Sunday March 23, 2014
Book 15: Delegates and Delegation — Part I: Confidence

Note: Neutrinos are notoriously hard to detect. Look down at your hand. Trillions of neutrinos are moving through it at close to the speed of light (unless you happen to be benefiting from the cover of a unifield shield, or sitting in the "shadow" of a neutron star.)

The tiny, swirling clumps of neutronium inside an annie plant cast fairly solid neutrino shadows, and much, much fainter shadows are cast by the oversized post-trans-Uranic atoms used in the construction of annie plants, as well as the spacecraft hulls for folks who can afford such extravagance.

Seeing these shadows, however, requires the ability to catch lots of neutrinos, and figure out where they are and are not getting through.

The Deep Ice Array on Europa does not depend on hundreds of kilometers of ice for neutrino detection. It uses the same field manipulation technology found in unifield shields, allowing for the capture of as large or as small a percentage of passing neutrinos as the scientists working there wish to capture. It's one more way to monitor the health of Sol system's primary (aka "the Sun"), an activity that the hundreds of billions of sophonts depending on that star for a gravitational anchor approve of. 

At any rate, the illustration of Neosynchronicity's neutrino shadow is stylized for enhanced readability, and shows that Ennesby isn't afraid to do some sky-writing with beams of neutrinos.

Transcript

ENNESBY: Oh, ho!  These are the clever monkeys.

MURTAUGH: What have you found, Ennesby?

ENNESBY: Draw a straight line between Sol and Europa.  Our flight plan has us crossing that line while in a mandatory slow-fly zone.

MURTAUGH: So our shadow will zip across Europa.  What does that accomplish?

ENNESBY: Here, in the path of our shadow, is the site of the old Deep Ice Array.  It's a neutrino detector.

MURTAUGH: Ah... the usual scans left them concerned, so somebody up the chain demanded a peek at our neutrino shadow.

ENNESBY: Exactly.  At speed, with shields up they'd see nothing, but in slow-fly we'll have them down, and the biggest neutrino-emitter for four light-years in any direction will be shining right through us.

MURTAUGH: What is that going to tell them?

ENNESBY: The neutronium in our annies will cast sharp shadows, and they'll also get an idea of just how dense our hull material is.

ENNESBY: Of course, by modulating neutrino emission I can tell them lots of other things, too.

SORLIE: Message for you from the Neosynchronicity.

BALA-AMIN: For me?  Really?  How would they know who to address the...

Okay, yes.  That is addressed to me.

neutrino scan: *on-screen, printed* "COOL, HUH?

IF YOU WANT

A BETTER LOOK,

JUST ASK."