"James P. Hogan - The Genesis Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

without there being any component of vibration in normal space-time at all.
This yielded point-centers of interaction that offered no resistance
whatsoever to motion in space-time and therefore always moved at the maximum
speed observable -- the speed of light. These were the massless particles --
the familiar photon and neutrino and the hypothetical graviton.
In one sweeping, all-embracing scheme, Maesanger's wave equations gave a
common explanation for the bewildering morass of facts that had been
catalogued by thousands of experimenters in a score of nations throughout the
1950s to the 1980s. They explained, for example, why it is that a particle
that interacts strongly always interacts in all possible weaker ways as well,
although the converse might not be true; clearly the 6-D resonance responsible
for the strong nuclear force had, by definition, to include all possible lower
modes as subsets of itself. If it didn't, it wouldn't be a 6-D resonance. This
picture also explained why heavy particles always interact strongly.
Theory predicted that 5-D resonance would produce particles of small
mass, unable to participate in strong interactions; existence of the electron
and muon proved it. Further considerations suggested that any heavy particle
ought to be capable of assuming three discrete states of electric charge, each
of which should be accompanied by just a small change in mass; sure enough,
the proton and neutron provided prime examples.
If an interaction occurred between two resonances whose respective
components on the time axis were moving in opposite directions -- and there
was nothing in the theory to say this couldn't happen -- the two temporal
waves would cancel each other to produce a new entity that had no duration in
time. To the human observer they would cease to exist, producing the effect of
a particle-antiparticle annihilation.
As a young graduate at CIT in the late 1990s, Bradley Clifford had
shared in the excitement that had reverberated around the scientific world
after publication of Maesanger's first paper. K-theory became his consuming
passion, and soon uncovered his dormant talents; by the time he entered his
postdoctoral years, he had already contributed significantly to the further
development of several aspects of the theory. Driven by the restless,
boundless energy of youth, he thrust beyond the ever-widening frontier of
human knowledge, and always the need to know what lay beyond the next hill
drew him onward. Those were his idyllic days; there were not enough hours in
the day, days in the year, or years in a lifetime to accomplish all the things
he knew he had to do.
But gradually the realities of the lesser world of lesser men closed in.
The global political and economic Situation continued to deteriorate and
fields of pure academic research were increasingly subjected to more stringent
controls and restraints. Funds that had once flowed freely dried to a trickle;
vital equipment was denied; the pick of available talent was lured away by
ever more tempting salaries as military and defense requirements assumed
priority. Eventually, under special legislation, even the freedom of the
nation's leading scientists to work where and how they chose became a luxury
that could no longer be allowed.
And so he had come to ACRE, virtually as a draftee...to find more
effective methods of controlling satellite-borne antimissile lasers.
But though they had commandeered his body and his brain, they could
never commandeer his soul. The computers and facilities at ACRE surpassed