Quantum radio, p.6
Quantum Radio, page 6
He inserted the drive into the USB port. A message flashed on the screen:
UPLOADING…
Ty handed the laptop back to Richter, who set it on the couch next to them, the screen still open so both men could see the progress.
“What does quantum entanglement represent to you?”
Ty was again surprised at the sudden change of subject.
“Well,” he began, collecting his thoughts. “Quantum entanglement is part of the disagreement between quantum physics and classical physics. Einstein called entanglement ‘spooky action at a distance.’ It’s this phenomenon where one or more particles can act as mirrors of each other. The astounding thing is that it can happen over vast distances. So, for example, if two particles were entangled and one was here on Earth, it would have the same properties as the entangled particle even if the other one was in another galaxy. The problem is that entanglement communicates the quantum state of the particles instantaneously over millions of light years—which obviously violates the theory of special relativity, which established that the speed of light was the fastest anything can move in the universe. Einstein also felt that entanglement wasn’t possible based on the local realism view of causality. He authored a paper in 1935 with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen describing their arguments against it, which we call the EPR paradox today. But we’ve actually observed entanglement in all kinds of particles: photons, neutrinos, and electrons. Entanglement shouldn’t be possible, but it is.”
Ty held his hands up. “It’s a perfect example of one of the biggest problems in physics: the way things work at the macroscale—what we can see—basically breaks down at the subatomic scale. At scales larger than atoms, the universe seems fairly logical and well-ordered. Cause and effect govern the behavior of the universe, time moves in a forward direction, and the objects we observe are measurable—and, most importantly, predictable. That all changes at the subatomic level. Things occur there that shouldn’t be possible based on our current theories. Entanglement is an example of one of those things that shouldn’t be possible.”
Richter nodded. “That’s what entanglement is, but what does it represent?”
Ty shrugged. “Just what I said: a sort of paradox between the major branches of physics.”
“You’re seeing it like a scientist. Zoom out for a moment. If you can entangle particles and indeed link them over great distances, what are the implications?”
“Well, there are arguments that you could communicate faster than light, but it doesn’t really work that way. With entanglement, it’s the act of observation that determines the particle’s state. Once you observe one of the entangled particles, the others take the same state. But you can’t force one of the particles into a state and instantly change the state of the others.”
“But what if you could? What if someone figured out a way to entangle two particles and control their states? Even across vast distances. Even after observation.”
“If you could? Well, that would change everything again. You’re talking about faster-than-light communication, sending messages across the galaxy, maybe even across time.”
“Apply that to what you found at CERN.”
Ty squinted. “What do you mean?”
“Describe for me what you think your… quantum radio is.”
“I’m not entirely certain.”
“Why not?”
“Well, the very nature of the discovery. Look, the LHC crashes particles together so we can see what they’re made of. I designed an algorithm to analyze the data from these collisions. It revealed that the subatomic output of the collisions added up to more than the particles that were collided. Not only that, but in the wreckage of these particle collisions, there are exotic particles that shouldn’t be there—and they’re organized. A data stream.”
“That’s what it is. What do you think it means?”
“Personally, I think it’s our first glimpse of some larger phenomenon at the subatomic level.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. But the theories behind how the quantum radio works could be one of the big answers in quantum mechanics, possibly the key to unifying the opposing branches of physics. It could be a Theory of Everything.”
“Consider, for a moment, if you will, entanglement in the context of your discovery. Consider the idea that I previously proposed, that it was possible to alter the states of entangled particles after observation.”
Ty shook his head. “I don’t follow.”
“What I’m suggesting is simply this: what if the particles you’re observing at CERN are entangled?”
“As in…?”
“What if they are entangled with particles very far away? In another part of our universe? Or in another universe entirely? Or in another time?” Richter leaned forward. “What if the phenomenon you’re observing, the pattern you’ve been able to detect, isn’t a natural phenomenon?”
“You’re saying you think that’s how the quantum radio works. Our particle collisions make our universe porous enough for someone to send entangled particles through and use them to communicate? Is that it?”
“I’m merely posing some questions. But the real question is this: if that were the case, what would it represent to you?”
“The greatest discovery in history—period. It would be a monumental scientific breakthrough, but it’s far larger. We’re talking about first contact. A new understanding of our place in the universe.”
Richter smiled. “You’re still thinking like a scientist. Consider the prospect that someone in another place or another time can alter the state of subatomic particles on our world. Think about what one could do with that power.”
“Well, I think that’s unclear. For us, even smashing particles requires extraordinary amounts of energy, and we can only do it for a fraction of a second. It’s unknown what the limits of long-range—or long-time—entanglement might entail.”
