Ball Lightning

by Cixin Liu

  And so the project reached an impasse. We had by that point excited forty-eight thunderballs, but we had also experienced a major accident; it was impossible for tests and observations to continue in this form. More importantly, everyone knew in their hearts that there was no point in risking it. We had been shaken not by the thunderball’s power, but by its almost supernatural strangeness. The aviator’s vanished fingernails reminded us that the secrets of the thunderball could not be unlocked through conventional means.

  I remembered something Zhang Bin had said: “We’re both mortal men. We may have put far more into the search than other people, but we’re still mortal. We can only make deductions within the framework defined by fundamental theory, and dare not deviate from it, lest we step out into the airless void. But within this framework, we cannot deduce anything.” I included these lines in my report to the GAD leadership.

  “Our approach to ball lightning research needs to adopt cutting-edge physics,” Lin Yun said.

  “Yes,” Colonel Xu replied. “We need to bring in a superman.”

  Ding Yi

  GAD convened a meeting to discuss expanding the ball lightning project. The meeting was attended primarily by representatives of civilian sector research institutions, most of them specialists in physics, including several directors of state physics institutes, as well as the physics department heads at a few well-known universities. The chair of the meeting turned over a stack of forms they had collected, brief introductions of the participants’ specialties and achievements, as material for us to use in making our selection.

  Neither Colonel Xu nor I was happy after we’d read through the materials.

  “These are the country’s most outstanding scholars in the field,” the head of the Institute of Physics said.

  “We believe it. But we need something more fundamental,” Colonel Xu said.

  “More fundamental? Aren’t you doing lightning research? How fundamental does that need to be? You don’t expect us to simply fetch Stephen Hawking, do you?”

  “Hawking would be wonderful!” Lin Yun said.

  The GAD team glanced at each other. Then the academy head said to a physics department dean, “Well, send Ding Yi, then.”

  “His research is fundamental?”

  “The most fundamental.”

  “How’s his scholarship?”

  “The best in the country.”

  “What’s his affiliation?”

  “He’s unaffiliated.”

  “We’re not looking for an outsider physicist.”

  “Ding Yi holds two doctorates, in philosophy and physics, and a master’s in mathematics. I forget which branch. He’s been a senior professor and a CAS fellow, the youngest ever, and he once served as senior scientist on the national neutron decay study, for which he was rumored to be nominated for a Nobel in physics last year. Does that sound like an outsider physicist to you?”

  “So why is he unaffiliated?”

  The academy head and the physics dean both snorted. “Ask him yourself.”

  *

  Lin Yun and I arrived at Ding Yi’s residence in a new apartment building in Haidian District. The door was ajar, and after pressing the doorbell several times with no response, we pushed it open and went in. The large apartment with its three bedrooms and two living rooms was mostly empty and had bare-bones decoration. The floor and windowsills were carpeted white with a large quantity of A4 paper, some of it blank, other sheets covered in formulas and peculiar graphs. Pencils were strewn about everywhere. One room held a bookcase and a computer. There were few books on the bookcase in that room, but it had the largest quantity of paper, rendering the floor barely visible. In a clearing in the center of the room, Ding Yi was sleeping in a deck chair. He was in his thirties, with a thin lanky body, and he was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and shorts. A strand of saliva hung from his mouth to the floor. Beside the chair was a small table holding an enormous ashtray and an opened pack of Stone Forest brand cigarettes. A few of the cigarettes had been broken open and their tobacco stuffed into a glass. Evidently he had fallen asleep while working. We called out to him a few times, but he did not respond, so we had to forge a path through the paper to the chair and push him awake.

  “Hmm? Oh, right. You called this morning?” Ding Yi said, smacking away saliva. “There’s tea in the bookcase. Pour it yourself if you want some.” After sitting up, he suddenly burst out shouting: “Why did you mess up my calculations? I had them lined up, and now they’re out of order!” He got up and busied himself pushing about the paper we had cleared, blocking our retreat.

