I think I will give this a last try... in theory we are half through the story.
#####################
"Good morning everyone, sorry I am a little bit late" Julia said and yawned. "It took some extra time to figure out the controls in the room this morning."
All six of the visitors had met in the corridor in front of their rooms, Nina promised to have a breakfast with them and then take them to the particle accelerator.
'Sure, it was just the controls" her roommate Amanda thought with a grin, 'not the fact that you wanted to have a longer shower'.
"We are still waiting for Mrs. Nina anyways" Dr. Steinberg replied, looking at his wrist watch. "I hope she did not forget our appointment. Maybe we should already leave to have breakfast?"
"I just sent her a message, she replied she has been delayed and will meet us during breakfast" Julia said with a smile. "Lets go, I am curious about the Sunday breakfast here!"
The group quickly headed to the cafeteria and sat down with their breakfast. It took nearly ten minutes until Nina arrived at their table.
"Hello everyone… a personal friend had a problem and called in a favor, thats why I am late." she said and put down her tray. "But I made sure we have a car waiting for us at the airlock and the accelerator will be be open for a first tour!"
"Excellent, we are already looking forward to see this machine. An experimental facility where you can change the speed of light should be very useful for all kinds of physics experiments" Dr. Steinberg said. "I know a few coworkers at CERN who spend countless of hours with me to come up with some predictions how the machine would behave."
"Welcome to the club of people hurting their own mind by predicting handwaved hardware capabilities" Nina said with a grin, "I think we all got it wrong before we had the chance to work with the new accelerator. One thing is the speed of light acceleration… whatever a handwaved FTL engine is doing, it fortunately does not simply raise the speed of light."
"Yes, we concluded that just raising one of the universal constants of the universe should be quite unhealthy for anything as complex as a human being" Dr. Steinberg said with a nod. "Just too many things in chemistry and atomic physics would change. Getting 250.000 times the energy from radioactive decay would be quite spectacular. But what does it change?"
"Our best guess is that it modifies the Lorentz factor of General Relativity… it allows you to go faster before relativistic effects make further acceleration difficult" Nina tried to explain. "At least that is what we see with our own Mass Effect engines… but there is also a lot of crazy things happening at the edge of a faster than light field, otherwise each of these engines would be a death trap."
"I am sure this would also kill everything inside instantly, but we should continue this discussion after we have learned more about your current physics experiments" Dr. Steinberg replied, "maybe we could get some hints about the real physics happening. I know that all attempts to understand Handwavium have ended badly, but its effects should be within the real laws of physics!"
'Shit, shit, shit… he nearly managed to drag me into a discussion about the nature of Handwavium within the Cafeteria" Nina thought as she tried to smile calmly. "That could have taken hours and hours of debate until someone got calm enough to stop!'
"What kind of experiment do you have planned for the accelerator today" Dr. Miller asked. "I am just curious, CERN experiments are scheduled for weeks, months or even years."
"Oh, do not worry, we will have the whole machine all for ourselves for the whole morning" Nina said with a grin, "we can do whatever you want to show you how everything is working. And if you have suggestions for experiments in the next weeks, just tell us!"
The group quickly finished their breakfast and Nina guided them out of the central living space of the Little Big Bang Labs back to the spaceport of the station.
"Here we are, our shuttle is already waiting for us… please put on your spacesuits and we will be off to the accelerator complex within a minute. As I told you before, most of the complex has no atmosphere." Nina told the group. "You can use the changing rooms behind these door. I will help you to check if everything is alright as soon as you come out."
The group quickly got into their spacesuit and only not even 15 minutes later they were in a small Shuttle towards the second installation around Nostromo.
"There it is, I can see the blue lights on the surface" Ingo Bartels said as the shuttle moved around the station in a wide circle to get towards the hangar doors. "Similar to the other installation, but more larger blocks and less windows!"
"Makes sense, the accelerator at CERN is also below the surface" Dr. Miller replied. "You don't need that many windows for the experimentation areas."
"Ahh, I hear that you already discovered the heart of the Labs" Nina said from the pilot seat and stopped the Shuttle. "Please put on your helmets, I will open the shuttle's door so you can get a better look."
Nina closed her helmet too and the whole group assembled in front of the open door of the shuttle.
"Originally this part was attached to the other station, but it sometimes produces gravity shockwaves, which makes sleeping a bit hard… so we positioned them on opposite sides of Nostromo" Nina explained. "The large three dimensional cross you can see over there with the central bulb is the particle accelerator. That is where the best Science is done!"
She waited until everyone had got a good view of the station, then she returned to the pilot seat and closed the outer door. Just a few minutes later the group finally arrived at the entrance of the particle accelerator room.
