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"In 2001, I was a sophomore in college, not much younger than you are now, planning
a double major in math and physics. Early in that year, Wilford and Turner announced
a discovery. It’s forgotten now, but it was a ten-day wonder then, and enough to
give my studies a much needed focus.
"They announced that they’d verified that the quasar they’d been studying dated
from far earlier than any previously verified astronomical object. Every calculation
indicated it originated 800 million years after the Big Bang."
Walsh made another of his abortive gestures, as if his yearning to get to the answer
was at war with a lifetime of respect. Glasberger nodded in response. "I know, I
know. So what’s the big deal? The big deal was, it was the first major, verified
observation to break, no, to shatter the one billion-year mark. For me and others
interested in the field, it was the sort of psychological barrier that the four-minute
mile had been in sports, an accomplishment which, judging from the expression on
your face, means nothing to you."
"Sorry."
"Don’t be. One know-it-all in the room is enough, and I’ve had plenty of time to
think about humanity’s limits and achievements since I ‘quit,’ as you put it. Since I
shifted my focus, as I like to think of it. Now, where was I?"
"You were deciding to trace the Big Bang back to its source."
"Well, you’re a little ahead of me, and you make me sound even more grandiose than
I suspect that twenty-year-old physics nerd was, but yeah. From that point on, I
devoted myself to helping humanity see as much of ‘the early days’ as I could,"
Glasberger said, making little quote marks in the air.
"If I may, sir, I think everyone knows this part of the story." Walsh put in quickly. "In
2003, you began grad school at MIT, with summers spent interning at Hubble Ground
Support, JPL, and Fermi."
"Right. I was building a base. A broad base."
"In 2010, you specialized in neutrino research, producing papers in 2012 and 2014
that developed a model allowing researchers to correlate neutrino absorption rates
with UHF tracking to date quasar age more accurately. Then, in 2016, you—"
"My team."
"Right," Walsh said, flushing. "You and your team confirmed your mathematical model
for locating quasars blocked by dark matter, to extrapolate galactic dates and
position much further back than anyone had done before."
"Yes. We were sneaking up on the 100 million-year mark. 100 million years ABB—After
Big Bang, we started calling it ABB. Somebody duplicated an old movie poster with a
twentieth century hottie in it, something like 4 Million Years BC, and doctored it so
dinosaurs and cavemen with our faces were looking at the Big Bang like they’d
discovered fire."
Walsh laughed; Glasberger only smiled. "Yes. Well, late in 2016, I became interested
in the shape of space at 100 million ABB."
"The shape?" Walsh asked obligingly.
"Yes. I’d become interested in some of the gravitational anomalies that the Eire
neutrino team had documented, especially in the Australian team’s observations of
what seemed to be evidence of ripples or waves through the denser primordial
matter. Since we were talking about the mass of the entire universe moving
outward from a single point, earlier assumptions had been that any local variation
would be minimal, if even noticeable at that scale. Essentially, we assumed that the
young universe would be shaped like a sphere."
"Aha!"
"Aha?"
"Yes, I’ve always wanted to say that. ‘Aha,’ I say, as in, ‘at last, something new,
now I have a story.’ May I assume that the universe was not in fact spherical, and
how could you tell?" Walsh spat out hurriedly.
"No. No, it wasn’t spherical. I used the basic results that the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
had produced earlier, then started drifting over to use the Cal Tech evolutionary
computing labs, adapting some of their cybernetic life programs to generate a model
that started with the base forces of the Bang, to generate an image of what the
universe would have looked like from the outside, a three dimensional shape rather
than the two-dimensional snapshot that Sloan’s people had managed."
Walsh smiled slowly. This part of the story was clearly new to him, and the level of
ambition contained was clearly a more appropriate fit with the Glasberger he’d
studied. "The universe," he breathed. "You wanted to look at the universe. From the
outside. You don’t think small, do you?"
"Hey, I was curious. And young. So I threw grad students and money and time on the
fastest processors at the problem, played with the issues around shifting dominant
radiation distribution into the visible spectrum without distortion, and found that
the result was . . . this."
The scientist reached across to his desk and tapped a quick sequence on his home
computer; he still preferred manual access computing to voice-activated, even in
retirement.
Walsh looked at the presentation-quality hologram for a long time. When he finally
spoke, his voice was carefully flat. "Dr. Glasberger. From this angle, that looks almost
like a face."
