Tim and the PC fight the improbable Standard Model

Timothy is the best nephew anyone could wish for.  Say "Hello" to Tim, as he was on Queen's Surf, Waikiki, some few years ago.

Tim is bright, witty, inventive, and he had a computer that wouldn't do the simplest things.  It couldn't even be fixed.  So naturally, when it comes to gluons, the basis for supposing that they exist being millions and millions of computer observations and millions of computer computations, Tim is sceptical.

However, the Standard Model of Particle Physics predicts that there are gluons with defined though heretofore unobserved (by computers) properties, and physicists are understandably pleased that  predictions have now been confirmed. (Or displeased, for a proof that the Standard Model is wrong would mean work for hundreds of physicists for years to come.

So, this is what has been learned.  We consists of atoms, so we can dispense, in descriptions of us, with "we" and simply note a collection of atoms.  Atoms consist of protons and neutrons, in the main, so we can dispense with "atom." and substitute "proton and neutron"  Protons and neutrons consist of quarks and gluons, so we can dispense with protons and neutrons, and say that "we" and everything that humans can observe, are quarks and gluons.

Now.  We think that we "weigh" something.  I think that I weigh 182 pounds -- down , thankfully, from 196.  Little did I know, until I read this article in Science News, that weight is an illusion.  Rather, what we think of as weight is merely the strong "force", the constant interaction of gluons with their attendant quarks.  ["Force" is in quotation marks, to indicate that I think it is as meaningless as "aether" was in bygone days.  Try to find a definition for for force that isn't circular.]  

The science News article has lots of other interesting stuff about multiple computations on four dimensional matrices which all of you might enjoy marveling that JP can understand.

We cannot, even theoretically, "see" a gluon, nor touch nor smell one.  Science now marches on such abstractions of abstractions.  Will someone, someday, understand the world in a more direct way?  I think so.  I know that many scientists hope so, and dream of being the one to make such a discovery.  See, Dreams of a Final Theory, by Steven Weinberg, a hero of mine.

In the meantime, it would be good if  Hussein were to use stimulus money to hire an army of technicians to create home computers that work, or at least that can be easily repaired, so Tim will at last enjoy his life. 

Or he could get a Mac.

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When I heard the learn'd astronomer;

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and

measure them;

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much

applause in the lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

But Whitman, whom I love, was shortsighted in this instance.  Both views fill me with wonder.  You too?

Or you might prefer Ginsberg's rake on Whitman, whom I love too:

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for

I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache

self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went

into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families

shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the

avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what

were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,

poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery

boys.

Can't go to a grocery store without this line of poetry echoing in my mind.