were mentioned. I thought you deserved an official welcome.”
An empty subway train pulled into the station, and the three followed the herd into a car.
“I’m afraid we’re not going to be much help, though,” Wu said, grabbing onto a bar for support. “These spheres are the work of a true genius. If you hadn’t just come from Ada Dillon, I would have suggested she was the most likely person on Earth who could have built them.”
“She said she didn’t think anyone alive could have designed them.”
“So we should look to the dead scientists then?” Wu smiled, her cherubic face warm with laughter. “Perhaps it was Einstein or Bohrs or Huxley. Because we don’t have any graduates who could have pulled this off.”
“I’m sure that’s unfair to your students and to your teaching,” Shaw said diplomatically. “Besides, aren’t these kinds of advances often accidents? Maybe someone stumbled across the concept while trying to test for something else. Antibiotics were discovered that way, if I remember my history correctly.”
“I see your point, but generally accidents in the lab need a genius to understand the significance of what has been revealed. No one but Wulfgang Huxley would have understood the data he was receiving when trying to measure gravitational waves. But he stuck with it, and the Lattice was born.”
“The Lattice was an accidental discovery?” Yang asked, surprised.
Wu looked surprised too. “Of course. He was trying to measure gravitational waves from supernovas and black holes.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Don’t you work at the Lattice Installation?”
“We just try to keep it safe,” Shaw said. “Trumped-up security guards.”
“Ah.” Wu seemed incredulous that anyone would not know the story about the invention of the Lattice.
“So what happened?” Shaw asked.
“With Huxley and the accidental discovery?”
Shaw nodded.
“He thought that a resonant structure of stable rhodium atoms might be able to detect gravitational waves. He was correct, but the structure picked up a lot more than that. It could feel the gravitational pull of every atom within a couple hundred meters. That’s when Huxley started to realize just what he had.”
“Every atom? They exert gravity?”
“An infinitesimal amount, but yes. Everything has its own gravitational field, however small.”
“That’s amazing that things that small can be detected by their gravitational pull from so far away.”
“Do you know anything about quantum entanglement?” Wu asked.
“Just enough to launch this trip.”
“When I say it was a ‘resonant’ structure, what I mean is that every atom is entangled with another atom somewhere else in the Lattice. If one atom is acted upon, the entire Lattice is. It means that the entire Lattice essentially acts as a single atom. But the Lattice is a few trillion times bigger than an atom. Which is why it is sensitive to the gravitational pull of even the tiniest field—it senses all those little pulls and then amplifies them into a scale we can measure.”
“The same way a rainbow is actually millions of individual rainbows,” Yang said. Wu eyed him appreciatively. “Yes, exactly. But while the Lattice is an amazing design, some of the real genius is in the math that runs it. That’s why Huxley was unique: he could envision both the technology and the math to use it. … Do you want me to keep going? I don’t want to bore you.”
“If you wouldn’t mind. People have tried to explain it to me before but you’re probably the first to use plain English.”
“I can try plain Mandarin and see how you do with that,” Wu said, laughing again. She looked at the subway map on the wall. “We’ve got some time before we get to campus. So, Huxley’s first lattice of rhodium atoms was very small, just a few centimeters in length, just to see if it could be built. Remember, he was trying to detect astronomical phenomena—supernovas and neutron
An empty subway train pulled into the station, and the three followed the herd into a car.
“I’m afraid we’re not going to be much help, though,” Wu said, grabbing onto a bar for support. “These spheres are the work of a true genius. If you hadn’t just come from Ada Dillon, I would have suggested she was the most likely person on Earth who could have built them.”
“She said she didn’t think anyone alive could have designed them.”
“So we should look to the dead scientists then?” Wu smiled, her cherubic face warm with laughter. “Perhaps it was Einstein or Bohrs or Huxley. Because we don’t have any graduates who could have pulled this off.”
“I’m sure that’s unfair to your students and to your teaching,” Shaw said diplomatically. “Besides, aren’t these kinds of advances often accidents? Maybe someone stumbled across the concept while trying to test for something else. Antibiotics were discovered that way, if I remember my history correctly.”
“I see your point, but generally accidents in the lab need a genius to understand the significance of what has been revealed. No one but Wulfgang Huxley would have understood the data he was receiving when trying to measure gravitational waves. But he stuck with it, and the Lattice was born.”
“The Lattice was an accidental discovery?” Yang asked, surprised.
Wu looked surprised too. “Of course. He was trying to measure gravitational waves from supernovas and black holes.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Don’t you work at the Lattice Installation?”
“We just try to keep it safe,” Shaw said. “Trumped-up security guards.”
“Ah.” Wu seemed incredulous that anyone would not know the story about the invention of the Lattice.
“So what happened?” Shaw asked.
“With Huxley and the accidental discovery?”
Shaw nodded.
“He thought that a resonant structure of stable rhodium atoms might be able to detect gravitational waves. He was correct, but the structure picked up a lot more than that. It could feel the gravitational pull of every atom within a couple hundred meters. That’s when Huxley started to realize just what he had.”
“Every atom? They exert gravity?”
“An infinitesimal amount, but yes. Everything has its own gravitational field, however small.”
“That’s amazing that things that small can be detected by their gravitational pull from so far away.”
“Do you know anything about quantum entanglement?” Wu asked.
“Just enough to launch this trip.”
“When I say it was a ‘resonant’ structure, what I mean is that every atom is entangled with another atom somewhere else in the Lattice. If one atom is acted upon, the entire Lattice is. It means that the entire Lattice essentially acts as a single atom. But the Lattice is a few trillion times bigger than an atom. Which is why it is sensitive to the gravitational pull of even the tiniest field—it senses all those little pulls and then amplifies them into a scale we can measure.”
“The same way a rainbow is actually millions of individual rainbows,” Yang said. Wu eyed him appreciatively. “Yes, exactly. But while the Lattice is an amazing design, some of the real genius is in the math that runs it. That’s why Huxley was unique: he could envision both the technology and the math to use it. … Do you want me to keep going? I don’t want to bore you.”
“If you wouldn’t mind. People have tried to explain it to me before but you’re probably the first to use plain English.”
“I can try plain Mandarin and see how you do with that,” Wu said, laughing again. She looked at the subway map on the wall. “We’ve got some time before we get to campus. So, Huxley’s first lattice of rhodium atoms was very small, just a few centimeters in length, just to see if it could be built. Remember, he was trying to detect astronomical phenomena—supernovas and neutron
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