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 Cover to Einstein's Bridge | |
| Author | John G. Cramer |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | hard science fiction, Alternate history |
| Publisher | Avon Books |
Publication date | June 1997 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback), eBook |
Einstein's Bridge is a hard science fiction novel by physicist and science fiction writer John G. Cramer.
The novel was first published in June 1997 by Avon Books. The company first published in hardback and trade paperback, followed by publishing a mass-market paperback version in 1998. The novel is currently out of print. [1]
The plot revolves around three central human characters, George Griffin, Roger Coulton, and Alice Lang. Set between the years 1987 and 2004, the book details the efforts of physicists George and Roger as they work to bring the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) online in Waxahachie, Texas. Alice is a novelist who becomes involved with the pair whilst researching material for her new horror book at the SSC. She and George fall in love just as preliminary trial runs of the SSC produce an unexplained phenomenon: a Snark, to borrow an expression from Lewis Carroll, or an impossible event, in the form of a heavy particle which emerged from the planned head-on collision between two 20 TeV protons inside the SSC.
In addition to violating physical laws such as the conservation of mass, this particle emits pulses of radioactivity, spelling out the numerical prime number sequence of 2-3-5-7-11-13-17-19-23-29-31-37. Therein begins the unraveling of an even greater mystery than the particle itself: a powerful intelligence is behind this event, seeking to communicate with Humankind, which has unwittingly announced itself to the universe through the powerful bursts of energy unleashed with the collisions of particles within the SSC. For a time, this first contact is made by a benevolent species. Another species is also working to make contact—a less benevolent species, whose intent may ultimately destroy the Earth and perhaps even the fabric of the universe.
The plot does not take place in our timeline but in an alternative history—one in which the Superconducting Super Collider was built in Texas. In reality, the project was cancelled in 1993 and never implemented. In this alternate history, American forces invaded Baghdad and overthrew Saddam Hussein after liberating Kuwait during the Gulf War (1990-1991), leading to George H. W. Bush's re-election in 1992 over Bill Clinton. The sinister significance of all this, and the relation of this alternative history to ours, become clear in the last part of the book.
In reviewing the novel, SF Site said, "Cramer weaves a compelling tale." [2] Kirkus Reviews noted "Cramer splendidly demonstrates just how fascinating and mind-boggling real science can be, and shows exactly how vulnerable basic research is to political whim." [3]
Leon Max Lederman was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1982, along with Martin Lewis Perl, for research on quarks and leptons. Lederman was director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. He founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in Aurora, Illinois in 1986, where he was resident scholar emeritus from 2012 until his death in 2018.
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The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas, United States.
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The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Standard Model, the Higgs particle is a massive scalar boson with zero spin, even (positive) parity, no electric charge, and no colour charge that couples to mass. It is also very unstable, decaying into other particles almost immediately upon generation.
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Twistor (1989) is a hard science fiction novel by physicist and science fiction writer John G. Cramer. The novel was first published in hardcover by William Morrow in 1989, then in mass market paperback by Avon Books in 1991. It was reprinted by Avon Books in 1997 with slight revisions.
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