Nov 19 2008
Poetry and the High Art of Particle Physics
It seems to me (at least at this point in time) that most poetry takes aim at exciting the human limbic system: that part of our triune brain responsible for the generation and perception of the social emotions: anger, love, jealousy, sadness. But then there is “higher” art that shoots for the more elusive target of the neocortex. When struck we feel wonder, curiosity, awe: our imagination as much as our emotion is aroused (if, in fact, they can be completely teased apart).
That is what happened to me this morning when reading this bit of . . . science (!):
Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. The anti-matter, also known as positrons, shoots out of the target in a cone-shaped plasma “jet.”
Okay, that snippet of a research finding may not appeal to the large crowd whose artistic taste extends to pulling a daisy apart and muttering, “She loves me, she loves me not.” But it’s their loss. For me: Wow!
[...] of us can find poetic inspiration in [...]