As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have undertaken the seventh major revision of
Slip, my debut novel. The first chapter is long but I am interested in getting some feedback. Please feel free to copy this post so you can read it in a more convenient format.
“James, come check this out!” The beginnings of a permanent wrinkle creased my forehead as I focused intensely, not comprehending what I saw. I rubbed my forehead, relaxing my scowl, remembering what my dad had told me countless times: excessive worrying gives you wrinkles. I smiled at the recollection. Not a day went by that I didn’t miss my parents, and today was no exception.
James wandered from his bedroom, bleary-eyed, blinking against the light of my bedroom, his dishwater blond hair plastered to one side of his head. James Barnes and I met during our second year at Cornell in a theoretical physics class. We became roommates during the intervening summer and had been for about the last four years. In spite of our instant and lasting friendship, science was about the only thing we had in common.
“What in the world . . . ?” James asked, rubbing his eyes to clear his vision. “Is that. . .”
“. . .Yeah,” I said. “A penny.”
“H. . .How. . .?” James stammered.
We both leaned in, peering at the shiny penny protruding from the crack-free glass. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn it had always been a part of the window.
I tried and, with a little effort, was able to pull the penny from the glass. It was covered with a thin layer of ice. I scraped the ice away with my fingernail and studied both sides of the coin with rapt attention.
“Look at this.” I said, intrigued. “This must be some kind of defect or something. Look at the year on this penny.” I said, handing the coin to James.
James stopped rubbing his eyes to take the coin.
“2028, how can that even be possible?”
“Like I said, it must be a defect. I wonder how many more of those are in circulation.”
“That hasn’t always been there, right?” James asked, yawning.
“No, it definitely wasn’t there before. The question is how did it get there without breaking the glass?”
“You figure it out, Einstein. I have no idea and it’s way too early for me to think about it.” James said, losing interest. He tossed the penny back to me and bumped into the wall as he turned to go back to bed.
I stood by the window, turning the coin over in my hand, examining every detail. Convinced that the solution to the mystery was not printed on the surface of the coin, I set the penny on my dresser as I reached for my running shoes. I had some pent up anxiety that I had to work off.
The sun was still hidden behind the Eastern horizon when I walked out the door of our apartment on Woodcrest Avenue. It was the same every time I ran. On the coldest days, I ran in the rec center. Today, however, the weather was beautiful. Dark as it was, the temperature was perfect for running, hovering just above forty; a perfect April morning. I took a few moments to stretch my legs before starting off down the street, the lights casting a large checkerboard pattern across my path. I lived, as a child, with my parents in the very apartment I now occupied. They were going to school at Cornell and rented the comfortable apartment off the back of Stephanie Gaines’ house; a young widow with two daughters. It was a place that felt as familiar as though I had always lived there. Now that my parents were gone, Stephanie was the closest thing I had to family.
My thoughts fell into rhythm with my feet and breathing as I moved almost silently down the vacant street. A quiet street was a rare find in Ithaca. Cornell, with it’s 32,000 students, faculty, and staff was host to constant motion. Campus life never stopped. Consequently, neither did the businesses surrounding the campus. Rounding the corner at the end of Woodcrest Avenue onto State Street, I was greeted by the usual flow of cars heading toward campus. Stiff competition prevailed in many of the colleges where everyone felt like they had a reputation to gain or protect. Status was everything, and I fit right in.
Far ahead, a solitary billboard etched a bright rectangle into the dark backdrop of trees. The advertisement had been in place for weeks. “Family. It’s about time.” A message from some church or other. Thoughts of my parents floated into my mind. Today marked seven years since their death. An explosion and fire at their favorite restaurant had killed them both, along with thirty-five other people. Investigators had discovered a gas valve that failed to close. The build-up of gas caused the explosion. They called it a freak accident. When the gas valve had finally been disassembled, a pen was found lodged in the aperture. Something that should have been impossible. Try as they might, the investigators found no evidence of tampering.
Marcus Jones, the lead investigator and a good friend to my parents, wondered if a plumber had dropped the pen into one of the many pipes that provided gas service. Over time, it must have moved slowly into place in the valve. There was no other explanation.
I ran toward the billboard and looked at the happy family smiling down at me from the semi-lit board. I still missed my parents more than I could express. A knot formed in my stomach, slowing my pace.
