Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu

Author:Cixin Liu [Liu, Cixin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786694676
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2018-08-13T22:00:00+00:00

Macro-Electrons

The base was close to the Kangxi Grasslands northwest of the city. To celebrate the experiment’s success, we took a trip to have roast whole mutton. Dinner was outdoors on the edge of that fairly small grassland.

Colonel Xu gave a small speech: “In olden days, there must have been a day when someone had a stroke of inspiration and understood that they were surrounded by air. Later, people learned that they were constrained by gravity, and that their surroundings were an ocean of electromagnetic waves, and that cosmic radiation passes through our bodies at all times.... Now we know something else: that bubbles are there around us, floating nearby in space that appears empty. Now, let me speak for us all, and offer Professor Ding and Major Lin my well-deserved admiration.”

Again, everyone cheered.

Ding Yi went over to Lin Yun, raised up a large saucer (he was a boozer as well as a smoker), and said, “Major, I used to have a prejudice against soldiers. I thought you were the epitome of mechanical thinking. But you have changed my ideas.”

Lin Yun looked at him wordlessly. I had never seen that expression in her eyes before toward anyone—not even, I’m willing to believe, Jiang Xingchen.

And then I realized that in the midst of all of the uniforms, Ding Yi stood out. In the hot summer wind on the grassland, he seemed formed of three flags: one, his wind-tossed long hair, and the two others his large sleeveless T-shirt and shorts that whipped constantly about his thin stalk of a body, like flags hung on a flagpole. Next to him, Lin Yun cut a lovely figure in the evening light.

Colonel Xu said, “Now you all must be brimming with anticipation for Professor Ding to tell us just what ball lightning is.”

Ding Yi nodded. “I know that lots of people have poured immense effort into unlocking the secret of nature, including the likes of Dr. Chen and Major Lin. They devoted their life’s energies to taking the EM and fluid equations and twisting them to mind-shattering degrees, until they nearly broke. Then they put in one patch after another to plug the holes, adding extra struts to support the teetering edifice, ultimately coming up with something far too huge and complicated, and incomparably ugly.... Dr. Chen, do you know where you failed? It wasn’t that you weren’t complex enough. It was that you didn’t think simply.”

It was the same thing I’d heard from Lin Yun’s father. Two uncommon men in two different fields had come up with the same profound observation.

“How simple could it be?” I asked, mystified.

Ding Yi disregarded my question and went on: “Next, I will tell you what ball lightning is.”

At this moment, the few scattered stars that had begun to appear in the heavens seemed to stop their twinkling, as if listening for God’s last judgment.

“It is nothing more than an electron.”

We looked at each other, each of us trying to wrap our minds around this. Eventually we focused our attention back on Ding Yi.

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