Why
Anti-matter
Matters Douglas Cruickshank
"What more is possible?
After us the Savage God."
William Butler Yeats, after seeing
the first performance of "Ubu Roi"
WE'RE FINALLY STARTING TO get somewhere. What the turn-of-the-century avant-garde began, contemporary physicists may finish by the turn-of-the-millennium. Unfortunately the guy who would probably be most gratified checked out in 1907. I'm referring to the recent breakthrough in creating atoms of anti-matter, and also to the late playwright, poet, artist and freelance scoundrel Alfred Jarry (born 1873) who, among other accomplishments, was Pablo Picasso's weapon supplier. (Picasso used the pistol to shoo away bores, but we'll get to that later.) Anti-matter, as you can guess, is the opposite of matter. In fact when matter and anti-matter come in contact with one another they explode. Scientists and the popular press don't like to use the word explode because it's too, well, explosive, and leads to unpleasant associations and bad public relations. Instead, when referring to close encounters between atoms of matter and anti-matter they'll use a phrase like "instantly annihilate each other, releasing a burst of energy" (Associated Press, 5 January 1996). Where I come from that describes an explosion, but perhaps I'm missing something. Anyway, awhile back at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland (the same folks that brought us the the World Wide Web) an international team of physicists created atoms of anti-matter for the first time; they conjured up nine of the little scutters. The world, as Aristotle long ago determined, is made of matter. The anti-world, as the physicists seem to have confirmed, is made of anti-matter. At the time of the anti-matter materialization, CERN's spokesman remarked that "This discovery opens the door into a completely new anti-world." It may be a "tiny Alice in Wonderland door," he added, that will forever change physicists' understanding of reality once they gaze through it. Where I come from that describes a portal to a parallel universe, but perhaps I'm missing something. | |
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