Philip Latham

“ Every time I couldn't help saying to myself, ‘Stoddard, maybe you've discovered something at last. Maybe you've stumbled onto something big.' So far I've never made a single scientific discovery.
"Now you take this observation tonight. Sure, it would be exciting to suppose the solar system has shrunk to the size of a dime, but first I want to be absolutely sure there isn't some perfectly natural commonplace explanation. It's a depressing fact that most of the exciting results a scientist gets can eventually be traced to errors of observation. ”

“ Stoddard had not listened for more than five minutes before he began to experience the same sense of bewilderment that little Dorothy must have felt on her first trip to the land of Oz. As nearly as he could gather, Friedmann considered the familiar everyday world to constitute merely a tiny corner or "clot" in a vastly higher order of space-time or "Xi space." Ordinarily, events in the Xi space are on too gross a scale to exert a sensible effect on the finegrained clot space. ”

“ Our universe only had a diameter of twenty thousand angstroms. All radiation of longer wave length was cut out."
"About one ten-thousandth of an inch," said Stoddard, doing some fast mental arithmetic. He chuckled. "No wonder old Fosberg was worried!"
"You see the Xi effect does give a consistent explanation of all the phenomena," said Arnold triumphantly. "In any case, we can't be in doubt much longer."
"How's that?"
"Why because the universe will have shrunk so much the optical spectrum will be affected. The landscape will change color." ”

“ Soon the world will be completely devoid of the quality of radiation that excites the sensation of visible light. As it disappears, the sensation will be similar to that of watching a scene in a play in which the lights are gradually dimmed until finally the stage and players are utterly blotted out. ”

“ A pure Type B, on the other hand, gives the impression of being always on the point of boiling over. He trembles with suppressed excitement. One of his former pupils has just proposed a theory that constitutes a tremendous advance. Where there was only darkness before now all is sunshine and light. As soon as a few odds and ends are cleared up the whole problem will be practically solved, et cetera, et cetera.
Stoddard classified Friedmann as predominantly Type A with a few overtones of Type B thrown in. ”

“ Fosberg and Ballantyne from the math department, Blacker and Tinsdale from the radiation laboratory, and Denning the nuclear physicist. The remainder of the audience in the rear was composed of a miscellaneous rabble of graduate students and professors from neighboring institutions of learning and culture.
"Who's ahead?" asked Stoddard, sinking into the chair beside his partner.
"You should have heard Friedmann put old Blacker in his place a minute ago," Arnold whispered with evident relish. "He sure slapped him down plenty that time." ”

“ When events in the super-cosmos happen to intrude upon an individual clot extraordinary results ensue; for example, angular momentum is not strictly conserved, and Hamilton's equations require modification, to mention only a few.
"Thus for a properly oriented observer the universe must at all times have a radius equal to tau times the velocity of light," said Friedmann, by way of conclusion. "Hence, if tau increases uniformly we must of necessity have the expanding universe as shown by the general recession of the extragalactic nebulae. ”

“ The government makes me pay taxes so scientists can sit in their laboratories and hatch these wild theories. But when danger comes along they're just as helpless as the rest of us.'"
The letter provoked a good deal of laughter mingled with a surprising amount of handclapping. The humor of the situation, however, was wholly lost on Friedmann. "What would Mr. Taxpayer have the scientists do?" he demanded in a voice that was openly contemptuous. "Does he think they deliberately create the lightning that destroys a tree? ”

“ No scientific theory ever became accepted as fact so quickly as Friedmann's theory of the Xi effect, but then no other theory before ever had such a convincing array of scientific evidence to support it. The change in the tint of the landscape that Arnold had foreseen eventually developed but for several weeks it was too slight to be readily obvious. ”

“ Stoddard was in his laboratory in the basement of the Astrophysics Building at Western Tech hard at work on the wiring diagram for the amplifier system when Arnold came breezing in, his bright young face aglow with enthusiasm.
"Guess what?" he exclaimed. "Friedmann's in town. He's agreed to give a talk this afternoon in Dickinson Hall on his theory of the Xi effect. You know Friedmann, don't you?"
Stoddard shook his head. "Never heard of him."
Arnold hooked one leg over the corner of the desk. "Well, in my opinion he's the foremost cosmologist in the world today. ”

