Algorithm - Book 1 - The Medallion

Chapter 14

Percy turned to the two visitors now that things had calmed down and he could be heard. "That was an automatic alarm set to engage when we detect an unusual amount of radiation." He paused to look at the digital display on the wall near the stairway entrance to the shelter. An oscillating green line illustrated the recent emission. "Based on the energy scaling factor it looks like … neutrinos.  A peculiar pattern—the burst occurred a few minutes ago, and now it appears it has ceased.  Nothing more. Curious."

Adam asked, "You can detect neutrinos?" 

"Deep underground we have a very large system that can do just that."

Linda asked, "Are they dangerous?"

Percy explained, "Not at all. Neutrinos are very small. They hardly hit a thing at the atomic level. Actually, most pass right through the Earth with no problem."

The shelter was not designed with comfort in mind, and the proximity of so many people in such close quarters spurred Adam to look more closely at Linda. She looked pale. Adam asked, "How long do we have to stay here? The neutrinos look like they have stopped, so can we go back up?"

"Only after the all clear sounds. We need to wait a while. It's really unlikely that this type of radiation, that is, neutrinos came from our labs, although we could produce some, I suppose, by subjecting certain elements to a high energy beam of sub-atomic particles.  Most of the work here generates much heavier particles, and the usual radiation would take the form of x-rays, gamma rays and such.  We are shielded from that kind of radiation. And in any case, like I mentioned to Linda, neutrinos do not pose a health threat.  In fact, millions of neutrinos generated by our sun are racing through your bodies right now. The real danger may lie quite far off … something like a supernova, and if so, we should expect a killer burst of heavy radiation any moment now."

Linda moved closer to Adam.

"It's all right." He brought an arm around her shoulders. Adam was well-aware of the possibility of a local supernova wiping out all life, not only here, but for a large chunk of the galaxy, with the only warning being a surge of neutrinos preceding the ionizing barrage of deadly radiation.  Neutrinos would be the first to arrive since they were subatomic particles with nearly no mass travelling at near light speed. 

Leave it up to Brookhaven to come up with a way to detect them and provide a warning system to boot.

After a few minutes, the mechanical voice announced that it was safe for everyone to return to their workstations. As people began climbing up the stairway and casual conversations resumed, Adam glanced at the radiation monitor's display and took notice of the exact time the neutrinos appeared. Color had returned to Linda's face.

When they arrived at the TMS lab, they found that Percy had fitted the medallion in the beehive scanner and the MRI's output was displayed on a computer screen.

Adam pointed at the screen. "Is that the medallion we're looking at?"

"It certainly is Adam. Let me show you something."

Percy used his keyboard mouse to maneuver the medallion's image on the screen. With a gentle tap or two on the keyboard, the image enlarged, and the patterns of the carbon-13 particles began to emerge.  As Percy continued his tapping, these tiny specks enlarged. The honeycomb pattern found throughout the medallion gradually morphed into linear strands of bright white spots on the screen.

"Take a look at this." Percy pointed with his free hand at one of the strands of particles. "Notice anything unusual?"

Linda jokingly quipped, "You mean you've found something even more unusual than the fact that this gold medallion contains all these carbon-13 bits?"

Adam fought down a grin. "It looks like these particles are not all the same size."

"Quite, quite.  In fact, there appear to be four distinctly different sizes."

Another mouse movement formed a box around a row of particles.

"I've been running the data into our analysis systems. When I zoomed in, it became apparent that the particles lined up in a kind of spiral pattern—sort of like on a phonograph record or CD."

Percy pointed to another screen nearby where a continuous line of peaks streamed by, reminiscent of an EKG strip, but here the peaks were of four sizes.

Adam asked, "Is there a way we could see if there is some kind of pattern behind these four sizes?"

Percy beamed. "That's just what I was thinking. In fact, that's what the analyzer system is doing right now. It would take quite a while to look at all of the data, but I can check out a substantial amount by manually isolating a number of the rows on screen."

"How much exactly?" asked Linda.

"Oh, say a couple of million peaks."

As Adam pondered over these findings, a thought occurred to him. "By the way, were you doing anything out of the ordinary at around one-fifteen this afternoon?" Adam asked. 

"That was about the time when I was setting up your medallion for analysis."

"What exactly did you do to set up the analysis?"

"Well, I was positioning it in the MRI chamber."

"Anything else?"

"Not much. I just fired up the MRI."

"What does that mean, 'fired up'?"

"Well, the machine goes through an automated alignment procedure.  After a short x-ray scan, the radio frequency detectors …"

"X-rays?" Adam interrupted. "You subjected the medallion to x-rays?"

"Quite. Quite. I used the x-ray image for the alignment. The x-rays are not harmful. Sort of like the kind you might get using a fluoroscope. Perfectly harmless."

Percy looked at Adam's face and realized the possible coincidence. A few key strokes later, he added, "The log indicates that the x-ray scan ran at exactly one-fifteen."

How crazy is that?

Linda followed the line of reasoning. "Why would x-rays cause the medallion to emit neutrinos?"

Percy pushed up his spectacles. 

Adam wondered.

Why indeed?