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Suzanne Treister Scientific Dreaming/Science fiction short stories by scientists at CERN |
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| Name and field of work |
Story title and synopsis | Selected quote |
Maria Elena Angoletta Senior electronics engineer |
Beginnings and some endings In this short fiction originating on Mars in a highly technological future, a lab-created man, engineered with a specially tailored genetic profile, is seeking a glimpse of his past as he is embarking on a one-way interstellar journey. The past is recalled as two women and two men, from current days, live the beginnings of a new, technological era aimed at improved health and lifespan. As they go on their life’s journey to find happiness and a better future, they unknowingly provide genetic source material for future humans. Hope, longings and journeys, literal or metaphorical, are intertwined in this short futuristic tale, where people dream of the future or strive to piece together the past. All of this in a scenery where technological breakthroughs and potential outcomes are imagined. In short: beginnings and some endings.
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Mars, June 2500 The man felt the files downloading to his embedded chipset just in time, a few hours before his departure for the Kepler-1638b Super Earth. He had required data on the original un-edited sources of his genome. The vast majority of records had been lost during the Genome Wars, so this was an unexpected gift from fate... |
Claire Adam Bourdarios Atlas experiment scientist |
The pendulum beats time | François Mitterrand looks away: he will go to CERN, yes, because he is sensitive to the European vision and that an accelerator will be inaugurated there in 1989, the year of the bicentenary of the revolution … But should the President heed the warnings of a few climate experts? … if only a "great vacuum cleaner" of pollution existed, capable of purifying the atmosphere and recovering the calories in the process while making them usable, what suffering and complications avoided. So many perfumes to smell again... |
Taylor Carnahan High energy physicist |
To Probe a Soul What if your life was like a skipped rock in the pond of time? Its ripples would extend into the future or even into the past. As several distinct lives collide, like ripples in a pond, they influence each other in the strangest ways. When Jocelyn Grimm is tasked with uncovering the neural landscape of these intrepid strangers, she discovers a fundamental link between the distinctions that connect them all. But, this discovery puts both her and humanity’s future in the balance. What secrets lurk within time’s ripples?... |
Dr. Grimm had studied dark matter projections within neural networks since before her PhD, but only in AI setups. What had happened since then was her usage of breakthrough tech in establishing live neural pathways of humans into coded algorithms that could reconcile the images from what she called “live wires” of human minds. She could watch dreams, see deteriorations in real-time, capture the neural scope before and after a trauma, reconstruct the healthy mind before the occurrence and build it back to that “cocooned” time with minimal side effects. The one thing she could not figure out, though, was how these few patients held distinct differences from usual dead people. And, they were strangely similar, even connected to one another, though they had lived entirely distinct lives in the past... |
Denis Oliveira Damazio Physics associated engineer |
Built-in Memories and (non) Human Experiences Exploring recent developments in complex processors building and the flexibility provided by Machine Learning algorithms running on such devices, a new system is put in place to assume people’s trivial tasks. As Artificial Intelligence evolves, manipulation of Machines and non-Machine Minds via social media diffusion and education becomes a standard tool for societal evolution. Machines and people redefine who is used by whom. Behaviours, cultural acceptance, even sexuality changes step-by step. Four different people have their fates affected by machines, by other people, by the concepts being worked on by science right now. All this happens in different moments as technology slowly takes over. The promises are as exciting as careless. An ill defined notion of happiness is pursued. Sweet dreams are made like this. |
Heila was not sure what her role in the colony would be. Of course, she understood that she was part of the System and that the system was always trying to optimize parameters. The system always claimed that the parameter was the average happiness of all individuals. It was not clear whether that included the conscious machines that now were also part of the population, even though, given that they were really immortal and could avoid pain if they accepted not having pleasure... |
Michael Doser Research physicist |
Dark nuggets In a post global warming world, humanity lurches between a desire for a simpler, fragmented Rousseau-inspired existence and an Enlightenment-based global view of the world and of humanity’s place in the Cosmos. Technologies currently being worked on in fundamental research play key roles throughout, as villains and as enablers in the century-spanning developments. |
Dealing with the hydrowars and the polydemics revitalized science, but accompanied by a deeper understanding than that which led to the stop-and-go, even if increasingly concerted, tackling of the causes of climate change in the mid 21st century, or the wholesale rejection of technology in the 22nd. This new scientific Renaissance led in fact to a renewed awareness and understanding of the paleolithic balance of innovation with societal needs and the availability of scarse resources, and thus a system of resource allocation and reuse rules that were technologically implemented in a simple, transparent and to a large extent egalitarian manner, and consequently perceived as just. … some art historians even trace a direct line from the current highly popular paleotech synverses fad so characteristic of the New Dark Age to the visions Takeshi wove into the last third of her novel, art not only predicting, but actually shaping the future... |
