Практикум

А

DIRECT CP VIOLATION has been observed at Fermilab by the KTeV collaboration. An important way of apprehending the basic nature of time and space (in the finest tradition of Greek philosophy) is to ask “what if” questions. For example, will a collision between particles be altered if we view the whole thing in a mirror? Or what if we turn all the particles into antiparticles?

These propositions, called respectively parity (P) and charge conjugation (C) conservation, are upheld by all the forces of nature except the weak nuclear force. And even the weak force usually conserves the compound proposition of CP. In only one small corner of physics – the decay of Kmesons – has CP violation been observed, although physicists suspect that CP violation must somehow operate on a large scale since it undoubtedly helped bring about the present-day preponderance of matter over antimatter.

K mesons (kaons) are unstable and do not exist outside the interiors of neutron stars and particle accelerators, where they are artificially spawned in K-anti K pairs amidst high energy collisions. K’s might be born courtesy of the strong nuclear force, but the rest of their short lives are under control of the weak force, which compels a sort of split personality: neither the K nor anti-K leads a life of its own. Instead each transforms repeatedly into the other. A more practical way of viewing the matter is to suppose that the K and anti-K are each a combination of two other particles, a short lived entity called K1 which usually decays to two pions (giving K1 a CP value of +1) and a longer-lived entity, K2, which decays into three pions (giving K2 a CP value of -1). This bit of bookkeeping enshrined the idea then current that CP is conserved.

All of this was overthrown when in 1964 the experiment of Jim Cronin and Val Fitch showed that a small fraction of the time (about one case in every 500, a fraction called epsilon) the K2 turns into a K1, which subsequently decays into two pions. This form of CP violation is said to be indirect since the violation occurs in the way that K’s mix with each other and not in the way that K’s decay. One theoretical response was to say that this lone CP indiscretion was not the work of the weak force but of some other novel “superweak” force. Most theorists came to believe, however, that the weak force was responsible and, moreover, that CP violation should manifest itself directly in the decay of K2 into two pions. The strength of this direct CP violation, characterized by the parameter epsilon prime, would be far weaker than the indirect version. For twenty years detecting a nonzero value of epsilon prime has been the object of large-scale experiments at Fermilab and for nearly as long at CERN. In each case, beams of K’s are sent down long pipes in which the K-decay pions could be culled in sensitive detectors.

At the APS Centennial meeting in Atlanta last week, both groups discussed their work. The KTeV group at Fermilab reported a definite result: a ratio of epsilon prime to epsilon equal to 28 (+/-4) x 10 ^{– 4}, larger than the theoretical expectation. As for the NA48 group at CERN, Lydia Iconomidou-Fayard said that data analysis was still proceeding and no definite measurement could be reported at this time. The principal conclusion was stated by KTeV co-spokesman Bruce Winstein: Before the new experiments direct CP violation had not been established, owing to the large uncertainty in the early measurements of epsilon prime; the new experiment, by contrast, does succeed in establishing a nonzero value for epsilon prime, thus providing a new way to probe (a parameter that can be measured in the lab) this cosmologically-important and most mysterious feature of particle physics.

CREATING ANTIMATTER WITH LASER LIGHT. Intense light from the Petawatt laser at Livermore, the world’s most powerful laser, has been directed onto a thin gold film where it creates a plasma plume, which acts as a sort of messy wakefield accelerator. In particular the laser electric fields rip electrons from the gold atoms and send the electrons shooting off with energies as high as 100 MeV. Some of these electrons radiate gamma rays which in turn can create electron-positron pairs (the first antimatter made in laser-solid interactions) and can also induce fission. Thus laser photons at the electron-volt level can, by teaming up, initiate the sort of million-electron-volt nuclear reactions that normally take place only at an accelerator. Moreover, the femtosecond laser pulses can be focused to a much smaller spot size then is possible with any conventional particle beam. Tom Cowan reported these results at last week’s APS centennial meeting in Atlanta.

TABLETOP THERMONUCLEAR FUSION. Yet another Livermore photonuclear breakthrough was reported at the APS meeting. Todd Ditmire described an experiment in which laser pulses (35 fsec long and intensities as high as 1017 W/cm2) were absorbed by a gas jet of deuterium molecules. These molecules actually resided in clusters (average size of 5 nm) which exploded under the laser bombardment. Some of the rocketing D’s fused into helium-3 nuclei plus energetic neutrons. The neutrons, showing up with a characteristic energy of 2.45 MeV, were detected (about 10,000 per laser shot) via a time-of-flight technique. Ditmire said that this new approach to promoting fusion reactions (executed with a setup that fits on a 4’x11’ table) could probably not be scaled up to provide commercial power, but that it might provide a cheap source of neutrons. The whole process is highly efficient: virtually all the laser energy was converted into ion kinetic energy.

