interpretation."
"That's because all were equally valid. Everything we observed fit any
interpretation, from wavefunction collapse to Bohm's hidden variables."
"But not any more! Don't you see? This discovery is so important, it'll shake
the foundations of philosophy as well as physics."
Roy harrumphed and shook his head. "And it's all due to a killed experiment.
Don't get me wrong, Harold, I am happy for you --"
"For us, you mean. It would be indecent not to list you as co-author."
"All right, for us, then. But it still doesn't change one annoying, undeniable
fact. I was hoping that what we found would indicate a working collider."
"Well, it does, in a sense," Harold said. "It indicates a working SSC in some
other universe. If it hadn't been killed, it's now about the time when we would
have started running the machine. Think of it."
Think of it. A universe where the SSC was never canceled. A universe where
science never lost its way, where the government and the lay people understood
the importance of this project, appreciated the need for basic research.
Perhaps in that universe, the other projects, like SETI and the human genome
project, were also going strong. Perhaps in that universe, the space program
hadn't stopped at the moon, but was even now moving humanity towards the stars.
Perhaps...
"Harold," Roy said softly, "can we use your theory to travel to that other
universe?"
Harold looked wistful, and shook his head. "I'm afraid that's unlikely. The
energies are just too much. You'd have to be in the path of the beam, and that
would probably kill you. Of course, we could get a resonance effect going, but