Re: Reaching toward the Big Bang

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

See below:

Adam was by constitution and proclivity a scientist; I was the same, and
we loved to call ourselves by that great name...Our first memorable
scientific discovery was the law that water and like fluids run downhill,
not up.
                          Mark Twain, <Extract from Eve's Autobiography>

On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Larry Cartwright wrote:

> Jack Uretsky wrote:
> > The Reuters posting is pure hype, with no substance.
> > [...]
> > Apparently the CERN group wanted to get its two cents in before
> > RHIC would have a chance to speak up.
>
> Chuck Britton wrote:
> > The guy on NPR this morning said it would have been better done
> > as a Sci. Am. review article rather than an 'IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT'
> > of results that have been accumulating over the years.
>
> A group of CERN researchers has put *five years* of their lives into an
> intricate and important project which has culminated and is being passed
> on to Brookhaven, and you're criticizing because they want lots of
> people to hear about what they believe they've accomplished?
>
> I know there are those who think that scientific knowledge ought to be
> reserved for the elite few who have mastered the details and intricacies
> and jargon necessary to pursue it professionally.  Hey, let's keep those
> discoveries couched in language that only specialists in the field can
> understand; and publish them only in Scientific American and journals
> and such sources as are only read by a relative handful of people.
        And you think "recreating the big bang" isn't meaningless jargon
to most of us?  OK, so give us a layman's description of how high energy
nuclesu-nucleus (what's a 'nucleus', daddy?) collisions recreate the
big bang.  And why was the evidence "compelling"?  After all, the lay
public has the right to make up its own opinion.  Or are pronouncements
from physicists privileged from scrutinity by us six-packers?
        Come on, Larry, tell us in your own words - not by analogy with
a paradigm that no one understands - what is this great new discovery.
        I assure you, that if you filter it down to my understanding of
what was observed, it has almost nothing to do with the big bang.


> Just because my neighbors are never going to understand how "the
> observed enhancement, relative to proton-induced collisions, of hadrons
> containing strange quarks signals a new and faster strangeness-producing
> process before or during hadronization etc etc" doesn't mean they aren't
> fascinated and impressed by the workings of modern science to the extent
> that it is explained in something approaching everyday language.

        Everyday language?  Which words did you mean?
> I believe it is very important for the scientific community to bring its
> accomplishments to the attention of the general public, the more
> frequently and the more understandably the better.

        I agree with the last, especially the "understandably".  Hype and
understanding are two different concepts.

> Best wishes,
>
> Larry
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Larry Cartwright  <exit60@ia4u.net>
> Physics and Physical Science Teacher
> Charlotte HS, Charlotte MI USA
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~