Solid Matter Matters by Robyn Mundell and Stephan Lacast, authors of Brainwalker

 

 

Inside the Book:

Title: Brainwalker
Author: Robyn Mundell & Stephan Lacast

Release Date: September 26, 2016

Publisher: DualMind Publishing

Genre: Science Fiction

Format: Ebook/Paperback

Fourteen year-old Bernard is full of out of the box ideas—ideas that nobody appreciates. Not his ultra-rational father, not his classmates, and definitely not his teacher, who’s fed up waiting for Bernard’s overdue science project. You’d think with a hotshot quantum physicist for a dad, the assignment would be easy as “pi”, but with his relationship with his father on rocky ground, Bernard is under more pressure than a helium atom.

And Bernard’s impulse control flies out the window when he’s stressed. So instead of turning in his project, he moons the class and gets suspended. Now his dad’s got no choice but to bring him to his work. At the Atom Smasher. It’s the chance of a lifetime for Bernard, who knows smashing atoms at the speed of light can—theoretically—make wormholes. How about that for the most mind-bending science project ever? But when he sneaks into the particle accelerator and someone hits the power button, Bernard ends up in the last place he’d ever want to be.

Inside his father’s brain.

And it’s nothing like the spongy grey mass Bernard studied at school. It’s a galaxy, infinite and alive. Like, people live there. A mysterious civilization on the brink of extinction, as unaware of their host as he is of them. But there’s zero time to process this. Bernard’s about to be caught up in an epic struggle between the two sides of his dad’s brain over their most precious resource: 

Mental Energy.

 With his father’s life at stake, Bernard must go up against the tyrannical left side of his father’s brain to save the dying, creative right side. But how the heck is he supposed to do that when he’s just a hopelessly right-brained kid himself?

  

SOLID MATTER MATTERS

In the first chapter of the science-fantasy novel Brainwalker, our hero Bernard has a heated discussion with his dad about how all matter is energy, and all energy matter. This has been expressed years before by Albert Einstein in his brilliant equation, e=mc².

But if it’s true that all matter is energy, it brings up some big questions: how come solid matter can’t pass through other solid matter, the way two beams of light just go through each other? Why do we go around barking our shins against table legs, instead of just phasing through them the way the Vision does in the Avengers? Why can we stand on the ground instead of just falling through the Earth’s crust straight down to the core?

Good questions, and as with anything that has to do with reality at the quantum level, the answer is both weird and complicated.

First let’s set the table. As you well know, matter is composed of atoms, which are themselves composed of smaller particles: electrons (which carry a negative charge), protons (positive charge) and neutrons (no charge).

Electrons and protons are attracted to each other due to their opposing charges. Hence you have electrons orbiting protons in the nuclei. On the other hand, electrons repel other electrons because they have the same negative charge. These are the properties of electromagnetic force, one of the four elemental forces that make up the universe.

Solid objects, of course, are made up of trillions of atoms, each with their own electromagnetic force. And so the EM force present in a leg chair will repel the EM force of your shin in the event of a collision, and, well, you won’t be able to spare yourself some pain.

So to go back to the book Brainwalker’s discussion, yes, matter is energy and vice versa. The mug on your table is being held up by energy, floating on a vast sea of electrons!

It all seems strange, but as you will see as you go deeper into the quantum level, the world gets stranger still.

Meet the Authors:

 

Robyn Mundell is an award winning playwright. A graduate of New York University, she performed in dozens of plays in New York. She studied with such theater legends as Uta Hagen, Lee Strasberg, and Stella Adler. Robyn wrote and performed in several of her own plays including Pieces of Oand Traveling Bowls of Soup, produced by Pulitzer-prize winner Beth Henley. Traveling Bowls of Soup opened at the Met theater to rave reviews and received several Drama-Logue awards. Robyn has since been selling original screenplays and TV pilots to major film companies and networks. She is the daughter of Canadian Nobel laureate Robert A. Mundell, and is married to actor-playwright Raymond J. Barry. Together, they have four children.

 

 French-Born Stephan Lacast likes to think of himself as a geek, which depending on your  dictionary means either “knowledgeable about computers”, or “boring social misfit.” At the age of twelve his idea of fun was building computers and programming, and by fifteen he was a contributor to a computer magazine. A graduate of Paris-Dauphine University, he holds a Bachelor in Economics, a Master in Business Administration, and a Master of Advanced Studies in Information Systems. After teaching at Dauphine University, Stephan went on to work as a consultant and engineer for one of the top ten Information Technology services companies in Europe, before deciding to leave Paris and move to the United States.

 Visit them at http://www.brainwalker.net