MOLECULAR ASTROPHYSICS. To understand how molecules form in space, earthbound scientists are performing laboratory experiments that simulate the cold interstellar dust and gas clouds where molecules are manufactured. Some researchers study the formation of H2, the universe’s simplest and most abundant molecule. Other researchers study the properties of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), flat rings of carbon and hydrogen which seem to exist in the interstellar clouds. At the APS meeting, Gianfranco Vidali of Syracuse presented studies on how two hydrogen atoms join together on an interstellar dust grain. Shooting H atoms onto a solid target (playing the role of an interstellar dust grain, with a temperature of 10 K) and observing how many of the atoms would react on the cold surface to form molecular hydrogen, he and his colleagues found that the rate of H2 formation was higher on amorphous carbon than on olivine (a silicon-oxygen based material), suggesting that the former is a more likely candidate for interstellar dust, whose composition is still unknown. Louis Allamandola and his colleagues at NASA-Ames discussed recent experiments showing that shining UV light on PAHs can convert them to organic compounds that are present in henna, aloe, and St.John’s wort.

Combined with spectroscopic measurements that support the existence of PAHs in interstellar clouds, these experiments advance the notion that PAHs may be the precursors of biologically important molecules on our planet and possibly others.

B

The Mayor, the Virgin, and the Elephant Dung by Ian Cooper

Picture the following. You approach a transparent box which contains a reddish-black sculpture – the bust of a man, smiling enigmatically. You discover that the artist, Marc Quinn, drained pints of his own blood for months and, in a complex process, froze it and sculped it into a likeness of himself. The fragile resulting work, “Self”, would cease to exist were it to thaw. Furthermore, the blood cells which make it up are actually still alive. Now, do you find this repulsive, fascinating, or both? Does it make you ponder, what is art? Or do you feel that such questions are so dangerous that you should be protected even from asking them?

This is one of the works in a show which the mayor of New York is trying to shut down. Rudy Giuliani swears that he will cut off city funding for the Brooklyn Museum of Art if it follows through with the opening this Saturday of “Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection.” The mayor calls the entire show, “sick stuff,” and takes particular offense at one painting, “The Holy Virgin Mary,” adorned with clumps of elephant dung. He said, “You don’t have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else’s religion.”

(The artist, Chris Ofili, is himself a Catholic, and the dung is a reference to his African roots. But never mind.) The museum is taking the city to court to win back its money and its first amendment rights.

The dung doesn’t smell, by the way. But the affair does reek of politics. Giuliani the undeclared Senate candidate and proud philistine is pandering to social conservatives in general and Catholics in particular. (I am surprised, incidentally, that Giuliani has not made the ingenious argument that the artists, being British, have no constitutional right to free expression in the U.S.) His foe Hillary Clinton, cravenly following other New York Democrats, agrees that the show is “deeply offensive” and that she herself would not go see it, but lamely maintains that shutting the museum is the “wrong response.” The implication is that any art which is sensational must necessarily be bad.

But just as what makes art “great” is a matter of subjective judgment, so it is with what makes art “shocking”. In London, where the show originated, the most controversial work was a gigantic portrait based on the famous mug shot of the child murderer, Myra Hindley; a vandal pelted it with eggs and ink, thinking it glorified her crimes. (It was painted not with brushes, but with casts made from the hands of children.) In that case, the work would be meaningless without the shock value of the image; the controversy, far from being irrelevant, is an integral part of the work.

On the other hand, the – unremarkable and easily missed – Virgin Mary painting was not at all scandalous in London. (Of course, what could a vandal throw at a work that already has dung on it?) Its scandalousness is a product of the political requirements of the willfully ignorant mayor, who seems to conflate all Catholic experience with that of white Catholic New Yorkers.

Some of the works in the show are not scandalous at all, but just really cool: a painting which covers an entire canvas with the single stroke of a gigantic paintbrush; a sculpture which is a breathtakingly realistic reproduction, in miniature, of the artist’s dead father; and a work made up of one hundred luminous resin sculptures which exactly represent the spaces beneath one hundred chairs. Others are intentionally shocking but utterly pointless: the spectacularly narcissistic, “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995,” which is a tent embroidered with the names of the artist’s bedmates over the years; and sculptures of mutant children with multiple genitals growing out of their heads. (This latter work – surely the most objectively offensive in the show – has curiously not been mentioned by the mayor.)

