Einstein's Bridge (book)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Einstein's Bridge is a hard science fiction novel by John Cramer, first published in June of 1997.

The plot revolves around three central human characters, George Griffen, Roger Coulton, and Alice Lang. Set in 1987 through 2004, the book details the efforts of physicists George and Roger as they work to bring the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) online in Waxahachie, Texas. Alice is a novelist, working on her latest horror effort, who becomes involved as she researches material for her book at the SSC. She and George fall in love just as preliminary trial runs of the SSC produce an unexplained phenomena: a Snark, to borrow an expression from Lewis Carroll, or an impossible event, in the form of a heavy particle which emerged from the planned head-on collision between two 20 TeV protons inside the SSC.

In addition to violating physical laws such as the conservation of mass, this particle emits pulses of radioactivity, spelling out the numerical prime number sequence of 2-3-5-7-11-13-17-19-23-29-31-37. Therein begins the unraveling of an even greater mystery than the particle itself: a powerful intelligence is behind this event, seeking to communicate with Humankind, which has unwittingly announced itself to the universe through the powerful bursts of energy unleashed with the collisions of particles within the SSC. For while this first contact is made by a benevolent species, another species is also working to make contact, with a truly diabolical intent that may ultimately destroy the Earth and perhaps even the very fabric of the universe.