Closed Loops

The whitsun sun is warming the light sea breeze… A number of investigators are Out of Office. My own anglepoise lab is vacated. My mind turns once more to conversations with Sam Ting, Gershon Goldhaber, Martin Perl, and others in the old quark team. Once a wildcat, always a wildcat, as they say. People often ask me: ‘what’s happening at CERN?’ ‘What’s going on since the big switch flick?’ I tell them go research. Meantimes, I sit on seafront, eying for brown ion pipes and other usable objects recycled in that sea out there. That was meant to be brown iron pipe – an ion pipe is something altogether different, more of use to Sam and the MIT boys. Cornetto wrappers in bins are testament to the changing seasons. Still light enough to spin wool (and vinyl) at 11pm now, with a clear sky.

An old face from Edinburgh turned up at the weekend, up with Edinburgh Kayak Group, with his latest belle in tow. I need to give some thought to superstring theory. I believe the theory views all particles as ‘closed loops’ – circular strings of energy – thin donuts. There is also a theory among cosmologists that, 4 or 5 dimensionally speaking, the universe is donut shaped. If both theory is correct, the smallest and the largest are then identical – the universe and the particle. And naturally from this, one can suppose that the universe could be a donut particle in a larger universe, and that each donut particle could itself be a donut universe of its own.

All this talk is getting me hungry.