A Vomit of Diamonds (5 page)

Come lunch time the group
removed to the break room; wherein ingredients to make a sandwich
were laid out on the central table, ready for assembly according to
the tastes and preferences of the person intending to eat
it.
“No peanut butter” Balzac noted,
surveying the provided selection of sandwich fillings and not
finding his standard choice; “Is this to be my fate for the next
six lunches?” he added with an emotion perhaps more pertaining to
the phrase “why hast thou forsaken me?”
His
first option thus absent, Bouchard settled for a vegetarian
ensemble, not trusting the origins or makeup of the cold cuts and
ham.

Entertainment during this indoor
picnic was provided by a second year student, mature-aged with
curly dark hair and a round figure. Her name was Maxine, and her
personality embodied the spirit of champagne. Her hair bounced with
every laugh. “What’s a female astronomer called?” she asked,
courting the attention of all present in the room. Some suggestions
were made. Though none said “lady of the night,” which was the
answer she soon provided with evident gusto.

At another point in her act, she
adopted the air of a tragedy queen. “I married young,” she began,
relating her history; “I was a housewife for many years, in the
country, baking pie and all that. But then one day my husband asked
for a divorce, and so I became depressed for a while. A few years
later I decided that I needed to do something with my life, I
needed to move on. And so I enrolled at the ANU. I chose astronomy
right away because it was something I had always thought about when
I was still young and pretty. Of course; now I’m just
pretty.”

The lectures in the afternoon were
decidedly heavier than those delivered in the morning. The
orientation and inspiring speeches apparently over. “All I
understood from Dr. Hansen,” Balzac remarked to Perry once said
speaker had left the room, “is that the Lagrangian equals kinetic
energy minus potential energy.” This confession was delivered with
a disturbed expression. “His lecture just explained the derivation
of that equation,” Perry said simply. “Oh,” was Balzac’s flat
response, feeling very dumb indeed. But then, like a phoenix rising
from its ashes, his passions returned aflame. “But why must we use
spherical, polar or cylindrical coordinates?” he posed
significantly; “With their thetas and phis, when I am perfectly
content with x, y, z.”

“They’re basically just different ways
to approach a problem,” Perry explained, radiating an Obi-Wan
Kenobi calmness, which never failed to smooth out Bouchard’s
frowns; “For example,” he continued in that casually wise strain of
his, “if we’re looking at a symmetrical system, then polar
coordinates are probably more useful. But if there’s no symmetry
then Cartesian might be a better choice. Generally speaking, we
assign whichever coordinate system makes calculations
easier.”

“Indeed,” Balzac responded after a
pause, the information thus assimilated.

XII

The next three days of astro camp
passed by like the first — a concatenation of lectures from nine to
five in the domed lecture theater resembling a planetarium. Topics
were presented by their respective enthusiast, covering many
observed and theorized phenomena.

From black holes:

“
I wished they’d just call it a
black sphere,” Balzac said to Zimmerman after a lecture on black
holes; decidedly, the two-dimensional nomenclature was irresistibly
misleading when one had to imagine a singularity in
three-dimensional space. “I’ll pass on your request to the IAU,”
Perry quipped with a good-natured smile. “Please do,” drily
retorted Balzac; “For if they can turn Pluto into a common rock,
then I’m sure changing the name of a phenomenon we can’t even see
shouldn’t pose much of a problem.”

To faster-than-light:

“
So one way to travel back in time
is by moving faster than the speed of light,” Balzac reflected,
turning to Zimmerman with a dubious Vulcan eyebrow raising.
“According to special relativity, a tachyon could theoretically do
that,” Perry allowed, nodding wisely. “And how do tachyons differ
from normal particles? I didn’t quite follow the math,” Balzac
freely admitted; for as far as he was concerned,
stupid-but-willing-to-question was better than silent-and-
staying-ignorant. “Think of it as two speed ranges that share the
same barrier which is the speed of a photon,” Perry explained;
“Below the line you have a normal particle requiring an infinite
amount of energy to accelerate to light speed. While above you have
a faster-than-light particle that needs an infinite amount of
energy to decelerate to the speed of light.”  

