by John Ringo
From my point of view, the mission of SF was handed down from the greats. Science fiction, speculative fiction, however you wish to say it, has the mission of looking at current theory and taking it beyond the realm of the currently possible. To push the boundaries and think about what could be out there. Whether that is in macrocosmic space, looking at what planets might look like beyond our solar system, or in the microcosmic, looking at what particles might really be doing and why, in biology extrapolating and questioning the ethics of bioengineering in all its manifestations, SF is now and always has been about pushing the boundaries of the known and striking out into the unknown. To speculate, not to prove. What ifness to the nth degree. And maybe get some bright young guy to invent some of this stuff thus making my job harder. What, you don't have a communicator? AKA a flip-phone?
While, of course, hopefully having a cracking good storyline and some characters people like.
Whether we succeed in our mission, to boldly impart some of the most advanced ideas in quantum theory and cosmology to the uninitiated, to enlighten and entertain, to develop a spark that blossoms into the flame of reality, or not, the mission is worthwhile. And maybe Doc will eventually get me to understand what a fermion is and why it's important.
Alas . . . I have the mind of a fourteen-year-old male. Whenever I even write "fermion" I get an image that is anything but cosmological . . .
John Ringo
Chattanooga, Tennessee
August 2006
On the Particle Physics in This Work of Fiction
Thought I would add my two cents in here as well. There is an awful lot of talk about particles and such in here so I thought a quick description of the fundamentals might be useful. But then again, it might just be damned confusing. But if I were going to give the Space Marines a one- or two-page summary of particles they should keep up with I'd do it with the following information.
Known fundamental particles that can't be broken into smaller particles are:
Fermions:
Quarks: up, down, top, bottom (sometimes called beauty), charm, and strange
Leptons: electrons, muons, tau, and the three flavors of neutrinos which are electron neutrino, muon neutrion, and tau neutrino
Bosons:
Gauge bosons: photons, W+, W-, Zo, and gluons
Other bosons (theoretical and possibly gauge): Higgs and the graviton (although I personally don't hold a lot of stock in the graviton)
Now, these are the fundamental particles that can't be made smaller by splitting them or smacking the hell out of them or anything else. It is these particles that in some combination or other that make up all the matter and interactions in the universe. Well, if you don't like the graviton we have to consider gravity from some other approach like strings or membranes or spacetime fabric or—oh hell, let's leave it at that for now.
Fermions are normally the ones that make up matter and stuff and the bosons are the ones that do the interacting or make up the so-called "forces" in nature that we hear about. The four forces are gravity, electromagnetism, weak, and strong forces.
And here is how they work.
Gravity works through the graviton (remember this is debatable as gravity can be described quite well with Einstein's General Relativity, but most particle weenies won't admit that. Einstein. Need I say more? Probably, but that'd take all semester).
Electromagnetism works through the photon, which accounts for radio, microwaves, terahertz waves, infrared, visible light, ultra-violet, x rays, gamma rays, and anything higher energy than that. This theory also explains the interactions of electrons and the electric and magnetic fields and is refered to as quantum electrodynamics or QED and is the field that Richard Feynman is most famous for. Humanity really, and I mean REALLY, understands QED. Or at least we think we do.
The weak force works via the W and Z bosons which were predicted by Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg, and one of my idols, Sheldon Glashow. These guys won a Nobel prize in 1979 after the bosons were finally measured to exist in a particle collision experiment. The study of the weak force interactions is known as GWS theory for the founders. Sometimes it is apparently called quantum flavordynamics but I've never actually heard that used out loud by anyone. It is the weak force that allows for the color of gluons in a neutron to change and therefore allow it to decay into a proton. Interestingly enough, the process requires another field from which the heavy W and Z bosons can gain mass and hence we have the Higgs field (sometimes we'll hear Higgs mechanism). You see, the interaction between the electromagnetic boson (the photon) and the weak force bosons (W and Z bosons) requires a middle man to transfer various properties including mass as the weak force bosons are heavy and the photon is massless. This middle man is the Higgs boson, which by the way has never been measured no matter what drunk particle physicists might claim.
The strong force uses the gluons and describes the way that particles in a nucleus of an atom (protons and neutrons) are held together. The study of the strong force particles is known as quantum chromodynamics or QCD. QCD was championed by Frank Wilczec, David Politzer, and David Gross who shared a Nobel prize in 2004 for their theory. The strong force governs hadrons, which are particles made up of quarks and gluons. The hadrons contain baryons, which are fermions made of three quarks (with gluons holding them together), and mesons, which are made of two quarks (again with gluons holding them together). These gluons have colors of red, green, or blue and don't forget the anticolors. Seriously, I'm not making this maulk up! When one of these gluons changes color is when there are neutrons decaying into protons as described above in the weak interaction description.
Finally, know this, in this book we mention a new set of "make believe" bosons that are connected and when manipulated properly allow for travel from one to another. This idea of Looking Glass bosons is not unlike at all how the Higgs boson transfers the effect of mass from an all encompassing and permeating field (the Higgs field or Higgs ocean) between the massless boson and the massive bosons of the electromagnetic and weak fields. It is possible that as we understand new ideas in modern physics we will uncover some similar mechanisms that will allow for "gate travel" as Ringo and I describe in this book. On the other hand, we could have just made all this maulk up.
"Doc" Travis S. Taylor
Harvest, Alabama
August 2006
THE END
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Table of Contents
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EPILOGUE
Afterword
