~e; Fwd: particular acceleration

[brian carroll <human@electronetwork.org>]

  this short newsbit is interesting for several reasons:
    1- research which is testing  the scientific ideas about the 
beginning of the universe, in the artifact of a electromagnetic 
particle-accelerator.

    2- i have a vague memory of somewhere reading or hearing (may have 
been from a S. Hawking lecture at the University of Minnesota) that 
the universe was created by a master particle, at some point, if 
things were reversed. an egg/plenum concept, not sure. but, that 
particles 'birth' other particles, as the accelerator's scattershot 
shows.

    3- the artistic aspect of the science. personally, i find there is 
much meaning in a particle accelerator photo, although as abstract as 
many works are today, and as subjective, given the fuzziness of 
knowledge. i am uncertain where the boundary lies between the imaes 
on this site and 'art', and electronic art at that. in terms of 
meaning, that is. cultural awareness. facts. debatable. but the 
aesthetics and the consistency amongst accelerators and their output 
(photographs) is like seeing recurring symbols used in early 
civilization. (see symbols.com or .org for the best outline of such).

    4- that a building, housing a machine that is a particle 
accelerator, or many even, is off the cultural map, when it is doing 
work that is defining the reality we exist within. wishing there was 
some way to acknowledge the importance of such places, as they are 
educational. yet, when visiting Lawrence Berkeley Labs and seeing one 
of their machines, an accelerator, there was not much to see, really. 
it was about 'thinking about' what the machine was doing, more than 
seeing it. such as hearing that a machine, somewhere in its innards, 
uses magnets to hold a particle in place, for experiments. just that 
idea makes me have to sit down and contemplate what is missing from 
the separation of scientific from cultural knowledge. if these two 
could be brought together, an education about the present seems a 
possibility, where students may tour such facilities, such as telecom 
and power and media facilities, and understand both the science and 
culture, and have the experience presented as such, to raise 
awareness of the important cultural aspects of the sci-tech that are 
largely unacknowledged in general education. ...~e.org

============================================================

  From Wired News, available online at: (see URL for imagery)
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,46314,00.html

Striking Gold at Speed of Light
Wired News Report

2:00 a.m. Aug. 30, 2001 PDT

Physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory are on a roll.

Last week, an international team of scientists working with one of the
lab's particle accelerators announced they had made a batch of 
"doubly strange" particles.

Just weeks earlier, another group said it is very close to recreating
the conditions of the earliest universe.

Run by the Department of Energy, the lab in Long Island, New York,
operates nearly two dozen particle accelerators of varying sizes.

One of the largest, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC),
recently started operating at full energy. At the same time, the 
sensitivity of its detectors, or eyes, have been significantly 
upgraded.

The results can be seen in the beautifully intricate images above,
which show the paths of subatomic particles after gold ions are 
smashed together at nearly the speed of light.

Scientists hope that by smashing ions together, the collider will
recreate the conditions of the earliest universe, when matter's 
elemental particles, which are normally bound together, floated 
freely in a hot, dense "quark-gluon plasma."

"It is difficult to know how the resulting insights will change and
influence our technology, or even our views about nature," said 
Thomas Kirk, an associate lab director at Brookhaven. "But history 
suggests there will be changes, and some may be profound."


Copyright (C) 1994-2001 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.
fair-use.edu, ~e.org 2001
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brian thomas carroll		the_electromagnetic_internetwork
electromagnetic researcher	matter, energy, and in-formation
human@electronetwork.org	http://www.electronetwork.org/

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