Shaking my head, I forced myself to move faster. I felt the surge of blood in my legs as my feet slammed into the pavement with increased velocity. Soon, I was sprinting down the sidewalk. At top speed, I could run a 4:30 mile. My heart pumped like it was trying to explode through my ribs. I drew breath in and out as fast as my feet carried me forward. I glanced at my GPS watch. I was just below the five minute mark. Realizing I was not on a professionally paved track, I pushed myself no harder. Trees and parked cars flew past me as I continued expelling anxiety from my body.
I reached the corner and slowed to a walk just as my watch beeped to indicate the completion of my first mile. I struggled to catch my breath as sweat poured down my face; my heart still beating wildly. The physical exertion helped me relieve the stress I had awoken with that morning. Two things weighed on me that day. In about two hours, I was due to give a guest lecture in one of Dr. Austin’s first-year physics classes. That was a small concern. I had defended my dissertation almost two months ago and had been awarded my PhD in elementary particle physics. That was my second concern: I had applied to numerous research positions around the world and I still had no job. For weeks I had struggled to find purpose. Several professors within the department invited me on a near-daily basis to lecture in their classes, but the need to find something permanent weighed on my mind.
I ambled down the sidewalk feeling my heart slow with each step. As it reached a moderate rhythm again, I began running, this time at a more controlled speed. The loop through campus would take me past the Newman Laboratory where James and I, along with a host of other post grads, were studying elementary particle physics. Our goal, along with thousands of other researchers, was to fill the gaps that existed in the Standard Model; a model that described the universe. . .somewhat.
I arrived for my lecture a few minutes early and opened the door to the cavernous lecture hall. A few students sat half-asleep, sipping coffee, on opposite sides of the room. James and I became friends in this room. James, never short of a good prank, had flown a paper airplane through the darkness of the room during a particularly boring video that looked like it was straight out of the 1970s. The plane glided gracefully over the heads of several disinterested students and bounced harmlessly off the video screen. The professor stopped the class and demanded to know who had such blatant disrespect. Not surprisingly, no one came forward. As the year progressed, I always had the feeling he suspected James, but as James and I climbed to prominence in his class, he overlooked the “indiscretion of our youth.”
The introductory semester of theoretical physics was always divisive. Students serious about physics and the other disciplines that required it would persevere. Many would drop the class before the semester ended, deciding that physics or engineering just wasn’t their thing. Now that the semester was nearly its conclusion, the room which had undoubtedly been filled to capacity at the beginning of the term would now have many empty seats. Even this late in the year, my lecture was sure to create a new wave of empty seats for the next semester.
Two dozen students were seated in the room when Dr. Ruth Austin, my graduate advisor and friend, walked into the room. Dr. Austin was a tall, slender woman with short hair just starting to gray around the edges. She had moved to Ithaca twenty-three years earlier when she was offered a position in theoretical physics at Cornell. She had finished her doctoral work at Harvard only a few months before being offered the position as an adjunct professor. She was always at the top of her game; considered to be one of the brightest minds in her field. That didn’t protect her from a very rocky start at Cornell. Dr. Markus Larkin was the department head at the time and he constantly berated Dr. Austin in front of the board. After nearly five years, she finally broke the silence that he made several inappropriate advances toward her. His personal attacks were in retaliation to her resistance. Her story only came out because he had sexually assaulted a student member of the staff. His immediate dismissal was followed by a departmental shake-up, resulting in Dr. Austin receiving tenure and becoming an associate professor.
On her twentieth anniversary with the college she was appointed Dean of the College of Physics. She believed it was her personal responsibility to prepare every doctoral candidate to defend his or her dissertation. As she put it, she didn't want any slackers leaving the department to work as educators, scientists in research labs, or anything else. If someone couldn't measure up, she wanted to make sure they got the help they needed or got out of the program before any of her valuable grant money was wasted. Shrewd. It was a great way to protect the reputation and funding of the college.
Early in her career at Cornell, Dr. Austin had met Stephanie Gaines. The world was too atomic for me sometimes. Because she knew Stephanie she also knew my parents. And, she knew me – when I was in diapers. That was a little embarrassing, but I managed. Dr. Austin and Stephanie both took special interest in my life. They both kept careful tabs on me, particularly my love life; individually and collectively pressuring me into telling them all about the girls I was dating. I didn't mind so much. It wasn’t a rare thing to find them – both now single – sitting together over coffee, questioning me about the girl I happened to be dating at the time. If Stephanie had the role of mother-figure in my life, Dr. Austin had the role of cool aunt. In class, she always kept things professional, but in our free time, Dr. Austin, Stephanie, and I would often go out to a movie or dinner; quite the odd-looking trio.
