Ball Lightning

On the way back, Lin Yun said to Ding Yi, “One more question: You’re the cutting edge of theoretical physics in this country. It’s hard to believe that decades ago, another ball lightning researcher was as well. There’s certainly an element of subjectivity in Zhang Bin’s assessment of his wife, but was Zheng Min really capable of making those discoveries?”

“If humanity lived in a frictionless world, Newton’s Three Laws might have been discovered even earlier by someone even more ordinary. When you yourself become a macro-particle in a quantum state, you might have a far easier time understanding that world than we do.”

* * *

And so the base started working on collecting macro-atomic nuclei.

They began by using the bubble optical detection system to make precise observations of the free-motion state of macro-electrons in the air, understanding now that the complicated floating path followed by a macro-electron, or the ball lightning that resulted when it was excited, was in fact an endless succession of atomic electron transitions—quantum leaps—that appear to us like continuous motion. If that macro-electron did indeed belong to a macro-atom, the magnificent mathematical model that had appeared on Zhang Bin’s gravestone could determine the position of a macro-atom’s nucleus through a complicated calculation involving various parameters of the atomic transition.

The first set of ten free-moving macro-electrons observed were discovered at a height of five hundred meters. A macro-electron had to be observed continuously for half an hour to obtain enough raw data for the calculation. The results showed that, of those ten macro-electrons, two were free electrons, and the other eight each belonged to a different macro-atomic nucleus, between three hundred and six hundred kilometers away. This was very close to Ding Yi’s initial estimate of the size of macro-electrons. Three of the nuclei were beyond the atmosphere in space, one was deep in the Earth’s crust, and of the four in the atmosphere, two were outside the country. So the researchers set off in search of one of the in-country macro-atomic nuclei, which was 534 kilometers away from the observed macro-electron.

It was wartime, so it was impossible to requisition a helicopter, but fortunately the base had three helium blimps they had used for capturing macro-electrons. These were easy to use, and cheap to fly; their one flaw was that they moved very slowly, at maximum speed no better than a car on an expressway.

Skies were blue in northern China that day, an excellent time for capture. They flew westward for more than four hours, crossing the Shanxi border. Below them was the unbroken line of the Taihang Mountains. The position of macro-nuclei was relatively constant compared to macro-electrons, but they still moved slowly, meaning the base had to continuously monitor the macro-electron and notify the capture blimp of the latest calculations of the macro-nucleus position. After the observation team on base notified the blimp that it had reached the target’s location, the aviators turned on the blimp’s optical detection system, whose pattern recognition software had been modified to detect a length of string rather than a round shape. There was a roughly one-hundred-meter margin of error for locating the macro-nucleus, so the optical detection system carried out fine observations of that area of sky to quickly locate the target.

The blimp descended slightly, and the aviator said that the target was several meters off the front left side of the cabin.

“Maybe we can see it directly!” Ding Yi said. Macro-electrons were hard to see without particularly keen eyesight, but Ding Yi had predicted that the shape of macro-nuclei was clearer to the naked eye, and their movement was slower and more regular, so they could be tracked more easily.

“It’s over there,” the aviator said, pointing down and to the left. All they could see in that direction was a rolling mountain range.

“Can you see it?” Lin Yun asked.

“No. That’s based on the data,” the pilot said, pointing at the detection system’s screen.

“Take us down a bit more, so we can use the sky as a background,” Ding Yi said to him.

The blimp descended slightly. The aviator watched the screen as he worked, and soon the blimp came to a standstill again. He pointed up and to the right. “It’s over there….” But this time, he didn’t pull his hand back. “My God! There really is something! Look over there! It’s moving upward!”

And thus, after the discovery of the macro-electron, humanity saw a macro-atomic nucleus for the first time.