"C. Sanford Lowe & G. David Nordley - Kremer's Limit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lowe C Sanford)

Kremer's Limit
G. Sanford Lowe and G. David Nordley
Analog
July-August, 2006

Chapter 1
Black Hole Project Headquarters,
Santa Cruz Mountains,
10 April 2257


"But what if you're wrong?" the reporter asked.
Hilda Kremer tried to compose herself. The Black Hole Project auditorium became so
silent that the gentle whoosh of maglev traffic on the grassway down the hill could be heard.
Even the small gaggle of protesters outside the auditorium were quiet, leaving the air to the
calls of birds about their business in the two century-old redwoods that had grown up around
the mountainside building. The four story Mediterranean style mansion had once served as
a satellite campus for the University of California at Santa Cruz and before that, a Buddhist
retreat. The speaker's platform faced the rose window that once stood over the Buddhist
altar, and Hilda often drew a sense of inner peace looking in that direction.
She needed it. They had spent twenty minutes explaining why trying to make a black
hole would not destroy the known universe, and here was yet another hostile question.
Project director Dr. Zhau Tse Wen, who had the floor, turned to her. Did he want her to
reply to the question? On one hand, his turning to her was a form of recognition; on the other,
she didn't want to venture into the minefield of loaded questions. She shook her head. She
created intricate, massive computer simulations of subnuclear processes; others strove to
make them happen. Desire to make things happen was the enemy of equanimity and
clear-headedness.
Tse Wen's mouth turned up just slightly at the corners and he winked. When Tse Wen
smiled he reminded her of a contented, if undernourished, Buddhist monk He'd lost his hair
before taking his initial telomerase treatments and preferred that look, as it simplified his
life. His thinness was not from any asceticism; he simply forgot to eat for days on end. Not
infrequently, Hilda and Sarah Levine kidnapped him from his office and dragged him over to
Sarah's room for a feast of chicken soup and bagel sandwiches filled with kosher sausage
slices.
He turned back to the reporter who'd asked the question. "Theory tells us the forces
between the electron shells of atoms keep us from collapsing into a tiny ball of neutronium in
the center of the Earth. What if we were wrong about that?"
"We don't collapse…" the reporter said.
Tse Wen smiled and bowed slightly. "And neither has any naturally formed black hole
ever created a new universe on top of us. Please remember, we live here, too."
A titter ran through the room. Hilda smiled. Tse Wen was a student of martial arts
among many other things, but had the kind of mind that could apply those lessons to conflict
with words and ideas. Here he had gotten the opponent going in one direction and
effortlessly pulled him past his objective and onto the floor. But another reporter rose to take
a shot.
"Dr. Zhau, is or is not the Ten-Ten experiment an attempt to create a black hole right in
our own asteroid belt before final review of the project?"
"It is not. It is far too small, only ten milligrams, and not the right geometry, to create a
black hole. Many years ago, it was thought that quantum black holes might form in such