Solution Geneva part 3

"_Ouai_," said Jacques. "He is your boss, _n'est-ce pas_?"
"He didn't tell me he was going to this meeting. He set me up with an intern at the lab. Now he shows up without letting me know. I am pretty sure something is wrong."
"_Vraiment_," said Jacques. "I could not discuss over the phone. Come, we will get down from the bus and go the meeting room. It will start at noon. You should have rested a little."
"No, I'll have a bag of peanuts and some gum from the vending machine," she said.
"Ach, not healthy," said Jacques. "I will arrange for some breakfast. We are arriving at the end of the line at the CERN visitor centre. Let me help you with your bags." He looked around. "Didn't you have more than one bag with you?"
"Yes, it's..." Sam trailed off. Her luggage was nowhere to be seen. "I was struggling to get on the bus," she said. "Then we put the luggage..."
"Ach, _non_, you left it on the number 57. _Il n'y a pas de problème_. We know what bus it was. Here in Switzerland everything is planned like clockwork. We can file a claim on the mobile app and they will let me know when they have it in the lost items." Jacques took out his mobile phone and began to poke and swipe at the screen with one hand.
They got off the bus and checked into the  visitor centre. After a breakfast at the cafeteria, they settled in the meeting room.
"Fortunately you have your computer with you," Jacques said. "But don't worry,you will get your luggage back by the time you get to your hôtel. Don't worry about that at all."
"I'm not worried, Jacques," said Sam. "You need to tell me what you couldn't tell me about that is so secretive."
"Ah, yes," said Jacques. "Well, you know the mess with Dieter in 2011. Signore Bertolucci was upset about the whole event. Herr Dieter was removed from the OPERA program but he still works here at CERN."
"The clock was wrong," said Sam. "It's very tempting to believe in faster than light speeds. It's also very tempting to imagine cold fusion and perpetual motion."
"_Oui_, which both exist."
"Shadows move faster than light," said Sam. "But you can't move information, mass, or energy faster than light in a vacuum."
"_Oui, oui_," agreed Jacques. "So Herr Dieter was moved to other functions. But there have been anomalies in the other departments where he has gone. It's like a curse has followed him wherever he goes."
"He is incompetent and should be banned from working in physics projects, obviously," said Sam.
"It is not so simple in Europe," said Jacques. "In any case, I do not believe it has to do with incompetence or sabotage."
"What could it be?"
"I was hoping that there could be an explanation by a theoretical physicist, not by an engineer like myself."
"I have done some experiments with observer effects. But each observer that is accurate should record the same information. An observer could be a human but it could also be a sensor. Quantum behaviour does not change differently for some people versus others."
"Are you sure?"
"No one is sure. I do not know everything. But let's imagine a very 'lucky' person who observes Schrödinger's cat when the lid is opened. This 'lucky' person always sees the cat is alive. It is possible the lucky person could influence the experiment in such a way that the cat lives indefinitely. Each time the lid is lifted, the cat meows."
"Yes," said Jacques.
"It's possible but doubtful. For that 'lucky' person must be balanced out by an 'unlucky' person who always kills poor Schrödinger's pet every time the experiment is run."
"Must 'luck' be conserved in the universe?"
"There is no such thing as conservation of luck because luck does not actually exist. It is an illusion created by short intervals. If the experiment is repeated indefinitely, the lucky and unlucky person will eventually revert to the mean observation that the cat has a fifty-fifty probability of surviving."
"Still, Herr Dieter or anyone else might have a localised influence for some short observations."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I do not know," said Jacques.
"You are saying that Herr Dieter may have a 'special propensity' to affect the outcome of an experiment that has some random outcome?"
"You are the scientist," said Jacques.
"Imagine instead of Schrödinger's cat we have a Schrödinger's particle that exists in a superposition cloud. Let's say the cloud fills a box which is marked with a right and left side. Whenever the lid of the box is lifted, we observe the particle is on the left or right side of the box."
"_Ouai_."
"Now a 'lucky' person always observes the particle on the right side of the box. Just by random chance somehow. Every time they lift the box, they see the particle on the right side, never on the left side. Does this mean the particle exists only on the right side of the box?"
"No, the particle is on  both sides equally while the lid is closed. And as soon as the lucky person sees it on the right side, it will move quickly within its cloud superposition anywhere inside the box."
"Exactly, so the 'lucky' person just sees a small part of the world and assumes that everything else extends linearly from that observation. But the 'lucky' person is wrong. The particle is not affected by this person and the particle does not 'obey' any commands or influence from the 'lucky' observer."
"_Excellent_," said Jacques. "But you must explain that to Monsieur Mathiason because the original clocks that measured the tau neutrino in 2011 are acting up again. That is why we fear the beams are dumping."
"So the clocks are broken. Fix the clocks."
"You know that Monsieur Mathiason is the president of the Thorne industries solid state products division. And he gives money generously to your projects at Micron U. and also to the CERN projects here and elsewhere. You can imagine the difficulties."
"Oh," said Sam.
Jacques smiled.
"Oh," said Samantha again.

