Zero Game - Brad Meltzer [128]
“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 Tungsten.”
“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