...And We Will Have Snow

Chapter 9: The Sun Bottle

Later, Dema told Cern about the biology project. They were seated in a cozy lounge in the main house, their first time alone together all day. After describing Marian's vision, which was now her own, she said, "It's like Gaia in a bottle. In a good way. Condensing all we can learn about the essence of the way life on earth sustains itself, so we can establish a complete, self-contained sub-unit anywhere. At least, anywhere there's an energy flow available," she added.

She could barely contain her excitement at what she was telling him, and Cern grinned at her, because his enthusiasm for what he had seen was a match for it.

"What Jack showed us may take care of that last part," he said. "He calls it 'the sun in a bottle.'"

"You're kidding!"

"Not at all. What's installed here is a prototype. Jack says the details of the design are proprietary and very hush-hush. So much so that our unit is sealed inside a metal shell. It looks like a sphere mounted on a cylinder attached to a cube. It's only a couple feet high, and barely hums, but it supplies all the power for the island without adding any fuel."

"Sounds like a miniature nuclear reactor."

"Almost, but that's not it. Not fission anyway. Jack says it's not fusion either. From what he's been told, it uses hydrogen in a kind of exotic chemical process that turns it into dark matter."

"Dark matter? The stuff between the stars? You are kidding, right?"

"That's what I said to Jack, but he was dead serious. It started with a theory that what physicists call the 'ground state' of hydrogen isn't really a ground state after all. It's just such a big jump to the next lower level that it rarely happens."

"You're talking about quantum theory, quantum electrodynamics, QED. Mom talks about that sometimes, and I'm sure she said it's one of the most remarkably accurate theories ever. Now you're saying it's wrong?"

"No, I don't think so. Jack says there's a very simple equation that predicts energy levels for hydrogen, and it works to predict this dark matter state. There's nothing wrong with the theory. It's just that when the theory was developed it was based on what was known from experiments. The theorists called the lowest known energy state one. After that, everyone just assumed it was the lowest state possible, and no one even tried to go lower."

"Until...? So where did our power unit come from? Some DARPA black project? Some mad scientist?"

"From what Jack could tell me, it sounded like mad scientist might be close to the truth. Someone willing to disagree with conventional wisdom, defy accepted reality."

Dema knew all about defying accepted reality. It had its own rules, what she thought of as the laws of magic. She knew how hard it could be to break those rules when there were a lot of disbelievers around. But she also knew that one of the laws of shaman magic was that if you can get enough people to believe, you can change accepted reality. In fact, modern technology was full of miraculous inventions that were as magical as anything ever conceived. And depended on quantum physics. She thought of the cell phone in her pocket, and of all the people who now accepted that reality without question. "Okay, so how does it work?"

"Jack says it depends on a resonance phenomenon, well understood from quantum chemistry dating back to the work of Linus Pauling. The hydrogen atom will only give up that next huge quantum of energy if the quantum field can accept it, and that means there needs to be another atom nearby that has room for it, so to speak. Apparently water molecules at high temperature and pressure, basically compressed steam, can do the trick."

"So the hydrogen emits a photon and steam absorbs it?"

"A high energy ultraviolet photon, correct. So-called dark light. Then the steam molecule instantly ionizes leaving a free electron that can re-emit the energy in a broad spectrum of lower energy, basically the whole range of visible light."

"Okay, what then?"

"Photocells convert the light to electricity."

"Regular photocells? As in solar panels?"

"Yes, but the photocells have to be a little special. They have to handle hundreds of times the energy of direct sunlight."

"Why?"

"What would be the point otherwise? We might just as well put panels on the roof and wait for the sun to shine. The advantage is in having a concentrated source. Sun in a bottle. Fortunately, the idea of using concentrated sunlight is not new. In place of a whole field of low-energy solar panels, some installations use mirrors to redirect the light to smaller arrays of high-energy photocells. So that's what are used here."

"Wow. Sun in a bottle. Gaia in a bottle. What else are we trying to bottle around here?"

Cern smiled. "I think Tengri already hinted at that."