  “Are you Professor Ding?” Lin Yun asked. She was clearly disappointed by her first impression of him.

  “I am Ding Yi.” He opened up two folding chairs and motioned for us to sit down, then returned to his chair. He said, “Before you tell me why you’ve come, let me discuss with you a dream I’ve just had.... No, you’ve got to listen. It was a wonderful dream, which you interrupted. In the dream I was sitting here, a knife in my hand, around so long, like for cutting watermelon. Next to me was this tea table. But there wasn’t an ashtray or anything on it. Just two round objects, yea big. Circular, spherical. What do you think they were?”

  “Watermelon?”

  “No, no. One was a proton, the other a neutron. A watermelon-sized proton and neutron. I cut the proton open first. Its charge flowed out onto the table, all sticky, with a fresh fragrance. After I cut the proton in half, the quarks inside tumbled out, tinkling. They were about the size of walnuts, in all sorts of colors. They rolled about on the table, and some of them fell onto the floor. I picked up a white one. It was very hard, but with effort, I was able to bite into it. It tasted like a manaizi grape.... And right then, you woke me up.”

  With a bit of a sneer, Lin Yun said, “Professor Ding, that’s a schoolboy’s dream. You ought to be aware that protons, neutrons, and quarks would exhibit quantum effects, and they wouldn’t look like that.”

  Ding Yi stared at her for a few seconds. “Oh, of course. You’re totally right. I tend to oversimplify things. Imagine how wonderful life would be for me if protons and neutrons really were that big. They’re so tiny in reality that a knife to cut them open would cost billions. So this is just a poor child’s dream of candy. Don’t mock it.”

  “I’ve heard that the state didn’t include the large hadron accelerator and collider in the latest sci-tech five-year plan,” I said.

  “They said it was a pointless waste of resources, so we physicists have to continue to go cap in hand to Geneva and beg them for a pitiful scrap of experiment time.”

  “But your neutron decay project was quite successful. They say you nearly won a Nobel.”

  “Don’t go bringing that up. That’s why I’m in the state I’m in today, with nothing to do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, just a few innocuous remarks. It was last year at... I’ve forgotten where. Definitely Europe. On a prime-time talk show, the host asked me for my thoughts as a leading candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics, and I said, ‘The Nobel? It’s never been given to superior minds, but favors competence and luck, like Einstein, who won for the photoelectric effect. Today, the Nobel is just a withered old whore, her charm gone, relying on flashy clothing and intricate tricks to win the favor of clients. I’m not interested in her. But the state invested a mint into the project, so I wouldn’t reject the prize if it was forced upon me.’ ”

  Lin Yun and I looked at each other in surprise, and then burst out laughing. “That’s not cause for termination!”

  “They said I was irresponsible, grandstanding, and wrecking it for everyone. Naturally, they all see me as a weirdo. ‘Those whose courses are different cannot lay plans for one another.’* So I left.... Okay, why don’t you two tell me why you’ve come.”

  “We’d like to invite you to take part in a national defense research project, to be in charge of the theory portion,” I said.

  “Research on wh
at?”

  “Ball lightning.”

  “Great. If they’ve sent you here to insult me, then they’ve succeeded.”

  “Why don’t you listen to our explanation before forming a conclusion? Maybe you’ll be able to use this to insult them,” Lin Yun said, opening up the laptop she had brought. She played a recording of the excitation of ball lightning, and explained it briefly to Ding Yi.

  “So you’re saying that you’re using lightning to excite some undiscovered structure in the air?” Ding Yi said, staring at the ball lightning floating faintly on the laptop screen.

  Lin Yun affirmed that that was the case. I showed Ding Yi Zhang Bin’s notebook with the alternating burnt pages and described its provenance. He took it and looked it over closely and carefully before returning it to me.

  He took a bunch of tobacco from the glass, stuffed it into a large pipe, and lit it. He pointed at the loose cigarettes and said, “Take care of those for me.” Then he walked over to a wall and began to smoke. And so we extracted the tobacco from the cigarettes and put it into the glass.

