‘And yet, you see, the original hopes of resolving the mystery of mass in terms of finding the Higgs particle made absolutely no reference to gravitation.’
Euclid: ‘What do you make of all this?’
‘It was really a whole bag of wishful thinking. You see, Euclid, finding the Higgs particle was considered just about within the capabilities of the physicists of the time. So, if a solution to the mystery of mass could be found that way – why, then it would have been pretty well within their grasp.
‘But if the issue of the role of gravity had to be seriously faced – there would not have been a hope in Hell of their finding an answer to the origin of mass experimentally. They were looking for God with a candle!
‘The energy required would have been what we call the Planck energy – which is larger than the Higgs energy by a factor of at least – well, if we said a few thousand million million, we wouldn’t be far out.
‘Put it this way. Even a collider the length of the Earth’s orbit would not have been enough.’ His young-old face broke into a broad grin at the thought of it.
Euclid: ‘Yet you tell us that they still did not give up. Why is that?’
‘As I told you, it was all wishful thinking. They believed that finding the Higgs would be enough. Anyhow, science often proceeds by being over-optimistic. It’s a way in which things do eventually get done. Eventually.
‘So although the mass mystery remains unsolved, we now think our project here could well be close to doing so.’
Euclid: ‘More over-optimism?’
‘No, this time the case is pretty convincing. The thing is that we are now really facing up to the Planck energy problem.’
Euclid: ‘I may be only an android, but as far as I know our experiment does not involve a collider of anything like that length. Or any collider at all.’
Jon released a 3D projection of something like a dark matrix motorway into the lecture room. He let it hang there as he spoke. On that infinite road, smudges shot off endlessly into distance. A cloud of other coloured spots sped after them.
‘We’re looking at a VR projection of a succession of different smudges, alpha-, beta-, gamma-, delta-smudges. Artist’s impression only, of course. You’re right, we have no collider on Mars. I’ve said there were a couple of encouraging breakthroughs. Those breakthroughs make our Mars project possible.
‘First breakthrough. The realisation that there was no point in working through this whole gamut of smudges, at greater and greater energy levels, the list continuing for ever.’
He switched off the projection. The scatter of smudges died in their tracks.
The Icelandic physicist, Iki Bengtsoen, showed that when Einstein’s theory of gravitation – already confirmed to an unprecedented degree of accuracy – was appropriately incorporated into the Chin-Hawkwood smudge theory, it became obvious that the energies of all the different smudges, alpha, beta, gamma and so on, did not just increase indefinitely, sans limit, but converged on the Planck energy limit.
‘You see what this implies? All would be resolved if just a single experiment could be devised to explore the “ultimate” smudge, that limiting smudge, where all the lower energy smudges are supposed to converge. It’s this putative ultimate smudge we call the Omega Smudge.’
Euclid. ‘So we have got to it at last.’ He maintained an expression of goodwill. ‘But maybe you can explain how an experiment out here, on Mars, can be of particular use in finding this Flying Dutchman of a smudge – supposing it to exist at all.’
‘That’s where our other breakthrough comes in. Harrison Rosewall argued convincingly that a completely different kind of detector could be used to find this Omega Smudge, supposing it to exist at all.
‘This involves the phenomenon known as “hidden symmetry”.’
Euclid: ‘And what might that be?’
Jon stood gazing at the low ceiling, as if seeking inspiration. Then he said, ‘Every part of the explanation takes us deeper. These facts should have been part of everyone’s education, rather than learning about past wars and histories of ancient nations. Well, I don’t want to go into details, Euclid, but a hidden symmetry is a sort of theoretical symmetry which is dual in a certain sense, to a more manifest symmetry than might exist in theory. The idea goes back to some hypotheses popular late last century, although at that time the correct context for the hidden-symmetry idea was not found.