Nature Futures, page 14
Even this genius couple stood in awe of what they had created. Magnusson applied the formula to a problem of tachyon spin that he had been worrying at for more than a year. It was solved on the spot.
Almost as an attempt at humor to alleviate the intense emotion of the occasion, Stern wrote out the equation and filled in the elements for the never-solved relationship between sunspot cycles and the birth weight of male Greenlanders. And gasped. There was the answer—clear and obvious now that the equation had been solved.
The rest is history. With these seven mathematical symbols, mankind has regularized the dictionaries of the Anglo-Saxon language, predicted earthquakes and tsunamis, found hidden oil reserves, abolished city traffic jams—and moved on from the glorious past to the even more glorious future. No scientific discipline has resisted the irresistible logic of this equation. The Stern-Magnusson Equation is the definitive discovery of humanity, the finding that has freed mankind.
Of course we have all learned it in school. But it always bears repeating, for we can never tire of it. The Stern-Magnusson Equation goes like this …
Operation Tesla
JEFF HECHT
Jeff Hecht writes regularly for New Scientist and Laser Focus World. His most recent book is Beam: The Race to Make the Laser. His Web site can be found at www.jeffhecht.com; he lives in Auburndale, Massachusetts, and still uses a land-line phone.
An hour ago, Frankel had been on the holovision stage, being introduced as part of Team Beta.
“It is two hundred years since the birth of Nikola Tesla in 1856,” the announcer had said. “Now Enigmas of the Twentieth Century is sending three teams of intrepid time travelers to find the legendary inventor’s lost papers on wireless transmission, death rays, and energy before they went missing.”
Now Frankel was back in Tesla’s Manhattan, walking north on Sixth Avenue from Fortieth Street toward the entrance to Bryant Park. Massive yellow taxis zoomed by. A blue-uniformed policeman checked him out, then walked on past, but Frankel still worried. “I haven’t heard from Watkins,” he said to the phone transmitter buried in his collar.
He could hear Johnson’s annoyance through his earpiece. “I told you dead spots are inevitable, even with the main transceiver in the Empire State Building. I know these phones are outdated for 2056, but they’re hidden so nobody can see them. Everything you’re wearing belongs in October 1937.”
“Okay,” Frankel agreed, reluctantly. He was grateful the rules let them use technology from any time in the twentieth century. It would have been hard to hide mobile phones built with vacuum tubes. Getting the colors of women’s fashions would have been hard, but the three men on Team Beta could get by with dark suits, ties, and white shirts. Yet that hadn’t helped all-male Team Alpha, who hadn’t come back on time.
“Do you see Tesla yet?” Johnson’s voice hissed through the earpiece. “He should be near the public library, feeding the pigeons.”
Inside the park, Frankel looked east toward the library. A tall, gaunt elderly man on a bench scattered crumbs to a flock of head-bobbing pigeons. Frankel recognized the inventor. He wondered what secrets of power-beaming and wireless transmission were hidden in the missing papers. “I see him. Where’s Watkins? I haven’t heard from him in fifteen minutes.”
“That’s when he went into the Hotel New Yorker. I watched him from Cut Rate Drugs across Eighth Avenue; I’m having a soda inside. The hotel is a complex forty-three-story building, and something inside must be blocking his signal. I’ll tell him you’ve spotted Tesla. If I can’t reach him on his mobile, I’ll head up to Tesla’s room myself. I have a set of tools to get in.”
“But what if I can’t reach you?” Frankel worried. The operation depended on everyone keeping in touch so they could copy the papers and bring them to the retrieval point. They’d lose points if they had to be retrieved from different locations.
“Don’t worry. You’re perfectly safe. Nobody can eavesdrop on these calls. Just watch Tesla.”
“OK,” Frankel agreed. Watching him was the easiest part of the operation. The goal of Operation Tesla was to bring back copies of Tesla’s missing papers: Enigmas of the Twentieth Century promised fame and a handsome reward for the team that came back with the best. Watkins and Johnson thought the documents were in the hotel room where he lived. The old-fashioned mechanical locks should be easy to pick; the challenge was to find and copy the right papers.
Frankel settled down on a bench to keep a discreet eye on Tesla. The inventor was engrossed in his pigeons, as if he knew each one. Frankel opened a copy of the New York Sun he had bought from a news vendor. The headlines ranged from world politics to sports. Roosevelt had talked on the transatlantic radio-telephone with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain about Adolf Hitler’s meeting with Benito Mussolini. Police were questioning the staff of Bellevue Hospital about three lunatics who had vanished without a trace from a locked ward. The Yankees had just beaten the New York Giants four games to one in the World Series, and a sports writer wondered how long Lou Gehrig could keep playing.
Glancing at his authentic 1930s watch, Frankel saw it was time for another report. He scanned the park, and noted the inventor feeding the pigeons and three policemen walking down the path that went by him. “Tesla is still feeding the pigeons,” Frankel said to his collar.
Nobody replied. That was odd. “Johnson! Watkins! Are you there?”
Worried that the police might have caught Watkins and Johnson trying to break into Tesla’s hotel room, Frankel tried to look inconspicuous behind his paper. “Johnson, Watkins? Where are you? Rendezvous is in one hour and fifteen minutes!”
