"Hogan, James P - The Genesis Machine p174-259" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

and a number of experiments of this kind had been conducted in which the machine in Baltimore was linked to another BIAC, owned by the Air Force and located in California, thus coupling operators three thousand miles apart. Clifford found this the most astounding thing he had seen since coming to Baltimore. He thought about it all the way back to Boston.

Clifford returned to Sudbury to find that installation of the InstituteТs own BIAC was well under way and that construction of the Mark II had commenced. The latter operation would require far more time to complete, however, and as an intermediate measure to gain some preliminary experience in using BIAC techniques to interpret k-functions, the new computer was connected on-line to the Mark I prototype.
He slowly learned to steer his way through the masses of data to ferret out and manipulate the spacelike solutions of the equations and to project them as visual displays. To his astonishment he found that he could УmoveФ his vantage point at will throughout the body of Earth and about its surface. The resolving power of the Mark I was still poor, preventing him from distinguishing much in the way of meaningful detail, but he did succeed in producing recognizable images of some prominent geographic features such as mountain ranges, continental margins, and ocean trenches. He managed to obtain some surface views of the Moon too, in which the ghostly outlines of the larger craters and ring-walled plains could just about be discerned. It was somewhat like viewing the transmission from a remote-TV space probe that could be moved instantly from place to placeЧa tantalizing foretaste of what might be possible with Mark II.

One evening, while they were out for a few drinks at
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their favorite bar in Marlboro, Clifford was describing his experiences in Baltimore to Aub and Morelli. Aub had at last reached the point of being able to leave the immediate work on Mark II in the hands of the rest of the team and had made arrangements to go on a BIAC training course himself, starting the following week. Naturally, he was interested to learn about what the Navy had in store for him.
УYou mean thereТs this guy in Baltimore and thereТs this other guy out in California someplace, both plugged into BIACs that are hooked together, and they can exchange thoughts?Ф Aub stared over his beer in astonishment. УMan, thatТs crazy.Ф
УYouТve gotta be joking, Brad,Ф Morelli said.
УReally.Ф Clifford nodded emphatically. УIТve seen them doing it. One of them can read a list of numbers off a piece of paper and the other one will tell you what they are. . . . They can send picturesЧone guy imagines a face that they both know and the other guy identifies it. . . all kinds of things.Ф
УSorta like telepathy by the sound of it,Ф Morelli remarked. УI never had much time for that kinda stuff.Ф
УItТs not really, though, is it,Ф Clifford pointed out. УNot in the way that people usually mean the word.Ф
УHow dТyou mean?Ф Morelli asked.
УWell, usually theyТre talking about paranormal phenomena . . . things outside known science. But this isnТt like thatЧitТs all based on things we know about and understand.Ф
УIt achieves the same sort of effect, though,Ф Aub broke in.
УWhich is my whole point,Ф Clifford declared. УItТs just another example of the kind of thing thatТs happened over and over again through history.Ф Two pairs of eyes looked back at him blankly. УEvery day,Ф he
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explained, Уwe take it for granted that we Сcan do things that people five hundred years ago dreamed about, but could only think of in terms of magic. We can fly through the air, stare into magic mirrors, and watch things going on in other places. . . . We can even talk to people all over the world. . . .У Clifford opened his hands expressively. УWeТve made all those things happen, but weТve used methods of doing it that people from way back could never have imagined.Ф
УYeah, IТm with you,Ф Aub said, nodding. УBecause they had no idea about electronics and the like.Ф
УYes, thatТs what IТm getting at,Ф Clifford told him. УThey imagined flying and talked about levitation, because they couldnТt see in advance the kind of engineering needed to make the idea work.Ф
УOkay, IТll go along with that,Ф Morelli agreed. УYouТre saying that people made the mistake of imagining telepathy, thinking it had to be some kind of magic. Now that the effects they talked about are actually starting to happen, it turns out you donТt need anything magic to do itЧjust a couple of BIACs.Ф
~СThatТs exactly it, Al,Ф Clifford confirmed. УTalking about something paranormal is just a way of discussing something you donТt properly understand . . . yet. The operative word is Сyet.Т In the end, the idea all becomes part of whatТs normal. Nobody thinks now that thereТs anything mysterious about talking across country by Intonet. And effectively, this is no different, except that the talking uses a BIAC instead of a regular Intonet terminal.Ф

УWell . . . I guess that doesnТt leave much over outside orthodox science,Ф Aub mused after reflecting for

a while. УI guess maybe thatТs what everything we do is aboutЧturning paradox into orthodox.Ф
Chapter 17

