Red gold a hard science.., p.1
Red Gold: A Hard Science Fiction Novel, page 1
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Red Gold
Ido Sharon
Copyright © 2023 Ido Sharon
All rights reserved; no parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.
Translation: Dr. Jonathan Boxman
Contact: ido@pitaron.info
Dedication
Dedicated to Moshe Weiss, my Physics teacher, and Yekutiel Fekete, my electricity teacher at Bezeq High-School.
To Mario Livio, who taught me astrophysics, and also about the smile of the Cheshire Cat, at the Technion.
To Lany (Ilan) my brother, who taught me history and prehistory.
To Ada my wife, who taught me about myself.
To all the teachers of truth, wherever they may be.
Table of contents
Dedication
Table of contents
Global warming and Christopher Columbus
Part A: Big Oaks and Little Oaks
Part B: Rakefet
Part C: The first plane
Part D: The second plane
Part E: The Moon
Part F: The Moon Worlds
Part G: Mars
Part H: The Golden State
Afterword
Appendix A – scientific background
Appendix B – Ismail’s technical lecture
Appendix C – A short explanation of Nadav’s ionic engine
Global warming and Christopher Columbus
When we were children, we were taught that, until Columbus, humanity assumed the world was flat. Reality is somewhat different.
By 1490, the roundness of the world was widespread, and almost consensual. The Church, its priests and the literate all knew the world was round — it was only the ignorant commoners, who were mostly illiterate 550 years ago, who believed otherwise.
By the same measure, there are those who currently claim that global warming is a “theory” only accepted by some scientists. In reality, it is hard scientific fact. Unlike the commoners of the 15th century, those who are willfully ignorant and deny this fact, cannot offer illiteracy as a defense for their error.
Nonetheless, a genuine dispute between Columbus and mainstream opinion did exist back in the 15th century, just as one exists today. But the past dispute was not between flat earthers and round earthers, just as the present one is not between global warming proponents and deniers.
Rather, mainstream educated opinion in the 15th century held (correctly) that the circumference of the globe was around 40,000 kilometers. As China’s eastern seaboard was known to lie some 10,000 to the East of Iberia, it followed that to reach China by voyaging westwards across the Atlantic, as Columbus proposed, would involve sailing over 30,000 kilometers of trackless ocean. This was clearly impossible, as no ship, not even Portugal’s ingenious caravels, could carry provisions for a voyage greater than 5,000 kilometers. The crew of any ship that passed that line condemned itself to death.
Columbus, however, insisted — wrongly — that the circumference of the globe was a mere 15,000 kilometers. Hence, he confidently predicted he would make landfall after less than 5,000 kilometers. In the event, he did indeed make landfall, albeit 6,000 kilometers from his port of embarkation in the Canaries, far beyond what anyone thought possible. He landed, however, on the previously unknown continent of America, discovering an entirely new world.
So, it is with global warming. Everyone who is not willfully ignorant knows that our planet periodically undergoes massive cycles in the global temperature, leading to ice ages interspersed with warm periods. It is also well known that this great cycle also contains smaller cycles, so that even in the midst of global warming there will be cold, even very cold, years.
The only question is how the fluctuations of these cycles will impact the clear and present trend of global warming. Are we facing a point of no return, to extinction within fifty years, or do we have one hundred and fifty years to find a technological solution to global warming?
Let us return to Columbus. When he approached King John II of Portugal to sponsor his intended westwards voyage around the globe, he was knocking on a locked door. King John, you see, was in possession of a secret with profound significance. Previous explorers, sent south and east around the African coast to find a passage to the Indian Ocean (which Vasco de Gama would finally achieve a decade after Columbus’s momentous discovery of the New World) had crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. The celestial charts of the southern hemisphere enabled Portuguese cartographers to precisely calculate the circumference of the Earth. King John therefore knew, with absolute certainty, that the circumference of the Earth was, in fact, 40,000 kilometers, and hence Columbus’s vision of reaching China by sailing westwards was utterly impossible. So, he made what seemed to him the shrewdest move — sending Columbus to the court of his rival for the African and future Indian trade routes, the King of Spain. Hopefully, he would be foolish enough to fund Columbus’s expedition and squander his treasury and the lives of his sailors.
Of course, things did not work out quite that way. Columbus discovered a New World, ascribing his success to divine providence. And don’t we all like to believe that the Good Lord is looking out for us? But just as it seems unlikely God desired Spain’s subsequent rampage across the Western Hemisphere, and the mass slaughter of tens of millions of his Native American children by the sword and Old-World diseases, so it would behoove not to attribute God with a propensity to actively interfere in his creation and save us from the consequences of our own bad decisions. I invite you, if you are skeptical of the prospects of divine salvation as a cure-all for global warming, to continue reading.