Solution Geneva part 2

"The measurements of the collider must be precise, because the beams must intersect exactly. A 6 tera-electon-volt beam hitting another 6 TeV beam only 1 millimetre thick traveling within one millionth part of c is very tricky. The magnets along each point of the accelerator must be within several micrometers of accuracy. The whole ring must be perfectly circular. A ring of this diameter must compute π within 8 decimal places," Jacques said.

"And how much is the error?" asked Sam.

"Nearly 2 centimetres," said Jacques. He pointed. "We are at Myrin now, we must change to the 56 bus."

Sam nodded. The bus pulled up to the stop and they got out. Jacques continued, "As you know when we first escavated the LEP in the eighties, we were within 1 centimetre when we joined up the tubes."

Sam nodded again. "You haven't had to dump I hope?"

Jacques clucked his tongue. "Unfortunately, yes, we did. We have dumped the beam twice. These were test beams, so they were not heavy. Only 50 bunches or so."

"This was an automatic dump?" Sam asked.

The bus arrived and they boarded. They sat down further in the back where there was more room.

"Yes, it was an automatic dump. The sensors detected beam divergence and the dump plates were hit."

"This was near ATLAS?"

"No, the dump is between CMS and LHCb in octant 6."

"And the automatic systems are calibrated how?"

"We have a sensor matrix with software that is programmed to trip at certain thresholds. We can sample the metrics for a proper, stable beam at around 3 bunch-revolutions, or three-tenths of a millisecond."

"Have you accounted for the tidal effects of the earth''s crust?"

"_Mais bien sur_," said Jacques. "The moon does affect the curvature of the earth but only affects us by 1 millimetre in any case."

"Can the beam travel faster than light?"

"Many particles do," said Jacques. "Especially if they are going through the detection materials."

"These are all small effects," Sam said slowly. "We must be missing something that is even easier. It must be something larger. We are swatting at gnats when we are being stomped on by elephants. Why did you even call me?" she asked.

"I could not describe it on the phone or in email," said Jacques. "We are nearly there, let us get down from the bus. We will go into the meeting room to discuss it. Mathiason will meet us there."

"Mathiason?" cried Sam.

Solution Geneva

When Samantha landed in Geneva, she was greeted by Jacques Luc-Paul at the baggage terminal. Jacques greeted her in the customary European way, which made Sam nervous every time.
"Greetings. Welcome to Geneva," said Jacques.
"_Merci_," said Sam. "_Comment ça va_?"
"_Bien merci_," said Jacques. "I trust your flight was not too stressful?"
"_Pas mal_," said Sam. "I am very tired, however."
"No trouble at all," said Jacques. "We are very happy to have you come to CERN to help us with some of the problems we are having. We are very close to reopening the collider and we want to avoid any unpleasant situations."
"Unpleasant?" asked Samantha. "The last time you had an accident, the collider closed for more than a year."
"Ach, yes, that is true," said Jacques. "But we will discuss it later. You are tired. Which _hôtel_ are you staying in?"
"The _Tarhôtel Genève_," said Sam.
"_Bon_," said Jacques.
Sam reached to grab one of her suitcases and Jacques leaned in to pick it up for her. "You have more?" he asked.
"I can manage," she said and grabbed her suitcase. She saw a second suitcase and grabbed it with some difficulty.
Jacques walked with her to the Unireso ticket station and they each got a metro pass.
"Bus 57?" asked Sam.
"Ah, yes," said Jacques. "But you can drop your baggage at your _hôtel_ and rest if you like."
"No, I'll be fine. It's only 8 o'clock in the morning. I slept on the plane."
"Very well," Jacques said and they walked to the bus stop.
"Tell me about the problems you are having?" asked Sam.
"We call them 'challenges'," said Jacques.
"Yes, tell me about your challenges," said Sam.
"We are having some troubles explaining some anomalies with the measuring equipment," said Jacques.
"The Swiss clocks are wrong?" joke Sam.
"No, no, no. Jacques smiled. "The Swiss clocks _son parfait_!"
"I know. So you are not going to repeat the mistakes that Didier made with the speed of light again?"
"Oh no, no," said Jacques. The bus arrived and they boarded. Samantha refused to get help from Jacques and held up the queue of passengers as she struggled with her bags.
When they were seated, Jacques continued, "No, Didier has not been involved. It was a disaster and embarrassment obviously when we could not calculate the speed of light correctly. No, this problem is a bit more strange. We have tried to calibrate our measuring devices several times and each time we do so the clocks on both sides of the collider are changing together."
"How do you think this is happening?" asked Sam.
"In the email I sent you last month, I detailed some of the results we have seen."
"I know. I have been running some tests in my lab. But I'm asking you what you think the problem is so that I can determine what you are, and are not, looking at."
Jacques sat back in his seat. "You _Americaines_ are always a bit pushy," he said. "But I agree. We need some outsider views on this problem if we are to make progress."
"It helps that I'm fat and ugly," said Sam.
"You are not _laid_," said Jacques, familiar with her routine. "No, we are sure that the problem lies with the software that calculates the measurements we get from the sensors. We know for sure that the clocks are correct, the measurements are correct to the micrometre, and the speeds and geometry of the collider are completely correct."