She approached the front of the room with purpose in every step as students now poured into the large auditorium. Roughly two-hundred fifty students enrolled in the introductory course to theoretical physics every semester. Many of them were engineering majors who were required to take the class. Few, likely fewer than thirty, would continue pursuing a degree in particle physics. Of those, about half would change their minds before graduation. Most research jobs in the world were labors of love that did not yield huge financial rewards. Typical researchers made forty-five to fifty thousand dollars a year. Preeminent positions at a facility like FermiLab in Chicago or CERN in Switzerland commanded salaries upwards of one-hundred twenty thousand plus royalties on published works. I set my sights early in my education on something like that. I knew the likelihood was remote, but I never gave up hoping.
“Good morning, Ty.” Dr. Austin said, extending her hand to me as she reached the front of the room. I pressed it, feeling the warmth and strength she still carried in spite of her age. “Are you ready for today?” She asked with the slightest hint of doubt in her voice.
“Ready? Of course. When am I ever not ready?” I asked, erasing the look of doubt from her face.
“I mean, are you ready to help these kids understand?” She rebuffed, smiling.
“I guess that depends on if they are ready to understand. I’ve prepared some good examples that should help get my point across. Still, the search for the Higgs boson is a bit advanced for this group.”
“I’m confident you can help them. There are a few students I’d like you to pay special attention to during the lecture. I’ve seen some promise in them and I want to make sure they stay engaged.”
The recruiter line. Dr. Austin was always on the look-out for new students for the physics department. Frankly, I was glad. It was a lot easier for me to cater to the needs of a small group of students than trying to connect with a large auditorium of semi-interested individuals.
The bell rang, signaling the beginning of class.
“Quiet, everyone. Let’s get started.” Dr. Austin began before the bell stopped ringing. Her voice carried well through the large room and a wave of silence swept over the crowd.
“Please allow me to introduce you to Dr. Ty Reed.” The accolade had just been awarded officially, and I was still getting used to the title. I thought it suited me well. “Dr. Reed has been a student at Cornell for — what’s it been now?” she paused, turning toward me.
“Seven years.” I responded.
“—Seven years. Has it really been that long?” She questioned, smiling at the seeming revelation.
“Yes, it has.” I offered, smiling in return.
“Dr. Reed has been a student for seven years. During that time, he has presented some rather unique theories in particle physics. Let me be honest, he is a genius. You would do well to pay attention to what he has to say this morning.” She concluded, walking toward the long flight of stairs leading to the back of the room.
The floor was mine. This wasn’t my first guest lecture but it was the first one where I had an opportunity to discuss my own theories in detail. Excitement blended with nervousness as I moved to the center of the room.
“Good morning. Let me begin by saying, Dr. Austin is exaggerating.”
“No, I’m not.” She practically shouted from the top row where she had taken a seat.
I paused for a long moment, surveying the crowd. “Well, who am I to argue?” I said with a smug smile.
When no one laughed, I cleared my throat and quickly jumped into the subject at hand. Strike one.
“Dr. Austin has asked me to take some time today to explain a few concepts from my doctoral dissertation. I know there are only a few dozen of you actually working on a degree of some kind in physics. For the rest of you, please bear with me. I will do my best to make some of the subject matter today relevant for you as well. For the physicists to be, I feel obligated to remind you that there is no money in physics. So, if you’re looking for fame and fortune, there is an acting class being taught right now about a mile from here.” I gave a sweeping gesture in the general direction of the performing arts building that drew a laugh from everyone except those who were already not paying attention. The next group to drop out, I thought as I shuffled my lecture notes.
I grabbed a small remote from the table behind me and clicked a button, waiting momentarily for a projector overhead to power up, while a few stragglers made their way to their seats. The screen behind me brightened with the title of my dissertation: From Petameters to Picometers: How the Extremely Large and Extremely Small Are Connected.
