Lindl got out his phone, “Wait, wait. You’re both being offensive. I’m calling the PC police.”
Kiri’s eyes widened and she turned towards Lindl. Raising her hands, she made a couple of quick bowing motions, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. Please, call them off!”
Adam put his hands together as if praying. He intoned, “Oh great PC in the sky, please forgive us.”
Morgan rolled his eyes, thinking that, as the adult, he should chide them for what they were saying, but not wanting to ruin their good spirits when they’d been spending so much time down in the dumps. Especially when Kiri picked up her sandwich and took a healthy bite. After a moment he settled for, “Children, children. Be nice.”
Adam said, “So, transmutation. Are you talking about the kind where you transmute one chemical into another?”
Kiri raised an eyebrow, “One element into another.”
Adam’s eyes went to Morgan for an instant, then back to Kiri. “I thought elements couldn’t be changed? Well, I mean, they can be combined with other elements to make different molecules, but the atoms of an element can’t be changed, right?”
“Atoms can’t be changed with chemistry. Chemistry’s all about combining atoms into different kinds of molecules. However, nuclear reactions change atoms into different elements all the time. Hydrogen fuses into helium in the sun. In an atomic bomb, or a nuclear power plant, uranium splits into smaller elements like barium, cesium, zirconium, or niobium. In fact, a radioactive element’s one that’s naturally unstable so it tends to just fall apart into smaller elements.”
“Oh,” Adam said thoughtfully, “I kind of remember reading that somewhere.” His eyes went from Kiri to Lindl and back to Kiri. “So, is that what Uncle Daryn was doing? Splitting bigger atoms into smaller ones?”
“Um, no,” she said slowly, as if uncertain how to explain. Then she produced a sweet smile and said, “He was working on alpha capture with proton loss.” The smile suggested she knew neither Adam nor Morgan would have any idea what she was talking about.
There was a long silence and for a moment, Morgan was afraid he’d have to demonstrate his ignorance by asking a question himself. Fortunately, Adam said, “And just what does ‘alpha capture with proton loss’ mean?”
Kiri gave him a wide-eyed look, “You remembered all five of those words?”
Adam wadded up his napkin and threw it at her.
She put up her hands in surrender, “I give, I give. An alpha particle’s a helium nucleus. Two protons, two neutrons, no electrons. If it did have electrons, it’d be a helium atom. If you squeeze an alpha particle into the nucleus of an atom, the nucleus burps up a proton, i.e. the ‘proton loss.’ Rutherford did this all the way back in 1919. He hit a nitrogen atom with an alpha particle. Nitrogen has seven protons and seven neutrons in its nucleus. Absorbing the alpha particle gave the nitrogen nucleus two extra protons, but it burped one up. So now it had one extra proton and two extra neutrons which made it the next atom in the periodic table, oxygen seventeen.” At the confused look on Adam’s face, she said, “Eight protons and nine neutrons for a total of seventeen nucleons. Oxygen has eight protons and its isotopes can have eight, nine, or ten neutrons.”
Adam stared at her for a moment, then said, “Let me look some of this stuff up. Then you can explain the rest of it.”
After they finished their lunch, Morgan went upstairs with Kiri to give her the Mace. As he did, he had a sudden thought. “There’s two in this blister pack. Do you mind if I keep one? In case… In case that big guy shows back up?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll order two more so Adam and Lindl can carry them too.”
Morgan had a brief attack of conscience, wondering if he should be arming the family, even if it was with the rarely-lethal Mace. He gave her a nod, deciding he’d hate himself if he didn’t and they were subsequently attacked. It’d be crushing to realize they might have been able to protect themselves with pepper spray but he’d refuse to get it for them.
When Morgan got back downstairs, he found Adam intently focused on his laptop. “Hey, I’d really like to be there when Kiri explains this transmutation thing. Can you wait until dinner to ask her about it?”
Adam shrugged, “Sure.”
Morgan found his own laptop and settled down to learn more about transmutation himself.