A heavy hand clamped down on Frankel’s right shoulder, and as he started to jump, a second clamped on his left. “All right, pal, we’ll take you back to a nice, quiet padded cell,” said one of the three policemen suddenly standing around him. They pulled away his newspaper and snapped handcuffs around his wrists, then patted him down, pulling out his wallet but not spotting the little transmitter sewn into his jacket.
“Johnson, Watkins, help!” he cried into his collar.
The first policeman shook his head. “If those are your pals from Bellevue, they’re already at the precinct, talking to themselves—just like you.”
Frankel shivered. “They caught Team Alpha, and now they’ve got me,” he said into his collar phone. “I don’t know what tipped them off.”
The policeman rolled his eyes.
Making the Sale
FREDRIC HEEREN
Fredric Heeren is a science journalist who has reported for New Scientist, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and others. He lives in Olathe, Kansas, and his work can be sampled at www.fredheeren.com.
It was that Presbyterian biologist who almost blew the sale. And not only a sale to the Presbyterians, but to the Seventh-Day Adventists, too. Those two denominations alone could deliver eighteen million customers, guaranteed. It was a good thing I came along with the sales staff for this one. Halfway through my product-design talk, the biologist interrupted, as though suddenly possessed, and began telling the others they were making a big mistake.
I brought the denominational leaders back to the purpose of the meeting when I showed them what our Personal Advice Device could do.
Of course James had done his usual great job of setting the hook. Nobody could argue with his facts. People have come to trust their PADs implicitly. More than their spouses. More than their pastors. What human being can compete with this advice from a mind programmed to think according to our individual tastes, but immeasurably smarter, continuously updated from a world of information according to our present needs?
So here’s how I explained why our product is the solution to their evolution issue—and if you pay close attention, you’ll know how to handle the Mennonites next week.
“If you want to look at the future of your denomination,” I said, “you only have to look at how the Southern Baptists were transformed from criticizing evolution in the schools to promoting it. This was bound to happen, with all the preachers telling their people there’s no evidence that primitive hominids ever existed.
“That might have been fine in the day when to check out that claim, a person would have had to sit down at a PC and hunt around for hours—who has time for that? But now for those who have PADs, questions like that get answered with just a few thoughts and a quick menu selection on their retinas. Presto—they’re looking at a sequence of hominid photos with increasing cranial capacities over time. And seeing is believing, even if you’ve been home-schooled and never heard of evolution except as a naughty word. The result: anti-evolution leaders were voted out by an informed electorate.
“If our projections hold, 80 percent of American teens and adults are going to own a PAD within three years. There’s no choice about that, but what you can still choose, courtesy of our latest design and your specs, is whether your PAD will be your enemy or your friend.
“We’ve designed a friendly PAD. It’s not just a matter of helping people make good decisions by showing them their best options—it actually does the rationalizing for them, too. This is as close to real human thinking as any PAD has ever come.”
Now at this point, I thought we were still going according to plan. The Presbyterians had brought their biologist to give me the chance to demonstrate how our PAD works. I let him fire away with his toughest questions.
“How do you explain the stark differences between animals across impassible barriers, as between Australia and other lands? Why do islands always have organisms most like the nearest mainland? Why do we find clear evidence of common ancestry when we compare the DNA of an evolutionary sequence of animals, so that we can trace how genetic insertions, including retroviruses, appear and then accumulate in later forms of life?”
The Adventists were set up for PADs and got answers in their heads. I showed the others on the large virtweb display what our PAD does compared with the others. As soon as any question was seen to contradict a specified tenet, our PAD logically dismissed it—and everyone knows a PAD’s logic is flawless. It also showed an alternative, God-honoring explanation for the putative evidence. It suggested that several of the questions were based on false preconceptions. And always, it directed people to look at their denominational virtwebs, where they would get the true picture. Of course, we restricted access to the problem virtwebs.
“So,” I concluded, “it really operates exactly as the human mind does. It chooses what it wants to believe.”
That’s when the biologist piped up and said something about our spoiling the whole point of genuine choice: young people shouldn’t be made to choose between faith and science.
“Of course not,” his leaders said. “Not as long as you’re talking about Christian science.”
“We’re seeing the Christian Science people next week,” said James. And from there things got very confusing.
The Presbyterian biologist got into an in-house discussion with his leaders about whether the particular means God used to create our bodies should be the issue.
“It certainly is the issue,” the Presbyterian president said.
“It shouldn’t be,” said the biologist, “because the more genetics or history our bodies share with other animals, the greater the wonder at what we humans uniquely experience: morality, humor, literature, science, faith.”
“Dr. Adams,” said the president, “you were invited here to ask your questions and you’ve done that.”
“But I have more,” said Adams. “Do we really want to credit all these attributes merely to something special about our bodies, as if the material world is all there is? Isn’t that what we’re doing when we emphasize the special way our bodies were made? Isn’t that what we’re doing when we pit God against evolution?”