Richter held his hand out and rolled it forward. “Play it out, Ty. Think about if you could force entanglement on a grand scale and affect matter here on our world. After all, a brain is composed of neurons that are made of atoms and their subatomic constituents. If those pieces were entangled and you could alter them, what would be possible?”
“If that were the case, you could change the state of neurons, change the electrical impulses they fire. You could actually control what someone thinks. But that’s only the start. You could conceivably alter a child’s DNA the moment an egg was fertilized. Simply put, anything would be possible.”
“What would you call that?”
“A breakthrough.”
Richter shook his head. “A threat. That’s what the people I work with would call it.”
“Are you saying this is happening? Has happened?”
“We don’t know.”
“What do you know?”
“We know that, to a large degree, the world doesn’t make sense. Take your physics example—some things seem well ordered and predictable while others seem totally illogical, inconsistent with what is to be expected.”
Richter stood and moved to the small bar in the corner of the cabin, where he opened a bottle of water and offered one to Ty, who shook his head.
“I grew up in West Germany in the 1960s. People were asking some very deep questions then—about whether the world truly made any sense, about whether things were broken at some fundamental level. About whether there was intervention or manipulation on a grand scale. An unseen hand shaping the future. We went looking for answers in the only logical place in which to search: the realm of science.”
Richter sat again and stared out the window.
“Is that what the Origin Project is?” Ty asked.
“Yes.”
Richter took another sip of water. “What you’ve discovered is the closest anyone has come to a real answer about what’s happening. I assume you’re familiar with Alain Aspect’s experiments in the 1980s.”
“Sure. He’s a French scientist who built on Stuart Freedman and John Clauser’s work on quantum entanglement. His experiments were the first to really demonstrate the violation of Bell’s inequalities, essentially confirming that quantum entanglement was possible.”
“Aspect’s experiments also sent a shock wave through the global military industrial complex in the early eighties. The atom bomb had changed the world a few decades earlier. It was widely expected that a quantum breakthrough would be the next logical step—and a much more drastic leap. It was believed, by many in power, that the next true battlefield wouldn’t be one of tanks and mortars and planes or even nuclear bombs but instead a quantum war. Whether that’s true remains to be seen, but it is very likely that somewhere within the mystery of entanglement and your quantum radio lies the key to not only understanding our past but to controlling the future. That’s what they’re willing to kill for. In fact, there’s no sacrifice too great to obtain the details of what you’ve found.”
“So what do we do? What happens now?”
“What happens now is very simple: it is a race.”
“What kind of race?”
“What you’ve discovered—with your quantum radio—is a code, a message written in exotic subatomic particles, particles that may have originated from outside of our universe, particles that were created elsewhere, entangled at their point of origin and sent here, then modified in an ordered way to provide a message to us—a message that could only be detected with a super collider. What does that tell you?”
“That it’s a message that is very hard to find.”
“Correct. Specifically, that a species must achieve a certain level of advancement to detect that message. For the first time in history, we have reached that level of advancement. Whatever the message is, it implies that it is the dawn of a new era in human existence. Whoever is the first to understand what the message means may well control the future.”
13
Two hours into the flight, Richter stood, gripped one of the seatbacks, and propelled himself down the aisle toward the back of the jet. In the cramped galley, he worked for a few minutes.
Soon, the smell of meatloaf and mashed potatoes filled the small cabin. Ty hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the aroma reached him. He wondered if the man was bringing enough for both of them.
The microwave dinged, and Richter returned to the small table he shared with Ty, indeed carrying two trays with heated meals.
Each man dug in without preamble, their motions practically a mirror of each other.
“One thing is bothering me,” Ty said, taking his second bite of the meatloaf, which was better than he expected (or maybe he was just hungrier than he realized).
Richter raised an eyebrow as he finished his bite. “There’s only one thing bothering you?”
“Okay, there are two million five hundred and fifteen thousand things bothering me, but one thing sticks out.”
“Which is?”
“Coincidences.”
Richter gave a knowing nod. “The same has occurred to me.”
“The fact that you’re involved in this—and that I discovered the quantum radio broadcast, the fact that I was in Geneva, and you were in Zürich when it happened. Those two coincidences, they’re just… too convenient to be random.”
“On that point, I agree.”
“What does it mean?”
“I can’t say yet.”
“But you have an idea of what it means.”
“The shape of one.”
“Which is?”
Richter took a bite of mashed potatoes and stared out the window. “Too early to speculate.”
“I’m a scientist. I’m used to speculation.”
“As an investor, so am I. But I prefer not to. I prefer facts. As I’m sure you do.”
“What do you think is happening here?” Ty asked.
“I think what’s occurring is a bit like your Higgs boson. What is it you call it? The God particle?”
Ty cringed. “That’s what the media calls it. The articles get more clicks that way. We don’t call it that.”
