Novel in which a female physicist creates a mini-universe

Question

I'm trying to find a science fiction novel. I read it in about 2010, but I think it would have been published earlier in probably the late 1990s or early 2000s.

It deals with a female particle physicist who accidentally created a miniature universe in a collision experiment. The created universe was very simple, and so I think it was nicknamed something like "The Void" to indicate its lack of structure. One of the first things the researchers found was that the Void would consume some objects but reject others, and that its tastes were highly specific and idiosyncratic. For example it might absorb a paperclip but not a key, or a prime number of toothpicks, but not a non-prime number. (I don't remember if these specific examples are correct, but this was the sort of strange basis it operated on). This led to the group trying to build a robot probe solely out of materials that the Void accepted, which I do remember included ripe strawberries.

The physicist had a boyfriend who was a professor or post-doc in the literature department. I remember more the "physics details" of the story, but the overall theme was whether the physics professor was more in love with her creation than with her partner.

One final thought is that I have the impression that the author was not a scientist (like Egan or Asimov), but had learned enough jargon to sound reasonably convincing.

Answer 1

I initially jumped to Cosm by Greg Benford, but I was wrong.

It's As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem

It deals with a female particle physicist who accidentally created a miniature universe in a collision experiment. The created universe was very simple, and so I think it was nicknamed something like "The Void" to indicate its lack of structure. One of the first things the researchers found was that the Void would consume some objects but reject others, and that its tastes were highly specific and idiosyncratic. For example it might absorb a paperclip but not a key, or a prime number of toothpicks, but not a non-prime number.

Lack is an emptiness created in a particle collider. Professor Soft theorized that the experiment would replicate the Big Bang and opened a wormhole to a microscopic universe and that this wormhole would close shortly after it was created, leaving the new universe attached to reality. The wormhole however is not accompanied by any events to indicate it is a physical object and so it is named Lack. Lack is characterized by its inexplicable preferences, as some particles and objects enter the space where Lack should be and fail to appear on the other side. Professor Alice Coombs is the first to discover that Lack only absorbs certain items. It takes her keys, but not a paperclip. Its only consistent property seems to be that, when Lack refuses an object once, it would forever refuse to consume that object.

The physicist had a boyfriend who was a professor or post-doc in the literature department. I remember more the "physics details" of the story, but the overall theme was whether the physics professor was more in love with her creation than with her partner.

The physicists in Coombs's lab become obsessed with Lack, which appears to have its own personality and preferences. Alice develops a personal relationship with the artificial intelligence that they have created, while Philip becomes jealous of their relationship.