Solution Taxi ride

They ran the experiment several times that week without any further issues.  Mark had worked on the experiment application that ran on Sam's computer and had reduced the run time by half. Sam had grudgingly admitted his changes were beneficial to her experiment process, allowing them to run several more tests per day. However, Sam still took time out to go the lobby for a drink of water or work on her designs on paper. Even though the computer could analyse the report data faster, Sam still took a break between each run to ponder the experiment after each run.
During the last run of the week, Mark said, "I wonder if I can leave early today? I need to get to the airport before the break."
Sam nodded. "Where are you going?" she asked out of boredom rather than actual curiosity.
"Nassau," Mark said. "My dad owns a timeshare company there."
"Must be nice," Sam said.
"It is nice. There'll be a lot of sweet coeds down there partying. You're going to Geneva?"
"Yes," Sam said. "There will be a lot of smart old euro trash men there."
Mark laughed. "You'll pick up a lot of old white dudes I bet."
Sam said, "It helps that I'm fat and ugly."
"You're not fat," Mark said. And then, a moment too late, "Or ugly."
"Nice try kid," Sam said. "Why don't you take off right now? I can close up by myself. I don't need you anymore."
"That's cold, Ms. Griffen," Mark said and grinned.
After Mark left, Sam finished collecting the data from the last run. She turned off the laser and hit the big red button labelled STOP. She cleaned up the room and closed the door to the lab while the screen asked anyone if was sure or not.
Sam walked back to her apartment and gathered her luggage and research papers. She left her apartment and waited downstairs for the taxi to arrive. A greyish taxi with a crooked roof light passed as she waved. She couldn't tell if the light had been on or not. Another taxi with a triangular advertisement for pizza passed. She waved again, but the taxi didn't stop.
She waited for a few more minutes and saw another grey taxi with a crooked roof light. She waved and jumped up, leaning out into the street. Her safety goggles nearly fell off. She realised she had them on, so she took them off and was surprised to see the world jump into full colour. The taxi that was grey was actually yellow and the light was clearly on but nonetheless had passed her by.
Sam yelled in frustration, "I hope that you find a lot of customers who tip poorly and go on sub-optimal routes!"
Behind her she heard someone calling her name. "Ms. Griffen! Ms. Griffen!"
Sam turned and saw a yellow taxi nearby at the sidewalk with a triangular advertisement for pizza on the roof. The rear window was rolled down and a young man wearing a hoodie was leaning out the window and waving at her.
"Mark?" she asked.
"Ms. Griffen!" he called and got out of the taxi. He pulled down his hoodie to reveal his large headphones. He took the headphones off and put them around his neck. "Ms. Griffen," he repeated. "My taxi took a long time to get here and I saw you waiting. Let's share a ride, my treat."
"No thanks," she said distractedly, looking for her taxi to arrive.
"No, really, it's okay. My dad owns the taxi companies. They're corrupt and will probably never come to pick you." Mark grabbed her luggage and walked around to the back of the taxi. The taxi driver jumped out of the car and ran around to pop open the boot. The taxi driver lifted the luggage into the rear of the car.
Sam nodded and said, "Thanks. I guess." She crawled into the open passenger door. Mark tipped the taxi driver and got into the cab with her. The taxi started driving to the airport.
"Thanks," Sam repeated to Mark. "I don't know how long they make people wait for a taxi. It's like when you make a reservation at a restaurant. They never hold the seat for you. They just pretend to save a table and just hope they have an opening when you arrive. Then, when you walk into the restaurant fifteen minutes early as is polite, they make you wait for an opening. It's very frustrating."
Mark laughed. "You don't seem like you go out to restaurants a lot," he said.
"No, it's too expensive," Sam admitted. "Although I do go on dreadful dates."
Mark laughed. "You go on dates? Your cats must miss you when you go out."
"I don't have cats," said Sam.
A grey van in front of the taxi stopped abruptly at an amber light. The taxi cab stopped and honked.
"You meet the dates on Elderly Meet dot com?" Mark asked.
"It helps being old and short," said Sam. The taxi continued through the intersection on the green light.
"You're not short," said Mark. Then, to ease the sting, he said, "How do you get ready for your dates? Put on a nice clean lab coat and spray some bee pheromones from the biology lab?"
