‘What was important for Rosewall’s scheme was that there can be things called monopoles associated with hidden-symmetry fields.
‘A magnetic monopole would be a particle that has only a magnetic north pole or south pole assigned to it. As you know, an ordinary ferroperm magnet has a north pole at one end and a south pole at the other. Neither north nor south poles exist singly.
‘But the great twentieth-century physicist, Paul Dirac, showed that the charge values had to be integer multiples of something. If you could find even a single example of a separate north or south pole, then – as we have since discovered to be the case – all electric charges would have to come in whole-number multiples of a basic charge.
‘So, a number of years later, experimenters set to work to find such magnetic monopoles. If just one was found, then a major part of the mystery of electric charge would be solved. One group of experimenters even argued that the most likely place to find these things would be inside oysters. Of which, as we know, there’s a considerable shortage on Mars.’
Euclid: ‘Any luck?’
‘No. No one has ever found a magnetic monopole, even to this day. But, in Rosewall’s case, the hidden symmetry refers to a dual on the gravitational field. Rosewall made an impressive case that a hidden-symmetry gravitational monopole – known as a HIGMO – ought actually to exist. In fact there is a solution to the Einstein gravitational equations – found in the early 1960s, I believe – which describes the classical version of this monopole.
‘This was Rosewall’s brainwave. He realised that if you built a large ring-shaped tube, filled with an appropriate superfluid – argon 36 is what we use, under reduced pressure – then whenever a HIGMO passed through the ring, it would be detectable – just barely detectable – as a kind of “glitch” appearing in the superfluid.’
A voice from the audience asked, ‘Why argon 36 and not 40?’
‘Proton and neutron numbers are equal in argon 36, which underlies the reason for its remarkable superfluidity under reduced pressure. A technical advantage is the low pressure of the Martian atmosphere. Fortunately, argon 36 is not radioactive. Okay?’
At this point, he projected a vidslide of a scene I recognised. There lay the massive inflated tube, protected by its lid. There stood Dreiser, delivering his little speech. I had been a part of that historic scene!
‘Obviously, this is a large-scale but delicate experiment. No other disturbances of any kind must affect the super-fluid in the tube. You have to do the best you can to shield the superfluid from external vibrations, because any significant outside activity is liable to ruin the experiment.
‘No place on Earth is going to be remotely quiet enough for such an experiment. Never mind human activity, the magma under Earth’s crust is itself active, like a giant tummy rumbling. Earth is an excitable planet.’
Euclid: ‘What about Luna?’
‘The Moon proved no longer possible. Too much tourist activity and mining was already taking place. Maybe forty years ago the Moon could still have been used, but not now, certainly not since they began building the transcore subway.
‘But Mars … Mars is ideal for the Omega Smudge experiment. No moving tectonic plates, vulcanism dead … That is, it’s ideal provided that human activity is kept down to present levels.’
Euclid: ‘No terraforming?’
Thorgeson laughed. ‘The UN did a trade-off. No terraforming for a few years. The hidden agenda was that this would give a breathing space for the Omega Smudge experiment. The gun at our heads is that we have to get results.’
At this there were rumblings from the audience, and an angry voice called, ‘So how long is “a few years”? Tell us!’
After a moment’s pause, Thorgeson said, ‘There was to be a stand-off of thirty years – four years from now -before they began to bombard the Martian surface with CFC gases, to start the warming-up process. This was the deal pushed through by Thomas Gunther.’
This statement provoked angry interjections from the audience. Thorgeson calmed things down with a wave of his hand.
‘Obviously the collapse of EUPACUS has altered all such arrangements.