“My goal today is not to bore you.” I said, pointing toward a few people whose heavy eyelids where already struggling to stay up. “If you have questions, please interrupt me. You can raise your hand or you can just shout it out. I’m supposed to teach you something today. If you don’t ask questions. . .well, I won’t know if you’re learning anything. Also, if I ask a question, I expect an answer. The questions are not rhetorical. Fair enough?” Several heads bobbed in agreement.
“Second, if you need to fall asleep, please try not to snore. I’m counting on those of you seated next to the sleepers to give then a good ribbing if they do.”
“. . .Because Dr. Reed here always stays awake in my class!” Dr. Austin lofted from the back of the room, laughing along with most of the class. I nodded, acknowledging my own shortcoming as the class continued to laugh. I paced the front of the room while I waited for the murmur of quietness in a large room to return.
“Let me start off with a brief introduction. Since high school, I’ve been interested in particle physics. A good friend to my parents worked for FermiLab and invited me on a tour there during my Junior year of high school. I fell in love with the notion that I would someday be a physicist. At that early stage, I really had no idea what it involved. I came to Cornell full of hopes and dreams about being the next Cockcroft or Wigner.” Everyone had heard of Fermi and Einstein. I liked giving credit to the lesser known, but equally important contributors to modern physics.
“I finished my undergraduate work in early 2007. I spent the next two years developing temporal-spacial models of black holes and other space phenomena; models that refute a lot of the current ways of thinking. The only thing that kept me from being laughed off campus was the unconventional — and, I might add impressive — math I developed to support my theories. What I’ve set out to prove is that the behavior of subatomic systems and galactic systems are not altogether that different. It has a lot to do with Quantum Field Theory, Situational Dimensionality, and a bunch of other stuff that will take me seven years to explain.
“Physics is really about the human condition. Why are we here? Where are we going? How does my microwave actually work? We all want answers. We want to light up the dark corners. My goal today is to help shed some light for you.
“With that in mind, a little recap from your high school chemistry class. How many of you are comfortable with the standard concept of the atom? Anyone willing to admit they’re not comfortable with it?. . .No. . .Okay. Let’s review a little, shall we?” A few heads nodded in gratitude.
“From chem 1010 we know that atoms are composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Neutrons and protons make up the nucleus of an atom. Electrons orbit the nucleus. Differing combinations of protons, neutrons, and electrons constitute the various elements that appear in the periodic table. Anyone know what the Greek word atomos means?”
“Indivisible.” A student six rows from the back offered.
“First question answered. Can you catch?” I asked, producing a Milky Way candy bar from behind the desk. I lobbed it high into the stadium seating, missing my mark by several rows.
“Can you throw?” Came the sarcastic question from somewhere to my right.
“I’m a physicist. Of course I can’t. So, I will apologize for the state of the candy bars. Even broken, they taste pretty good. Please, if I miss the mark, make sure the right person gets their reward. There are eleven more where that came from.”
Everyone sat up more attentive at the mention of additional junk food.
“Excellent. In around 450 BC Democritus coined the term for what has become known as the atom. For those who aren’t so great at math, that was a long time ago. It wasn’t until almost 1900 AD that someone finally suggested that atoms were not, in fact, indivisible. That idea gave rise to a whole new field of physics that deals with components of atoms smaller than protons and neutrons. What do we call these particles? Any guesses?”
“Subatomic.” An attractive young woman from about the twelfth row offered. Dr. Austin tilted her head in the direction of the young woman. One of the promising ones, I thought, tossing a Milky Way her way, over the heads of the eager-looking boys between her and me.
She caught it with one hand, rolled it over, and asked, “Do you have any Twix?”
I returned to the tray behind the counter, and pulled out a fistful of Milky Ways.
“Nope, I only brought the physicist’s favorite.”
She shrugged, and tore off the wrapper to the envy of the students around her.
I continued, “The basic components of atoms are actually made up of other subatomic particles. As it turns out, there is quite a number of them. They’ve been classed according to their characteristics. We’re not going to get into that today. However, I do want to focus on one class of subatomic particles: bosons.”
“How many of you have heard of a boson before?” I waited as several hands shot confidently into the air, followed by many more hands rising slowly.
“Okay, and how many of you know what a boson actually is?. . .There’s another candy bar at stake.” Several hands dropped quickly leaving five hands in the air as I surveyed the crowd.
