Quantum

‘How the hell would you know what Raphaele wanted me to do? We were a team. We were going to solve this thing together.’

‘Actually, after you moved into the new lab, Raphaele was going to retire.’ Kelsey held up her hand to stop the question she saw forming on Sandstrom’s lips. ‘We had a long talk with Dorothy yesterday after the funeral. She told us that Raphaele felt that he’d done all he could for you, and it was time for him to step aside. Had none of this happened, Raphaele would be telling you this right now and wishing you well. He would also have given you this.’

Kelsey set the thick manila envelope on the edge of Sandstrom’s bed. He stared down at it; across the top was his name scrawled in Paramo’s hand.

‘What’s in it?’

‘Letters. Dorothy said they were Raphaele’s most prized possession. Sometime back in the forties, he corresponded with another physicist. In Raphaele’s opinion, the man was one of the greatest minds he’d ever known. He also felt that something in these letters might help you figure out your discovery.’

Sandstrom’s eyes never left the envelope as Kelsey spoke. There were only a handful of twentieth-century physicists who Raphaele Paramo considered truly brilliant, and as best as Sandstrom could recall, Paramo never mentioned having significant communication with any of them.

‘Who was Raphaele’s pen pal?’

‘We don’t know,’ Nolan replied, just as curious about the letters as Sandstrom was.

‘We were tempted to read the letters on the way back from South Bend,’ Kelsey admitted, ‘but it wouldn’t have been right. These letters were meant for you.’

‘Well, I want to know. Open the envelope and read me one of them.’

Kelsey smiled as she unclasped the oversize envelope. Inside, she discovered a collection of old brown file folders bound together by string. Each folder bore the date of the letter it contained; the correspondence spanned almost two years.

‘I guess we should start at the beginning.’

Kelsey untied the string and opened the first folder. Surprisingly, the paper, which was older than anyone in the room, had barely yellowed – Paramo had kept his treasured letters safe for more than fifty years. The author’s penmanship was fluid and precise, like the work of a calligrapher.

‘Fifteen September 1946,’ Kelsey began. ‘Dear Raphaele… ’

After a few lines about personal matters, the author shifted direction into the realm of theoretical physics. The tone was conversational, as if Raphaele and the author were sitting in a bar having a discussion over a glass of beer. The man would pose a thesis, then let his imagination run wild, challenging his thesis from several different directions.

More than once Sandstrom had to ask her to stop so he could digest what he’d heard. The beautifully written prose was interspersed with mathematical notations and explanatory doodles. The first four-page letter took nearly an hour to read.

“‘— and I look forward to your thoughts on this. Your friend, Johann Wolff.’”

‘Amazing.’ Sandstrom sighed, physically drained by the effort he’d put forward to follow the letter. ‘I’d have to study that letter more carefully, but I’d swear that part of what you just read dealt with interaction-free measurement.’

‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Kelsey agreed.

‘I’m sorry to be the dumb guy in the room,’ Nolan said, crossing his arms over his chest, ‘but what is it about that letter that has you both so stunned?’

‘If Kelsey and I understand this letter correctly, Wolff was working on quantum optics.’

‘And why is this significant?’

‘The significance is not what, but when,’ Kelsey said. ‘Wolff was thinking about interaction-free measurement in the mid-forties. I’ve never seen anything on the subject dating that far back. In the early sixties the guy who won the Nobel Prize for inventing holography essentially said such a thing was impossible. No one was even fooling around in this area until the eighties.’

‘This is cutting-edge quantum thinking now,’ Sandstrom added. ‘Fifty years ago, my God. This guy’s grasp of the subtle nature of potential and probability is amazing. Las Vegas would hate a guy like this.’

‘Shall I read another?’ Kelsey asked as she carefully placed the first back in its folder.

‘Absolutely,’ Sandstrom replied eagerly.

Four hours and five letters later, Sandstrom was ready to get out of bed and go back to work. While Nolan was impressed with the author’s ability to describe incredibly complex phenomena lucidly, for Kelsey and Sandstrom the experience was something akin to an epiphany.

‘Raphaele was right,’ Sandstrom declared, ‘this guy’s thinking was decades ahead of his time.’

Kelsey nodded her head in agreement. ‘I’m just surprised that we’ve never heard of him.’

‘Me, too,’ Nolan said as he put the last few folders back in the pile. ‘Especially since he was here at Michigan when he wrote these letters.’

‘His comments on some of the senior faculty in our physics department sound like they could have been written today. Just change the names,’ kidded Kelsey.

‘Bureaucracies are eternal,’ quipped Nolan.

Still reclining in his hospital bed, Sandstrom stared in wonder at this gift from his mentor. ‘It’s like Wolff was doing stuff in his head that we’re just starting to figure out now using supercomputers. Based on what he showed Raphaele, I think Wolff was working toward a theory of everything.’

‘A theory of everything?’ Nolan asked. ‘Sounds like a Monty Python movie.’

‘For physicists,’ Sandstrom replied, ‘a workable theory of everything is the Holy Grail.’

‘I’ll bite then. What is it?’

‘You want to field this one, Kelsey?’ Sandstrom asked.

‘Sure. The short version goes something like this. Four basic forces are known to be at work in the universe – forces that determine the behavior of everything from the smallest subatomic particle to the universe itself. Current theory predicts that if we were to wind the clock back in time to less than a hundredth of a second after the Big Bang, we should find these four apparently separate forces merging into a single unified force.’

Nolan nodded. ‘I’m with you so far. Gravity, which keeps us from falling off the earth and affects all the big stuff in the universe is theoretically related to the forces that hold atoms and all the subatomic bits together.’

‘Exactly. A theory of everything, or TOE, describes the linkage between all the forces. If we can ever develop one that can survive experimental testing, we’ll have a much clearer understanding of how the universe began, how it works, and where it’s going. Now, trying to tie all four forces together in one shot is incredibly difficult. Einstein spent the later years of his life on his unified field theory and came up empty. Taking it one step at a time, we’ve managed to tie two of the forces – electro-magnetism and the weak nuclear force – together. Currently physicists are trying to tie these two forces with the strong nuclear force – the one that holds protons and neutrons together to form atomic nuclei. A theory describing the union of the three nongravitational forces is known in the trade as a GUT, which stands for grand unification theory. The next step after a working GUT is developed is a working TOE.’

‘So, based on Wolff’s letters, you think he was piecing together a theory of everything?’

‘Absolutely,’ Sandstrom assured Nolan, ‘and he was at least as far along fifty years ago as anyone is today. I’m seeing glimmers of M-brane theory in these letters and hints at strategies for resolving some of the stickier problems that current theorists are wrestling with.’