“
Indeed,” said Balzac, arriving at
an understanding; “Assuming they’re out there, I wonder how we
could detect them. In Star Trek Voyager, tachyon particles were
always present where there were temporal distortions,” he
recollected, “Speaking of which, are black holes temporal
distortions?”

To multiple cosmologies:

“
The universe has multiple
histories?” Balzac whispered to Zimmerman in the middle of another
lecture. “In theory, yes,” Perry quietly replied back without
removing his gaze from the lesson, adding: “Applying the path
integral formulation concept to cosmology tells us that our present
universe evolved from one of many possible pathways, or histories,
with varying probabilities.”

Nonetheless, despite the speakers’
sparkling eyes and encouraging nods, Bouchard found most talks hard
to follow; the slides seemed to flicker by like a phantasmagoria on
a wall, and one theory sufficed to sedate him more than two Valiums
could hope to affect. Thus, come Thursday afternoon, space in all
its glorious resplendence appeared to him larger and more confusing
than it ever did before.

“I’m mentally exhausted,” Balzac
commented, as he and Perry walked down Daley Road towards their
respective residential halls. It was a little after five; the sun
completing its projectile descent, and their surrounds cooling down
like water freezing into ice. “If it’s any consolation,” Perry
chimed in, “I’m not sure I got that last lecture either.” Bouchard
considered this comment; then in the manner of his idol, Seven of
Nine, replied: “Is that an observation or a
condescension?”

“Um, the former,” said Perry, looking
a little bit surprised. “In that case he was probably teaching it
wrongly,” Balzac replied in a decided manner; for, as far as
concerned Bouchard, Perry Zimmerman’s intelligence was above doubt.
“Anyway,” Balzac continued, slapping Zimmerman’s humility to the
side, “The only thing I learnt today is that Karl Schwarzschild
derived his solutions to the Einstein field equations in the
trenches when not being fired upon by the enemy. Actually,” he
added, pausing, a frown developing, “I’m not sure I understand that
either.”

“He was definitely an interesting
guy,” Perry agreed, nodding to that effect. “Speaking of Karl,”
said Balzac familiarly; “What are tensors anyway?” and he turned to
Zimmerman with a questioning look. “They’re just vectors,” was
Perry’s simple reply. Bouchard raised an eyebrow. “If scalars are
zero rank tensors,” Perry continued, knowing the import of that
raised eyebrow — the advent to a flood of questions if not sealed
properly with prompt explanations; “and vectors are first rank
tensors. Then a second rank tensor is just a vector where all its
components are vectors.”

“So,” said Balzac, hesitantly;
“Tensors are like what? Super vectors?” Zimmerman appeared amused
by this conclusion; “That’s one way of putting it,” he confirmed,
wisely amused. Bouchard sighed.

“Did you know that a jellyfish is
actually a colony of tiny organisms?” the latter moved on to a more
agreeable topic. “Yeah,” was Perry’s casual reply. “That’s nice,”
said Balzac dismissively; “I only found out recently, and so I did
some searches on Scopus and read a few journal articles that
quickly brought me up to speed on the matter. For example, I now
know that jellyfish are at least ninety-five percent water. And
contrary to popular belief, they do age. In the sense that the
cloning process wears them down after a couple of years, and as a
result they start to produce less healthy polyps. But at its
prime,” he added, now near excitation, “the oral arms of a
jellyfish are a good source of protein, and their bell caps are
rich in minerals such as sodium and chlorine. Both body parts are
valued in Chinese cuisine you may be interested to know, where the
bells are sliced into salads and the arms are served cold with a
dipping sauce.”

Some dozen steps later they
parted.

XIII

“Dear Soka,

How do you do? Fine weather in Tokyo?
Everything here is all-right; except for the inclemency which has
me warming up to the idea of climate change. Honestly, how bad
could an increase of two to three Celsius actually be? Of course,
come summer I will be asking for an ice age.
  