  “I know a place that sells pipe tobacco,” I said, looking up at him.

  He didn’t seem to hear me, but stood there exhaling smoke. His face was practically pressed against the wall, so that the smoke he blew against it seemed to be issuing from the wall instead. His eyes were focused on the distance, as if the wall was the transparent border of another vast world and he was surveying the profound sights it held.

  Before long, he finished his pipe, but maintained his posture against the wall. He said, “I’m not as self-righteous as you might imagine. The first task is to prove that I’m qualified for this project. If I’m not, then you can find someone else.”

  “So you’ll join us?”

  Ding Yi turned back around. “Yes. Why don’t I go with you now?”

  *

  That night, quite a few people at the base found it hard to sleep. From time to time they looked out the window at the tiny red star that flashed intermittently on the broad lightning test ground. That was Ding Yi’s pipe.

  After arriving at the base, Ding Yi looked briefly through the materials we had prepared, and then immediately began calculating. He didn’t use a computer, but worked quickly with pencil and paper, and before long the office prepared for him was as covered in paper as his home. He did calculations for two hours straight before stopping, and then moved his chair to the edge of the test ground, smoking his pipe constantly. Its flame, flickering like the summer fireflies, was the light of hope for ball lightning research.

  The flame had a hypnotic effect that made me drowsy watching it, so I went to bed. When I woke up, it was two in the morning, and, looking through the window, I could see the tiny star still flashing on the test ground. Now, though, it was moving like a firefly. Ding Yi was pacing. I watched him for a while and then went back to sleep. It was daylight when I awoke, and the test ground was empty. Ding Yi had gone to sleep.

  It was almost ten when he got up and declared to us the results of his thinking: “Ball lightning is visible.”

  We looked at each other with forced smiles. “Professor Ding, you’re not just... bullshitting us, are you?”

  “I mean, unexcited ball lightning. What you called the already existing structure. It’s visible. It causes light to bend.”

  “...How do you see it?”

  “According to my calculations of the light bend, it should be visible to the naked eye.”

  We looked at each other uncertainly. “So... what does it look like?”

  “A transparent sphere. It exhibits a round edge due to the bending of light. It looks like a soap bubble, although it lacks a bubble’s iridescence, so overall it is not as conspicuous. But it is definitely visible.”

  “But why hasn’t anyone seen it before?”

  “Because no one was looking.”

  “How is that possible? In the whole of human history, think of how many of these bubbles have been floating in the air. And no one saw them?”

  “Can you see the moon during the day?” Ding Yi asked.

  “Of course not,” someone said reflexively.

  Ding Yi pulled back the curtain on a crystal clear sky. There in the azure was a crescent moon, snow-white and stunning against the sky, looking conspicuously spherical.

  “I’ve never noticed it before!” the speaker exclaimed.

  “Someone did a survey showing that ninety percent of people have never noticed it, but it has often appeared during daytime throughout human history. Do you really expect people to notice a small, indistinct bubble found only once in several cubic kilometers, or maybe even an order of magnitude less than that?”

  “That is a little hard to believe.”

  “So let’s prove it. Let’s excite a few more thunderballs, and we’ll see.”

  * The Analects of Confucius, Chapter 15: Wei Ling Gong, translation by James Legge.

  Empty Bubbles

  That afternoon, the aircraft that had been grounded for several days took flight once again. They ignited the arc at three thousand meters and excited ball lightning three times. Seven people, including Lin Yun and me, were in the helicopters watching the thunderballs through binoculars until they vanished, but none of us saw the unexcited form.

  “Your eyesight isn’t good enough,” Ding Yi said, after learning the results.

  “Captain Liu and I didn’t see anything either,” said Captain Zheng, one of the helicopter pilots.

  “Then you need better eyesight.”

  “What? We’ve got perfect vision. You can’t find anyone with better eyesight!” Captain Liu, the other helicopter pilot, said.

