Free Doctor How and the Rings of Uranus by Mark Speed Page A

through both slits and interferes with itself like waves would?”
    “Excellent. And I’m so glad you’ve finally dropped the sexual innuendo from such sentences.”
    “Uh?”
    “Never mind. In short, subatomic particles can be terribly obliging . A great many of them could be characterised as being rather British in their behaviour.”
    “You what ? Like, you’ve completely lost me there.”
    “They’re very polite, and they get a little embarrassed if they disappoint you. Ever heard of charm quarks? Aptly named. So at a superficial level they’ll behave any way the observer’s expecting, so as not to disappoint or embarrass. Even to the point of being completely different.”
    “So you’re saying the Higgs Boson was kinda there, but not there?”
    “Of course. The well-meaning physicists at CERN were looking for the Higgs Boson and, well…”
    “The subatomic particles kinda clubbed together and gave them… what , exactly, if it wasn’t the Higgs Boson itself?”
    “They gave them the experience of discovering the Higgs Boson, of course. Otherwise the whole Large Hadron Collider would have been a very embarrassing waste of a colossal sum of public money.”
    Kevin relaxed back down onto his steamer chair with a heavy sigh, and let the Sliver™ hang in the air in front of him. “No. Freakin’. Way.”
    “I thought you’d been reading up on particle physics?”
    “Reading up on it is one thing, believing this weird stuff is another, Doc. You know it still makes me uncomfortable knowing that the Spectrel consists of nothing whatsoever.”
    “It’s not nothing. It’s forces without the tiresome encumbrance of any matter at all. There’s a subtle difference. Now that you understand a bit more, can you see why I got rid of the pesky subatomic particles almost completely when building this thing? I mean, why bother if you can go straight for the forces? Now put your book away and I’ll brief you.”
    “Hang on. Almost completely?”
    “Yes, almost completely. I have a few of the most obliging subatomic particles hanging around to let me project the forces. I could do without them, I suppose. But they really are so terribly nice.”
    Kevin folded up his Sliver™, tucked it into his pocket and ordered his seat to change back into a regular shape so that he could look as alert as possible.
    “Thank you. Doubtless you’re wondering why the existence of the gamma ring is important.”
    Kevin nodded. “Indulge me.”
    The Doctor ignored his assistant’s deadpan answer.
    “Everything has to be in its proper place, that’s why. I’ve told you about this before. The slightest thing being different can have a massive knock-on effect.”
    “So has someone half-inched it?”
    “Just p ossibly, but probably not. The simpler explanation is that someone’s been a bit careless, that’s all.”
    “Careless?”
    “Yes. When we were setting things up here we had to do a bit of mining on Uranus.”
    “Mining? But I thought it was a gas giant?”
    “Well, I say mining, but in its broadest sense it’s the recovery of a natural resource.”
    “What were you mining?”
    “Helium-3.”
    “You’ll have to remind me, Doc. Helium-3 is …?”
    “Helium-3 is helium -4 minus one of the neutrons. So the nucleus has two protons and a single neutron, unlike normal helium which has two neutrons.”
    “Gotcha. And you were mining helium-3 because…?”
    “Great fuel for nuclear fusion. Let’s just say it’s all the power without the pesky excess neutrons. The protons it produces can be contained and used to generate electricity. Very clean burn, you see? And you can do all sorts of other fun stuff with helium-3 that you can’t do with your standard helium-4. The atomic mass is a whopping twenty-five percent less than the four version.” The Doctor was enthusing. “And it’s a great substrate for neutron detectors because it can absorb an extra neutron so easily.”
    “Sounds wonderful. Sorry not to