“You, in the very back. What do you think?” I asked, straining to make out the face obscured by the darkness in the room.
“A subatomic particle.”
“Ah. Thank you for that very circuitous answer. Sorry, I can’t give you a candy bar for that.”
His face fell dejectedly as the student to his right jabbed him in the ribs. He held his phone up for his friend to see.
“And no using Google to get answers to your questions. I’m fairly certain Google can’t enjoy a candy bar anyway.”
“Before I dive into this notion of a boson, I need to explain a little about the Standard Model of Particle Physics. This model attempts to explain what subatomic particles exist, how they behave, and why they are important. There are three forces in the Standard Model that help us understand particle behavior. If you’re interested, and I know you are, these are the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. You’ll have to do some of your own research on those because we don’t have time to cover them in detail. Neither do we have time to cover all the subatomic particles in the Standard Model and how they behave. There’s a great book written by our own Dr. Ruth Austin called The Standard Model: Introductions and Insights that is very good at lighting up that particular dark corner of your understanding.” I had to shield my eyes from the overhead light to make out Dr. Austin’s expression high in the auditorium. From her look, I knew I was earning some great brownie points.
“Circling back to bosons. Tell me, young lady, what is a boson?” I asked, selecting one of the people who had raised a hand at my previous question. She responded quickly, yet with some trepidation. “I don’t know.” She said honestly.
“C’mon. Why not guess?” I asked, waiving a candy bar out to the crowd.
“Elementary particles.” A young man in the third row shouted, snickering at his own cleverness.
“That’s part of it. . .not enough to get a candy bar.” I added, seeing the look of anticipation from the young man.
“What type of elementary particle is a boson?” I asked, pressing the question more specifically.
“One that carries a particular force.” I recognized the voice from the rear of the room. I looked up to the back, toward where Dr. Austin was sitting.
James and his girlfriend, Claire, has slipped in unnoticed. My eyes locked on Claire momentarily. She was, by far, the most beautiful woman I had ever met. How she ended up with James, I did not know.
“Thank you, James. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you my best friend, Dr. James Barnes. Dr. Barnes, I believe, will be the guest lecturer in this class next week. I can promise you, he is far more entertaining than I.”
James stood and bowed with an exaggerated flair. Then, “where’s my candy bar?”
“Sorry, candy bars are for the undergraduates only.”
He threw a scathing look my way, smiled, and settled back into his seat.
Seeing Claire with James, I was jealous for a brief moment. I hesitated then forced myself back into lecture mode.
“To summarize the last five minutes, stuff is made up of atoms, atoms are made of subatomic particles, and the boson is a class of subatomic particle that carries force. We’re not going to get into what that entails.
“The next logical question then is, who can name a boson?” With ten more candy bars up for grabs, the students were getting a little braver. I gave the class ten seconds of awkward silence so they could each figure out if they were committed. This time, I picked on a young man far up the ranks of seats.”
“Yes?”
“Gluon.” He responded, tucking his phone back into his pocket.
“Gluon is correct. Google thanks you for another donated candy bar.”
“Anyone want to try another without the Internet?”
A young lady on the front row who, to this point, had leaned attentively forward, raised her hand.
“The Higgs boson.”
“Jackpot!” I said, erupting into applause, laughing out loud as a number of students snapped to attention at my outburst.
“Ms. —”
“Thompson.” She replied, the faintest hint of quiver in her voice.
“Ms. Thompson has just hit on my favorite subject: the Higgs boson. For that, she receives two candy bars.”
Protestations came from all sides.
“This is not a democracy.” I retorted, grabbing another candy bar from the tray and dropping it on her desk. She looked up at me and tossed the three candy bars over her head into the crowd. Students scrambled to the center of the room the way baseball fans go after a fly ball into the stands.
“Okay, people. Perhaps the candy bars weren’t such a good idea. Let’s bring it back together.”
It took several seconds for the noise to die down and for students to return to their seats.
“The Higgs boson is the core of my dissertation. It is the boson that makes or breaks the Standard Model. As of yet, it is only theoretical. That is, no one has actually seen it.
