Jupiter’s Bones. Faye Kellerman

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СКАЧАТЬ back to your dad’s theories … did any of them have any scientific bases?”

      “Of course. Before my father vanished, he’d been working on superluminal loopholes—things that could scientifically account for instantaneous time travel, backward-in-time travel and faster-than-light travel.”

      Decker raised his brow. “Okay.”

      “Not a science fiction reader, Lieutenant?”

      Decker smiled, “I liked it when Han Solo did that warp speed thing on the Millennium Falcon.” He leaned forward. “What travels faster than light?”

      “Undiscovered subatomic particles called tachyons—”

      “Undiscovered?”

      “They’re out there. We just haven’t found them yet. Also photons coming from the same electromagnetic wave. Subatomic particles called kaons travel backward in time. With them, we see the result of the event before the actual event takes place.”

      “I don’t follow you,” Decker said. “I was taught that nothing travels as fast as light. Are you saying that’s not true?”

      “I believe you mean that you were taught that nothing travels as fast as electromagnetic radiation. Visible light is only one small part of the spectrum. You’ve got UV waves, microwaves, radiowaves, infrared waves … any of this ring a bell?”

      “No.”

      She tapped a pencil on the surface of her desk. “All right. I’ll try to sum up twentieth-century physics in a couple of paragraphs.”

      “I’m taking notes.”

      “Stop me if I lose you.” She finished the dregs of her coffee. “For years, physics was based on Newton’s three laws of motion. The second law deals with the orbits of heavenly bodies. The fact that some of the orbits didn’t comply with Newton’s mathematics bothered no one. They just added a fudge factor, an arbitrary number that makes the math fit the physics.”

      “You can do that?”

      She chuckled, “It’s not ideal—something akin to smashing a square peg in a round hole—but physicists do it with theories that almost work until someone comes along with a theory that works better. Newton’s theories worked for most cases so why quibble with the few exceptions? Something wasn’t right, but no one knew how to fix it.”

      “I’ve known a few cases of that.”

      “I’ll bet.” Europa leaned over her desk. “Then along came Einstein, who ushered us into the modern world. His theories on the curvature of space explained the inconsistency in Newton’s planetary laws. But he is best known to the layman for his remarkable theory of relativity. It changed our concept of time from something absolute and immutable to something relative from party to party.”

      “Which means?”

      She stopped, took in a breath and let it out. It appeared as if she was used to confusing people. “Words don’t do it justice. The mathematics is beautiful, but that won’t help you either. Please interrupt me if I’m going too fast.”

      “Oh, I will. Go on.”

      “All right. This is the standard model used to explain it. Picture a train pulling away from a platform. To the person on the platform, it appears as if he is standing still and the train is moving, right?”

      “Right.”

      “But to the person on the train, it seems as if the train is standing still and the platform is moving—”

      “But we know the train’s moving.”

      “Only because you’ve been taught that it’s the train that moves.”

      “But the train is moving. It’s going from place to place. The platform isn’t budging.”

      “In space, Lieutenant, you have no way of knowing who or what is actually moving. You always have the option of assuming that you’re moving and other guy is standing still.”

      Decker said, “But if you’re moving, you’re moving.”

      “Sorry. Motion is relative. So is time, distance and mass. And the faster you go, the more relative it is. Now, at slow speeds, the relativity factor isn’t going to make much difference. Suppose you’re cruising at sixty miles an hour on the freeway and I’m stalled on the shoulder with a flat tire because I didn’t have the time to take my bald retreads into the garage. If you zoom past me at one o’clock in the afternoon, what time will my car clock read?”

      Decker said, “It’s not going to read anything because your motor’s turned off.”

      She laughed, showing teeth. She had a nice smile when she chose to use it. “It wasn’t a trick question, sir.”

      Decker smiled boyishly. “One o’clock.”

      “Brilliant.”

      “Thank you.” Decker noticed that talking about science loosened her up. That was good. Loose people had loose lips.

      She continued. “But as your speed approaches that of light, everything changes. For instance, say you’re in a spaceship going ninety percent the speed of light. Now, inside your ship, everything looks normal to you. The clocks run on time, your spaceship has the same dimensions and your clothes still fit you. Are you with me?”

      “I’m here.”

      “But to another ship out in space, your rocket will look shorter by a factor of two, your clock will appear to run half as fast and your weight will be twice as heavy.”

      “So you’re saying fast speeds distort things. I can buy that.”

      “But here’s the entire point of relativity. To your eye, everything inside your spaceship is normal. To your eye, it’s the other guy who’s distorted. His clock is slow, his rocket is shorter and his mass is twice as heavy. To your eye, he’s distorted. But to his eye, you’re distorted.”

      “So who’s right?”

      “You both are.”

      “A Solomonic approach to physics,” Decker stated.

      Again, she smiled. “It’s all perspective.”

      Decker said, “Getting back to your father, you’re saying he based his theories of teleportation on Einstein’s relativity. Something like he could transport himself from one place to another because everything’s relative?”

      “Actually, Einstein wasn’t a major factor in my father’s theories.”

      “So there’s more.” Decker held up his pencil. “Shoot, Doc. I’m ready for you.”

      She chuckled. “Einstein’s theories kicked off a revolution, but he wasn’t the final word on cosmology. That belongs to quantum physics.”

      “Is this going to СКАЧАТЬ