When reached for comment, Senator Sam Bayless (R-KS) said, “In the real world, outside of the ivory tower, science is a vigorous debate, not a museum piece. Just as there is no scientific agreement about the so-called Big Bang, there is no scientific agreement about the causes of so-called climate change.” Rep. Bayless added, “I’m proud of my role in helping the National Science Foundation understand that diversity in science is a good thing.”
Cooper found the sidebar accompanying the article more interesting than the political implications of congressmen bickering with the NSF. In coming to South Pole Station for the research season, Tim wrote, Pavano was reuniting with a former college roommate: an astrophysicist named Sal Brennan, the son of a highly respected theoretical physicist from Stanford. Dr. John Brennan had, with Alan Guth, helped introduce the idea of cosmic inflation. He had also plucked Frank Pavano from the cornfields of Indiana and brought him to Stanford, only to have Pavano decline to work on Dr. Brennan’s team.
Tim reported that, at the same time Pavano was studying heliophysics across campus, Sal had taken up the mantle of his father’s uncompleted work—the search for b-modes, the gravitational waves that would, if found, prove the inflationary theory to be correct. And he’d come close once: in 1999, Sal had been part of a South Pole–based experiment that had discovered that microwave radiation was polarized. (Tim didn’t elaborate on the import of this finding, and Cooper assumed that, to minds more subtle than hers, the discovery spoke for itself.) But then something had changed. Sal lost confidence in the inflationary model and decided to leave Stanford in order to do his post-doc work at Princeton with Peter Sokoloff, a theoretical physicist who had developed a rival theory to the Big Bang. This theory suggested that rather than the explosive genesis that Dr. Brennan and others had posited, the universe had come about as the result of the latest collision with a parallel world.
“Sal Brennan now believes what his father calls the Big Bang is nothing more than an echo,” Tim wrote. “The two men have not spoken since early 2000, when the younger Brennan left for Princeton.” Tim went on to report that others working in cosmology—particularly adherents to cosmic inflation—viewed Sal’s model, which was a novel refinement of Sokoloff’s, with skepticism. However, Princeton’s joint South Pole–based experiment with Stanford’s Kavli team was without precedent, and could possibly result in the elimination of one of the models by year’s end.
“None of the cosmologists working on the standard model at Pole this season would go on the record about Sal Brennan’s research,” Tim wrote, “but some indicated that he and Frank Pavano’s research interests had more in common that one might think.”
Cooper absorbed this information avidly. Her own disagreements with her father ran along the lines of whether oars and paddles really were two different things. In some circles, she now realized, it was possible that a father would disavow his son over a difference of opinion regarding the origins of the universe. Or maybe it was just in Sal’s circle that such a thing could happen. Either way, it was now clear to Cooper that Sal was not just a bro-dude with a taste for tater tots. There was a whole universe behind his laughing eyes.
*
“Journalists never get science right,” Sal replied when Cooper found him on the climbing wall in the gym that night.
“What about Pavano? Did he get Pavano right?”
Sal dropped from the wall and rubbed powder off his hands. “Pavano’s so awkward he makes even theoretical physicists uncomfortable. He was always too much in his own head, so he could never collaborate with anyone on papers. Then he started plagiarizing—and trust me, you have to work really hard to convincingly plagiarize helioseismology research. He couldn’t get tenure and got the boot. With no home institution, he couldn’t get funding. Without funding he was fucked.”
“But he’s here,” Cooper said, “so clearly he’s not totally fucked.”
“Well, lucky for him there are people who make a living looking for failed scientists.”
“But what about the plagiarism? Wouldn’t that tarnish his rep?”
“You keep forgetting—it’s not about the science. Plagiarizing a couple graphs in an obscure research paper? No, that’s nothing more than a love bite. It’s about the messaging. Did you read the rest of the piece?”
“You mean where they talk about you and your research? I stopped reading after the part about the branes and the parallel universes. It got too science-y and I lost interest.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course that’s the part that is going to change the world, but sure, god forbid it get too ‘science-y.’” He picked Cooper’s parka off the floor and threw it at her. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
Minutes later, they were careening across the ice on a snowmobile, flying over sastrugi and hitting every frozen crest so hard Cooper could feel her fillings clattering. The wind was ferociously cold; Cooper thought her face was going to peel off. She looked over her shoulder at the Dome growing smaller and smaller as they sped toward the metal city where so much science was done at South Pole: the Dark Sector.
She pulled her face out of the back of Sal’s parka in time to see two enormous funnels, open to the sky and surrounded by scaffolding, and a couple of large, blue prefab buildings embraced by metal staircases. She was amazed at how impermanent the structures of the Dark Sector looked, like a mutated, multilevel trailer park. The place seemed deserted. Once inside, Sal led her into a large room filled with humming supercomputers and servers and endless coils of cables, all feeding into a large enclosed cable tray. He showed her the calibration station, and his face flushed with geek joy when he took out the blueprints for the Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver (ACBAR, he called it) that would be installed on the telescope next year.
Cooper began to lose track of the number of flickering computer screens and exactly what was supposed to be happening, but that was okay. She was almost getting it. This was what the Beakers were always yammering about. This was, in fact, Sal’s world, and she was weirdly drawn to it.
Sal brought her to a small, cluttered cubicle. Her brain immediately filled in the gaps of time when she didn’t see Sal during the day. He was here, going over readings with Alek and the other research techs. Sal flipped through some papers on his desk and started to say something, then stopped. He flipped through more papers, and Cooper cast about for something to say but came up empty. Finally, Sal cleared his throat. “Yesterday, I was looking over measurements of CMB anisotropies, and I thought—where will she be sitting at dinner tonight? Will she be wearing that ratty Vikings T-shirt again? Will she come to my table or will I have to go to her?”