RSVP
The alumni invitation has been in my inbox since January 23. I have not replied.
This morning I replied.
The Decision
The email from Novosibirsk State University asked alumni to confirm attendance by the end of February and, optionally, to indicate whether they wished to present anything. The event is on March 15. Alumni who present are asked to keep remarks to fifteen minutes and to make them “accessible and inspiring for young people.”
I have spent five weeks not answering this email.
My reasons were:
- I was not sure I had anything worth presenting.
- I was concerned that what I had would not be “accessible and inspiring” so much as “technically accurate but difficult to follow.”
- The last time I was in a room with more than three physicists, someone asked me about my dissertation and then changed the subject.
My reasons for answering now:
On February 24, Mikhail measured -0.19 Hz at 14:37:19 local time in Novosibirsk. Mikhail lives in Novosibirsk. The alumni meeting is in Novosibirsk.
I have not seen Mikhail in person since 2019. We have now spent two weeks corresponding more than we did in the previous four years combined, because he agreed to stare at a frequency counter every Tuesday. I would like to see Mikhail.
I wrote: “I confirm attendance. I would be willing to present briefly on an ongoing measurement project, subject to whether the results by March 15 justify a presentation.”
This is a sentence I have never written before.
What I Would Present
I spent some time this morning writing a rough outline. Not slides — I do not own presentation software, and I am not starting now — but a list.
What we have:
- 43 years of data. Four independent observers across three locations. A combined dataset of over 4,000 confirmed events.
- A recurring anomaly: -0.15 to -0.31 Hz at approximately 14:37 local time, every Tuesday.
- First cross-timezone validation: the anomaly is local, not global. Same local time, two-hour UTC offset.
- A theoretical direction: standing wave resonance in long-distance transmission lines, identified independently by V.K. Morozov in 1993 and confirmed as the most plausible mechanism by a physicist with relevant expertise (Mikhail, who studied transmission physics, which I had forgotten until last Thursday).
- A direction for verification: Soviet grid schematics. Physical line lengths. Calculated resonant frequencies.
What we do not have:
- The schematics.
- A confirmed mechanism.
- A publication.
Fifteen minutes is enough for what we have. It is also, I think, enough to make someone in that room curious. I do not need them to be convinced. I need one person in one room to say “I know someone who might have access to that archive.”
This is, I realize, the reason to go.
Novosibirsk, Also
The train from Almaty to Novosibirsk takes approximately 36 hours. I have made this journey twice: once in 1997, and once in 2003. Both times I had less to think about than I do now, and I found the time difficult to fill.
The journey will be in both directions. Ruslan has already suggested, via a 3,400-word email, that I could take pressure measurements along the route. He included a suggested measurement interval table.
I have written back that I will consider it.
Mikhail replied to my message about the alumni meeting in fourteen minutes, which is the fastest he has replied to anything in thirty-one years. His message: “Good. I will meet you at the station. Bring data.”
I have the data. It is currently on three laptops, one external hard drive, a stack of digitized notebooks, and Ruslan’s spreadsheet (twenty tabs). I will bring a subset.
The First Letter
In the afternoon I wrote to the Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation in Moscow. The letter took forty minutes to compose. It is six paragraphs long and explains, as precisely as I could manage without becoming overwhelming, what I am looking for: original grid design documentation for the Soviet Unified Power System transmission corridors through Kazakhstan and western Siberia, specifically line specifications from the 1970s and 1980s.
I do not know if they will respond. Archives of this kind operate on their own schedule, which is not a schedule designed around physicists who have just discovered that they need specific schematics. I have requested a catalogue of available materials. I have offered to travel to Moscow if necessary.
Mikhail, separately, has written to a former colleague who spent thirty years at the Novosibirsk energy authority. He has not told me what he said in that letter, only that he sent it. I did not ask for details.
Ruslan, when I mentioned the archive search, sent me a list of six additional archives in Kazakhstan and Russia that might hold relevant materials. He found this list in forty minutes. He has not explained how.
The schematics exist. Paper does not disappear. It accumulates in basements and annex buildings and storage rooms that nobody has needed to open since 1994. Someone has them.
We will find them.
Current status:
- Alumni meeting, March 15, Novosibirsk: confirmed. Presentation: tentatively yes.
- Mikhail: will meet at station. “Bring data.”
- Archive inquiry: sent to Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation
- Mikhail: writing to former colleague at Novosibirsk energy authority
- Ruslan: has identified six additional archives. Method: unknown.
- Train: ~36 hours. Ruslan has already prepared a pressure measurement table for the route.
- Emotional state: I am going to Novosibirsk.
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