The space was dominated by six long tubes, each of them at least a meter diameter and leading to an empty area in the center. Each of the tubes had multiple power cables connecting it to the walls and tiny blue-glowing spheres every few meters. Small handmade stickers with catgirl faces decorated the tubes all over the surface and large red arrows on the tubes pointed toward the central area of the accelerators.
There were a number of small floating platforms near the center, buzzing around like a mob of tourists taking pictures of an invisible attraction. Two large robotic arm with flexible tubes mounted on them completed the picture.
"Ladies and gentlemen… I present you the Little Big Bang Accelerator!" Nina said proudly, pointing at the large tubes. "One of the most powerful and versatile particle physics research centers in Fenspace."
Dr. Steinberg rolled with his eyes when the catgirl started again with some pseudo-scientific explanation about what they had done in this room. He was more interested in the small details that he found in the room.
'Its a bit like we guessed back at CERN, some parts look more like a movie prop than scientific devices. I wonder how reproducible their experiments are.' he mused as they walked through a door that lead out of the experimentation chamber.
There were already a few more catgirls waiting in the control room, sitting in front of large consoles with lots of blinking lights. A holographic projection in the center of the room showed schematics of the six accelerators and all kinds of things that were attached to them. As soon as the door to the control room closed the room
"Experimentation chamber is empty, switching accelerator to particle physics mode."
"Electron/Positron source is ready, accelerator 2 and 5 are showing condition green."
"Speed cameras initialized."
"Wait, what?" Joseph Singh's head shot up. "What do you mean with speed cameras?"
"Oh, we use a series of waved Speed Cameras to measure the energy of the particle beams."
'Keep calm, keep calm… there is nothing to worry about' Dr. Steinberg thought, breathing in and out slowly. 'This whole insanity is about the end and they will show us some real science soon.'
"Just one question before we start, I noticed that place where the beams intersect is empty" Dr. Steinberg said. "Where is the detector? I mean, without a detector the whole accelerator is nearly worthless."
"Unfortunately we did not know how to build a modern one, and this is a kind of low budget facility anyways" Nina replied sadly. "We managed to come up with a waved gas that works like an improved Cloud Chamber, with different colors for different types of particles. We just have to filter out the cat pictures it draws during the collisions!"
#####################
"Good morning everyone, sorry I am a little bit late" Julia said and yawned. "It took some extra time to figure out the controls in the room this morning."
All six of the visitors had met in the corridor in front of their rooms, Nina promised to have a breakfast with them and then take them to the particle accelerator.
'Sure, it was just the controls" her roommate Amanda thought with a grin, 'not the fact that you wanted to have a longer shower'.
"We are still waiting for Mrs. Nina anyways" Dr. Steinberg replied, looking at his wrist watch. "I hope she did not forget our appointment. Maybe we should already leave to have breakfast?"
"I just sent her a message, she replied she has been delayed and will meet us during breakfast" Julia said with a smile. "Lets go, I am curious about the Sunday breakfast here!"
The group quickly headed to the cafeteria and sat down with their breakfast. It took nearly ten minutes until Nina arrived at their table.
"Hello everyone… a personal friend had a problem and called in a favor, thats why I am late." she said and put down her tray. "But I made sure we have a car waiting for us at the airlock and the accelerator will be be open for a first tour!"
"Excellent, we are already looking forward to see this machine. An experimental facility where you can change the speed of light should be very useful for all kinds of physics experiments" Dr. Steinberg said. "I know a few coworkers at CERN who spend countless of hours with me to come up with some predictions how the machine would behave."
"Welcome to the club of people hurting their own mind by predicting handwaved hardware capabilities" Nina said with a grin, "I think we all got it wrong before we had the chance to work with the new accelerator. One thing is the speed of light acceleration… whatever a handwaved FTL engine is doing, it fortunately does not simply raise the speed of light."
"Yes, we concluded that just raising one of the universal constants of the universe should be quite unhealthy for anything as complex as a human being" Dr. Steinberg said with a nod. "Just too many things in chemistry and atomic physics would change. Getting 250.000 times the energy from radioactive decay would be quite spectacular. But what does it change?"
"Our best guess is that it modifies the Lorentz factor of General Relativity… it allows you to go faster before relativistic effects make further acceleration difficult" Nina tried to explain. "At least that is what we see with our own Mass Effect engines… but there is also a lot of crazy things happening at the edge of a faster than light field, otherwise each of these engines would be a death trap."
