If you reached this page from the audiobook of Flash Point, welcome.
In the afterword I referenced several real scientific experiments and research efforts that inspired the story. Audiobook listeners obviously can’t see hyperlinks, so they are collected here.
Most of the science in Flash Point is real. Some is speculative. And one key assumption—the idea that neutrons might tunnel into a mirror universe—is what technothriller writers call the One Big Lie.
FILE 001 — MIRROR NEUTRONS
MIRROR NEUTRONS AND THE NEUTRON LIFETIME PUZZLE
One of the key scientific ideas behind Flash Point comes from real work being done at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by physicist Dr. Leah Broussard and her team.
These experiments explore whether neutrons might occasionally oscillate into a hidden mirror state before returning to our universe.
LINKS:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory – Mirror Neutron Experiment
https://www.ornl.gov/news/search-mirror-neutrons
Oak Ridge National Laboratory – Fundamental Neutron Physics
https://neutrons.ornl.gov/
Fermilab explanation of the neutron lifetime puzzle
https://news.fnal.gov/2021/04/the-neutron-lifetime-puzzle/
FILE 002 — MULTIVERSE/INFLATION
THE MULTIVERSE AND INFLATIONARY COSMOLOGY
Modern cosmology allows for the possibility that our universe may be only one region of a much larger multiverse. Several inflationary models predict that different regions of space-time could possess different physical constants or particle properties.
LINKS:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Multiverse
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmology-multiverse/
MIT Technology Review – Inflation and the multiverse
https://www.technologyreview.com/
FILE 003 — CP Violation / M–AM
MATTER, ANTIMATTER, AND CP VIOLATION
One of the greatest unsolved questions in physics is why the universe contains far more matter than antimatter. Experiments studying CP violation attempt to understand the asymmetry that allowed matter to survive after the Big Bang.
LINKS:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Multiverse
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmology-multiverse/
FILE 004 — Particle Accelerators
PARTICLE ACCELERATORS AND HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS
Facilities such as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider allow physicists to probe the deepest structure of matter and test theories that may point toward new particles or hidden sectors of physics.
LINKS:
CERN – Large Hadron Collider
https://home.cern/science/accelerators/large-hadron-collider
ATLAS Experiment
https://atlas.cern/
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