Hierion Confinement

In her "spare" time, Stephane Bush handled the task of speaking to reporters about the operation of CERN's Internet eXchange Point. Luckily, requests for information from the press had dwindled through the years following the start of operations at the Large Hadron Collider. But now she'd received a terse email from colleen.l@tcd, with Colleen identifying herself as a student journalist doing a story about the handling of particle decay data from the LHC. In the email was Colleen's Skype user name.

Viewing this as a fairly routine inquiry from a student, Stephane connected via Skype to the Colleen, who immediately gave her full name as Colleen Liscan. While she talked, Colleen seemed to be bouncing in and out of her chair, so her head was only occasionally visible in the video window. Stephane was still working through her email inbox, so she only had a vague impression of Colleen's wild mop of black hair framing a fresh white face that was dominated by two large eyes. For several minutes Colleen rambled on about quarks and gluons. Rather impatiently, Stephane asked, "Who do you work for?"

Colleen replied in her strangely lilting English accent, "I'm writing a story for a magazine called Popular Physics."

Rather rudely, Stephane said, "I've never heard of it."

Colleen laughed. "The magazine is a collaborative project of the Trinity School of Physics and Journalism Department at DCU. It was founded..." Colleen prattled on with a long-winded account of how Popular Physics had been formed by a group of students.

Stephane was always willing to work with students, but she feared Colleen was a bit scatter-brained and disorganized and might become a huge waste of time. With a growing feeling of impatience she interrupted the seemingly endless account of the history of Popular Physics being provided by Colleen and she asked, "What kind of story are you working on now?"

Colleen replied, "I've read about how CERN periodically inserts fake information into the data stream from the LHC detectors, just to make sure that rare types of particle decay events can be effectively recognized by the data analysis teams."

"Yes, that's a common quality control practice for big data projects. The technique was first developed by early SETI astronomers."

Colleen asked, "Have you done SETI work? Well, don't get me started on that." Colleen giggle and continued, "Anyhow, I'd like to watch the next time you insert a test data packet."

Stephane said, "I doubt if anyone from outside CERN has ever been allowed to see that process. Think about the security issues... we don't want anyone knowing how to fake the security code that is used to tag raw data. Anyhow, there is nothing to see. The process is fully automated and computerized."

Colleen nodded. "Yes, but...actually, what I want to do is insert a fake data packet of my own... as a test. Ian told me you'd be able to do it."

Stephane muttered, "Verdammt noch mal."

________________________________________________

Stephane knew instantly that the 'Ian' mentioned by Colleen must be Ian Slate, a particle physicist at Trinity College. Stephane also knew that Ian was a blabber mouth.

Colleen switched briefly to German, "Bitte nicht böse sein." She quickly went back to English, "I tricked Ian into telling me that you handle the test data inserts."

For a moment, Stephane thought about denying her role in testing if rare decay events could be efficiently spotted by the thousands of physicists who ran their data analysis algorithms through the vast data pool flowing out of the LHC. Somehow, she knew that it would be futile to pretend that Colleen was mistaken. She decided to simply end the Skype call. "I have nothing further to say. Goodbye."

Colleen raised one of her thick, dark eyebrows. "I think you will be interested in the test I want to run, Dr. Bush. I believe I've discovered a type of particle decay that is being systematically missed."

Stephane was intrigued but skeptical. "Missed by every physicist in the world?"

"Well, I'm afraid there are blind spots whenever you rely on human observers... and human scientists."

Stephane was impressed by Colleen's cool confidence. She asked, "Are you working towards a journalism degree or a physics degree?"

"So far I've only earned a computer science degree here in Dublin, but I hope to add both a journalism and a physics degree to my resume."

Stephane gazed at Colleen's smooth skin and pink lips and asked, "How old are you?"

Colleen laughed again. "I'm older than I look and I'd rather not say. I hope you don't have a blind spot when it comes to young science students."

"I've always helped students in the past, but I want to know how you discovered my role in testing the sensitivity of LHC data analysis network. That is a secret."

"Oh, it wasn't very difficult to figure that out. Just a matter of thinking about who is in the right place to slip in the test data and correlating that short list with the people, or I should say -person- who once gave a seminar on the process."

"That seminar was not open to the public."

"And yet you list it on your CV."

"Nobody outside of CERN has seen my CV for many years."