  “Then excite a few more and look more carefully,” Ding Yi said, unconvinced.

  “Professor Ding, exciting thunderballs is very dangerous. We’ve got to be cautious,” Colonel Xu said.

  “I think we should do as Professor Ding says and try once more. Sometimes risks have to be taken,” Lin Yun said.

  In the less than two days that Ding Yi had been at the base, Lin Yun’s attitude toward him had experienced a conspicuous transformation, from initial suspicion to respect, a respect that I had not noticed her showing toward any other individual. After the meeting, I mentioned this to her.

  She said, “Ding Yi has lots of ideas. He’s contemplating ball lightning on a level far beyond our reach.”

  “So far I haven’t seen any impressive ideas from him.”

  “It’s not something I’ve seen. It’s a feeling I have.”

  “But his abstruse enigmas are supposed to solve our problems? And his practically pathological stubbornness? I dislike it.”

  “Ball lightning itself is an abstruse enigma.”

  And so the next morning another three hours of exciting flight were undertaken. Two thunderballs were excited, but the results were the same as the previous day’s. Once they disappeared, there was nothing to be seen.

  “I still think you need better eyesight. Could we bring in a few more senior aviators, the kind that fly aircraft with wings?” Ding Yi said.

  His question angered the helicopter pilots. Captain Zheng barked, “They’re called fighter pilots. And you listen here, the air force and army aviation each have their strengths. One’s not higher or lower than the other. And as far as eyesight goes, our requirements are the same as theirs!”

  Ding Yi chuckled. “I’m not interested in military issues. Even so, it’s got to be because of the distance from the target. No one would be able to see a thunderball at that distance.”

  “I’m certain that no one could see it from even closer!”

  “That is a possibility. It’s a transparent bubble, after all. For a target like that, conditions are quite poor for airborne observations. What we need to do is take it back and observe it on the table.”

  Once again, we looked at each other uncertainly. It was a common expression for us when Ding Yi was around.

  “That’s right. I’ve got a plan. We can capture an unexc
ited ball lightning and store it.”

  “Is that possible? We can’t even see them!”

  “Listen to me. While you’ve been flying, I’ve been reading the background on these,” Ding Yi said, pointing at the two superconducting batteries next to him.

  “What’s that got to do with ball lightning?”

  “They can store unexcited ball lightning.”

  “How?”

  “Simple. Contact the thunderball with a superconducting lead, no thicker than half a centimeter, drawn from the battery’s anode, and it will be conducted into the battery and stored like current. It can be released from the cathode in a similar fashion.”

  “Ridiculous!” I exclaimed. Ding Yi’s tricks had become intolerable, and I now regretted inviting him.

  “It won’t be easy to do,” Lin Yun said, entirely serious. “We can’t see the bubbles, so how are we supposed to contact them?”

  “Major, you’re a smart person. Maybe you should think about it a bit?” Ding Yi said with a sly grin.

  “Maybe like this? We can see ball lightning in its excited state, so if we extend the lead to that position at the moment it vanishes, we’ll contact the bubble.”

  “You’ve got to be quick, though, or the bubble will float away,” Ding Yi said, nodding. The sly smile remained on his face.

  It took us a moment to realize what Lin Yun meant. “That’s risking death!” someone shouted.

  “Don’t listen to his crap, Major,” Captain Liu said, pointing at Ding Yi.

  “Captain, Professor Ding is a world-famous physicist and a CAS fellow. He deserves respect,” Colonel Xu said sternly.

  Ding Yi laughed and waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. I’m used to it.”

  “Oh, I’ve got an idea! Dr. Chen, I’ve got to take you someplace right away,” Lin Yun said, leading me off.

  *

  Lin Yun said she wanted to take a look at something called a “feeler defense system,” and that the strangely named system would solve our safety problem. We drove four or five hours in the direction of Zhangjiakou and arrived at a dusty mountain valley crisscrossed by tracks in the ground. She told me this was the proving ground for the Main Battle Tank 2005.