***
Argo felt pretty uncomfortable. He didn’t like being sent out to this place to act as a spy. It would’ve been okay in town. Watching people or cops was a pretty common task Argo’d been assigned over the years. But, out here in the woods, it was a different story.
Dan made it sound simple. Park a quarter mile north of the Djai place. Walk into the woods uphill of the road and head south. Use the GPS in his phone to aim himself toward a spot uphill and a little north of the mine entrance.
When he was getting close, he was supposed to move slowly so nobody’d notice him. Then he was just supposed to sit out here all damned day, watching to see whether it looked like Djai was working his mine.
It hadn’t sounded all that bad. But now that he was out here, he was seeing a lot of poison ivy. It seemed like, when he detoured to avoid the poison ivy, he kept running into dense vegetation that was hard to push through. Also, it seemed like he was making an ungodly amount of noise—pushing through brush, stepping on dead sticks that broke, and swiping at bugs. He didn’t suppose the Djais had a guard or lookout watching over their mine, but Dan had emphasized that Argo was supposed to be stealthy.
He felt anything but.
He finally got to a location where he could see the area right in front of the entrance to the mine. There were several police vehicles parked there and a bunch of cops were standing around. That son of a bitch! he thought of Dan. No wonder he didn’t want to come up here and look around himself!
Argo thought about just leaving. But, now that he was in position, it seemed like he was more likely to attract the cops’ attention trying to leave then he was just sitting there like Dan asked him.
He settled into a patch of deep shade where he could watch through a narrow cleft in the leaves. He’d only been there about thirty minutes when a couple of guys came out the mine entrance carrying a stretcher. The stretcher bore a body covered by a sheet.
Rob, he thought with dismay. Dan claimed he didn’t know what happened to Rob. But, I’ll bet he did, Argo thought unhappily. He’s just covering his ass, hoping no one’ll figure out it was his fault. I’d better report this to Mr. Buckley, not just Dan.
He decided he’d definitely better not leave before the cops were gone. He really didn’t want them finding him out there spying on their murder investigation.
***
Morgan had just put the spaghetti in a pot of boiling water when he glimpsed movement out on the porch. A moment later, the doorbell rang. Drying his hands, he told Alexa to set a pasta alarm for nine minutes and went to open the door.
Detective Chatfield stood with a couple of uniforms behind him. “Hello Detective,” Morgan said, putting on a pleasant expression despite his persistent dislike of the man.
Chatfield took off his hat, “I’ve come to apologize for arresting your niece.”
Morgan gave him a nod, accepting the apology without saying something fatuous like “That’s okay.”
Chatfield sighed, “It turns out that being underground really gets on my nerves. But, I certainly shouldn’t have taken it out on your niece. I appreciate your forbearance.”
Morgan said, “Can you give us an update on what’s happening up at the mine?”
“Yes sir. We’ve found and removed the body of the second man. As your niece suspected, he’d fallen down that roped-off shaft. So far, we haven’t identified the first man or found a motive for their invasion of the mine. It might be that we just haven’t checked the right database yet, but it also could be because the quality of the images from those security cameras aren’t all that great.”
Morgan frowned, “What about a motive for
killing my brother?”
“Um, we’re going on the assumption that the actual killing was an accident. We have no evidence to contradict your niece’s statement that the man’s gun went off when she struck him in the crotch. Of course, it may be that he intended to shoot your brother anyway, or was in the process of doing so when she hit him. Hopefully, when we find the guy, we’ll get a better understanding.”
Morgan nodded, “Okay.”
“Just a few more details,” Chatfield continued uncomfortably. “They should release your brother’s remains sometime this coming week…”
“Why did he die? Kiri said he got shot in the abdomen but I didn’t think people usually died from abdominal wounds. Or, at least when they did die, it took a long time.”
“Um, yeah. He did get shot in the abdomen, but the bullet ruptured the spleen, one of the organs in the abdomen. The spleen can bleed a lot.”
“Oh,” Morgan said, suddenly sad to realize Daryn had bled to death. And that he’d probably had time to realize the end was coming, “I see.”
