"Robert A. Metzger - Picoverse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Metzger Robert)

Couldn’t be modeled.

So chaotic, so intrinsically nonlinear, that the system just couldn’t be understood.

At least that was what the experts insisted—all those wizened old white men, with worn leather belts
cinched over their little pot bellies. Can’t do it,girl . No one can do it,girl .

Thisgirl would prove them wrong.

That thought normally cheered her, but the smile faded from her face as her thoughts drifted away from
the simulation and to the chunk of stainless steel, flickering lasers, and pulsing plasmas that the simulation
was attempting to model—the Sonomak. This work wastoo applied for her taste,too tied to
experiments and the boxful of zip discs crammed with data that refused to be modeled.

There was no real theoretical work anymore, no more physics that was studied for the pure joy of
simply understanding how the universe worked. For twelve wonderful months at Cambridge, she had
worked directly under Stephen Hawking, modeling the vacuum fluctuations that took place in the vicinity
of black holes.

Bliss.

But she had lost her funding. Cosmology, particle physics, those areas of research that couldn’t be
transformed into a product suitable for insertion into microwave ovens, or high definition CCD recorders,
or used to slow down the ever-widening trade gap with mainland China, had been deemed nonessential
by the Feds who doled out the science dollars. The only other avenues of funding were in the production
of military systems used to carbonize Third World types before they could stumble out of their huts, or to
sign your soul away to one of the bigSearch for Extraterrestrial Intelligence consortia and spend your
days trying to crack the uncrackable signals that poured down from the heavens, having been picked up
for a century now. Neither frying Third-Worlders nor crunching uncrackableSETI signals was her cup of
tea.

Good-bye funding.

At the moment, plasma physics was about as theoretical and esoteric a topic as the U.S. government
could tolerate. And Katie was afraid that even that indulgence was about to come to an end.

She refocused on the simulation. At the edge of theplasmon , that region where electrons had been
swept out of the plasma, leaving behind positively ionized helium atoms, just nanometers away from the
shock wave being generated by the collapse of the plasmon, the plasma temperatures were peaking, the
ascent rate punching discontinuities in the plot, the diagram indicating that the plasma residing within a few
atomic spacings of the shock wave had reached a temperature in excess of 60 million degrees.

Then the Pocket Accelerators were ramped down.

The thermal gradient went ballistic as the plasmon imploded.
 The simulation broke down, the plasma density mesh lines rippling, actually folding back on themselves
as the high-energy electrons transferred their energy to the helium ions. Frame after frame of contour
plots rolled by, each one a snapshot of the plasma as it evolved every two picoseconds. Katie shook her
head in disgust, but the simulation continued to hang stationary in her field of view, the input being fed
directly into her retinas through her Virtuals.