I’m not an art critic, but part of what is great about “Sensation” is that you don’t have special expertise to appreciate it. It is the work of a group of artists, many of whom went to art school together, who managed to find new things to say and do when it seemed like everything possible had already been said and done. In the process, they have actually made art hip, brought it to a wider audience, and more generally contributed to the revival of “swinging London.” (Many of these artists are household names in Britain; how many American artists still alive, let alone under forty, can you say that about?) Some of it is wonderful, some is mediocre, and some is – as the Brits would say – crap. The fun is sorting out which is which. Unless, of course, Giulini gets his way and you will never have the discomfort of deciding for yourself.

C

Two farmhands went to a country dance. One of the hands, Joe, had a wooden eye and was very self-conscious about it. Joe told the other guy, Bill, that he was worried about someone saying something about his wooden eye. Bill told him not to worry because it was a good eye and most people couldn’t tell if from a real eye.

Bill danced nearly every dance, as there was a lot of farm-girls there. Joe just didn’t dance at all. Finally, Bill went over to Joe and asked if he had danced with any of the girls. Joe told him that he had not because he was concerned about them saying something about his wooden eye. Bill told him again not to be concerned about it. Bill pointed to a girl sitting across the room and told Joe, “See that good-looking girl over there? She’s got a hair-lip and hasn’t danced but once or twice. I danced with her once and she’s an excellent dancer and real polite. Go over there and ask her to dance. She won’t say anything about your wooden eye.”

So Joe had a couple of more snorts of courage and went over to the hair-lipped girl and asked, “Do you want to dance?” To which she replied in a high pitched hair-lipped voice, “Would I, Would I!!!” To which Joe replied, “Hair-lip, Hair-lip!!!”

The Judge said to the defendant, “I thought I told you I never wanted to see you in here again.”

“Your Honor,” the criminal said, “that’s what I tried to tell the police, but they wouldn’t listen.”

My wife and I have the secret to making a marriage last. Two times a week, we go to a nice restaurant, a little wine, good food… She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.

TELL ME WHAT IT IS

Arnold Schwartzeneggar has a big one,

Michael J. Fox has a small one,

Madonna doesn’t have one,

The Pope has one but doesn’t use it,

Clinton uses his all the time,

Mickey Mouse has an unusual one,

Liberace didn’t use his with women,

Jerry Seinfeld is very proud of his,

We never saw Lucy use Desi’s What is it?

A last name

LOST CHPTERS IN GENESIS

Adam was walking around the Garden of Eden feeling

Very lonely,

So God asked him, “What is wrong with you?”

Adam said he didn’t have anyone to talk to.

God said that He was going to make Adam a companion

And that it would be a woman.

He said, “This person will gather food for you, cook for you, and

When you discover clothing she’ll wash it for you.

She will always agree with every decision you make.

She will bear your children and never ask you to get up

In the middle of the night to take care of them.

She will not nag you and will always be the first to admit

She was wrong when you’ve had a disagreement.

She will never have a headache and will freely give you

Love and passion whenever you need it.

Adam asked God, “What will a woman like this cost?”

God replied, “An arm and a leg.”

Then Adam asked, “What can I get for a rib?”

The rest is history…

GREETING CARD VERSES THAT DIDN’T QUITE MAKE IT

My tire was thumping…

Thought it was flat…

When I looked at the tire…

I noticed your cat… Sorry

You had your bladder removed

And you’re on the mends…

Here’s a bouquet of flowers

And a box of Depends

Heard your wife left you…

How upset you must be…

But don’t fret about it…

She moved in with me

You totaled your car…

And can’t remember why…

Could it have been…

That case of Bud Dry?

True stories from Technical Support

At 3:37 a.m. on a Sunday, when I received a frantic phone call from a new user of a Macintosh Plus. She had gotten he entire family out of the house and was calling from her neighbor’s. She had just received her first system error and interpreted the picture of the bomb on the screen as a warning that the computer was going to blow up.

Tech Support: “I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop.”

Customer: “Ok.”

Tech Support: “Did you get a pop-up menu?”

Customer: “No.”

Tech Support: “Ok. Right click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?”

Customer: “No.”

Tech Support: “Ok, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?”

Customer: “Sure, you told me to write ‘click’ and I wrote ‘click.’”

(At this point I had to put the caller on hold to tell the rest of the tech support staff what had happened. I couldn’t, however, stop from giggling when I got back to the call.)

Tech Support: “Ok, did you type ‘click’ with the keyboard?”

Customer: “I have done something dumb, right?”

One woman called Dell’s toll-free line to ask how to install the batteries in her laptop. When told that the directions were on the first page of the manual the woman replied angrily, “I just paid $2,000 for this thing, and I’m not going to read the book.”

Customer: “I’m having trouble installing Microsoft Word.”

Tech Support: “Tell me what you’ve done.”

Customer: “I typed ‘A:SETUP’.”

Tech Support: “Ma’am, remove the disk and tell me what it says.”

