Phobos: Mayan Fear by Steve Alten Page A

However, only extremely massive black holes, beyond the reach of any accelerator, would be stable. It has been speculated that magnetic monopoles might catalyze proton decay. At each catalysis event, energy is released by the decaying proton, causing the monopole to move. They estimated the number of nucleons that the monopole would destroy before escaping from the Earth and found it to be negligibly small. Most of the committee’s study concerned strangelets, a hypothetical new form of matter containing roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. They may become dangerous if they can be produced at the LHC, are sufficiently long-lived, are negatively charged so that they can attract and absorb ordinary nuclei, and finally if they can grow indefinitely without becoming unstable. The committee found that, from general principles, if negatively charged strangelets exist at all, they would not grow indefinitely: they soon become unstable. Furthermore, the committee concluded that any hadronic system with baryon number of order ten or higher is out of reach of a heavy ion collider, and the LHC will be no more efficient at producing strangelets than RHIC. To be dangerous the strangelet would need to be stable from a very low baryon number, where production is possible, all the way up toward an infinite baryon number, a possibility that has been excluded by the stability studies.

L. Maiani thanked J. Iliopoulos and his committee for their work, and the Research Board took note of the report.

    END MINUTES

Note: The official position of CERN assumes the theory of black hole evaporation is correct, though it should be noted that no empirical evidence exists to support this theory .

7

Earth News & Media

May 8, 2047: Albania residents continue to dig out from yesterday’s magnitude 7.7 earthquake. The quake’s epicenter was located twenty-two miles E-NE of the city of Tirana. Government officials estimate casualties will exceed three thousand.

    H.O.P.E. SPACE CENTER
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA

    T he eighteen-wheeled military transport follows its police escort east across the NASA Parkway, crossing the Banana River land bridge to Cape Canaveral. The caravan of vehicles is waved through three security checkpoints, then led to one of twelve steel and concrete structures towering over the southernmost tip of the Project H.O.P.E. Space Center.
    The left bay door is open. The military transport enters the facility, proceeding over a wasteland of concrete before arriving at the ten-story infrastructure and an interior tunnel sealed by a twenty-two-foot-diameter vault door.
    A dozen cyberwarriors exit the truck. Dressed hood to boots in a bulletproof, explosive-resistant lining dubbed “camouflage skin,” the soldiers by their presence bespeak the importance of the three fugitives housed in the truck’s portable sensory prison.
    The squad leader approaches the rear doors of the transport and touches his gloved palm to the computer keypad. The encrypted security codes are relayed from the White House through neural conduits in the soldier’s glove, the signal of which must match his own biorhythms before being uploaded.
    The rear hatch opens, activating a ramp. The sensory prison—an eight-by-twelve-foot windowless lead-gray steel and acrylic cube set on a magnetic hover pad—is maneuvered out of the truck.
    Devlin Mabus watches everything from his balcony on the sixth floor. The seven-ton steel vault door opens, its magnetic hinges whisper-quiet.
    The sensory prison, escorted by the detail of cyberwarriors, is guided inside.

    Though only ninety-six square feet, the interior of the holographic relocation cell appears as a vast Jamaican island beach resort. Artificial lighting coming from the ceiling panels re-creates the sun, the bulbs tinged with ultraviolet rays. Temperature-controlled fans provide a salty ocean breeze, with an occasional gust offering a saline “spritz” from the tropical sea.
    Shaded by the gently