"Wrong. Because of government funding for CERN, your CV was part of a data dump provided to the French government and it was part of a Wikileaks release last year. For my computer science senior thesis I wrote a worm that searches wiki data sets... even the deletion histories. So, at least I've seen your CV recently."

"I see. Well, Miss Liscan, I can tell that you are going to be a formidable science journalist... part hacker, part physicist... part gossip monger. Now, before I hang up, tell me; what is this particle detection 'blind spot' that you are so worried about?"

"Let me show you. It is here on my Google drive. Click this link..."

____________________________________________

Stephane clicked on the provided link and downloaded a large file: what appeared to be an LHC data packet. Stephane searched the LHC database for that particular packet using its ID code, but nothing was found. Strangely, the encrypted security code parsed as "true data'. Stephane felt her pulse quicken.

Colleen was explaining, "This is a fake data packet that I designed. I want you to insert it into the LHC data stream."

Stephane tried to keep control of her voice, "How did you generate a valid packet ID and security code?"

"I figured out the algorithm that you use to generate the codes. It's a rather obvious permutation of the code structure that you published in your Ph.D. thesis twenty years ago."

Stephane was startled that anyone else could see that connection. "Obvious to who? God?"

"Please, don't get excited, Stephane. What one person invents, someone else can also discover. Your algorithm has generated billions of ID/SC pairs over the past ten years. I had access to the test packet "ignore" filter in Ian's lab so I trained up a neural network... cracking the code did not take long. Of course, my ability to generate fake data is useless unless I can get you to insert my packets into the LHC data stream."

"Even the NSA doesn't have the computing power to crack my code algorithm!"

"Well, my neural network was able to 'guess' the most likely subset of the search space. It only took about a day of supercomputer time to drill down and crack the code." 

Stephane felt embarrassed for not having kept herself informed about the power of modern neural network-based algorithms. "You realize I can immediately change the code structure. This very minute."

"Well, yes, you could, but it would take months to send out techs to install new data decryption keys in all of the data centers. Anyhow, there's no need to do that. Relax, Stephane. I'm not going to tell anyone else how to fake LHC data packets."

Stephane was only able to relax a tiny amount. "What is special about your fake data packet?"

Colleen explained, "It simulates a particle decay event... for a type of particle that was predicted 30 years ago by Gustov Klein."

"What particle?"

"Its a 323 GeV particle that should have been detected by the LHC. The fact that its discovery has not been reported means something is wrong in the data analysis."

Stephane searched online for -and quickly found- a Klein article from 1987. That published article did not mention a 323 GeV particle. "Klein didn't predicted a 323 GeV particle in 1987."

"No, Klein expressed the particle's properties in terms of the as yet unknown properties of the Higgs boson. Do you see Klein's equation 23? If you substitute in the rest mass of the Higgs as determined at the LHC then you get 323 GeV for the mass of Klein's predicted particle."

"I see. But this is just a theoretical prediction."

"No, with the discovery of the Higgs, Klein's theory was confirmed. There is a new particle at 323 GeV, I assure you. And the fake data packet I sent to you is the type of decay event that should exist in the LHC data set. We just need to figure out why it has not been reported by any of the teams that analyze the LHC data."

Annoyed by the whole situation from Colleen's prattle to her hacking of the security code algorithm, Stephane was fidgeting nervously and eager to end the Skype call. "Let me check into this Miss Liscan." She moved her mouse pointer to the Skype 'disconnect' button. "I'll get back to you." She clicked.

__________

Two days later, Stephane answered her front door and found Colleen on her doorstep.

Colleen said, "Hello, Stephane."

Dismayed and rather irritated by Colleen's sudden appearance, Stephane asked, "What are you doing here?" Colleen had a small backpack slung over her shoulders. "I told you I'd contact you."

"I didn't want you to forget about me."

"Well, come in."

Colleen set her backpack on the floor. "Ian told me that you investigated me."

"Yes, I did. And I investigated Klein. He died shortly after publishing that article in 1987, when communism was collapsing in Eastern Europe. He was killed while trying to get out of Hungary."

"Yes, I know. Had he waited just a few more years, the iron curtain would have been gone."

Stephane gestured towards a couch and the two women sat down. "After I read Klein's article, I sent out your fake data packet and it was quickly spotted by many research teams. There is an excited buzz now among a group of old-time Klein fans who are still in love with his theory after 30 years. Today I'll have to tell them that the pretty decay event they found was just a test packet, not actual data."

"No, that would be a mistake, Stephane!" She reached out and grabbed Stephane's arm. "We need those Klein fans to help us figure out why the LHC data stream isn't full of this kind of decay event."

