Home: Blog: 2018-04-08 SCP - Secure, Contain, ProtectHome: Blog: 2018-04-08 SCP - Secure, Contain, Protect
The piece below was originally submitted to the unique SCP Foundation at www.scp-wiki.net.
SCP stands for Secure, Contain, Protect, and their site contains many reports, like the one below, of the various strange, sometimes hazardous, often disturbing things the Foundation guards, submitted by writers from all over the world.
It is well worth a visit.
Item #: SCP-9235
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-9235 is to be kept in a secure locker on-site.
Description: SCP-9235 is a cupro-nickel1 disc 21mm in diameter, 1.3mm deep, registering 4.03g on standard electronic scales.
To all appearances, it is an Argentinian coin minted by the Casa de Moneda2: one of approximately 109 million of its type manufactured between 1896 and 1942.
The obverse depicts the Effigy of Liberty, a bas-relief portrait of an unnamed young woman in a Phrygian cap, created by French artist Eugène André Oudiné in 1881. Around her appear the words REPUBLICA ARGENTINA and the date 1929.
The reverse shows the value 20 CENTAVOS within a laurel wreath. The coin's edge is reeded.
On issue, such coins were worth one fifth of a peso moneda nacional3. They were demonetised by the BCRA4 on January 1st, 1943.
SCP-9235 is in poor condition: badly worn, dull, partially discoloured, and bearing numerous small scratches. A numismatic consultant described it as "thoroughly typical of its type and age" and "almost certainly genuine"5.
This latter conclusion was based on two observations: that the coin's physical form and composition perfectly matched those expected, and that the value of genuine examples - both monetary before 1943, and to collectors since then - has never risen above the cost of producing forgeries.
The volume of the object is given by...
PI * (21mm / 2)2 * 1.3mm = 0.45cm3
...and its density by...
4.03g / 0.45cm3 = 8.95g/cm3
This density is within manufacturing tolerances for the alloy used.
SCP-9235's anomalous nature becomes apparent only when one tries to lift it. Most fail on their first attempt, and succeed only by applying far more force than might be supposed necessary to securely grip, and then lift, a small coin.
However, the coin is not simply unexpectedly "heavy". Once lifted and resting motionless in the palm of one's hand, it has no more weight than any other coin.
Those who have lifted and held SCP-9235 describe these mismatched experiences as bewildering and, somehow, acutely unpleasant.
The sudden lack of felt weight when one stops raising and merely holds the object leads many to believe that it is moving independently (though it has never been observed to do so), and instinctively let it drop.
SCP-9235's behaviour while falling is instructive. For a moment, it seems to float. It then becomes apparent that it is moving downwards, just very slowly. While it does visibly accelerate, if dropped from a metre high, it takes nearly ten seconds to hit the floor.
After extensive analysis, only one hypothesis has been found to accurately account for all the observed phenomena. SCP-9235 has substantially more inertial mass than gravitational mass.
A slight digression is here necessary to explain this distinction to non-scientific personnel. Though the following description is (necessarily) somewhat simplified, officers indoctrinated into SCP-9235 are required to study it carefully.
The concept of mass is generally, informally and instinctively, understood as a measure of an "amount of matter". However, this apparently simple idea proves surprisingly difficult to describe with scientific precision.
Physicists therefore define mass according to its measurable effects. The more massive an object is...
1. The more powerfull the attractive force which will exist between it and other objects. (Gravitational mass)
2. The greater its resistance to acceleration. (Inertial mass)
Though these may be measured independently, it is fundamental to modern science that they result from a single underlying property: mass.
Looking at gravitational mass first, any two massive objects will attract each other with a force F proportional to the product of their masses m and n and inversely proportional to the square of the distance d between them.
F = G * m * n / d26
The ratio of this proportionality is known as G, the universal gravitational constant.
This formula has one application central to day to day life: the calculation of the force attracting an object near the Earth's surface towards its centre - commonly called the weight of that object.
In calculating weight, all of the values to the right of the equal sign in the formula above are (roughly) fixed except m itself. Specifically...
G = Gravitational constant = 6.67e-11m3/kgs2
n = Earth's mass = 5.97e24kg
d = Earth's radius = 6.37e6m
The weight of a 1kg object is therefore...
6.67e-11 * 1 * 5.97e24 / (6.37e6)2 = 9.81N
Most scales therefore work by measuring the force applied to them in newtons - the weight of the object lying on them - and dividing this by 9.81 to discover the object's gravitational mass in kilograms.
Measured this way, SCP-9235's gravitational mass is 4.03g.
