"Wil McCarthy - The Technetium Rush" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCarty Sarah)

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ItтАЩs a fact of life in the prison business that prisoners sometimes escape. This
should not surprise us; the jailer goes home at night, while his charge remains, staring
at walls, the light fixtures, the bars of his cage. Escape is all he thinks about. And
wasnтАЩt Solanki a prisoner of circumstance? Of poverty, of love?

This much is a matter of record: He somehow scraped up the funds to
purchase salt-poisoned farmland in the Arvalli foothills. A parcel here, a parcel there,
slowly adding up to hundreds of dry, worthless hectares. Geologically speaking,
though, these peach-colored sites were rich in molybdenum and rhenium and
manganeseтАФchemical relatives of technetium. This was before he found the gyroidal
crystal. Unlike his idol Charles Fipke, Solanki didnтАЩt follow a trail of clues back to
their source; he bought the source and then, miraculously, discovered the distant
clue. Or so he would have us believe.

Perhaps he found his treasure on private lands and then bought the lands
without informing the owners of their worth and then filed his mineral claim. Poor
scientist that he was, he could perhaps be forgiven for such a fraud; he sold the land
for enough money to retire on several times over. And since the original
landownerтАФa cotton farmer like himselfтАФhas made out even better by unloading the
rest of his farm, there can be little cause for rancor between them. What a bloke.

Unfortunately, thereтАЩs a snag. тАЬTeaтАЩsтАЭ longest-lived, least-radioactive isotope
is technetium 98, and to the extent it occurs in nature at all, thatтАЩs the form weтАЩd
expect to find. The metal content of Tc solankite, however, includes high levels of
Tc 97, which according to my physicist friend, тАЬoccurs only as a result of a slow
neutron process, which would not occur naturally and certainly not in the
uranium-poor Arvalli.тАЭ

Mmm-hmm.

IтАЩm not saying Solanki whipped that crystal up himself and then hid it in the
ground as part of a real estate swindle. Such an accusation would be irresponsible.
Still, a funny thing about hoaxes is that they require fantastic skill to pull off. The
public may be duped easily enough, but to fool an art expert, fool a geologist, fool
the press and the government and assorted thugs and parasites, one has to forge an
object of such exacting proportion and composition that to a casual eyeтАФand even
to a battery of preliminary testsтАФit appears genuine. Curse the counterfeiter though
we may, we cannot help muttering our admiration through the other side of our
mouths. A fine job indeed, the rascal. How did he do that?

For better or worse, though, the Solankis are unlikely to hang onto their
fortune for long. With the land sale finalized and the rupees in the bank, the happy
couple have gone at last for the overseas vacation theyтАЩve dreamed about all these
years. Their destination? Las Vegas, Nevada.

Best of luck, mate.