BY JAN HAAG
ACCELERATORS AND FUNERARY FURNISHINGS
I
A
compassionate fellow
with a small English accent
asks: "What do we
think we're
doing, bashing all those atoms about,
the electrons,
the neutrons, the quarks?
They are consciousness. Do we never
consider
the harm? Building accelerators to speed them
toward the
speed of light, bombarding them with
each other. Do we never consider
the harm?"
I say:
"My intuition is that we may be doing more
than we think.
As skittish as those particles may be, we may
be
creating matter. Though they explode
off the bubble chamber
photographs,
still, who knows what ultimate
changes we wreak?
Creating.
Creating matter.
For they say
that high energy
particles do not
come into being until there is an observer,
an
experimenter who calls them into being -- us.
II
We
say
bashing atoms about is the only way we
can study them, and
particles and quarks.
Since we can't see them unless we involve
them
in drama/violence, we necessarily call
that violence/drama that we see
a part of them.
Might it not be the same for humans?
We can't really
see human beings
unless they are engaged in drama -- a skinned knee, a
terrible job,
a frightful husband, the throes of passion -- the way
they are in literature.
We grow bored with a story or an anecdote
unless it is dramatic.
The function of drama in human beings may just
be
the means for us to see each other.
We can no more perceive a
human being at rest,
in its "natural" state than we can see a muon, or
a quark.
Life itself may be blissfully, serenely placid;
it is our
bombardment in an effort to see
that creates all the drama,
just as
it does with particles
III
They say if there is a certain
finitude of matter
the universe is open, forever expanding.
They
say, if there is more than a certain mass
the universe is closed, it
will reach its maximum
and contract back into itself. Right now,
they
say, there is missing matter in the galaxies
which may be other
universes,
worlds we cannot see --
due to our limited ways of
seeing
(due to our chosen, self-limiting ways of seeing).
If
these universes appear, or we find the neutrino has weight, or
if we
create matter by bashing particles, then we have only (perhaps)
1030
more years to be about. (In any case look for a radical change
from
proton and neutron decay at 1032.) Think, as you make
things, dramas,
if you are making something which increases
matter. It can close down
our universe.
IV
Beware of what 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 © 2000 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