Turning to inertial mass m, this can be calculated by measuring the force F required to cause an object to accelerate at rate a.
m = F / a7
Indeed "inertial scales" which rely on this formula have been developed for use in space, where ordinary (gravitational) scales would naturally be useless.
However, gravitational scales can be adapted to measure inertial mass. It is simply not usually done because, until SCP-9235, no object had been discovered which would yield a different result when measured this way.
A scale may be placed on a motorised platform, capable of moving upwards with a constant acceleration of 9.81m/s2 for a short period. This is then placed within a vacuum chamber, to eliminate the inertial force of the surrounding air.
An object is then placed on the scale, and the chamber closed and evacuated. The scale is recalibrated to zero while at rest, eliminating the object's constant gravitational mass from the measurement. The scale is then accelerated upwards, several readings being taken at very short intervals to provide an average inertial mass.
As the upwards acceleration is 9.81m/s2, it will take 9.81N to overcome the resistance of each kilogram of inertial mass. This rate of acceleration is chosen to coincide with the design of gravitational scales, which are programmed to report 1kg of mass for each 9.81N of force they experience.
It is when measured this way that SCP-9235 is discovered to have an inertial mass of 1.79kg.
This explains the rather sickeningly slow descent SCP-9235 exhibits when dropped. The relatively small weight created by its 4.03g gravitational mass being attracted by the Earth...
4.03e-3kg * 9.81N/kg = 3.95e-2N
...must struggle to overcome 1.79kg of inertia. The acceleration this causes is therefore...
3.95e-2N / 1.79kg = 2.2e-2m/s2
...and the time taken to fall from 1m is...
(2 * 1m / 2.2e-2m/s2)0.5 = 9.53s
Imagine hanging a heavy bag of sugar from a large helium balloon: the weight of the bag and the size of the balloon so perfectly matched that they floated without rising or falling in still air. Then imagine gently resting a small coin on top of the bag of sugar.
The tiny additional weight would cause the balloon to move down, but clearly far more slowly than the coin would fall if simply dropped.
This is how SCP-9235 behaves: except that it does so without a weighty bag of sugar to account for the extra inertia, or a large balloon to account for the slow acceleration under gravity.
This also explains the anxiety SCP-9235 creates in the minds of those who handle it. It is not simply that it feels strangely heavy to lift for a coin - this would only mean that it was unusually dense, people quickly adjust to handling unexpectedly weighty objects.
Rather, it is that the force required to lift it is not matched by the weight then felt as it lies in the raised palm. This mismatch of sensation is profoundly alien not only to the experience of the individual, but to all the evolved responses of our species.
We seem to know, at a sub-conscious "lizard brain"8 level, that matter should not behave like this.
More troubling yet are the implications for our current scientific understanding, and the technology dependent on it.
It is a fundamental principle of relativity, for instance, that an observer inside a closed frame of reference cannot distinguish between the acceleration of that frame, and the gravitational attraction of an external mass.
For instance, no experiment conducted inside a windowless space craft should yield a different result when conducted accelerating through space at g (the acceleration due to gravity nearer the Earth's surface, 9.81m/s2) far from massive objects, and when conducted with the space craft actually standing on the surface of the earth.
As simply dropping SCP-9235 would immediately distinguish acceleration through space (by falling fast) from gravitational attraction (by falling slowly), it implies the possibility of detectable and therefore absolute motion, absolute rest, and the existence of a privileged frame of reference.
This serious complication of relativity theory already intrinsic to our communications systems is only one of many issues SCP-9235 raises. It is also unclear how the conversion of mass to energy...
E = mc29
...harnessed by nuclear power programmes is implicated - one is inclined to ask which mass is being converted - and what the consequences are for our measurement of the Universe, already complicated by "dark matter" hypothesised to account for anomalous mass calculations which may now afford of other explanations.
SCP-9235 is intrinsically harmless. The Foundation's primary concern is that knowledge of its nature, location, or even existence should not become known before its scientific, technological, and military implications are properly understood, and subject to appropriate management through ████ and the ███ █████ ████████.
FOOTNOTES
[1] A 3:1 alloy of copper and nickel
[2] Argentinian mint
[3] Predecessor of the modern peso convertible
[4] Banco Central de la República Argentina
[5] Numismatic Analysis of SCP-9235, Zahir, L., 24 April 1988
[6] Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Newton, I., 5 July 1686
[7] ibid.
[8] That part of the human brain common to remote evolutionary ancestors, see The Triune Brain in Evolution, MacLean P. D., 31 January, 1990
[9] Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper, Einstein A., 26 September 1905