"Obviously you are wrong about that. The data don't lie. There have been no such decays in the real data."

Colleen jumped up an went to gaze out the large front window of Stephane's house. After a moment she turned and said, "Think about it! What if Klein was killed in order to hide the existence of this particle? What if someone is covering up the greatest discovery in physics, the existence of this new particle?"

For a moment Stephane sat in stunned silence. "What are you saying? Don't go off into fantasy land! Colleen, you've proven that any decay event of this type would be easily recognized. The LHC simply hasn't been generating such particle decay events. Don't start imagining some conspiracy, just because a theoretical particle -some silly predicted particle- has not been detected. Sure, maybe Klein was right and this particle exists, but maybe the rate of generating these decay events is smaller than you suspect it should be."

Colleen was looking out the window again. She shook her head and mumbled quietly, "No, no, no..."

______________________________________________

Just then the doorbell sounded again. Stephane got up off the couch and opened the front door, revealing a tall woman who was wearing an odd metallic jumpsuit.

The tall woman spoke: "Sorry to interrupt, Stephane... may I come in?"

The woman confidently stepped inside, glanced at Colleen and closed the the door. "Hello, Colleen."

Alarmed by the way the woman had barged into her house, Stephane asked, "Do I know you?"

"Not well. We met once before, but you can't remember that occasion... just as you will be unable to remember me later today after I leave with Colleen."

Colleen asked, "Who are you?"

"You can call me Ekco."

Stephane and Colleen both though she had said 'echo'. Colleen said, "I'm not going anywhere with you."

Ekco moved close to the girl and brushed a clot of dark curls away from her right eye. "Yes, you will. And you will finally get to meet Klein."

"Gustov Klein?"

"Yes, I had to remove him from Earth 30 years ago, but he waited patiently on the Moon. He got very excited after I told him that his greatest fan would soon come up from Earth to commiserate. The time has come."

Stephane asked, "What's going on?"

Ekco turned her head over her shoulder and replied to Stephane, "Nothing much. You will remain on Earth and complete the recall of Colleen's fake data packet. Soon the hub bub over evidence that support's Klein's theory will die down. You see, it is not safe for you primitive humans to learn about Klein's new particle, what we Genesaunts call a hierion. You'll have no memory of me or hierions an hour from now."

Colleen said, "I'd prefer to stay here with Stephane. You can erase my memories, if you like."

"No, in your case that would not be possible. Last year you devoted your life to finding Klein's predicted particle. I could erase your memory of meeting me here today, but you'd keep working to prove Klein right. No, you must join Klein in exile. Besides, half of the Tryp'At Council suspects you of being an Interventionist agent."

Stephane looked at Colleen with horror and asked, "Interventionist agent?"

Ekco turned and sent a cloud of nanites into Stephane. The nanoprobes quickly inactivated Stephane's motor control circuits. Ekco caught Stephane as she collapsed and placed her limp body on the couch. Echo then scooped up Colleen's backpack from the floor and took hold of the girl's hand.

Colleen thought the lights went out, but her eyes quickly adapted to the dim light. Ekco was tugging her towards a lit doorway. Colleen followed along and they emerged into a well-lit room. An elderly man was standing there. Colleen blinked into the light and mumbled, "Dr. Klein?"

Ekco said, "This is Colleen Liscan, the young student who recently discovered your hierion theory."

Klein stepped forward and took hold of Colleen's hand. He spoke English with a heavy accent. "Wonderful! Tell me, has my theory been confirmed?"

Colleen looked around. A large display screen along one wall showed a magnificent view of the Moon's surface, but gravity seemed Earth normal. She looked at Klein and asked, "You've been held prisoner here for 30 years?"

Ekco replied, "This isn't a prison. Klein was free to move on to the Galactic Core, but he's been watching events on Earth."

Colleen asked Klein, "Then you realize that data from the LHC should have confirmed your prediction?"

Klein shrugged, "Well, Ekco tells me that some data from the LHC have been hidden. Essentially erased."

Colleen turned to Ekco and asked angrily, "Is that possible?"

Ekco nodded. "You saw how easy it was for me to handle Stephane. When she wakes up she'll have no memory of either you or me having been inside her house. We Overseers have access to advanced nanotechnology. We can confine inconvenient memories within the synaptic labyrinth of a brain or confine inconvenient particle decay events to the LHC. We simply don't allow data arising from the existence of hierions to enter the LHC data stream. Quantum computers here in the Hierion Domain efficiently spot such forbidden data as it arises and substitute bland data packets."