Alessandra Gnecchi Theoretical physicist: black holes, quantum gravity and string theory |
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Dorota Maria Grabowska Theoretical physicist |
Three Minds | Though this did beg the question: what was humanity? After all, some past iteration had to have had contact with them or something like them in order for the current Eden to be considering them. However, in reaching out with their consciousness, probing the dark space that existed beyond them, Eden felt no other being. They were utterly alone. And so Eden kept thinking about atmospheric convections, the perturbations in Mars’ magnetosphere from the wobbles in the magnet placed at L1, and whether dandelions and hops would be good produce to grow in the native soil... |
B. K. Theoretical physicist |
Four Episodes of Evolution Spontaneous generation of order plus natural selection are driving forces of evolution. We tell four stories, the first starting in the present day. We challenge a few, often implicitly held anthropocentric views, namely that evolution would stop with humans, that their mindset would set the agenda for the future, and that today’s notions of consciousness would apply to drastically more intelligent future beings. |
It had taken thousands of years to construct. Now it floated through space. Avoiding radiation sources in order not to perturb its largely superconducting state. Maintaining self-tuned criticality, fluctuating around the fertile border between order and chaos. Keeping a delicate balance of nuclear power generation, entropy production and long-term sustainability, just barely within the laws of thermodynamics. A huge spherical assembly, consisting of myriads of Josephson junctions and other quantum gates. Crisscrossed by macroscopic, rapidly changing entanglement patterns and correlates of quantum states. As far as one could guess, constantly aiming at the next level of enlightenment... |
Chiara Mariotti Higgs Boson physicist, CMS at LHC (Large Hadron Collider) |
A Trumpet on Proxima D Thanks to the discovery of the Higgs boson, the graviton and dark matter, we can reach distant planets. The world is again at peace. Having seen their dreams come true a scientist, a painter, a musician and an explorer gather in Iceland and then again on “Proxima D”. |
"I told you that thanks to the Higgs field, the graviton and the dark matter we could do it." Sara is radiant. … “You're right Sara, but I still haven't gotten used to the fact that contact with new worlds has wiped out all forms of violence” replies Aurora. And she concludes: "Knowledge and understanding of the universe have finally opened up our eyes."... |
Francesco Polci Experimental research physicist |
The Graviphone A novelist joins the team of scientists who built the first instrument to communicate among parallel universes: the graviphone. Through her letters she will give new hope to a society who made fundamentally different choices. |
Diana had been telling Stacy about the graviphone for years. The idea came soon after the first detection of gravitons a few decades earlier. That particle was not only the key to understanding and mastering gravity, but also the concrete demonstration of the existence of other dimensions. Parallel universes had already been in the people's imagination, a sort of intuition. Gravitons could travel through them, so it was natural to use them as messengers to communicate with other universes... |
Diego Blas Temiño Researcher in theoretical physics |
Scientific Universe It was the most expected scientific discovery. It would transform our science and our life. We were not ready. |
The day had arrived. In parallel to the craziness in Iceland, Julie and her team had achieved spectacular progress on the treatment of the data. They were now convinced that this was the message of an agonised civilisation facing the Big Crunch of the Universe. This civilisation had mastered the conversion of information into gravitational waves, something so far away from current technology that it seemed completely impossible. On the other hand, this was also the only chance for their signal not to disappear in the violent explosion that the Universe was heading to in their lifetime... |
Tamara Vazquez Schroeder Experimental particle physicist |
As a matter of dark How can a discovery in fundamental physics affect each person? In the complex mesh of conscious and subconscious threads of four apparently disconnected individuals, the news of a colossal physics breakthrough at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN resonate with their deepest essence in diverse forms. A story of wonder, dreams and the intrinsic connection of humanity in their pursue of truth. |
Alice spilled the remainder of her morning tea over the table as she read the news in her digital newspaper. As hot liquid dripped down the table leg and through gaps in the floorboards Alice zoomed into the Feynman diagram, recognising the imagery from her recent dream, as she explored the rectangular aquatic left hand side of the diagram. She had once stared at that right hand side which was dark and unknown… … A world-wide task-force was already being created to explore the potential benefits to society of a manufactured dark matter particle … In the past, studying psychology had allowed her to analyse her hyperreal dreams, her worlds of eccentricity, but now it seemed that the answer lay in the domain of particle physics... |