origin

This year, Ars Electronica is working closely together with the folks at CERN—who are, after all, the go-to source for authoritative info about origins. It turns out that the top address in this field is a few flights down, where scientists are busy deep underground staging collisions among tiny particles to simulate the Big Bang, digging black holes, finding what actually can’t even exist and, for precisely that reason, actually should. But, wait a minute, dude—didn’t I just read something about black holes? Aren’t they, like, dangerous? Wasn’t there a thing about the top blowing off, a bang and a whimper, and we’re all invisible toast? Now, let’s just back up here a moment …

It hasn’t been until recently that CERN has produced a blip on most people’s radar screens. And this is mostly thanks to media outlet reps who make like they have the slightest idea about all sorts of things, and even if they don’t just make up some attention-getting stuff and let it fly. Fact is that CERN has been delivering cogent proof ever since 1954 that its staff isn’t made up of a bunch of loonies bent on deleting our collective existence. For more than half a century, they’ve been pursuing research on all sorts of endeavors—the possible and the virtually impossible. These projects are supported by funding from all over the world, which is also where the scientists themselves are from—CERN’s workforce includes 8,000 men and women, about 200 of them from Austria.

The spectrum of research projects is so broad that if we started describing them all now, we probably wouldn’t even cross the 10% mark by the conclusion of the Festival in September.

CERN’s most spectacular project is undoubtedly ATLAS, an inconceivably large, complex, heavy and mysterious measuring device. Built deep in the bowels of the Earth, this device’s mission is to confirm the existence of something like antimatter—that is, the obverse counterpart of all that exists. Without advanced training in physics, even smart, open-minded people have a hard time getting their minds around this concept; nevertheless, we’re going to try to shed some light on the subject—which, oddly enough, is something you can’t do with antimatter itself. Antimatter is that part of the universe that we can’t perceive optically, no matter how (pun intended)! All we can do is to register the gravitational effect of this antimatter, which is, needless to say, no simple matter, since gravitation is produced by many, many things indeed. One of the reasons why ATLAS was built was to study these gravitational effects. For that matter, deeper insights are available at http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Science/Dark-en.html

CERN staffers are also engaged in the hunt for Higgs bosons, particles that would make an essential contribution to our understanding of the Big Bang. Somehow, energy and energy potential don’t diminish, so it’s assumed that, by way of equalization, all energy particles had no mass at the moment of the Big Bang, and they became massive only when Higgs bosons cooled down—the more so the longer the interaction lasted. These particles are presumed to still exist; ATLAS’ job is to find them. A more detailed and comprehensive explanation is available here: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Science/Higgs-en.html

Another aim is the discovery of additional dimensions (I personally would be satisfied with a little more closet space, but hey…) http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Science/Dimensions-en.html

By the way–ATLAS provided the inspiration for the Festival logo. What seems at first glance to be a starburst or the glare you get when you take a photograph looking towards the Sun is actually a freeze-frame image of a particle collision in ATLAS. The truth be told: this mini-impact actually did produce a tiny little black hole that endured for a fraction of a nanosecond. And no, nobody was swallowed up by it, in case that’s what you were thinking. Though, indeed, there are theories maintaining that something akin to this is precisely what occurred in conjunction with the Big Bang at the inception of the universe. First a black hole, then condensation; and what happens when there’s too much pressure is something we’re all too familiar with in everyday life.

So then–throughout the summer, some ladies and gentlemen from CERN will be paying us a series of visits during which they’ll be giving us explanations of things that are so far beyond our powers of imagination that we’re really going to have to give it all we’ve got to see the light. What’s cosmically funny about this is that it’s highly probably that these things are the very reason why we’re even cognizant of what effort is because, without them, we’d be absolutely nothing at all.