"A railgun..." Richard mused. "Well, Harry, you're certainly not lacking in ambition!"
"Potter, you're a military maniac!" Hermione declared.
"Oi!" Harry protested. "I just saw one in a comic—it was, like, miniature. I thought it'd be cool to have a weapon like that. That's all."
"Miniature?!" Hermione looked at Harry as though he'd gone mad. "Potter, do you have a fever? You're talking nonsense! I read about railguns in a military encyclopedia—they're enormous cannons mounted on rails that, at best, can only be installed aboard a battlecruiser."
Harry fell silent in embarrassment. He wanted the floor to swallow him whole. Making such a fool of himself in front of a girl! And he'd always thought he knew a thing or two about weapons, considering Uncle Scott had taken him shooting with both pistols and shotguns.
Grosvenor had gone deep into thought. The mention of a railgun had stirred something in his memory, but he couldn't quite grasp it. Then, all at once, inspiration struck.
"The collider!" Richard exclaimed triumphantly.
"What?" Hermione asked, completely bewildered.
"Huh?" Harry blinked.
"The Large Hadron Collider, for heaven's sake!"
Richard was so delighted he wanted to jump up and cheer, barely restraining himself. Seeing nothing but utter confusion on Harry's and Hermione's faces, he decided to explain.
"A particle accelerator!"
Judging by the blank stares from the two Gryffindors, Richie realized they still had no idea what he was talking about.
"You know, that enormous thing made of gigantic concrete rings—a circular tunnel dozens of kilometres long, where protons are accelerated to near-light speed, two hundred and ninety-nine thousand seven hundred and ninety-two kilometres per second."
Hermione parted her lips. She wanted to ask what protons were but was too embarrassed to sound foolish, so she closed her mouth again. Harry, meanwhile, was simply staring straight through Richard with a glazed expression.
"Blast!" Richie ran a hand through his hair. "How do I explain this to you?"
"In simpler words," Harry pleaded.
"Simpler? Quantum physics?" Grosvenor's voice dripped with irony. "All right then. It's a gigantic death machine capable of smashing protons together to produce the Higgs boson."
"What's a bison got to do with it?" Potter asked.
"Harry, don't test my patience! Boson! The Higgs boson! Don't they teach you what a boson is in Year Six?"
"No," Hermione answered, shaking her head in astonishment. "I never heard anything about it even in Year Eight."
Richard closed his eyes and took several slow, calming breaths. He had managed to confuse this world's school curriculum with the one from his previous life. At that moment, he finally understood his secondary school physics teacher and just how exhausting it had been trying to explain important concepts to hopelessly clueless students. And his university professor of quantum physics? That man had been made of steel!
"The Higgs boson is the final piece of the puzzle called the Standard Model."
"The standard what?" Potter asked.
"The Standard Model! It's the source code of our universe. The universal code behind absolutely everything. Everything we know today: every human being, the air, the water, the sky, the planets, the Sun, the warmth you can feel, galaxies, black holes, our professors, every sound, every smell, and even the thought, 'Why did I ever ask Richard about this?' that's bouncing around inside your heads right now. Well? Any clearer?"
"A little." Hermione held her fingers about an inch apart.
"No," Harry admitted honestly, still looking stunned. "Richie... when did you learn to read minds?"
"I can't read minds," Grosvenor replied. "Harry, your face gives everything away."
"Er, Richie..." Hermione began.
She caught Potter's warning glance, which was desperately screaming, Don't do it! Harry didn't stop there—he crossed his arms, winked frantically, shook his head, and even whispered loudly,
"Don't!"
It was no use. Granger continued,
"Richie, could you explain it in more detail?"
"Of course!"
A despairing groan came from Harry's bed.
"Noooo! Hermione, you've awakened the sleeping evil..."
Richard had found his rhythm. A vast reservoir of knowledge from his school and university years in his previous life came flooding back.
"Let's start by understanding what the Higgs boson is and what role it plays. The famous equation E equals mc squared tells us that mass and energy are really the same thing. In the language of physics, let's say Professor Snape is either sixty million joules or seventy kilograms. Of that, sixty-nine kilograms and two hundred sixty-five grams are the energy holding the particles in Snape's body together, preventing them from flying apart. The remaining seven hundred thirty-five grams are the particles themselves. And that mass is provided by the Higgs field through Higgs bosons. Strange, isn't it?"
Hermione listened to Richard with bated breath.
"Strange..." she echoed.
Harry buried his head under the pillow and let out a muffled groan.
"Here he goes again! At least this time it's not a shopping trip for underwear…"
Richard paid Harry's lament no attention and continued,
"Particles move through Higgs bosons and get bogged down, like a spoon in honey. The entire universe is permeated by the Higgs field, so wherever particles appear, the Higgs field always tells them what their mass is. That's how particles know what they are."
Interesting, Hermione thought. What sort of school teaches this in Year Six? Mine certainly didn't. I've got you now, Richie! she rejoiced inwardly. Now I'm sure you're not just some rich boy. You're either an alien uplifting civilization... or a time traveller.
Meanwhile, the increasingly animated Grosvenor carried on enthusiastically,
"You already know that we're made of cells; cells are made of molecules; molecules are made of atoms; an atom consists of electron shells surrounding a tiny nucleus; and the nucleus is made of protons and neutrons. That's where school physics ends—but we need to go further. Much further."
"Oh, of course we know that," Harry muttered sarcastically, pulling his head out from beneath the pillow. "I think about it every day... Hmm, what's Snape made of? Why, naturally! Nuclei, molecules, protons..."
(End of Chapter)
P@treon: /SadRaven
🥳Joining P@treon keeps me motivated and eager to work diligently, so please consider joining.🥰