“Nevertheless, consider what it represents—something that you knew existed, or at least theorized—an unseen yet vitally important component of the workings of the physical universe. That is what I believe is at work here: something that will make sense once we see the entirety of it, yet defies comprehension now. We have only seen pieces of a larger whole. Yes, the pieces fit together, and later, we will know why.”
Ty considered that as he finished the meal. Then, choosing his words carefully, he brought up the other subject that had been nagging him for the past few hours.
“I need to contact Mom.”
That drew Richter’s stare, and an explanation from Ty: “She’s probably seen the articles by now—including the manhunt in Geneva for me. She’s probably worried sick.”
“You don’t need to contact her.”
“Why?”
“Because I already have.”
“You have?”
The news was a bit like his discovery at CERN: something that turned his world upside down. His parents hadn’t spoken in thirty years—as far as Ty knew. He couldn’t even imagine the two of them communicating. When he was growing up, his mother wouldn’t even let Ty mention the man.
“She’ll be waiting for us in DC,” Richter said.
Ty opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, dumbstruck. “What… did you tell her?”
“The truth. That you are safe. And that the articles are lies.”
“Well. Okay. Good.”
“She’ll meet us at DARPA.”
“DARPA? As in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency?”
“Correct.”
Ty leaned back in his chair. “I… didn’t see that coming. It’s a lot to unpack. First, is DARPA where you sent my research?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“They have been working on a similar project, which, as I mentioned, I am involved in. And have been for quite some time.”
“The Origin Project.”
“Yes.”
The truth occurred to Ty then—the obvious reason for why his mother would be waiting at DARPA. “Mom is part of the Origin Project too, isn’t she?”
Richter cocked his head and studied Ty. Was the man surprised? Ty thought so.
“Correct,” Richter said. “Her research into evolutionary biology is funded by DARPA.”
Ty saw the connection then. “She’s really researching quantum evolution, isn’t she? The prospect of quantum radio intervention in our species’ development.”
“Yes, that is the true premise of your mother’s work. Consider it: if someone could change a few DNA base pairs in the distant past, the entire future would change. She’s found plenty of possible evidence of this phenomenon. Periods when human evolution seems to leap forward or when the human race was clutched out of the abyss, from the edge of extinction, only to return stronger than ever with survival advantages that were not predicted by the biological arc of our species. In short, if you think history doesn’t make sense, human evolution, at times, seems even less logical.”
“The Origin Project believes there’s already been quantum intervention in human evolution?”
“That is the question. There’s evidence, but as yet, your mother feels it’s inconclusive.”
Ty felt as though he were seeing his whole world in 3D now—as if it had all been a flat image before and a new dimension had been added. It wasn’t just the added perspective on human history—it was the revelations about his own family history.
“What is the Origin Project going to do with my research?” Ty asked.
“Complete it.”
“How?”
“Simply put, they have the resources and manpower—and a head start.”
“A head start?”
“DARPA has a series of existing initiatives related to your research. Have you ever heard of the QuEST project?”
“No.”
“QuEST stands for Quantum Entanglement Science and Technology. It was started in 2008 at the DARPA Microsystems Technology Office, MTO. Its predecessor, QuIST, was the agency’s first foray into quantum data sciences. The project is looking at a wide range of things: secure quantum communications, quantum machine learning, game theory using quantum mechanics, quantum image processing, quantum radar and metrology, and even entanglement-assisted gravitomagnetic interferometry. The group has gone as far as applying entanglement principles to an old CIA initiative: remote sensing. But QuEST is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Richter held his hands out. “QuBE is another DARPA initiative to examine quantum effects in biological environments.”
“Is it part of Mom’s research?”
“Tangentially. There’s also the Quiness project, which is building new types of quantum repeaters that could one day form the backbone of a new quantum internet.”
“Interesting.” Ty had no idea so much quantum research was being done by the military.
“What you’ve stumbled upon, Ty, is the missing piece that a lot of people have been trying to find for a very long time. The pattern you identified is a sort of key. We had the pieces before, but we didn’t know how to put the puzzle together. Now we see the picture.”
“And what does it look like?”
“We’ll know soon.”
“What do you mean?”
“Right now, DARPA and its funded projects are using your algorithm to decode the data stored on the LHC Computing Grid.”
“I want to be there. I can help. It’s my research—that’s why I gave the presentation at CERN, to ask for funding to do what DARPA is doing right now.”
“I know. And you deserve to be. That’s the other reason we’re going to DC.”
Ty nodded, feeling a sense of relief and, surprisingly, gratitude to this man whom he had hated for so long but who was so strangely part of this moment, which looked like the culmination of his life’s work.
After a long silence, Richter spoke again. “I heard your brother got into some trouble.”
Ty studied the man, wondering how he had heard. And how much to say. “Yeah. He did.”
