It's nothing

In The Core, the Unobtanium Ship detects a blob ahead and must figure out - it's nothing. The crew figure it a... bubble, a vast hot underground geode. It turns out that mu-leptons, in their brief existence, if they travel fast enough, can be used to pinpoint Nothing right now. Such has been used to detect a tomb in Naples, the new-city which some Greeks had refounded upon old Cumae.

Muons are made in the particle-accelerators which are ancient quasars and supernovae, running cosmic rays at relativistic speeds (so their internal-age is still young) and banging into our ionosphere (spawning their own relativistic particles). They're used for instance in polar regions outside GPS and tilted-Molniya. I'm most-interested in the mechanics. 28 days at 18 meters underground, they caught about 10 million of these muons. That was more than they expected from the direction of the Nothing; they were even able to map out the dimensions, a 2 x 3.5 m rectangle in this case (but how high up?).

As for these specific findings, I'm unsure I care until/unless someone digs over there. Which would probably undermine some poor grandma's foundations. They figure it's about the right depth and dimensions for a hypogeum, of which the old Neapolis had many, some available to tourists.

The method seems, by contrast, an excellent means to sus out hidden lavatubes on rather, in our Moon and also Mars. Should we be settling either.

BACKDATED 5/6