Presently, Helena Hall is as empty as
Hogwarts must have been during the Christmas break. The shared
bathrooms are private for a change, and the communal kitchen is
always clean. If my life followed the events in War and Peace, then
this period is Peace.

The first half of astronomy camp
concluded this afternoon; four days of lectures upon lectures
communicated in a language I am foreign to. Fortunately, I had
Perry Zimmerman as my translator. He is patient and explanatory.
With him it is like talking to you. Actually, I think you two would
make a stable diatomic molecule.

Speaking of pairs, there are two
personalities in our astronomy group that have made an impression.
The first is a mature-age second year student, Maxine; whose
theatrical wit could find a career in stand-up or opera. The second
is a first year Korean from Brisbane, Minho whose confrontational
English gives me reason to believe that his English teacher was a
German. If the latter person sounds familiar, it is probably
because you have met him at one of those barbeques the faculty is
so fond of holding for its Advanced Science students, exclusively.
 

The second half of astronomy camp will
be spent at Coonabara Observatory. We leave tomorrow morning. The
journey thereto is an eight-hour drive — just knowing it makes me
bored. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to touring the insides of
the many optical telescopes on site; for they should be far easier
on the eyes and ears than the past four days of theory.

These evenings I have been reading
essays by Voltaire. He is a singular man with the genius of
multiple men. He writes about politics, philosophy, literature,
society, and the works of Isaac Newton in a witty and page-turning
way. Voltaire is no Einstein to be sure — he is a da Vinci! I am a
fan.

That is all for now.

Your Friend,

Balzac”

XIV

At fifteen minutes to eight o’clock on
Friday morning, Bouchard arrived with his travelling bag at the
carpark attached to the asteroid-grey building of the Research
School of Astronomy and Astrophysics before departure time. Said
car park was empty, save for an obvious white van. Upon reaching
the vehicle, the door opened for him and a gust of warm air escaped
from within. He climbed in, greeted his fellow inmates with a
clumsy smile and ensconced himself in the first seat near the
sliding door; his bag was helpfully passed on to the back of the
van, where a neat stack was beginning to form. A few minutes later,
Zimmerman sat beside him across from the aisle.

The day was bright sunny day without
the warmth. Empty paddocks and waves of wheat made up the passing
scenery. Sarah drove on without appearing to need a map, a feat
that told of her many journeys to the Coonabara Ranges. The road
took them past a few towns along the way, most boasting at least
one international fast food chain, its yellow neon sign glaring
“Like the Eye of Sauron in Lord of the Rings,” observed Balzac to
Perry, who understood such comments. Suffice it to say here, seeing
the greasy joints effaced the apple pie charm Bouchard associated
with country life.

Maxine provided comedy relief
throughout the otherwise tedious trip. At one point she called for
science jokes; many persons willingly satisfied her request. Little
chuckles quickly moved to uncontrollable giggles, and soon to full
out laughing fits. And though Bouchard’s voice could not be heard
among the general hilarity, he did, however, listen in on the
verbal orgy with polite interest.

“Perry,” said Balzac, turning from the
window back into the van. “Yeah?” he returned, welcoming the
distraction; at this point they were five hours into the trip.
“What’s Planck’s Law again?” Balzac asked, recalling a lesson on
Tuesday. “Planck’s Law?” Perry repeated, retrieving the
information; “The lower the temperature of a black-body, the lower
the average frequency of its emissions,” he said, as quick as a
calculator. “So a black-body at almost zero kelvin would emit
practically zero infrared radiation right?” Balzac reflected, an
idea gestating in his mind, the gears of which were grinding away
loudly enough to intrigue Zimmerman. “Pretty much,” Perry
confirmed, looking at Bouchard curiously; “What are you thinking?”
his expression seemed to ask. “I see,” Balzac returned, as if
realizing something for the first time, after a long period of
ignorance; “so that’s why we can’t detect black holes using
infrared cameras.”