Part A: Big Oaks and Little Oaks
1.
Nadav Ben Harush was born in Berkley, the son of a university professor and a Hebrew teacher. When he was four years old, his mother secured a permanent teaching position in the Technion, the Israeli Technology Institute, and the family moved to Haifa in northern Israel.
Nadav seemed, at first glance, to possess a typically Israeli appearance. Cropped, straight black hair, of average height, with tanned skin. He spoke little, but when he did, like many Israelis, he used his hands as much as his mouth.
Nadav had struggled with stage fright from a young age. In first grade, when the teacher asked him a question, he would blush and fall silent. In the second grade, a new teacher asked Nadav to solve a simple math question to which he knew the answer — but shame, stage fright and fear prevented him from speaking. The teacher asked him to stand in front of the class, with Nadav behind her, and asked the question again.
Nadav saw the class laid out before him, lines of children all seated at their tiny desks. Nadav felt the desks fade away — all he could see was the intent faces of his classmates watching him, testing him. Then, he felt a warm trickle run down his legs. The entire class, apart from the teacher, saw what was happening. Some of the children laughed, while others tried to direct the teacher’s attention to Nadav. Nadav’s friend, who sat in one of the front rows, stood up and took Nadav by the hand, leading him out of the classroom while the teacher remained occupied with the pandemonium. They slipped out of school through a hole in the fence, where Nadav, adding insult to injury, sliced his leg on the torn-up chain links. By the time they reached Nadav’s house, he was limping so badly that he could barely walk, collapsing on the front stoop. Nadav’s mother rushed out and drove him to the hospital. The doctor who stitched up his leg said he hoped Nadav would recover without a limp. Nadav stayed home for a week to recuperate, his friend was punished for sneaking him out of school, and no one remembered the question that was asked of him in mathematics class that day.
When Nadav returned to school, he found out he was simply unable to speak in the classroom. It was not that he did not want to speak, but even when he tried, his mouth refused to produce any sound. Nadav tried to overcome this on several occasions. He would try to speak quietly, to himself, without anyone noticing. He activated the same throat muscles when he used at home but to no avail — he was simply unable to produce any sound. After a while, he decided that this situation did not perturb him in the slightest. While there were certain disadvantages to his condition, there were also benefits. For example, when he was asked a question in class, he did not even blush. His classmates would shout at the teacher that Nadav was a mute, and all was resolved. Nadav never again felt an urge to pee in his pants.
When he was older, Nadav learned that his condition was a recognized one and was known as “elective muteness.” He suffered from social anxiety in high school as well, but not as badly. Still, Nadav remained silent in class, not even attempting to speak.
In the Israeli army, Nadav did well enough. He served as a tank commander instructor in Brigade 460. But when he was offered the chance to undertake an officer’s course, Nadav turned it down. Back then, exceptional soldiers were not pressured to become officers, and so he remained a tank commander in the reserves as well. Nadav was highly appreciated for his extraordinary technical abilities. Thus, in the Second Lebanon War, when the tread of the company co
Nadav was an avid cyclist and watched his nutrition. Something about his gait seemed off, sort of a limp but not quite. Like his parents, he was academically inclined, with a PhD in chemistry from the University of Samaria. His alma mater was not exactly by choice: when he completed his term of service in the IDF, he applied to the Technion and various other universities, but his SAT equivalent scores, even after three repeat tests, was only 1022.
Nadav knew the material, of course, but the rapid, automatic thinking tested in the standardized tests was not his forte. Nadav’s thinking was slow, methodical, and purposeful.1 With only mediocre SAT scores, he was persona non grata to his initial choices. Fortunately, the newly established Chemistry Faculty in the University of Samaria was eager to take in new students and so he managed, barely, to get accepted.
Following his PhD studies in the non-prestigious University of Samaria, Nadav moved on to teach in the equally non-prestigious North Galilee College. Nadav was also the laboratory supervisor. Every year, 300 bachelor’s degree students entered the lab. Every student had to perform several experiments. To purchase the experimental materials and to perform the upkeep of the laboratory, the college allocated Nadav 200 dollars per student. The budget was calculated according to listed cost of the materials in the “Beit Dekel Marketing Ltd” price list.
Nadav, rather than purchasing the laboratory materials from the industry leading but pricey company, purchased them instead from “Abu Maruf Ltd.,” a small company in Jenin in the northern West Bank. Someone once told him that Abu Maruf purchased the chemicals in Jordan, where they were subsidized by the United States. Whatever the real story behind Abu Maruf’s low prices, Nadav ended up paying the man only $85 American dollars per student, putting aside the remaining $115, to the sum of $34,500 per year. With this money he would purchase materials for his own private research. Not that the North Galilee College supported research, let alone research in chemistry, but Nadav set up a little corner for himself in the lab and used the $34,500 to build his own personal black-ops lab. Nadav, thereby, sought to carry on his PhD research. The $34,500 was not nearly enough, nor was the $6,000 he put in from his own funds, but he refused to abandon his research.
