ACCELERATORS AND FUNERARY FURNISHINGS
I
A compassionate fellow
in a high English accent asks:
"What are we doing bashing
those atoms about --
the electrons, the neutrons, the quarks?
They're consciousness. Do we never consider
the harm? Building accelerators, shooting them
toward the speed of light, bombarding them with
each other -- do we never consider the harm?" I say:
"We may be doing more than we think with those
skittish particles. We may be creating matter. Though they fly
off bubble chamberphotographs, still, who knows
what changes we've wrought?
Creating matter.
For they say:
high energy particles do not
come into being until there is an observer,
who calls them into being -- us.
II
We say
bashing atoms, particles and quarks about
is the only way we can study them.
We can't
see them unless we involve them in drama and violence.
Then we callthat violence and drama part of their nature.
Is it the same for humans? Perhaps we can't really see human
beings unless they're engaged in drama -- a skinned knee,
a terrible job, a frightful husband, the throes of passion.
In literature we're bored with a story unless it is dramatic.
Drama may be just what allows us to see each other.
We can no more perceive a human being at rest,
in a "natural" state, than we can see a muon,
a quark. Life itself may be serene, placid.
Bombardment, in our effort to see it
may be what creates drama, just as
it does with particles.
III
They say if there is a certain finitude to matter
the universe is open, expanding. They say,
if there is more than a certain mass
the universe is closed. When it
reaches maximum it will
contract back into itself.
Right now, they say, there is
missing matter in the galaxies.
It may be other universes, worlds we cannot see --
(due to our chosen, self-limiting ways of seeing).
If these universes were to appear, or we find that
the neutrino has weight, or if we create matter
by bashing particles,then we may have only
1030 more years to be about. (In any case look for a
radical change
from
proton and neutron decay at 1032.) And think, as you
make
things, dramas, creating matter could close down our universe.
IV
Beware when you create.
V
I have noticed a compulsion to go against
what I really want:
i.e. to eat when I'm not hungry, to remain in
love
with Allan when he bored me to death,
to stick with old friends
even when
they hurt me,
in short,
a natural compulsion to
work
against my own best interest.
VI
Why?
Copyright © 1996 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu
Challenger
Identity Crisis
McDonald Observatory
10-33*
BY JAN HAAG