When the camera was off, Alex sighed a breath of relief. Lori and Amy silently cheered her on from beside Jake, who never stopped filming. He did, however, give a quick thumbs up.
A long row of TV reporters all finished what they were saying and stepped out of camera shot so their operators could focus on the sharp featured woman with olive skin and curly brown hair now standing at the podium. She wore a dress of deep red fabric that looked both professional and powerful. She stepped in front of the big screens as the room fell quiet.
Alex recognized Dr. Fabiola Gianotti as soon as she saw her. The physicist was in her early sixties, by now a legend in the field, who exuded intelligence and focus and was heralded as one of the most adept experimentalists in the world. Though she'd never admit so aloud, Alex was nothing short of inspired by the dedicated expert.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," said Dr. Gianotti, the din de-crescendoing to total silence. "Allow me to welcome you to building 874, also known as the CERN Control Center, home of the ATLAS project. Very shortly we will undertake the highest energy particle collision in human history, advancing our knowledge of the universe to yet unknown new depths."
The room, which had been full of nervous excitement to begin with, offered a cautiously optimistic applause the was peppered with a few overzealous whistles. When it subsided 30 seconds later, a smiling Dr. Gianotti continued with a few more remarks, thanking the countless individuals, educational and commercial partners and the cooperating governments that had contributed to the experiment in one way or another.
"And now, back to the matter at hand," she said as another round of applause subsided. "The ATLAS team has been working for more than a few years preparing for today. Our systems are prepared, and we have run our final checks. Once the sequence begins it will only be a few minutes before data comes back to us here in the control room. You'll see the results as we get them on these monitors behind me."
Dr. Gianotti paused momentarily, like she was bracing for something.
"Now," she went on, "I cannot stress this enough..."
Light-hearted taunts and jeers came from the ATLAS crew before her. They all knew what she was about to say, and were ready for it.
Smiling, Dr. Gianotti continued, raising her voice to speak over her jubilant colleagues.
"Even though we can thank the talented systems integration team for writing software that will treat us to an early assessment of the results, it will take at least two weeks to confirm..."
The crowd drowned her out before she could finish, cheering and yelling. To the unfamiliar observer, it seemed like they were overconfident, expecting that their experiment would succeed before it even began.
But that wasn't the reason for their happiness. It was the mere fact that it was taking place at all that got the group of scientists riled up. A fusion reactor powered supercollider was something from a dream, enough power to probe the unimaginable small theoretical distance for today's test, ten to negative thirty-third centimeters.
.0000000000000000000000000000001cm
Dr. Gianotti walked from the podium to the right of the big screens where a small group of people awaited her. Alex watched as a lanky, blonde haired man stepped away from them and said something into his headset.
Presently a calm focus beset the throngs of technicians, each sitting or standing at his or her workstation. At at once a few of the scientists started working, fingers clacking away, while their peers anxiously waited. As Amy watched them begin the process of starting up the LHC, she heard a voice from behind her say her name.
"Alex," Amy said in a very loud whisper.
Startled she turned back toward the camera, only then noticing that the other reporters were again speaking into their cameras. The confidence she'd built suddenly vanished and a wave of heat poured over her.
She faltered, trying to find the words she was supposed to say next, but eventually managed to stammer, "There you have it Kurt." Amy caught her eye. She was holding out the pad again, and this time the words read, "clock." Alex twisted back toward the big screens, where a digital countdown had appeared and was ticking toward zero from one hundred and eighty seconds.
"Now that the timer has begun, we'll want to focus on those screens," she said, pointing. "The far right pair will show the collision progress, and things will move pretty quickly from here. Almost immediately after the photons are fired from the first accelerator, ionized particles will enter the first ring."
Alex went on explaining the process that was now taking place, finding her groove once more. Before she knew it the master clock reached zero and a bell chimed marking the end of the first cycle. A split second later, the screens came alive with graphics, meaning the particles had exited the first accelerator, a linear tube called LINAC 4.
Shortly after that two graphic circles, one red and one blue, appeared on screen indicating that the opposing beams had entered the first and smallest ring. The graphics pulsed and spun to indicate movement, making Alex wonder what it actually looked like inside the vacuum tube.
Very bright, she guessed.
The vacuum in use at CERN was extremely powerful, meaning that inside there was only the scantest trace of friction to slow the speeding particles. The tube was so well built, so perfectly engineered, it was more vacuous than the deepest, emptiest corners of space. Particles moved through the space with nothing to slow them down, allowing them to accelerate closer and closer to the speed of light.
The countdown clock started over, this time at twenty seconds, as the particles were sent into the second ring.
"Okay we can see from the monitors that the photon clusters have entered the second ring," she said. The room was alive with noise again, mostly from the clacking of fingers on keyboards and small conversations between the busy technicians. Behind the camera crews, reporters typed away at their computers while radio teams narrated the events live. Those who weren't working were transfixed by activity on the big monitors, adding to the sense of awe that had qfilled the space.
The clock hit zero as Alex finished explaining in brief detail how the second collider worked. Once again the graphics on the oversized monitors changed as the particles entered the third ring. The clock reset yet again, this time to sixty-three seconds.