"No," said Sam. "I just make sure my underwear don't have any skid marks. That's about it."
Mark sat uncomfortably, not sure if she was joking or not. Ahead of them a taxi cab with a crooked roof light was stopped behind a grey van at a red light. The taxi in front of them honked.
"I was just kidding," said Mark.
"I know," said Sam. "I have a sense of humour but it's not the same as normal people."
"I know," said Mark. "So, you're single I guess. Were you ever married?"
"No," said Sam. "My father was professor of astrophysics at LYU and my mother was professor Emeritus of mathematics at Illinois Technology. I never got to meet qualified men."
Mark whistled. "That's where you got your brains from," he said.
"No, I was adopted," Sam said.
"Oh," said Mark. The grey van was now in front of their taxi. It rushed through the amber light. The taxi stopped as the light turned red. The van indicated left and turned, revealing a similar grey van turning right. After both had turned, another grey van continued straight.
"I was dating a single dad who was professor of... I don't want to say because you were there at LYU," Sam said. "I pestered him until he finally agreed to have sex with me." Mark laughed. "What? It's not that funny. He finally agreed to take me to his house after a date. We were in the middle of having sex when his son came into the room and caught us."
Mark laughed louder. "What did he say?"
"He said something like, 'Daddy, you have a teddy bear!' He was six or so at the time."
Mark laughed. Sam continued, "I was humiliated and we broke up that evening. We broke up after having sex. That's the last time I'll do that."
Mark stopped laughing. "Aw, that's not funny."
Sam said, "No, it's not. I figure I'm not very good at anything else, so I try to do my best in science. I'm not very good at that either, so I just give up on the rest."
"You're good at science!" exclaimed Mark. "You are the top theoretical physicist in the nation. You have an IQ of like 160."
"I have an IQ of 130," she corrected. "I couldn't even get into LYU with my father's help. We're not rich like your family. My father had to beg your grandfather to let me get a position at his private labs."
"You couldn't get into LYU?" Mark asked.
"No, I worked in your grandfather's labs for ten years before I got an honourary degree from LYU, but my dad was embarrassed by then and retired. I only got a 1700 on the SAT. The dean at LYU said she didn't care who my father or mother was. She said they turn down people with 1800s for the SAT. With a 1700, I could work at McDonalds and be the manager."
Mark laughed. "I only had a 1900 for the SAT," he admitted.
"The new scoring system, out of 2100?" Sam asked.
"Yep," Mark said. "My father got me into LYU. I didn't know it was that hard to get in." The taxi stopped at a red light and a grey van behind the taxi honked. Mark looked back.
"Did you have any kids?" Mark asked.
"I had a son," said Sam. "From that one night encounter with the single dad."
"Oh," said Mark. "You should have had him use a condom."
"He did," said Sam.
"Oh," said Mark. "You should have been on the pill then."
"I was on oral contraception," said Sam.
"Oh," said Mark.
"They didn't have Plan B at the time," she said. "I also didn't even realise it until it was a month later. My parents were upset with me. I was barely working through my bachelors at LYU part time. As far as they were concerned, I might not even make it to graduate school. My father told me to get an abortion."
"You didn't?" asked Mark.
"No, I kept the baby and put him up for adoption. My therapist says I re-enacted my birth-parents' actions to try to connect with them."
"What about the father?" asked Mark.
"I never told him," Sam said. "I don't think it's his fault, and he's just a single father on a professor's salary so I didn't want to bother him."
"Man," said Mark in disbelief.
"It was an open adoption and I visited my son on and off through the first few years of his life."
"Okay," said Mark.
"One day he ran away from me and ran into the street. He was hit by a bus and died. The universe is a cold and cruel place to kill children, and it doesn't care what we do or say."
"What the fuck?" asked Mark wiping something in the corner of his eye.
"He would be your age by now," Sam said. "I'm glad I told this story. I've never told anyone about this before. Now I feel like I've let it out and no one is listening."
"I can hear you," said the taxi driver. "My two sons are 25 and 27. I lost my third son to leukemia. We're almost at the airport."
"Thank you driver," said Samantha.
When they arrived at the airport, Sam got out at her terminal and tipped the driver for her fare despite Mark's objections.

Solution experiment part 4

"If you insist on being a child, I'll treat you like one. In fact, children aren't allowed to work. Given that you act like a child and children aren't allowed to work, maybe I will fire you," Sam said.
"I'm sorry Ms. Griffen," Mark pleaded.  "My dad would kill me if I didn't intern with you. He had to pull some strings with Mathiason and I'll be in deep sh..." Mark trailed off and corrected himself, "Doo-doo. I'll be in deep doo-doo if I get fired."
"Mathiason did send you!" said Samantha and she crossed her arms.
"No, they didn't send me. I requested this position. I've heard good things. My father says that Micron U is the best comp-sci campus and that you are the top investigator in theoretical modeling. I really want to work on those algorithms your interns have been publishing." He begged again, "Please."
Sam considered his plea. Then she said, "I don't know if I believe you or not. It's just crazy enough that you actually do want to work on this project. But you've been very disrespectful so far. And you also have an entitled air about you. I'd actually love to get back at a Thorne for what Julian did to my father." Sam uncrossed her arms. She continued, "But I don't have a lot of time to complete these tests. I need to go to CERN next week. I need some results before I go there. I can fire you after that."
"Thanks," Mark said. "I really appreciate it."
"Thanks for being fired?" asked Sam and laughed.
"Yes. I mean, no. I mean, thanks for the second chance. I know I can do better."
"Okay, let's go back to the lab," said Sam. She turned and walked back toward the stairwell.
Mark chased after. "What about the freaky sh... Spooky action in the lab?" he asked.
"The data will tell us," she said to the air in front of her as she marched up the stairs.
Back inside the lab, the computer was still displaying an hourglass that endlessly turned over, refilled, emptied, turned over, and refilled.
"What would we look for?" asked Mark.
"First, the amount of light captured from the front-split beam will tell us how long the laser was on and how much light should be captured by the back sensors. The left and right counts should add up to something close to the front-split amount. Whenever we see an equal amount, we would know that the experiment was configured correctly. If we see a bias on either the right or left amounts, we can probably guess that the mesh was incorrectly placed."
"What about when the mesh disappears completely?" asked Mark.
"I have some documentary evidence for that," said Sam. "There's also a camera above," here she pointed up to the ceiling, "that records the experiment from above. We just fast-forward the video to the point where the alarms were going off and look at the camera."
Mark looked up. "Oh," he said. "Speaking of alarms, doesn't that mean the sensors were recording an imbalance?"
Sam nodded. The computer flashed a green prompt and displayed a screen with several application icons. Sam touched the screen in a sequence and brought up a directory folder containing several files all listed by date. She finger-swiped to the bottom of the list and tapped the last item with a date and time from a few minutes earlier.
She said, "See here is the beginning of the replay." An overhead view of the table appeared. It showed a very symmetrical set of green lines dancing in a series of triangles and straight lines.
Sam swiped forward until Mark's head could be seen leaning into the visible table area from above. "You have a bald spot," Sam announced. Mark winced. She swiped forward again but more slowly. A graph with several lines splayed across it. The differently coloured lines bobbed up and down as the back of Mark's head moved and his hands pulled at the mesh, moving it forward. "And... here," said Sam.
The video froze and showed the table with Mark's left shoulder turned three-quarters to the table and his head looking over his right shoulder.
"What's that?" Mark asked, pointing.
Sam nodded. A green line along the bottom of the screen (the right-side from the laser) pointed off in at a strange angle, clearly breaking the neatly formed symmetry in the design of the table. Sam leaned closer and traced the line. She glanced at the graph with the coloured lines on the side. "You see here," she said, moving her finger. "The right-side count is zero. So that's all it was, the laser was moved off the lens and the incidence of the angle allowed those photons to be counted as left-side photons. Here the total count in yellow is just slightly higher than the left-side count in red. The right-side count in green is zero."
Mark nodded. "You can't see the mesh," he noted.
"You can never see the mesh," said Sam. "The camera is aimed from above. So it looks like a line."
"There's no line," he said, squinting.
"It's hard to see," she admitted.