"I am sure this would also kill everything inside instantly, but we should continue this discussion after we have learned more about your current physics experiments" Dr. Steinberg replied, "maybe we could get some hints about the real physics happening. I know that all attempts to understand Handwavium have ended badly, but its effects should be within the real laws of physics!"
'Shit, shit, shit… he nearly managed to drag me into a discussion about the nature of Handwavium within the Cafeteria" Nina thought as she tried to smile calmly. "That could have taken hours and hours of debate until someone got calm enough to stop!'
"What kind of experiment do you have planned for the accelerator today" Dr. Miller asked. "I am just curious, CERN experiments are scheduled for weeks, months or even years."
"Oh, do not worry, we will have the whole machine all for ourselves for the whole morning" Nina said with a grin, "we can do whatever you want to show you how everything is working. And if you have suggestions for experiments in the next weeks, just tell us!"
The group quickly finished their breakfast and Nina guided them out of the central living space of the Little Big Bang Labs back to the spaceport of the station.
"Here we are, our shuttle is already waiting for us… please put on your spacesuits and we will be off to the accelerator complex within a minute. As I told you before, most of the complex has no atmosphere." Nina told the group. "You can use the changing rooms behind these door. I will help you to check if everything is alright as soon as you come out."
The group quickly got into their spacesuit and only not even 15 minutes later they were in a small Shuttle towards the second installation around Nostromo.
"There it is, I can see the blue lights on the surface" Ingo Bartels said as the shuttle moved around the station in a wide circle to get towards the hangar doors. "Similar to the other installation, but more larger blocks and less windows!"
"Makes sense, the accelerator at CERN is also below the surface" Dr. Miller replied. "You don't need that many windows for the experimentation areas."
"Ahh, I hear that you already discovered the heart of the Labs" Nina said from the pilot seat and stopped the Shuttle. "Please put on your helmets, I will open the shuttle's door so you can get a better look."
Nina closed her helmet too and the whole group assembled in front of the open door of the shuttle.
"Originally this part was attached to the other station, but it sometimes produces gravity shockwaves, which makes sleeping a bit hard… so we positioned them on opposite sides of Nostromo" Nina explained. "The large three dimensional cross you can see over there with the central bulb is the particle accelerator. That is where the best Science is done!"
She waited until everyone had got a good view of the station, then she returned to the pilot seat and closed the outer door. Just a few minutes later the group finally arrived at the entrance of the particle accelerator room.
The space was dominated by six long tubes, each of them at least a meter diameter and leading to an empty area in the center. Each of the tubes had multiple power cables connecting it to the walls and tiny blue-glowing spheres every few meters. Small handmade stickers with catgirl faces decorated the tubes all over the surface and large red arrows on the tubes pointed toward the central area of the accelerators.
There were a number of small floating platforms near the center, buzzing around like a mob of tourists taking pictures of an invisible attraction. Two large robotic arm with flexible tubes mounted on them completed the picture.
"Ladies and gentlemen… I present you the Little Big Bang Accelerator!" Nina said proudly, pointing at the large tubes. "One of the most powerful and versatile particle physics research centers in Fenspace."
Dr. Steinberg rolled with his eyes when the catgirl started again with some pseudo-scientific explanation about what they had done in this room. He was more interested in the small details that he found in the room.
'Its a bit like we guessed back at CERN, some parts look more like a movie prop than scientific devices. I wonder how reproducible their experiments are.' he mused as they walked through a door that lead out of the experimentation chamber.
There were already a few more catgirls waiting in the control room, sitting in front of large consoles with lots of blinking lights. A holographic projection in the center of the room showed schematics of the six accelerators and all kinds of things that were attached to them. As soon as the door to the control room closed the room
"Experimentation chamber is empty, switching accelerator to particle physics mode."
"Electron/Positron source is ready, accelerator 2 and 5 are showing condition green."
"Speed cameras initialized."
"Wait, what?" Joseph Singh's head shot up. "What do you mean with speed cameras?"
"Oh, we use a series of waved Speed Cameras to measure the energy of the particle beams."
'Keep calm, keep calm… there is nothing to worry about' Dr. Steinberg thought, breathing in and out slowly. 'This whole insanity is about the end and they will show us some real science soon.'
"Just one question before we start, I noticed that place where the beams intersect is empty" Dr. Steinberg said. "Where is the detector? I mean, without a detector the whole accelerator is nearly worthless."
"Unfortunately we did not know how to build a modern one, and this is a kind of low budget facility anyways" Nina replied sadly. "We managed to come up with a waved gas that works like an improved Cloud Chamber, with different colors for different types of particles. We just have to filter out the cat pictures it draws during the collisions!"