“ Should you summon the courage to ask his opinion on a paper, he regards it with much the same expression of critical disapproval that a secondhand car dealer instinctively assumes when inspecting a battered automobile brought in for sale. Everything is in a pretty bad state. ”

“ He drew a line from the central dot to a point on the boundary. "Obviously nothing can exist within the boundary bigger than the boundary itself. Therefore, this means that all electromagnetic radiation exceeding a thousand kilometers is eliminated. That accounts for the fadeout in radio transmission. As the boundary continues to shrink shorter wave lengths keep being cut out all the time."
"I think I'm beginning to get it," said Stoddard, studying the diagram. "We didn't get any transmission beyond twenty thousand angstroms because there wasn't any radiation to transmit." ”

“ Arnold went on, falling into step beside him, "why couldn't we test the Xi effect ourselves?"
"Test it ourselves!"
"Why not? After all, it shouldn't be too difficult. As Friedmann said, we would only need to make some observation that depends explicitly on the velocity of light."
Stoddard snorted. "Bet he's never made a bona fide observation in his whole life." ”

“ Arnold gave him a quizzical glance. "Haven't you heard yet? All the radio stations have been dead for more than a week."
"What's the matter with 'em?"
"Well, it's really quite mysterious. Last Monday KLX faded out right in the middle of a program, and then stations farther up the dial began to be hit one after the other. For awhile all you could get were the amateurs and the police department. Now they're dead, too."
Stoddard, who regarded the radio as one of the major threats to his peace of mind, took the news philosophically. ”

“ We scientists have known the truth for weeks and had a chance to become reconciled to it. But what about the average man whose cosmic outlook is limited to his job and the mortgage on his home out in Brentwood?"
"Be quite a blow to 'em probably," said Stoddard, biting into his hot dog. "Trouble with these theoretical fellows is they act as if the Xi effect had been invented for the sole purpose of letting them test out all their screwy ideas on nuclear structure."
Arnold sat down and began studying his program. ”

“ If the solar system has really shrunk as much as the Xi effect predicts, it should occur way ahead of time."
"You mean do a kind of repeat on Roemer's work," said Stoddard, "only with a light time corresponding to the whole distance to Jupiter instead of the diameter of the Earth's orbit?"
"Exactly!"
Stoddard could feel the net closing around him. He knew that once his partner in crime became infatuated with an idea it was useless to try to discourage him. "Well, I guess we've looked for less hopeful things. ”

“ Men still laughed, and joked about the Xi effect over their old-fashioneds at the country club, but just when everybody was feeling happy and secure again someone was sure to spoil it all. "You know this thing may turn out to be more serious than we think," he would say. "I've got a nephew teaches out at the university. Hasn't got a dime but smart as the devil. ”

“ Arnold dozing against Stoddard's shoulder found himself repeating a phrase from Friedmann's last remark: "There is no hope—There is no hope—"
THE END
↑ The outstanding difference between gravitational theory and observation is the well-known discrepancy of 43" per century in the motion of the perihelion of Mercury. Einstein's explanation of this discrepancy was considered a triumph for relativity.
The next largest difference between gravitational theory and observation is the secular variation of 13" per century in the node of Venus, which has not been explained by relativity. ”

“ Here is the message: ‘Spectroscopic laboratory reports sudden marked acceleration Xi effect. Cutoff 5500 at 0000 GCT.' Now in plain language what does this mean? It means that at four o'clock this afternoon the extinction of radiation extended nearly to the green." He hesitated. "I regret to inform the lady that her husband will never be able to return to his work. Why? Because so little while is left to us that no time remains for either work or play."
An excited uneasy murmur swept around the coliseum that rose to a sharp peak then hastily died away as the chairman selected another card. ”

“ The first in the series was scheduled for the Los Angeles Coliseum for Monday, November 27th, with the great Dr. Friedmann as the feature speaker of the evening. Public sentiment changed almost overnight. The personal appearance of Friedmann alone did much to restore confidnce. He was the fellow who had discovered this Xi effect, wasn't he? Well, then, he could probably control it, too. Man had never met a problem that man was unable to solve. ”

“ Although the Los Angeles Police Department had every man available on duty in addition to two hundred special officers hired from outlying districts, they were able to maintain order only with considerable difficulty. ”