When it comes to “land art” on a grand scale, the Large Hadron Collider’s 17-mile circular tunnel is no mean artifact. As the proton-smashing tunnel operates under the border of Switzerland and France, it is bringing us closer to material “reality,” an important part of art-making.
This week scientists reported that the Collider had briefly trapped atoms of anti-matter hydrogen, a first in physics. This is only a step, though. The Collider’s ultimate goal is to detect one of the most basic particles of the universe, called the Higgs Particle (for Mr. Higgs, a Scottish scientist). By smashing protons at unprecedented energy levels, the Collider hopes to tease out this fundamental fragment of nature.
As a circular earth tunnel, the Collider is a candidate for the annals of land art. It could stand up nicely alongside Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” in Utah, Christo’s 24-mile “Running Fence” in northern California, or James Turrell’s “Roden Crater” in Arizona. Inside its guts, however, the Large Hadron Collider is producing something that transcends art. This illustrates the difference between art and science.
Science and art overlap in many ways, from admiration of creativity to recognizing that the universe does indeed include elements of chance, chaos, uncertainty, and probability. A century ago, all the rage in modern art—some Cubism and abstraction—was to find the fourth dimension suggested by the discovery of x-rays, waves, and non-Euclidian geometry (curved space), and to represent that unseen dimension in paintings.
All of this was before Einstein’s theory offered a more complete idea of how energy and matter are interchangeable at the smallest and the largest scales of the universe. To say the least, it has been difficult to paint the Theory of Relativity. What the Einstein revolution in physics has left unanswered, however, is what the Collider is after: What was the first packet of energy like before matter came into existence?
In the Standard Model of physics, the universe originated with a huge explosion. As that energy cooled, it left behind matter and various forces—the four basic forces—that hold matter together. At the moment of the Big Bang, all the forces were united as a single packet of energy. When Mr. Higgs asked how that pure energy turned into a universe with mass (that is, matter), he proposed that some very early universal particle-field (the Higgs Particle) slows down pure energy, as it were, to congeal energy into mass.
As this week's “anti-matter” headline illustrated, the very existence of matter is a mystery. Logically, at the Big Bang, matter and anti-matter (probably in the form of hydrogen, the simplest and most abundant matter) would have been in equal abundance. They would cancel each other out. After the Big Bang, there would be zero, nothing, nada. However, somehow, matter out-numbered anti-matter. We are here. The forces in nature we are talking about are either so small (binding nuclei) or so large (gravity curving space) that they do not show up in our daily lives. Because of them, however, we have elements and a place to stand in the universe. We have the ability to produce oil paints and land art with dirt and bulldozers.
To do its job, the Collider must presume that the forces of nature are operating by predictable patterns, that is, by laws. Nature is law-abiding and that is why we can know about it. In science, this knowledge is obtained by proposing reasonable hypotheses and testing them. The good hypotheses survive and become workable theories, which is the closest thing to “truth” in science. For example, the Standard Model is the best theory going, the best “truth” we have so a far. So at great expense, the search is on for the missing piece in that theory: the Higgs particle (also called the “God particle”).
If art and science are often at odds, it is because art, while having many ideas, does not test them. Often art will deny that a “real” nature exists, saying that nature is constructed by human imagination. In recent decades we’ve heard of the dematerialization of art, the belief that imaginative ideas alone can make anything possible. Sorry, says science: only some things are possible, according to the laws of physics.
Despite this impasse, art and science do share the impulse of curiosity, and some scientific hypotheses are curious indeed. Nevertheless, science views nature as averaging-out uncertainties. The result is bedrock, reliable Nature. To proceed, the scientist must presume that reality can be found “out there.”
As in the days of the fourth-dimension craze, art continues to tickle our fancy for science-fiction and fantasy. With computers, we are entering imaginary virtual worlds (though, again, based on the iron laws of physics). Over at the Collider, fantasy games can’t be a substitute for simple brick-and-mortar science.
The Higgs particle may not exist. Mr. Higgs may have taken the creative leap-of-the-century in proposing his ultimate particle. In the end, the Collider may be more land art than successful science. Still, when the protons smash each other to bits under Switzerland and France, the search is to know reality. Something holds Nature together. This allows us to make things that hold together as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment