Re: Reaching toward the Big Bang

[Larry Cartwright <exit60@IA4U.NET>]

Jack Uretsky wrote:
> 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?
> [...]
> Everyday language?  Which words did you mean?

They didn't claim they were "recreating the big bang".  They have
claimed that their 33 TeV ion beam created temperatures corresponding to
conditions that should have existed a few microseconds *after* the Big
Bang according to long-standing and widely-accepted cosmological
theories.  And that they have have accumulated enough plausible evidence
of the existence of quark-gluon matter to "present strong incentive for
the future planned experiments", i.e. Brookhaven and LHC/ALICE.

Everybody within the particle/cosmology community knew this is what CERN
was shooting for when they started the research and they haven't exactly
kept their progress a secret; this announcement should not astound or
even surprise anyone (even a layperson) who has been following the
progress of particle-beam research.  This program has roots way back in
the mid-80's when Carlo Rubia headed the CERN proton-antiproton
collision research (electro-weak confirmation) that won him a Nobel.
Even back then Rubia was publicly describing CERN's work as "little
bangs, trying to duplicate for very short periods of time the conditions
in the early universe".

You sound like you don't believe there are any intelligent and
interested lay observers of matters scientific.  There are millions of
non-scientists who follow the activities of the professional scientific
community, and that's who I am talking about when I say that the
professional scientific community ought to keep the "general public"
informed.  I'm talking about people who read newspapers and magazines
and books and watch TV presentations that bring them in touch with
scientific events.  Yes, they won't be able to comprehend a highly
technical presentation of all the details; but I don't think that should
preclude them from receiving an intelligent but general summary of the
current state of knowledge and achievement.

In yesterday's edition of our little regional newspaper (Lansing State
Journal) there is a lengthy article about Abrams Planetarium including
the introduction of their newest program that will be seen by thousands
of local people, "a multimedia history of life as we know it, starting
with the big-bang theory, leading up to today."  The general public are
not all "six-packers".  There are a great many people who understand, in
a general way of course, the language of 20th century physics including
nucleus, collider, Big Bang Theory, etc.

I realize that, by the traditional "rules of the game", CERN should have
first published in a scholarly forum.  Then all the professional players
would have the opportunity of spending weeks or months nitpicking
whether the experimental outcomes were "compelling" (their word), or
"strong evidence" (Jack's words), or "inconclusive" or whatever, before
reports eventually filtered out to the general public.

I'm fascinated to see CERN subverting the ancient and traditional
publication process.  Perhaps I should be horrified, but I suspect it is
not as terrible as many professionals will feel it is.  Perhaps a
communication and evaluation process that was designed for the 19th-20th
centuries is no longer appropriate as we approach the 21st century.  I
predict that within a decade or so the "journal first" tradition will be
pretty much history, supplanted by the news conference and the internet;
you can beat me up online in 2011 if I'm wrong.

Best wishes,

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