"If the mesh is a meant to emulate the diffraction pattern at the back, and the diffraction pattern were to collapse, then the light should be blocked by the mesh," Mark said.
"Light takes all possible paths," Sam said. "So it goes through the pinholes, around and bypassing the mesh, and continues on."
"If you rewind a bit," said Mark pointing, "You can see the mesh here.. stop," he said.
Sam nodded.
"And the right-side mirror is correct," he said.
Sam swiped forward keeping her finger on the screen. The silver line marking the mesh flickered in slow motion, waved slightly as if bending, and then disappeared. At the moment it started waving, the green light on the right side mirror angled abruptly out of alignment.
"Holy sh..." said Mark, mumbling the last word.
"Hm," said Samantha.
"The camera is another observer to the experiment. The fact that you were recording the video of the experiment means there were three observers. That changes everything," said Mark.
Samantha laughed. "Yes, the camera is an observer. So are all the photon sensors. Everything we use to measure the universe is an observer."
"So that proves it," said Mark.
"No, no," said Samantha still laughing. "Quantum mechanics can't go back into the camera or back into time to change the records retroactively. The camera doesn't see anything that we don't see or can't see.
"Einstein was upset about quantum theory because he couldn't abide by the fact that the universe wasn't deterministic. In classic terms, everything is deterministic. He fought for the fact that if you knew the exact starting position of every particle in the universe, you could deterministically predict everything in the universe. He must have lost his mind when Bohr and Heisenberg were proving that wasn't the case. Not only is it not the case that you can't know all the starting conditions of the universe. But you also can't know the outcome of every interaction at the quantum level. It's completely random. He went crazy trying to tear quantum theory apart."
"Isn't that chaos theory?" asked Mark. "The fact that small changes in initial conditions changes the outcome?"
"Yes, but that's just an expression of the underlying quantum interactions. Everything is completely random and the universe refuses to allow us to predict the outcomes of anything at the quantum level."
"So we can never reproduce the initial conditions of an experiment the same way twice?"
"Never. In classic physics, things are averaged out well enough that, say, rolling a ball downhill is roughly the same every time. But the better your instrumentation gets, the more you need to account for strange effects like thermal expansion, humidity, friction from different spots on the ball and ramp, and so forth. Even those are classic parameters. Imagine trying to setup the rolling ball experiment and trying to line up all the atoms with the same orientation, energy levels, and so forth."
"I agree," said Mark. "Einstein should have been smart enough to figure that out."
"The difference is that Einstein couldn't accept that it wasn't possible. He thought it should be theoretically possible. He figured that the Copenhagen analysis was incomplete at best, or wrong at worst. EPR, that is, Einstein Podolsky, and Rosen, made fun of the guys working on quantum theory. Einstein and all his believers were wrong. They were flat, broken, bald, and dead wrong."
"They weren't wrong," said Mark.
"Einstein was wrong. He wasn't some great saint. He had a very good theory in relativity which has been shown to work in all of the classic frames of reference. Newton couldn't have done experiments that involved relativity. Einstein, and everyone else, believed he had correctly rewritten the entire summation of physics in one fell swoop. Unfortunately for Einstein and everyone else, the universe was playing magician, showing how the trick is done and coming up with another stumper.
"Einstein was wrong," Sam repeated. "He was humiliatingly wrong. Like all men, he was wrapped up in his own idea of how things were and wouldn't listen to anyone else."
"'God doesn't play with dice,' he said," Mark quoted.
"The quote is 'God doesn't throw dice,'" Sam said. "But of course God throws dice. He is omnipotent. He can do anything. How can God not throw dice? He created the dice and He throws them all the time."
"Sacrilege," joked Mark.
"Of course," smiled Samantha. "It's something I think about all the time. Einstein was wrong. I must be wrong a lot more of the time. We should all be careful about what stands we make and where we plant our idealism."
"I'm not wrong," said Mark. "I saw the mesh disappear and it's on the camera too."
"There is a simple answer," Sam said. "There must be. You can count on people making mistakes. You can count on people being wrong. Whole careers are made of people who do nothing but show off other people's mistakes. I've seen it all too often."