"The beams are being pushed by fifty Mega-electron volts of electricity, as they accelerate inside the third ring," Alex said. "Once the particles reach top speed, a valve will open and they'll enter the fourth ring, the seventeen mile tube that makes the Large Hadron Collider the biggest in the world."
Her voice stayed calm as it broke the air between words. "At top speed, the system will draw five hundred thousand teraelectron volts, more energy than has ever been accessed by humankind for any purpose, all thanks to NASA's proprietary cold fusion reactor system in use here in Geneva."
GNT viewers were now being shown a side-by-side shot of the two large screens. On set in New York, everyone from Kurt Abramson to the most junior production assistants watched in synchronized awe. And then the countdown clock struck zero for the third time.
"The beams have entered the fourth and final ring," Alex said again breaking the silence. "Now the LHC will accelerate each beam far beyond the limits set by previous experiments, while harnessing what NASA scientists say is just around ten percent of the potential energy accessible through the fusion reactor."
The noise that had filled the room was approaching a dull roar. Around Alex the other reporters were all narrating for their various audiences while the technicians monitored their computers. At the front of the room, a normally stoic Dr. Gianotti was smiling to her colleagues, her usual demeanor cast aside and replaced by excitement.
"As you can see from the clock it will take one hundred and eight seconds for the matter to reach full speed," Alex said, her gaze affixed to the numbers as they blinked toward zero. "By the time the particles hit the predetermined energy level, they will circle the entire seventeen mile ring more than three million times per nanosecond. That's three millions cycles in a billionth of a second, an astounding rate of travel for the trillions upon trillions of particles carried in each beam. Just a fraction, far less than one percent, will collide. Those unfortunate enough to meet each other head on will come apart upon impact, their constituent parts will bounce toward the magnetic sensors, where data about their speed and direction will be captured. From there, the information will be stored and processed with the help of a global network of supercomputers."
The clock ticked past thirty seconds.
Somewhere deep below the earth a series of digitally generated signals instructed three hundred massive magnets positioned along the ring to slowly generate the powerful forces they recreated, and pull the beams toward to one another.
Inside the auditorium everything was abuzz, the mood tense as anxious whispers floated through the air. What was believed to be the most important scientific undertaking in human history was at hand.
Alex kept talking, her mind pouring forth with facts as the seconds ticked by, the particles flashing around time and again, ever faster with each pass. Just below her feet the matter was nearing the speed of light, that unbeatable limit. She was dizzy with excitement, and as the clock ticked past ten seconds she was at a loss for words.
At eight seconds she noticed a her eyes beginning to itch. At first it was mildly distracting, but soon it began to burn. And everything on the screens began fuzzing-up at the edges, like the projector's lens had gone out of focus.
Though barely noticeable at first, seconds later both screens were flickering, becoming harder to see with each tick of the clock. Alex squinted and blinked, tried to refocus, but couldn't. After a few more seconds the screens were completely out of focus.
"The beams are about to align," she stammered, wiping sweat from her brow. Time seemed to be slowing down again. The sensation was incredibly intense, and it consumed her thoughts. Only with some effort did she finally manage to say "...in seconds..." but that was all.
She was radiating heat, buzzing like a tuning fork and suddenly out of breath. She couldn't think very well either, she realized, and the room was now a complete blur.
Disregarding the fact that she was on national television, she broke poise so she could lean against the stanchion separating the media from busy CERN staff. As her hand found the metal handrail, she heard a muffled sound in her ear, the faraway voice of Kurt Abramson.
"Alex...what's happening..."
And then, nothing. Another wave of heat spread from her head down her torso and arms through her legs, ending at her toes. She looked at her left hand, and could have sworn it was flickering. There was a slight tickle in her nose and ringing in her ears, a high pitched tone like she'd been hit over the head with a baseball bat. Darkness was seeping into her periphery and blinking stars filled the foreground. Heavy legs begged her toward the floor, as if she weighed a thousand pounds.
But before she had the chance tothink, she was flat against the industrial carpet. Her head hit the floor with a sharp crack and a flash of bright light filled her field of vision, before everything went completely dark.
Strangely, she couldn't feel the impact, only heard the dull thump somewhere far off in the distance, like she was inside a long tunnel. The sound faded as the black set in.
In the auditorium hundreds of bodies lay slumped in their chairs or on the floor, motionless. The same was true of the people working in the subterranean lab and all throughout the facility.
The clock stopped ticking at -00:00:01, numbers locked in place the instant the event occurred.
Below the earth's surface, inside the seventeen mile ring, a billion billion particles had already completed their cycles, some impacting head on at nearly the speed of light, their collisions causing trillions of protons to give birth to the rarest subatomic information yet discovered by science.
The enormous sensors positioned all around the ring had collected their data, thousands of tetrabytes worth. All this occurred in a measure of time so small it would have been impossible to dissect without the help of the network. But before the information could pass from the magnets and through the fiber optic cables, the entire system shut down. The fusion reactor, computers, even the building's ventilation system, and finally the lights. CERN was completely dark.
But for a mere instant before the power failed, the central screen in the control room showed a digital fireworks display of blue and red dots. And just before the system shut off, a single red light flashed in the corner of the screen.