tell them stories

"Why are you searching for dark matter?" I ask.

"To further our knowledge," Christopher replies without hesitation, "and to give life meaning. If we're not exploring, we're not doing anything. We're just waiting."

I think of Rievaulx Abbey west of Boulby, where in a fertile river valley Cistercian monks founded and built a space in which to hold Mass. Out of ironstone they made an airy structure of soaring buttresses and vaulted ceilings. Their abbey was one among a network of such sites spread around the world, in which prayers were offered to a presence disinclined to disclose itself to the usual beseechings.

"My sense," I say to Christopher, "is that the search for dark matter has produced an elaborate, delicate edifice of presuppositions, and a network of worship sites, also known as laboratories, all dedicated to the search for an invisible universal entity which refuses to reveal itself. It seems to resemble what we call religion rather more than what we call science."

"I grew up as a very serious Christian," Christopher says. "Then I lost my faith almost entirely when I found physics. Now that faith has returned, but in a much-changed form. It's true that we dark-matter researchers have less proof than other scientists in terms of what we seek to discover and what we believe we know. As to God? Well, if there were a divinity then it would be utterly separate from both scientific enquiry and human longing."

He pauses again. It is not that this thinking is hard for him -- he has moved down these paths before -- but that he is picking each word with care.

"No divinity in which I would wish to believe would declare itself by means of what we would recognize as evidence." He gestures at the data read-out. "If there is a god, we should not be able to find it. If I detected proof of a deity, i would distrust that deity on the grounds that a god should be smarter than that."

"Does it change the way the world feels?" I ask him. "Knowing that 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second, that countless such particles perforate our brains and hearts? Does it change the way you feel about matter -- about what matters? Are you surprised we don't fall through each surface of our world at every step, push through it with every touch?"

"At the weekends," Christopher says, "when I'm out for a walk with my wife, along the cliff tops near here, on a sunny day, I know our bodies are wide-meshed nets, and that the cliffs we're walking on are nets too, and sometimes it seems, yes, as miraculous as if in our everyday world we suddenly found ourselves walking on water, or air. And I wonder what it must be like, sometimes, not to know that."

He pauses, and it is clear that he is thinking now beyond the confines of the salt cavern, beyond even the known limits of the universe.

Light Pillars over Whitefish Bay

This was in the Yearling box set edition of The Subtle Knife. It doesn’t seem to be included in earlier editions of the appendices. It reads:

Elaine and the boy



Lyra being like her parents Lyra’s parents being like her

While collecting Northern Lights book jacket artwork I cam across this Italian illustrator’s beautiful fanart, follow the link for more images

[It is evident that there is no end to the wicked imaginings of heretics and the blasphemous accounts they give of supposed ‘other worlds’.

There can be no compromise with heresy. It is to be extirpated wherever it is found, even in the mouths of babes and sucklings.

The magisterium has suffered reverses in recent times because of internal rivalries and arguments, some of them amounting almost to heresy themselves, and all detrimental to the great work. It is time to come together in a holy purpose and unite all our efforts under one banner. It is time for a holy war. Brother L]

The long baseline neutrino experiment in Chicago/Minnesota. A 130km beam sounds a lot but supposing they went right through the earth for 11,000km or so—to Australia or New Zealand—what is the diameter? Something like that—the DAQ system could serve the near and the far detectors in exactly the same way as it does for the MINOS project and dammit with all that magma and stuff in the way they’re bound to knock out a few more neutrinos even if those little monkeys are as slippery as they seem to be. I bet they could collim line it up if they wanted to.

Oh by the way I’ve found a new flat. Just a step from the lab—couldn’t be better—nice old lady owns the house—quiet, near the parks. Address as this letter. Spare room. Come and stay!

Love, Mary.