Influx Read Free Page A

condensates follow geodesics? I can drop them in a vacuum chamber, and they fall just like Galileo’s rock.”
    Grady grabbed a piece of paper from a table and started making intricate folds as he talked. “Yes, but the deBroglie wavelength of the BEC is on the order of a millimeter, whereas the gravity field wavelength is effectively infinite—which means gravity can move it around. If the de Broglie wavelength can be made longer than the gravity wavelength, we can in principle isolate the BEC from the gravity wave.”
    “Okay, but even so, it’s only true for time-varying fields—not static fields like this.”
    “Agreed, but I had an idea about that, too.” He held up what was now a paper sphere—handily crafted. He waved his hand around it. “Neutron stars have massive magnetic fields. And superconductors—like this graphene—
exclude
magnetic fields. But a neutron star like Cassiopeia A—which has a proton superconductor at its core—nonetheless has a massive magnetic field.”
    Kulkarni just stared.
    “How is that possible, I wondered? It’s because superfluids containing charged particles are
also
superconductors. The combination has some extraordinary effects. Add a superfluid to a superconductor, and the superconducting boundary shifts, changing the value of kappa and causing truly exotic behavior at the new superconducting boundary.” He slapped the side of the massive assembly. “I had a theory about the distortion of gravitational waves at that superconducting boundary.”
    Kulkarni sighed. “Mr. Grady, I don’t see how this could accomplish anything except waste money.”
    Grady gazed at the professor. “Right . . .” He turned to the chubbier of the two Asian men. “Raj, bring the power up, please.”
    “You got it.” Perkasa chuckled and moved toward the bank of capacitors on the edge of the room. He motioned to the visitors. “You guys may want to step back a bit. I’m about to pump fifty megawatts into this thing.”
    Kulkarni snapped a look at Grady. “That could light a small city.”
    Grady nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
    Before anyone could object, Perkasa raised his hand over a glowing button. “Heads up! And three, and two, and one . . .” With a jab of his thick finger a deep hum settled over the lab. An eerie glow appeared in the sphere as motes of dust were ionized; then the glow faded.
    Grady raised his beer bottle to the opening of a long clear tube that snaked down into the heart of the monstrous assembly. “Just watch.” He poured.
    All eyes followed the beer as it coursed down the plastic tube and spilled out across the concave platform. . . .
    At which point the liquid fell straight up.
    Kulkarni removed his glasses and stared, mouth agape. “Good lord . . .”
    As the liquid “fell” upward, it passed some invisible point where natural gravity returned, and then it spilled back toward earth again, like a fountain—only to be caught once more in the altered field. Soon the liquid began bobbing up and down, oscillating between ever narrowing high and low points until it reached equilibrium. Before long it was bubbling around like a domed membrane on the edge of both gravity fields, a seething polar “beer cap” on an invisible globe.
    Kulkarni put his glasses back on. “My God . . . it’s a flux.”
    Grady nodded. “Exactly. Gravitational fields follow the same shape as electromagnetic fields. Just as the flowing electrons in a plasma jet generate a magnetic field, we’re thinking these quantum fields interact with gravitation somehow.”
    “
Antigravity?
You can’t be serious.”
    “No. Not antigravity. What I think we’ve created is a machine that’s ‘shiny’ to gravity—a
gravity mirror
. Or perhaps refraction is more accurate. I’m not sure yet.”
    Kulkarni pointed. “This is clearly some form of electromagnetism. Water is diamagnetic, and at these high-energy levels you could probably float a brick given just trace amounts of