Through Zimmermann, the 1SF astronomers at Joliot-Curie had been kept updated on developments at Sudbury. Excited by the way in which k-theory had accounted successfully for the observed distribution of the three-degree cosmic background radiation, a group of them had begun reappraising other outstanding problems in the light of the new theory. This led to their formulating a new system of k-conservation principles and enabled them to explaiii at last, among other things, why the amount of conventional radiation produced in the vicinity of the Cygnus X-1 black hole was larger than classical quantum theory predicted it should be.
Essentially, the new conservation principles stated that when matter/energy СvanishedТ out of normal space to exist totally in hi-space, as happened when a particle annihilated or matter fell into a black hole, then an equivalent amount of energy had to reappear in normal space somewhere. Calculation showed that this Сreturn energyТ would appear in a distribution pattern that gave the greatest intensity in the immediate vicinity of the point at which the original annihilation had taken place, but which fell away exponentially all the way to infinity. This led to the remarkable conclusion that when matter annihilated, say in Cvc~nus X-L or in MorelliТs (IRASPR enerav rean
peared instantaneously at every point in the i,iniverse as a direct consequence of the event. The amount of return energy that would appear, for example, somewhere in the middle of the Andromeda Galaxy as a result of one gram of matter being consumed in the GRASER in Massachusetts would thus be immeasurably and unimaginably small; nevertheless, mathematically at least, it would be there.
All this was really another way of stating CliffordТs laws of hi-wave propagation, which showed that the hi-radiation produced by any event of creation or annihilation would manifest itself instantaneously all through space, the intensity decreasing sharply with distance. Indeed, the equations describing the two processes were soon shown to be mathematically identical. What the astronomers had done was to compute the amount of conventional radiation that would be produced at every point in space by the process of hiparticle interactions. When this quantity was integrated across the whole volume of the universe, the result showed that the total amount of energy produced throughout this volume equaled the amount originally destroyed. Hence the new conservation laws followed.
It was just as well that it worked out this way. The rate of destruction of mass sustained in the GRASER was far higher than that attained in the largest H-bomb. Only a tiny proportion of its energy equivalent was delivered back into normal space within the reactor sphere however, the rest b~ing distributed across billions of cubic light-years of space. Had it been otherwise, they would easily have blown Massachusetts off the map the instant they switched on.
The pattern of return energy therefore explained the observed radiation from Cygnus X-1. When Clifford examined the forms of the equations derived by the scientists on Luna, he discovered that they in-
eluded terms which made allowance for the distribution of matter in the surrounding volume of the universeЧterms which he had neglected in his own treatment of the problem. Using the more comprehensive equations, he recalculated the radiation that should be expected from an artificial black hole in the GRASERЧthe quantity that had previously contradicted both his own predictions and those based on classical quantum theory and the Hawking Effect. This time it came out right. K-theory, it appeared, was well on its way to being fully validated.
In the course of all this experimentation, Clifford developed a regular working relationship with the astronomers and cosmologists at Joliot-Curie, and together they began to explore some of the deeper implications of the theory that Clifford had not thought very much more about since his days at ACRE. From the Japanese model of quasars, it was evident that these objects were the scenes of mass annihilation on a truly phenomenal scale. According to the new conservation principles, the energy equivalent of the mass being destroyed ought to be returned into normal space, most of it being concentrated around the quasars and the rest of it diffusely scattered everywhere else. Throughout the Сeverywhere else,Т therefore, there ought to exist a steady background flux of particle creations attributable to distant quasars. But all the annihilations taking place inside the ordinary masses and black holes scattered throughout the universe would, by the conservation principles, contribute to this background flux as well. Thus there were three known mechanisms for destroying mass: quasars, black holes, and spontaneous annihilations, most of which took place inside masses. Also, there was one known mechanism for creating it: the universal background
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of spontaneous creations. The crucial question was, did the two balance?
It was important to know this because the very fabric of spacetime itselfЧthe b-domain aspects of CliffordТs k-functionsЧcame into the equations. It was possible for one of these two quantities to exceed the other without violating the conservation principles provided that the volume of the universe adjusted to compensate and maintain a constant average density. In other words, in a universe heavily populated by quasars, the rate of mass annihilation implied would be too large for return energy alone to provide the balancing mechanism, and space itself would grow to accommodate the excess. The expansion of the universe followed directly from k-theory, and came about as a consequence of an earlier cosmic epoch of quasar formation.
So, was the universe still expanding? Nobody knew because all the data that told of the factЧred shifts of distant galaxies, for exampleЧcame from millions of years in the past. Were there quasars still there now? Again, nobody knew, for the same reason. Could the balance be tested? How many black holes were there in sample volumes of the universe? Nobody knew. But the new science of k-astronomy enthusiastically anticipated by Aub and Morelli promised a means of answering all these questions.
What fascinated the cosmologistsЧand began to infect Clifford as well the more he talked with themЧ was the prospect of a new and revolutionary cosmological model. It was purely hypothetical at that stage, but somebody on Luna had suggested that if the quasars had ceased to exist now, and if the expansion had stopped as a consequence, and if creations turned out to predominate in the balance, a new epoch of quasar formation might be induced. This gave rise to
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