Customer: “It says ‘[PC manufacturer] Restore and Recovery disk.”

Tech Support: “Insert the MS Word setup disk.”

Customer: “What?”

Tech Support: “Did you buy MS word?”

Customer: “No…”

Tech Support: “Ok, in the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you see the ‘OK’ button displayed?”

Customer: “Wow. How can you see my screen from there?”

Customer: “Uhh… I need help unpacking my new PC.”

Tech Support: “What exactly is the problem?”

Customer: “I can’t open the box.”

Tech Support: “Well, I ‘d remove the tape holding the box closed and go from there.”

Customer: “Uhhhh… ok, thanks….”

- Customer: “I’m having a problem installing your software. When I type ‘INSTALL’, all it says is ‘Bad command or file name’.”

- Tech Support: “Ok, check the directory of the A: drive-go to A:/ and type ‘dir’.”

- Customer: reads off a list of file names, including ‘INSTALL.EXE’.

- Tech Support: “All right, the correct file is there. Type ‘INSTALL’ again.”

- Customer: “Ok.” (pause) “Still says ‘Bad command or file name’.”

- Tech Support: “Hmmm. The file’s there in the correct place – it can’t help but do something. Are you sure you’re typing I-N-S-T-A-L-L and hitting the Enter key?”

- Customer: “Yes, let me try it again.” (pause) “Nope, still ‘Bad command or file name’.”

- Tech Support: (now really confused) “Are you sure you’re typing I-N-S-T-A-L-L and hitting the key that says ‘Enter’?”

- Customer: “Well, yeah. Although my ‘N’ key is stuck, so I’m using the ‘M’ key…does that matter?

At our company we have asset numbers on the front of everything. They give the location, name, and everything else just by scanning the computer’s asset barcode or using the number beneath the bars.

- Customer: “Hello. I can’t get on the network.”

- Tech Support: “Ok. Just read me your asset number so we can open an outage.”

- Customer: “What is that?”

- Tech Support: “That little barcode on the front of your computer.”

- Customer: “Ok. Big bar, little bar, big bar, big bar…”

_________________________________________________

- Customer: “I got this problem. Your people sent me this install disk, and now my A: drive won’t work.”

- Tech Support: “Your A drive won’t work?”

- Customer: “That’s what I said. You sent me a bad disk, it got stuck in my drive, now it won’t work at all.”

- Tech Support: “Did it not install properly? What kind of error messages did you get?”

- Customer: “I didn’t get any error message. The disk got stuck in the drive and wouldn’t come out. So I got these pliers and tried to get it out. That didn’t work either.”

- Tech Support: “You did what sir?”

- Customer: “I got these pliers, and tried to get the disk out, but it woudn’t budge. I just ended up cracking the plastic stuff a bit.”

- Tech Support: “I don’t understand sir, did you push the eject button?”

- Customer: “No, so then I got a stick of butter and melted it and used a turkey baster and put the butter in the drive, around the disk, and that got it loose. Then I sued the pliers and it came out fine. I can’t believe you would send me a disk that was broke and defective.”

- Tech Support: “Let me get this clear. You put melted butter in you’re A: drive and used pliers to pull the disk out?” At this point, I put the call on the speakerphone and motioned at the other techs to listen in.

- Tech Support: “Just so I am absolutely clear on this, can you repeat what you just said?”

- Customer: “I said I put butter in my A: drive to get your dumb disk out, then I had to use pliers to pull it out.”

- Tech Support: “Did you push that little button that was sticking out when the disk was in the drive, you know, the thing called the disk eject button?”

Silence.

- Tech Support: “Sir?”

- Customer: “Yes.”

- Tech Support: “Sir, did you push the eject button?”

- Customer: “No, but your people are going to fix my computer, or I am going to sue you for breaking my computer”

- Tech Support: “Let me get this straight. You are going to sue our company because you put the disk in the A: drive, didn’t follow the instructions we sent you, didn’t actually seek professional advice, didn’t consult your user’s manual on how to use your computer properly, instead proceeding to pour butter into the drive and physically rip the disk out?”

- Customer: “Ummmm.”

- Tech Support: “Do you really think you stand a chance, since we do record every call and have it on tape?”

- Customer: “But you’re supposed to help!”

- Tech Support: “I am sorry sir, but there is nothing we can do for you. Have a nice day.”

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Think to go Hmmmm… about

It’s a dog eat dog world out there. And they’re short on napkins.

Never trust a stockbroker who’s married to a travel agent.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

Married people don’t live longer than single people.

It just seems longer.

Disneyland: A people trap operated by a mouse.

Common Sense Isn’t.

Sooner or later, EVERYONE stops smoking.

Light travels faster than sound.

This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

The best way to save face is to keep the lower part shut.