“Oh man,” I said. “So any heat energy above the critical temperature will just make the protons collide harder.”

“Yes. They’ll make neutrinos and have leftover energy. Then they bump into other protons, et cetera. Any heat energy above the critical temperature gets quickly converted into neutrinos. But if it drops below critical temperature, the protons are going too slow and neutrino production stops. End result: You can’t get it hotter than 96.415 degrees. Not for long, anyway. And if it gets too cold, the Astrophage uses stored energy to heat back up to that temperature—just like any other warm-blooded life-form.”

She gave me a moment to let that all sink in. CERN really came through. But a couple of things still bothered me.

“Okay, so it makes neutrinos,” I said. “How does it turn them back into energy?”

“That’s the easy part,” she said. “Neutrinos are what’s called Majorana particles. It means the neutrino is its own antiparticle. Basically, every time two neutrinos collide, it’s a matter-antimatter interaction. They annihilate and become photons. Two photons, actually, with the same wavelength and going opposite directions. And since the wavelength of a photon is based on the energy in the photon…”

“The Petrova wavelength!” I yelped.

She nodded. “Yes. The mass energy of a neutrino is exactly the same as the energy found in one photon of Petrova-wavelength light. This paper is truly groundbreaking.”

I rested my chin on my hands. “Wow… just wow. I guess the only remaining question is how does an Astrophage keep neutrinos inside?”

“We don’t know. Neutrinos routinely pass through the entire planet Earth without hitting a single atom—they’re just that small. Well, it’s more about quantum wavelengths and probabilities of collision. But suffice it to say, neutrinos are famously hard to interact with. But for some reason, Astrophage has what we call ‘super cross-sectionality.’ That’s just a fancy term meaning nothing can quantum-tunnel through it. It goes against every law of particle physics we thought we knew, but it’s been proven over and over.”

“Yeah.” I tapped my finger on the table. “It absorbs all wavelengths of light—even wavelengths that should be too large to interact with it.”

“Yes,” she said. “Turns out it also collides with all matter that tries to get by, no matter how unlikely that collision should be. Anyway, as long as an Astrophage is alive, it exhibits this super cross-sectionality. And that brings us nicely to what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?” I said. “There’s more?”

“Yes.” She pulled a diagram of the Hail Mary hull out of her bag. “This is what I need you for: I’m working on radiation protection for the Hail Mary.”

I perked up. “Of course! Astrophage will block it all!”

“Maybe,” she said. “But I need to know how space radiation works to be sure. I know the broad strokes, but not the details. Please enlighten me.”