Colleen was growing increasingly upset. "Forbidden by who? What right do you have to manipulate the LHC data?"

extinction curve (source)

Ekco activated a swarm of infites that had long been resident inside Colleen's brain. Now she had access to previously implanted memories that explained the danger posed to primitive civilizations by hierion-based technologies. The usual objection came to Colleen's lips, "What right do you have to deprive us of our discoveries? We might be different... maybe we Earthlings would not destroy ourselves..."

Ekco sadly shook her head. "No, we humans are a particularly bad risk. However, this Reality has been carefully engineered to allow us to survive. Delaying the development of hierion-based technologies is an important part of our survival trajectory into the future."

Colleen looked carefully at Ekco and asked, "So you are human?"

Ekco shrugged, "I'm a modified human, crafted in the Galactic Core." She allowed her body-shaping nanite prosthetic to return her face and hands to their normal form. "I'm what can be called an Ek'col." Her eyes were about twice the normal size for a human and her hands fingers were nearly twice as long as normal.

Colleen looked at Klein who grinned and said, "I've gotten used to Ekco's unusual appearance through the years. Even though she makes use of fantastic nanotechnology, I do think she is human."

Feeling a lifetime of plans slipping away, Colleen asked plaintively, "And so, what now? We are forever cut off from Earth?"

source

Klein replied, "I've enjoyed 30 years of studying hierion physics here on the Moon. I've reached the point where I feel there is yet another family of particles beyond the hadrons and the hierions. Ekco tells me that if I want to learn more physics then I must go to the Galactic Core."

Colleen asked Ekco, "But I could stay here, near Earth?"

Ekco smiled enigmatically, "We are no longer very "near" to the Earth that you know. We are now about 80,000 years before your birth. You could remain here and learn physics from the Grendels, as Klein has done, but I suspect you will be happier in the Core where there are other humans."

Related Reading: Top Quark
NEXT: time travel in the 1940s

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Homo sapiens vs. the Cosmos

Cosmos "A Spacetime Odyssey"
Life on Earth exists at the end of a delicate chain of DNA molecules stretching back through billions of years. We humans only discovered DNA's role as the genetic molecule back in the 1940s. Just in this century we have begun to chart what makes our genome distinctly human. Will our knowledge of the molecular basis of life provide us with god-like power to transform our biological nature? Will we transcend our biology, will our billion year genetic chains be snapped by we humans?

Episode 11: The Immortals

Can we humans do better than DNA? DNA is unreliable. Changing one chemical bond among millions in a DNA strand can be lethal. Why shouldn't we transform ourselves in artificial lifeforms, new forms of life that would not be subject to the whims of random mutation?

The commercials that were used during the leadup to Episode 11 included images of "artificial DNA", a CGI fantasy of the genetic material looking like a ladder of pixie dust. Here I've shown the DNA ladder as being strong enough to support Dr. Tyson, but how many times in the history of Earth has the long evolutionary chain of DNA been snapped by bursts of cosmic rays and storms of stellar radiation?

Has Earth periodically been subjected to cleansing blasts of radiation that reset the pattern of evolution? But here we are. We survived it all. Only to self-destruct? Are we, with our technological grandiosity, initiating the most devastating mass extinction ever?

Earth becomes engulfed by a red giant: video

In Dhalgren, an angry red sun appears, prompting readers to imagine the ultimate fate of our species. Through my whole life I've been amused by people who display angst over the fact that the Sun will not last forever, who fret about the chances that humans will be able to escape from Earth before it is baked by the Sun.

Does anyone really expect we humans to be around 5 billion years from now? In his novel The End of Eternity, Asimov imagined that we humans could create an artificial environment in which our biological evolution would stop. How likely is that? I suspect that we are at the start of a new era for life on Earth, an era for rapid development of artificial life.

Prelands: human 2.0

How are we to think about our future and our growing power to transform ourselves as a species? That transformation has been going on for millions of years already. When our primate ancestors became tool users who could pass tool-using skills from generation to generation we created our own evolutionary environment and began a process of auto-domestication.We have guided our own evolution. The human species is an artificial construct generated by artificial selection.

