ten years from now, this won’t be coming back to haunt us. That’s why we need to know, worst-case scenario, what’s the potential damage they can do?”
“So they’re going with an old mine, huh?” Minsky asks.
He doesn’t sound surprised. “How’d you know?” I reply.
“It’s the only way to get it done. The Kamioka lab in Japan is in an old zinc mine… Sudbury, Ontario, is in a copper mine… Know what it costs to dig a hole that deep? And then testing all the structural support? If you don’t use an old mine, you’re adding two to ten years to the project, plus billions of dollars.”
“But why do you have to be down there in the first place?” Viv asks.
Minsky looks almost annoyed by the question. “It’s the only way to shield the experiments from cosmic rays.”
“Cosmic rays?” I ask skeptically.
“They’re bombarding the earth at all times.”
“Cosmic rays are?”
“I realize it must sound a little sci-fi,” Minsky says, “but think of it like this: When you fly from coast to coast on an airplane, it’s the equivalent of one to two chest X-rays. That’s why the airlines regularly screen flight attendants to see if they’re pregnant. We’re being bathed in all sorts of particles right now. So why put your science underground? No background noise. Up here, the dial in your wristwatch is giving off radium — even with the best lead shielding, there’s interference everywhere. It’s like trying to do open-heart surgery during an earthquake. Down below the earth’s surface, all the radioactive noise is shut out, which is why it’s one of the few places where neutrinos are detectable.”
“So the fact that the lab’s underground…”
“… is pretty much a necessity,” Minsky says. “It’s the only place to pull it off. Without the mine, there’s no project.”
“Location, location, location,” Viv mutters, glancing my way. For the first time in three days, things are finally starting to make sense. All this time, we thought they wanted the mine to hide the project, but in reality, they need the mine to get the project going. That’s why they needed Matthew to slip the mine in the bill. Without the mine, they have nothing.
“Of course, what really matters is what they’re doing down there,” Minsky points out. “Do you have a schematic?”
“I do… it’s just… it’s with the Congressman,” I say, smelling the opening. “But I remember most of it — there was this huge metal sphere filled with these things called photomultiplier tubes-”
“A neutrino detector,” Minsky says. “You fill the tank with heavy water so you can stop — and therefore detect — the neutrinos. The problem is, as neutrinos fly and interact with other particles, they actually change from one identity to another, making different neutrino ‘flavors.’ It’s like a Jekyll-Hyde type of affair. That’s what makes them so hard to detect.”
“So the tubes are just for observation purposes?”
“Think of it as a big enclosed microscope. It’s an expensive endeavor. Only a few exist in the world.”
“What about the magnet?”
“What magnet?”
“There was this narrow hallway with a huge magnet and these long metal pipes that ran the entire length of the room.”
“They had an accelerator down there?” Minsky asks, confused.
“No idea — the only other thing was this big crate labeled
“A tungsten block. That definitely sounds like an accelerator, but-” He cuts himself off, falling unusually silent.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing — it’s just, if you have a detector, you don’t usually have an accelerator. The noise from one… it’d interfere with the other.”
“Are you sure?”
“When it comes to neutrinos… it’s such a developing field… no one’s sure of anything. But up until now, you either study the existence of neutrinos or you study their movement.”
“So what happens if you put a detector and an accelerator together?”
“I don’t know,” Minsky says. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing it.”
“But if they did… what’s the potential application?”
“Intellectually, or-”
“Why would the government or military want it?” Viv asks, getting to the point. Sometimes, it takes a kid to cut through the nonsense. Minsky’s not the least bit thrown. He knows what happens when the government digs its nails into science.
“There are certainly some potential defense applications,” he begins. “This doesn’t require an accelerator, but if you want to know if a particular country has nuclear weapons, you can fly a drone over the country, get an air sample, and then use the ‘quiet’ of the mine to measure the radioactivity in the air sample.”
It’s a fine theory, but if it were that simple, Wendell — or whoever they are — would’ve just requested the mine from the Defense subcommittee. By trying to sneak it though Matthew and the Interior subcommittee, they’re playing dirty — which means they’ve got their hands on something they don’t want public.
“What about weaponry… or making money?” I ask.
Lost in thought, Minsky twirls the tip of his paperclip through the edge of his beard. “Weaponry’s certainly possible… but what you said about making money… you mean literally or figuratively?”
“Say again?”
“It goes back to the nature of neutrinos. You can’t just see a neutrino like you see an electron. It doesn’t show up under the microscope — it’s like a ghost. The only way to see them is to watch their interactions with other atomic particles. For example, when a neutrino hits the nucleus of an atom, it generates a certain type of radiation like an optical sonic boom. All we can see is the boom, which tells us that the neutrino was just there.”
“So you measure the reaction when the two things collide,” Viv says.
“Exactly — the difficulty is, when a neutrino hits you, it also changes you. Some say it’s because the neutrino is constantly shifting identities. Others hypothesize that it’s the atom that gets changed when there’s a collision. No one knows the answer — at least, not yet.”
“What does this have to do with making money?” I ask.
To our surprise, Minsky grins. His salty beard shifts with the movement. “Ever hear of transmutation?”
Viv and I barely move.
“Like King Midas?” I ask.
“Midas… Everyone always says Midas,” Minsky laughs. “Don’t you love when fiction is science’s first step?”
“So you can use neutrinos to do alchemy?” I ask.
“Alchemy?” Minsky replies. “Alchemy is a medieval philosophy. Transmutation is a science — transforming one element into another through a subatomic reaction.”
“I don’t understand. How do neutrinos…?”
“Think back. Jekyll and Hyde. Neutrinos start as one flavor, then become another. That’s why they tell us about the nature of matter. Here…” he adds, opening the top left-hand drawer on his desk. He rummages for a moment, then slams it shut and opens the drawer below it. “Okay, here…”
Pulling out a laminated sheet of paper, he slaps it against his desk, revealing a grid of familiar square boxes. The periodic table. “I assume you’ve seen this before,” he says, pointing to the numbered elements. “One — hydrogen; two — helium; three — lithium…”
“The periodic table. I know how it works,” I insist.
“Oh, you do?” He looks down again, hiding his smile. “Find chlorine,” he finally adds.
Viv and I lean forward in our seats, searching the chart. Viv’s closer to tenth-grade science. She jabs her finger at the letters
17
Cl
