Neutrinos

"Cosmic Progeny"/huntemann                                                                                                                                             Page 5

Prologue
Scene [1]

Neutrinos

Kamiokande II Project Control room1, Japan
1987-Feb 23.43 UT2; 7:48 PM local time.
         Kimmo leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on the desk while he talks to his girlfriend, Mineko, on the phone. “Put the steak in the freezer now. I’ll be there in an hour. It should be stiff enough to cut by then.”

         “You sure you’ll be home in an hour?”

         “No problem, just have to write up the calibration log and I'll be leaving. Sallsi is usually here early anyway.”

         “Sallsi, that lush? You’re just going to the bar with Sallsi!”

         “No, no. He's working swing shift this week. I'll be home by eight-thirty.”

         “You'd better. If you're late... the steak will be frozen solid. Don't be late.”

         “Don't worry. I'll be there.” Kimmo hangs up the phone.

         Women who've spent time in the states sure are bossy. But, I'm still lucky I have her.

         He swings his chair around to the console just as a point of light flashes on the screen...

         Kimmo notes, 8 MeV3, just background, and returns to writing in a notebook.

         Kimmo’s relief, Sallsi, comes into the control room and says, “Hi Kimmo. Anything happening?”

         The smell of beer greets Kimmo, too, as Sallsi takes a seat beside him.

         “We just finished the calibration. Have to write up the logs is all,” Kimmo says. Waving a hand in front of his nose, “What bar did you just crawl out of?”

         “Oh Kimmo, you wimp. I’ve been good... Well, for several hours that is.”

         “Several hours?”

         “Met Idia at the airport bar about three... went to her place for a while.”

         “And what would Yiddia say about that?”

         “What? Now why would I tell her?”

         “Oh, maybe you won't. But, anybody at the bar, including Idia, might.”

         “Hay, if she finds out...” Sallsi shrugs his shoulders, “she finds out.”

         “Sallsi, don't treat Yiddia like that. She likes you... I don't know why... but she does.”

         “I am what I am,” Sallsi says. Looking past Kimmo he continues, “But, what was that?”

         “What was what?” Kimmo says.

         “That,” pointing to the screen.

         A spike at 20 MeV, followed by another at 37, and another at 21 flicker across the screen.

         “Wow, that's not background!” Kimmo says.

         “Nope.”

         More high energy hits light the screen for 15 seconds, slowly diminishing to background levels.

         Sallsi says, “Call Dr. O____. Were all the recorders running?”

         “Of course. We finished the calibration half an hour ago. They were all back to run mode.”

         “Capture the FFT4 loop before it recycles.”

         Kimmo throws an instrument switch that substitutes a second spectrum analyzer for the primary. Then picks up the phone and calls the Chief Scientist for the Kamiokande II project.
         
         
Pages: 3
Words: 461

Footnotes
1  Kamiokande II Project - located in the Kamioka Mozumi Mine (Kamioka Mining and Smelting Co.) in Hida city (formerly Kamioka town), Gifu, Japan. 35° 29’N, 136° 54’E.
2  UT - Universal Time is a timescale based on the rotation of the Earth. It is a modern continuation of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), i.e., the mean solar time on the meridian of Greenwich, England, which is the conventional 0-meridian for geographic longitude. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Time). Initial optical sighting 24.2 UT - 18/24 = 23.45 UT for neutrino sighting. .45 x 24 = 10:48 AM + 9:00 = 7:48 PM for local Japan time.
3  MeV - Million Electron Volts, a measure of ion energy.
4  FFT - Fast Fourier Transform, a sophisticated data analysis technique.