I'm a science fiction fan and I enjoy imaginary tales about aliens who visit Earth. For the Exode Trilogy, I imagine that aliens helped create the human species. Those aliens who guided our evolution have moved on and created other primate species. In particular, on worlds of the Galactic Core, the Prelands already exist as the planned replacement for we primitive humans.

Calvin

Science fiction stories provide entertaining ways to stimulate thought about how technology will impact Humanity. I don't take seriously the idea that aliens have guided human evolution.  As far as I can tell, we humans are alone here on Earth. One solution to the Fermi Paradox is that soon after a biological species becomes a tool-using creator of technology, it will learn how to alter its own genes and transform itself into new forms of its own imaginings. It might not be all that hard to self-evolve into artificial life forms with interests and concerns that are quite different from those of we primitive humans. It is probably far easier for species to transform themselves into artificial lifeforms than it is to traverse the vast distances of interstellar space.

Immortality
Bright eyes, burning like fire
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale? 
(apologies to Mike Batt and Art Garfunkel)

Isn't life a flux of change, death, rebirth? Can immortality be achieved by living creatures? In the Exode Trilogy I imagine that the Huaoshy long ago transcended their biological existence and became a form of artificial life residing within the Sedronic Domain. During the course of the story, humans are force to confront the possible ways by which technology can confer immortality.

The human condition?

Immortality is a popular theme in science fiction. A fundamental question is if immortality is compatible with the human condition. We might find a technological means of achieving immortality, but would the application of that technology necessarily put an end to our humanity? An important issue in Exode is if an immortal alien intelligence can have meaningful and constructive interactions with we humans.

May 25, 2014
Apparently car racing is more important than the Cosmos. Burn, baby, burn!

Episode 12: The World Set Free
Can we Earthlings break our addiction to fossil fuels or will we push Earth through global warming and catastrophic sea level rise?

Clu'ten'iun

In Episode 12 of Cosmos, differences between the atmospheres of Earth and Venus are discussed. Without oceans and biological/geological processes that can convert atmospheric carbon into rock deposits, Venus is crushed under a stifling atmosphere that traps heat.

On Earth, we have little carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. How much can our  use of fossil fuels drive up atmospheric carbon levels before we over-heat this planet?

Dr. Tyson went through an historical account of scientists who for the past 100 years have explained the role of atmospheric carbon dioxide in trapping heat and warming Earth. Recently, with dramatic warming in the Arctic Ocean, permafrost is being lost and another greenhouse gas, methane, is being released into the atmosphere. Another positive feedback process has begun: less arctic ice means more sun light is absorbed rather than being reflected away from Earth.

In Exode, Clu'ten'iun is a Venus-like planet, well suited for the Fru'wu. Clu'ten'iun was the origin world for the one Fru'wu individual who appears in the Exode Trilogy. The Fru'wu are a type of artificial life form that originated from a biological species: the Fruthwa. The Fruthwa civilization triggered runaway global warming on their home world (originally called Clustence), making it uninhabitable. The Fru'wu are a "bionic" artificial life form that was crafted after the Fruthwa could no longer breath the atmosphere of Clustence.

The Nereids and the Fru'wu share a secret: it was the Nereids who intervened in the development of Fruthwa civilization and "liberated" the Fruthwa from their pek Overseers. Standard pek protocols would have suppressed any development of a technological civilization by the Fruthwa, allowing Clustence to remain a Garden World inherited by the Fruthwanian Prelands.

Episode 13. Dark matter.
In this episode, Dr. Tyson uses the Spaceship of the Imagination to follow the two Voyager spacecraft out into the galaxy. What are the forces that give shape and organization to the galaxies? Gravity from "conventional matter" alone does not seem to account for the observed distribution of stars. What unseen "dark matter" adds additional gravitational force to galaxies?

In the Exode Trilogy, I imagine that there are whole as-yet-unknown families of fundamental particles. What great unanswered questions about the Cosmos remain? Does our civilization have "the right stuff" to push back the boundary of the unknown?

How do we compare to other civilizations? Like Carl Sagan in the original Cosmos, Dr. Tyson uses the ancient library in Alexandria, Egypt, as an example of how a culture can value knowledge and learning.

For the past 15 years, our civilization has known that Dark Energy is accelerating the expansion of the universe. This mysterious force of expansion seems to dominate the energetics of our universe.

Dr. Tyson explains Dark Energy.

What other features of the Cosmos will we discover if we can keep pushing at the frontiers of knowledge?
_________________
Cosmos:
Episodes 7-10
episodes 3-6
episodes 1 and 2