“Um, we’d like to urge you to keep the mine locked at all times in order to protect the curious. Also, we’d strongly recommend you put a stout fence around that down-shaft so no one else falls into it.”
Morgan nodded, “Both good ideas. Are you done so we can lock it now?”
The detective nodded, “Yes sir. We’re done with the crime scene.” He stepped back, “Please give my respects to your niece and convey my apologies.”
As Morgan closed the door, Alexa started alarming. Adam and Lindl came down the stairs while Morgan was turning off the stove.
Lindl said, “That smells good. What is it?”
“Spaghetti sauce and garlic bread. I hope I didn’t use too much garlic.”
Lindl said, “Can’t put on too much garlic for me, but you might be able to make it too strong for Kiri. Can I help somehow?”
Morgan felt grateful that the teenager offered. He said, “I’d be glad of some help, but the police are done up at the mine and want to be sure we lock it up so nobody gets in and hurts themselves.” He looked at Lindl and Adam, “I know it’s a one-man job, but I’m still a little uneasy about the place. I’d prefer it if both of you went. Do you mind going together?”
“No problem,” Lindl said, “I’ll learn about cooking next time.”
“Hah!” Morgan said, “If you want to learn about cooking, next time I’ll call you when I start to cook.”
Lindl gave him a grin, “Probably a good idea. Since I’m shooting for the starving artist career track, it’d probably be a good idea if I started learning how to cook cheap stuff like spaghetti for myself.”
Morgan reached in his pocket and pulled out his canister of Mace. Holding it out, he said, “Here’s a little extra protection for you guys.”
Adam took it with him.
Kiri came downstairs and helped Morgan finish the salad and set out their dinner. Adam and Lindl got back just as everything was ready. They reported that the cops were gone and that they’d locked up the entrance.
“This’s awesome,” Lindl said around his first mouthful.
Morgan looked at Kiri, “Is it to garlicky for you?”
“No, I like it.” She grinned, “As long as I don’t have to sit next to any of you guys afterwards.”
Morgan looked at Adam, whose eyes were fixed on Kiri. He’s got it bad, Morgan thought.
Adam glanced around at everyone else, then focused back on Kiri, “Can we talk about transmutation again?”
She nodded.
Adam said, “So, I’ve been reading about it. What you described doesn’t work. I mean, it worked for Rutherford converting nitrogen to oxygen, but it doesn’t work with bigger atoms. In fact, when you get to atoms that are larger than iron, fusion no longer generates energy. Instead, it actually requires an energy input to fuse them. Fusion of bigger atoms is supposed to happen inside stars, and especially in supernovas, where there’s a lot of excess energy available, but you shouldn’t be able to do it in the lab.”
Kiri nodded again, “Correctamundo. Can’t happen.” She looked at Morgan, “Has that block of platinum disappeared now that its existence has been disproven?”
Adam raised his hands in surrender, “Sorry. You’re right. If that platinum was produced by transmutation, that’s pretty good proof that Uncle Daryn had a way to do it.”
Morgan looked at Kiri and said slowly, “How did you know it was platinum?”
She blinked, “Well, I guess I don’t. Dad said he was going to try to make platinum first and when you said that block of metal was in the right density range, I just assumed.” She tilted her head, “Is it platinum?”
Morgan nodded.
“How do you know?”
“We got a more accurate scale from Amazon and it’s the correct density for platinum. Also, it’s pretty soft. If it was a mixture of elements that are more and less dense it’d be extremely hard.”
Kiri frowned, “Soft? What do you mean by that?”
“We can cut it pretty easily with a file. Osmium, iridium, rhenium, and tungsten are all harder than the steel they make files out of.” Morgan shrugged, “Maybe there’s some way to make those elements soft that we don’t know about, but I doubt it.”
Kiri gave them an admiring glance, apparently impressed that they’d been able to prove it was platinum. Morgan felt oddly pleased. A glance at Adam suggested he felt pretty proud as well, but he covered it by saying, “So, how does he do it?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure, but he was working on the idea that he could get alpha particles to enter the nucleus via quantum tunneling.”
