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

"Blaise Pascal, French mathematician --"
"I know who Pascal is."
"Right. Anyway, he once asked himself if it was worth his time to follow the
church, and he set it up as a bet. If God doesn't exist, and you follow the
church, you end up wasting a little bit of your time here on Earth. But if God
does exist, and you ignore the church, the payoff is eternal damnation."
"Those are...interesting odds."
"So what's it going to be, Ray? Are we going to take the safe and easy path, and
get some last trickle of data which may be worthless? Or will we take the risk
that we might be wasting our time, but with a possible payoff that would keep
the SSC running?"
Ray looked around him for a moment. All these people, the scientists,
technicians, and support staff, about to be put out of work because of a short
sighted Congress. Unless...
"What do you want to do?"
Kristin smiled.
#


8. Spin Down
Harold handed the sheet of paper to Roy, who leaned back in his office chair.
"The beams haven't been regular anymore," he said, as Roy studied the data.
"We're not getting 'Zing! Zing!' now, but rather, 'Pop! Pop!'" Harold
demonstrated with his hands his interpretation of zinging and popping, and Roy
found himself unable to keep from laughing.
But this was a serious matter. "Without proper beams, we can't finish the
experiment," he lamented.
"You're telling me?" asked Harold. "We're so close, so very close, and all we
can do is hope that they send us what we need. I have to tell you, it's got me
real worried, Roy."
The last time Roy had seen his friend so visibly distraught was when the proton
decay experiments of the 1980's had failed to confirm Volin's personal Grand
Unification Theory, called SU(5). Its name had turned out to be as unimportant
as the theory, since it had ended up disproved. Oddly enough, it was that same
disproving of the theory that had led to the necessity of the SSC.
"Could the shorter beams be due to anything specific?" Roy asked.
"If so, it's got me stumped. The beams aren't cutting off the way my equations
predict. It's almost like they're doing it deliberately. But why?"
Roy studied the data again, a listing of the different beam lengths. The shorter
beam times did seem fairly self- consistent, as did the longer ones that were
interspersed. But what could it all mean? He thought for a moment.
"Harold, let's think this through. If the beams have been coming here, then
what's been happening in that other universe?"
Harold's brow furrowed. "Trick question, right? If the beams are coming here,
then they're leaving there."
"Which means that they haven't been able to take any data. No beams."
A shocked look appeared on Harold's face. "That means that their experiment, as
far as they know, is a failure. And - -"
"And their government is probably just as unlikely to fund a failing experiment
as our is," Roy concluded for both of them.