Early on in his second year of college, Nadav pled with his favorite boss to allow him to leave for a conference on complicated quantic formulas in Windsor, England.
“This is my field, after all,” Nadav emphasized.
“I will try to set up time off for you then,” his boss answered, skeptically. “While the conference is on the summer break, you are also supposed, as you no doubt know, to teach the summer semester as well.”
Nadav ended up travelling at his own expense. The college would not even pay the entry fee to the conference and deducted his days of absence from his sick days. Nonetheless, Nadav wrote “North Galilee College” on his name tag. Not that anyone in the prestigious conference had ever heard of the backwater institution.
Adam Mansour was almost diametrically opposite in every possible way from Nadav. He was a tall man who spoke quickly and thought even faster. In high school, Adam played basketball, though his movements seemed graceless to external observers. He did not care how he was perceived, however — the game suited his both his height and his rapid thinking. Despite his lankiness, when he stood, he was a very handsome man. Adam was also very sociable — unlike Nadav.
Adam initially wanted to study computers but was not accepted into any university in Israel. Since he did not want to study for the SAT, he went on to study mathematics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The mathematics faculty there was prepared to accept anyone with a pulse — but you were unlikely to retain one, let alone graduate, if you did not know your stuff.
Adam knew his stuff.
He graduated summa cum laude. With this achievement under his belt, all the universities were prepared to roll out the red carpet for him to study computer science, or physics, or medicine, or any field of his choice, medieval literature included. But by this point, Adam was no longer fixated on computers as his life path, and he began studying for a second degree in physics under Professor Yoel Meir of the Hebrew University. Only then did he learn about energy state equations — the Schrodinger equations. That is how he chose to specialize in surface physics. His thesis topic was a sub-field of energy states in contact with the surface of various materials in different materials in various lattices.
Hadas was a cat. She always fell on her feet and easily connected to all living things; cats included. Like cats, she too found it difficult to delay gratification when unsupervised, including picking the cherry from the top of a cake or snatching grapes from the bunch at the supermarket when no one was looking. Hadas was Adam’s girlfriend back in high school. She enlisted in the IDF shortly after he did and tried for acceptance in the female combat infantry unit Caracal, but was rejected, instead becoming a Company Clerk in the 71st Armor Battalion. As mistress of her domain, she made sure Adam be assigned to her company.
Since Adam did not want to leave her side, he turned down the tank commander course. In this way, Adam served most of his term in the military with Hadas, his girlfriend. Hadas completed her service only a few months before him and she began studying literature at the Hebrew University. As soon as he was discharged and out of uniform, they got married, and once Hadas completed her studies, she began working as a literature teacher at the Boyar High School in Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Adam’s laboratory in the Hebrew University was plagued with complaints over lacking the budget to perform experiments.
“We, with an annual budget of around one million dollars, get nearly as much done as in MIT, where our counterparts enjoy an annual budget of over twenty million dollars,” they would say. In practice, it was one of the best funded research labs in Israel.
Adam had heard that one of the lectures at the Windsor conference may be of interest to him, so he registered to the conference at the last moment. His laboratory paid, of course, for the cost of the conference, including flights, hotel and living expenses. Not that the bill was too hefty, given that the conference only lasted three days, or that the bill would have been particularly onerous for him, given the affluence of his family. Nonetheless, he felt a certain satisfaction at being recognized by his institution, a recognition he did not take for granted, given that his parents, born in Iraq and in the retail trade, were not considered part of the Israeli elite which dominated academia.
As soon as he reached the meticulously trimmed grass outside the 15th century building, he met someone he knew from the United States. Adam greeted him heartily and a circle of chatter immediately formed around them. When Adam entered the sumptuous lobby, he saw a shamefaced looking man in a suit standing next to the refreshments. Something about his body language immediately identified him as an Israeli. When he approached the refreshments himself, he also noticed that the nametag on his lapel included the word “Israel” on it. When he drew closer, he realized that he knew the man, but from being in uniform, not dressed in suit. It was Nadav, a tank commander from another company in his battalion. Nadav was renowned in the battalion as a walking technical solution to any problem. Computerized stabilizing system bugs, engine troubles, the ever-decoupling treads — all ended up with Nadav. Whenever the battalion technical team gave up — they would call up Nadav. Adam was a tank driver in H company, and he too would often end up getting technical support from Nadav.
“Ben Harush,”2 Adam greeted Nadav, “what brings you here?” Nadav stared at Adam, clearly not recognizing him. Adam smiled, “I’m Mansour. From H company.” Nadav took another moment to collect himself and figure out who he was.