“Oh geez,” Adam said, rolling his eyes. “I think you just like rolling out obscure terms to make me feel stupid.”
Kiri laughed. Her eyes sparkling, she said, “It is an excellent side benefit. But, quantum tunneling’s a pretty important physical phenomenon. It’s responsible for the fusion of hydrogen into helium in the sun.”
“I thought fusion happened because of the huge amounts of pressure and heat from the sun’s gravitation. Doesn’t that just kind of smash the hydrogen atoms together until they fuse?”
“Kind of, but even as hot as the sun is and as much pressure as there is, hydrogen atoms still shouldn’t fuse. The pressure isn’t great enough to force their nuclei together against the natural repulsion that results from both nuclei being positively charged. But, what happens is that occasionally they ‘quantum tunnel’ past the barrier thrown up by the positive charges.” At Adam’s frown, she said, “I assume you know that at the really tiny sizes of the quantum scale, all kinds of weird things happen. Essentially atoms occasionally just show up on the other side of a barrier they shouldn’t be able to get past. They can even tunnel right through a piece of metal as long as it’s pretty thin. So, in the sun, you can think of it as hydrogen atoms just somehow showing up on the other side of the barrier created by the repulsion of the positive charges. Once they tunnel close enough to one another, they can fuse because the nuclear force which attracts them to one another even more strongly than the repulsion from their positive charges. But the nuclear force only attracts over very short distances so it won’t pull them in until they’ve gotten past the barrier. Tunneling doesn’t happen very often on a per atom basis, but there’s so many hydrogen atoms in the sun that it’s actually happening constantly.”
“Okay,” Adam said, “I remember reading something about that. But it shouldn’t happen with bigger atoms, or outside the sun, should it?”
“Correctamundo.”
Adam grinned, “So?”
“So, did you read about wave-particle duality?” On Adam’s nod, she continued, “So, if you think of our alpha particle as being a kind of tiny wave…” She tilted her head, “Did you come across any videos of pilot waves and walking droplets?”
Adam shook his head.
“The videos are easy to find on YouTube. Walking droplets are used as a way of visualizing the pilot-waves p
ut forth in the de Broglie-Bohm theory. They’re a set of waves that surround a particle and guide its travels so it acts like a wave instead of a particle. Dad thought it was crazy to think of the particles as having some waves that traveled around with them as if they were waves in the ether,” she shrugged, “the ether having been disproved a long time ago. Instead he visualized atoms or alpha particles as actually being the waves you see around a walking droplet.” She shrugged, “I’m not so sure about that, because it doesn’t seem to fit with Rutherford’s gold foil experiment showing that particles can be deflected by the tiny and very dense nucleus of an atom. Anyway, Dad’s idea was that if the alpha particles were behaving like a wave they could be focused like a wave.”
Since Kiri had paused and Adam wasn’t interjecting a question, Morgan said, “How do you focus particles?”
“Think of them as wavicles. We’re mostly interested in their wave properties.”
“Wait, I understand how you can focus light by passing it through a lens, but alpha particles won’t even go through a sheet of paper.”
“Ah, not by passing them through something. He was using something more like beamforming. They use beamforming in radar and even in the new models of Wi-Fi. In the original radars, they turned the entire antenna to point the beam different directions. Nowadays they can steer the radar beam by emitting it from a lot of little transducers. If one transducer emits a little bit earlier than the one next to it, the beam tends to be bent a little bit away from the first emitter and toward the second one. If you have a whole bunch of emitters and the ones near the edges emit before the ones in the center, it focuses their emissions toward the center.”
“But even if had a whole bunch of radioactive alpha particle emitting isotopes, you wouldn’t be able to control when they emitted their particles.”
“Well, no. What he was doing was ionizing helium to separate the electrons from the nucleus and then accelerating the helium nuclei. He’d found a way to make them kind of travel in register like the photons coming out of a laser. The idea was that he’d focus them so that huge numbers would hit the target atoms in register at a tight focal point.”
The Transmuter's Daughter Page 19