“Like the proton, neutron, and electron, the basic idea behind the boson is simple. Atomic particles are made up of smaller, subatomic ones. In reality, however, things start getting really messy when you break down protons and neutrons into smaller particles. Electrons are already fundamental; so we don’t get to divide those ones into smaller bits. . .yet. And that is a lecture for another day as well. Bottom line: there are a lot of subatomic particles with difficult-to-remember names. We’re going to focus on the Higgs boson today ‘cause that’s what I’m most interested in; why the Higgs boson is important to life as we know it.
“Before I heap any more confusion on you, a few analogies are in order.” I watched as the blank stares melted. Dr. Austin still sat smiling broadly from the back of the room. James was leaning in toward Claire, trying to talk to her, but he attention was fixed on me; a notion I found very satisfying.
The first snore of the morning echoed off the classroom walls.
“Could you?” I asked, indicating the student sitting next to the rather large man hunched forward in his seat.
“Just. . .that’s right. . .with your elbow.” She hesitated before poking him lightly. He almost fell out of his chair. Laughter erupted again.
“We’re just getting started here. Am I really that boring?” I asked, hoping no one would say yes.
I stopped behind the long counter and pulled out a large canvas bag from below the surface.
“To oversimplify somewhat, the Higgs boson exists in the Standard Model to explain why other particles have mass. There are some competing theories out there — one, in particular, called the Higgsless Model — but they’re all wrong so we won’t waste time with that.” I didn’t have to look up to know Dr. Austin didn’t agree with my statement. She was a staunch supporter of the Standard Model but I also knew she didn’t ever like to taint someone’s opinion, particularly at such an early stage.
“There’s another important question we have to answer before going any further. Why do we care about any of this? Why is it so important that we understand physics at this level.”
“It’s not.” Someone to my right shouted.
“I’m not going to contradict you, but why?”
“I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I don’t care that much.” He continued from the back row. His posture and attitude told me his seat would be vacant within the week.
“Fair enough. Thank you for your honesty.” I added, tossing him a candy bar. “For those of you who do care, why is it important?”
I didn’t wait for anyone to respond to my question. “Here is the honest truth. Life would not cease to move forward if we had no understanding of particle physics. Technological advances may cease at some point — truthfully, they would not have even made it this far — but life and death don’t hang in the balance. It’s simply a matter of curiosity. As I said earlier, it’s about lighting up the dark corners. And, even though the young man in the back doesn’t care, there are tens of thousands of people who will do just about anything to understand the origins of the universe. They want to know how all this came into being and how it works.
“So, if you stop to think about it. The Standard Model is really a theory of everything. At the very simplest level, all of this stuff is about understanding the universe. So, here we have our early universe.” I said, pulling an over-sized sheet cake pan from the bag. I raided Stephanie’s kitchen the previous night for an odd assortment of household products I was certain would help me explain things. A few students leaned forward, their gratitude apparent that I wasn’t lecturing in obscurities anymore.
“The early universe, prior to the big bang, was empty space.” I dropped the pan onto the counter, resulting in a loud bang that startled several students more engrossed in their phones and tablets than anything going on up front. I shot a dirty look at the few seated closest to the front then pulled another large bag from under the counter. “At the instant the big bang occurred, a variety of massless particles came into being.” I explained, pouring the bag of assorted balls onto the tray, allowing several of them to spill over the shallow rim onto the table. Making no effort to contain them, several rolled onto the floor in every direction. I picked up the tray and rocked it back and forth. Several balls followed those that were stopping at the edges of the lecture area. “These particles zipped around at the speed of light, giving birth to the early universe. To help us understand, I’ve slowed the process down to a speed we can all comprehend.” Only a few attentive students laughed. Strike two.
I pressed on, not phased. “One unique feature of our early universe was it’s mass — or rather, the lack thereof. In the first few femptoseconds after the big bang, nothing had any mass. It’s not something the Standard Model explains very well, so for now you’ll have to trust me.”
I paused, watching the final balls as they came to rest around the lecture area. Attentiveness peaked so I continued.
“A question has plagued scientists for a long time: What gives stuff mass? That question is an easy one to ask, but a very difficult one to answer. In 1964, a man named Peter Higgs, the only physicist among six whose name I can pronounce, proposed the idea of a boson that would give mass to all other elementary particles. That’s the basic idea anyway. Things like spontaneous symmetry breaking, isospin, gauge groups, and hypercharge have to be understood in order to get how this so-called Higgs mechanism works. Again, if you’re interested in understanding those things, please stick around for the next five or six years.”