Greg Beatty © 2009
a double major in math and physics. Early in that year, Wilford and Turner announced
a discovery. It’s forgotten now, but it was a ten-day wonder then, and enough to
give my studies a much needed focus.
"They announced that they’d verified that the quasar they’d been studying dated
from far earlier than any previously verified astronomical object. Every calculation
indicated it originated 800 million years after the Big Bang."
Walsh made another of his abortive gestures, as if his yearning to get to the answer
was at war with a lifetime of respect. Glasberger nodded in response. "I know, I
know. So what’s the big deal? The big deal was, it was the first major, verified
observation to break, no, to shatter the one billion-year mark. For me and others
interested in the field, it was the sort of psychological barrier that the four-minute
mile had been in sports, an accomplishment which, judging from the expression on
your face, means nothing to you."
"Sorry."
"Don’t be. One know-it-all in the room is enough, and I’ve had plenty of time to
think about humanity’s limits and achievements since I ‘quit,’ as you put it. Since I
shifted my focus, as I like to think of it. Now, where was I?"
"You were deciding to trace the Big Bang back to its source."
"Well, you’re a little ahead of me, and you make me sound even more grandiose than
I suspect that twenty-year-old physics nerd was, but yeah. From that point on, I
devoted myself to helping humanity see as much of ‘the early days’ as I could,"
Glasberger said, making little quote marks in the air.
"If I may, sir, I think everyone knows this part of the story." Walsh put in quickly. "In
2003, you began grad school at MIT, with summers spent interning at Hubble Ground
Support, JPL, and Fermi."
"Right. I was building a base. A broad base."
"In 2010, you specialized in neutrino research, producing papers in 2012 and 2014
that developed a model allowing researchers to correlate neutrino absorption rates
with UHF tracking to date quasar age more accurately. Then, in 2016, you—"
"My team."
"Right," Walsh said, flushing. "You and your team confirmed your mathematical model
for locating quasars blocked by dark matter, to extrapolate galactic dates and
position much further back than anyone had done before."
"Yes. We were sneaking up on the 100 million-year mark. 100 million years ABB—After
Big Bang, we started calling it ABB. Somebody duplicated an old movie poster with a
twentieth century hottie in it, something like 4 Million Years BC, and doctored it so
dinosaurs and cavemen with our faces were looking at the Big Bang like they’d
discovered fire."
Walsh laughed; Glasberger only smiled. "Yes. Well, late in 2016, I became interested
in the shape of space at 100 million ABB."
"The shape?" Walsh asked obligingly.
"Yes. I’d become interested in some of the gravitational anomalies that the Eire
neutrino team had documented, especially in the Australian team’s observations of
what seemed to be evidence of ripples or waves through the denser primordial
matter. Since we were talking about the mass of the entire universe moving
outward from a single point, earlier assumptions had been that any local variation
would be minimal, if even noticeable at that scale. Essentially, we assumed that the
young universe would be shaped like a sphere."
"Aha!"
"Aha?"
"Yes, I’ve always wanted to say that. ‘Aha,’ I say, as in, ‘at last, something new,
now I have a story.’ May I assume that the universe was not in fact spherical, and
how could you tell?" Walsh spat out hurriedly.
"No. No, it wasn’t spherical. I used the basic results that the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
had produced earlier, then started drifting over to use the Cal Tech evolutionary
computing labs, adapting some of their cybernetic life programs to generate a model
that started with the base forces of the Bang, to generate an image of what the
universe would have looked like from the outside, a three dimensional shape rather
than the two-dimensional snapshot that Sloan’s people had managed."
Walsh smiled slowly. This part of the story was clearly new to him, and the level of
ambition contained was clearly a more appropriate fit with the Glasberger he’d
studied. "The universe," he breathed. "You wanted to look at the universe. From the
outside. You don’t think small, do you?"
"Hey, I was curious. And young. So I threw grad students and money and time on the
fastest processors at the problem, played with the issues around shifting dominant
radiation distribution into the visible spectrum without distortion, and found that
the result was . . . this."
The scientist reached across to his desk and tapped a quick sequence on his home
computer; he still preferred manual access computing to voice-activated, even in
retirement.
Walsh looked at the presentation-quality hologram for a long time. When he finally
spoke, his voice was carefully flat. "Dr. Glasberger. From this angle, that looks almost
like a face."
Greg Beatty © 2009
Excerpt From
"The Smile"
by Greg Beatty
"The Smile"
by Greg Beatty
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