Art and Science of Time Crystal Wyken Seagrave

Wyken talks about why he is writing Time Crystal and trying to tell the history of the Universe as a work of fiction. He also gives some insight into why he is creating the Art and Science podcasts.

Wyken talks about the many origins of the scenario for Time Crystal, explaining how he arrived at the final form of the story over a period of several years of research, but avoiding an spoilers!

Wyken talks about the characters in Time Crystal, how they were created and his problems in doing this and how he finally solved the problem.

Wyken explains the origin of the cosmic monopole. Do they exist and if so is it feasible that one might get trapped inside ATLAS?

Wyken talks about CERN and the LHC and how scientists have assessed the risks associated with generating black holes and other novel particles. Mostly they rely on the evidence of cosmic rays but have never considered the possibility that a cosmic monopole might be trapped inside the beam pipe. So, he argues, there is an unassessed risk here.

Wyken Seagrave explores the mechanism by which the black hole causes the emergency stairs to collapse. This requires some knowledge of magnets and superconductors, helium cooling and quenches. It turns out Wyken’s idea of using quenches was a good one, since the LHC had a quench within a week of first starting up.