“I thought you were going to keep this simple.” A student to my right shouted, setting off a wave of murmurs and nods of agreement.
“This is simple.” I said, suppressing a laugh. Frankly, I knew the material was difficult. I also knew there were only a handful of students in the room who would ever be capable of understanding the intricacies the way I did. I had paid my dues. Maybe it came more simply to me than others, but I had still worked hard to get where I was.
“You’re right. Let’s bring the discussion back to ground level; what you need to know today. The general belief among those who support the Standard Model is that the Higgs boson is the particle that gives everything else its mass. Year two of graduate school will teach you how this happens. For now, convention tells us that something called the Higgs Field, populated by an incalculably large number of Higgs bosons, came into being during about the first picosecond after the big bang. As particles interact with the Higgs field, there is a kind of drag on those particles. That drag is what gives them mass.”
“Think of this flour as the Higgs field.” I offered, picking up the bag of flour I had behind the desk and pouring it onto the large cake pan. I collected the balls from around the lecture area and tossed them at random into the pan.
“Now that particles have mass, they can’t move around as easily as before. Where particles sped around the unbounded universe at the speed of light before, they are now constrained. There are a few particles like the photon and neutrino that don’t get bogged down in the Higgs field — also year two of graduate school. However, most particles are not so fortunate. The drag created by the Higgs field is absolutely essential to the formation of atoms, particles, clumps of matter — that’s a scientific term, by the way — us, planets, and galaxies.”
I shifted the pan from side to side once again, allowing the balls to lumber their way across the flour.
“We can draw all sorts of interesting analogies between the universe today and this rather simple pan of flour.” I moved the pan to an overhead projector and flicked on the lamp. In seconds, a super-sized version of the experiment was projected onto the screen above me, next to my opening slide. “Notice how certain balls made deeper grooves than others. Certain particles interact more readily with the Higgs fields, resulting in a higher mass. In this case, the deeper grooves. While we can’t observe it with the naked eye, the larger particles also have a greater impact on the path of smaller balls. Even gravity is impacted by the Higgs boson.”
“The Higgs field does a fairly good job of explaining some of the difficult things in the Standard Model. The most important one, which we have already discussed, is this issue of mass. I’ve spent the last couple of years working out the mathematics explaining how the Higgs field came into being; the lump sum of my dissertation.” I finally saw the nod from Dr. Austin I had been expecting. She was satisfied with where things were going.
“There is some really cool science being done in research facilities around the world to provide more information about the Higgs boson. My personal favorite, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, will perform high energy experiments over the next few years that should tell us, without reservation, that the Higgs boson does or does not exist as well as what kind of boson it actually is. Thousands of physicists and researchers are working on this question every day. My hope is to one day be among them.”
“Questions to this point?” I asked, scanning the large crowd.
“Yes.” I said, pointing at the young woman who was the first to answer one of my questions.
“You mentioned that the Higgs boson has been a problem for the last fifty years. How will researchers know when they’ve found the Higgs boson? How do they even know what they’re looking for?”
“That’s a great question.” I repeated the question for the benefit of the class. “In proton-proton collisions — the kind performed billions of times a day at the Large Hadron Collider — very interesting decay takes place as protons are split into smaller pieces. The various particles that are born of these collisions exist at varying energy levels. For the Standard Model to work, the Higgs boson has to exist within a specific band of energy. Right now, that range is too broad. Theoretical and computational physicists are working on narrowing that range. Basically, the experimental scientists are looking for a smaller range. Without being able to narrow the range, they won’t know if they’ve found the Higgs or not. Nearly every subatomic particle began as a theory. Over time, experiments have proven the existence of all the particles in the Standard Model except the Higgs.”
“Think of it this way. It’s like searching for something with a lantern that casts dim light in all directions versus a high-intensity flashlight with a very focused beam. A broad range of values is too difficult for experimental researchers to focus on. They require a tighter range for experimentation to be practical.
“The goal of my research has been to narrow the range.”
“Thank you for that question.” I lobbed a candy bar her direction.
I spent the next thirty minutes fielding questions, doing additional demos with my tray of flower, and elaborating mathematically. Dr. Austin was already tapping her watch. With the demonstration, the diagrams, and the math, I had used up more time than I realized.