Some of the denominational leaders began to show a hint of worry. Fortunately, his remarks had triggered their PADs, which were already fast at work drowning him out with a flood of dazzling answers, backed up by well-documented evidence and memorable sound bites.
Subpoenaed in Syracuse
TOM HOLT
Tom Holt was born in London in 1961. At Oxford he studied bar billiards, ancient Greek agriculture, and the care and feeding of Japanese motorcycle engines; interests that led him, inevitably, to qualify as a lawyer and emigrate to Somerset, England, where he still lives. After seven years he became a full-time writer, best known for a large number of comic novels and a smaller amount of historical fiction. His Web site can be found at www.tom-holt.com.
“Da-da-da-dum,” sang Archimedes, reaching over his shoulder with the sponge to get at the awkward spot in the middle of his back. “Da—”
Careless—a moment’s thoughtlessness, and there’s a big pool of water on the floor. Damn. Pause. Why is there a big pool of water on the floor? The philosopher frowned. An insight, nebulous as a cloud, began to condense in his mind.
“Hold it!” said a voice from behind.
Archimedes jumped, thereby increasing the size of the pool and, coincidentally, proving the hypothesis he’d been working on. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
The stranger stepped out of a fold of shimmering blue light. “You don’t know me,” he said. “My name’s Calvin Dieb. I’m a lawyer.”
Archimedes stared at the blue light, the stranger’s outlandish clothes. “Are you a god?” he asked.
“Nah. Easy mistake to make, though,” the stranger reassured him.
“Actually, I’m from the future. Three thousand one hundred and fifty years, to be exact. In my century, we’ve figured out how to travel backward in time. Oh, forget I said that, by the way.” He chuckled. “Don’t want that outstandingly intuitive mind of yours getting on the job back here in the Dark Ages, could lead to serious doo-doo. So,” he went on, stepping clear of the blue fire and vanishing it with a click of his fingers, “this is it, then. The big moment. Congratulations.”
“Is it?”
“Sure.” The stranger grinned like an open wound. “Because of this, your name’s gonna be a household word for the rest of Time—believe me,” he added with a wink, “we checked. This discovery of yours, it’s gonna revolutionize the way mankind understands nature. It’s practically the birth of science. And you know what really burns me up about it?”
Archimedes thought for a moment. “Well, no,” he said.
“What really bugs me is,” said the stranger, “you don’t make so much as a wooden nickel out of the whole deal. Not a cent. Nada. One of the most seminal discoveries in human history, and the guy who made it has to go on washing his own tunics. Now I ask you, is that right?”
Archimedes thought some more. “Yes,” he said. “I mean, it’s interesting, I suppose, in a kind of bet-you-didn’t-know-that sort of way, probably get me invited to a few parties, but it’s not as if it’s any good for anything—”
The stranger snorted. “That, my friend, that is where you’re—with the greatest respect—totally wrong. I can’t go into details for fear of screwing up the timelines, but trust me, this is gonna be huge. Multibillion-drachma huge. And who’s gonna get all that money? Not you, friend. Not,” he added, leaning forward a little, “unless you listen to what I’ve got to say.”
Archimedes frowned. “I’m listening,” he said.
The stranger nodded. “Back where I—forward when I come from,” he said, “we got a thing called patents. Means that if someone wants to use your idea, they gotta pay you money.”
“Really? What a strange idea.”
“It’s cool,” the stranger said enthusiastically. “Now, what I’m proposing is, in return for a small piece of the action, say one-third, I explain to you how it works. In the morning you go and see your friend King Hiero and explain to him how if he passes a law here in Syracuse whereby inventors like yourself get paid a whole lot of money each time they invent something, pretty soon Syracuse’ll be the technological and economic capital of the world, and he’ll be the biggest king, bigger than Rome and Macedon and Carthage put together. Then we patent this new discovery of yours, and after that it’ll just be a matter of raking in the dough.”
After the stranger had finished explaining the theory and practice of patent law, the philosopher’s eyes were burning like stars. “That’s brilliant!” he exclaimed. “I’ll go and see the king right this minute.” And he jumped out of the bath and headed for the door, pools of displaced water forming unheeded at his every step.
“Hey,” the stranger called after him, “aren’t you gonna get dressed first?”
Archimedes came home six hours later, in the king’s personal chariot, laden with gifts, and immediately signed all six copies of the contract that the stranger shoved under his nose.
“Great,” the stranger said as he clicked his fingers to light the blue flames of the temporal interface. “You won’t regret this.” He snapped his fingers again. Nothing happened.
Archimedes’ invention of the patent in 221 BC revolutionized the scientific world. Instead of blurting out discoveries for anybody to hear, philosophers revealed them only to the rich merchants who had the wealth to develop them properly. Because they were merchants rather than scientists, they chose to finance the projects that looked to them as if they promised a good, quick return on capital. Mankind never did discover gravity, but the whoopee cushion was invented in 146 BC.
As for Calvin Dieb, he made the best of a bad job, eventually settling down in the small city of Acragas where he tried to interest the local goat farmers in product liability litigation. Ironically, he was killed by an inventor, striving to patent the secret of flight, who fell on him after flying too close to the Sun and melting the wax that held his wings together.
Total Internal Reflection
