“So what now?” he asked.
Markus laughed. “You know they’ll fight you.”
She lowered her voice. “The ceramic’s grain boundary contains trapped argon from the sintering process. When the interferometer laser hits it, the argon ions oscillate. The wobble isn’t a defect. It’s a measurement of quantum shot noise—at room temperature.”
Elena gestured to the block, which sat inside a vacuum chamber. “It’s not the temperature. Not the humidity. I’ve isolated the vibration mounts. It’s… inside the ceramic lattice. A void, maybe. A defect from sintering.”