“Let me wrap this up with a few conclusions for all of you to consider. Theoretical physicists have proposed the idea of the Higgs boson to close a few gaps in the Standard Model. Experimental physicists want to see the Higgs boson in reality so they can confirm that it fits in the model. The general belief is that when the Higgs boson is experimentally uncovered, it will create a whole new branch of science. In my dissertation, I have taken the first steps to understanding this new branch of science. It is something I have labeled situational dimensionality and it hinges completely on the discovery of the Higgs boson. That’s why my research into the Higgs boson is so important to me. Thank you.”
Perfect timing, I thought as a bell rang in the distance. The students needed no prompting from me. They noisily packed up their bags and shuffled their way to the door. Dr. Austin made her way quickly to the front of the room before the wave of students crashed against the doors leading out of the auditorium.
“Well done, Ty. I particularly enjoyed the flour demo. Clever.”
“Thanks. I had something more elaborate planned but Stephanie suggested it was a little over the top.”
“I’m sure she was right.” Dr. Austin jabbed.
“Me too.” I said, nodding emphatically.
I glanced up to see James and Claire making their way against the steady flow of students to where Dr. Austin and I stood. They both looked somber; the tell-tale sign of yet another fight — probably the third one this week and it was only Monday.
“Nicely done.” James said, clapping me on the back hard enough that I staggered forward.
“Pretty basic stuff.” I responded, feeling the sting between my shoulder blades where James hit me. Claire’s presence with James somehow heightened my irritation at some of the things James did.
“He’s right.” Claire chimed in. “You’re a very good teacher. Have you considered it as a career option?”
“I did. Once. When I was thirteen. I told my dad I wanted to teach other people. He told me there was no money in it. That swayed me; so naturally I would select another field where there’s no money to be made.”
“It was wonderful.” Dr. Austin added in her motherly tone. “Let me buy you breakfast. You two interested?” She added, turning to James and Claire.
“I can’t.” James responded without hesitation. “I’ve got to deliver a lecture in about an hour for Dr. Richards. I still don’t think he’s forgiven me for not showing up last time.”
“Can you blame him?” Claire prodded.
Without another word, James spun and started toward the stairs. Claire took a hesitant step in his direction, exhaled sharply, and turned back to us.
“What am I going to do with him?” Claire whispered.
I considered the many ways I could encourage her to break up with James and date me instead. James was my best friend but Claire, without knowing or trying, had a way of driving an invisible wedge between us.
“Don’t worry about it. It’ll blow over. It always does.” I offered trying to sound as genuine as possible.
She stood motionless for an instant then responded slowly. “I don’t know. We’ve only been dating for seven months. The fights are getting worse. I don’t think we’re meant for each other.”
Inside, I was rejoicing.
“Well, I guess you have to evaluate whether the strengths of your relationship can help you overcome the things you fight about or not.”
Dr. Austin interrupted. “This probably isn’t the best place to have this conversation.” She inclined her head toward the doors. The flow of students had reversed as the next class pressed into the room. With only fifteen minutes between classes, the room would fill a lot faster than the first class of the day ever did.
“Forget about James for the moment.” Dr. Austin suggested. “Let’s get some breakfast and some perspective.”
I had so many things I wanted to say to Claire in that moment. Things I was certain would initiate the end of her relationship with James. I was certain I knew what she and James were fighting about. Again. James fit a Hollywood stereotype of the college male. It was an issue of conquest. James didn’t have long-term girlfriends. I had only ever dated two girls in my life. Claire, I knew, was not one to be conquered; the big sticking point for them. They had been together far longer than James typically lasted with a girl yet they had not slept together. It really bothered me that James was so cavalier about his morals, but a lot of people called me old-fashioned. I didn’t care. My dad raised me to respect women. Abstinence before marriage and complete fidelity. It was the one Sunday school lesson he had always adhered to. In his eyes, my mother was the most important priority of his life. I was a very close second.
I could love Claire as much as my parents loved each other, I thought.
“Ty. You coming?” Claire was several steps above the lecture floor smiling back at me.
“Where did you go just now?” She asked as I jogged up the stairs to where she was standing.
“I was thinking about my parents.”
A hint of sadness pulled at the corner of her eyes. She, among a select few, knew the story of how my parents had died. I was surprised when she took my arm in hers and walked with me up the remaining steps, dodging students hurrying toward their seats.
