Strings: something big is about to happen... by B A Spicer Page A

something was happening.
    Hugh lit the stove and set the kettle
on the hob.  
    “Soon have some heat.”
    The banality of his comment made her wince and she
sat down reluctantly in the chair he had pulled out, tapping her fingers on the
table while he sliced bread for toast, found the butter and jam in the pantry
and set two cups next to the kettle.   Spooning coffee into the pot, he stared out at the Shropshire
countryside, rolling hills and forests.   Maddy knew what he was thinking: beautiful.
    He didn’t speak again until the
coffee had been poured.   “There.   Drink some of this.   The toast’ll be along in a sec.”
    She looked at him with the
expression that she knew he dreaded.   She could see him thinking: If only she would not say anything.   If only this morning, she could keep quiet.
    But how could she ignore this
certainty inside her?   “It won’t be
long, now. You’ll see.”
    Hugh nodded, pulling out a second
chair and sitting close.   Too
close.   He took her hand and she shook
it off.
    “Are you working again today?   You could go back to bed and rest for a
while.”   Maddy’s jaw tightened.   He knew she wouldn’t reply, but he always
asked, anyway.   He knew that she hated
him to interfere, so why did he do it?  
    “I won’t be back until seven
tonight.   Got a meeting.”   He told her this as though he were speaking
to a child.
     
     
    Madeleine Happer, astrophysicist
and, apparently, as mad as a March hare, waited until she could no longer hear
her husband’s car and then she started to laugh.   She needed to explode, now that there was space to do so.   To let herself go.  
    A few minutes later, still
smiling, she left her toast and carried the coffee to her office.   Her expression, when she surveyed the
clutter of papers on her desk, became less frivolous. There was so much to do
and yet, what was the point, when no one would believe a word she said?   But study and research had been her
life.   She didn’t know whether she could
imagine not going on with it.   No matter
what.
    String theory.   It wasn’t a new idea by any means.   Matter smaller than the smallest
microscopically visible quanta, unproven and yet irresistible, essential, if a
theory of everything were to be possible.   A unification of all the laws of physics.   An explanation that held true for the visible world, with its
laws of cause and effect, and also for the world of the quantum universe, where
matter could appear and disappear seemingly at random.   String theory was the answer.
    And so, as she had done every
morning for the past six weeks, she went over the equations that had led her to
the vision which had brought clarity and yet could not be recorded in any
meaningful form.   Ha!   Vision!   An eminently simple model, and yet, after getting so far on paper,
impossible to tie down, like the laws of the quantum universe, in fact,
constantly contradicting themselves.   If
she presented such a paper to the department, she would be laughed at.   Especially now that her husband had actually
made her an appointment to see the local quack!  
    She pulled out her chair and put
her head in her hands.   Every great
discovery in science went back to basics.   The most elegant laws were the simplest.   And so…   from the very
large, to the very small there must be a bridge, a connection…   For years, physicists had tried, with
varying degrees of success, to divide particles into their component
parts.   Splitting the atom had just been
the beginning!   So, she took up her
pen.   If the final divisions were beyond
the capabilities of current instrumentation, how could any scientific investigation
be continued?   Once the particle
accelerators had done all that could be done and the tanks buried deep
underground had detected evidence of quanta so tiny that they could pass
through the earth in a flash, what next?   More experiments?   More use of
the massive to detect the