Build that accelerator!
Few exhortations ignite such wearisome passion as those to “build that wall” from the man otherwise reliable sources inform us is US President. Now physicist David G. Hitlin floats an alternative on the . It could, he suggests, “provide the desired deterrence capability without reallocation of Defense Department funds, the use of alligators, the separation of children and parents, or the need to shoot anyone in the leg”.
Hitlin notes the Mexico-US border has some very long, very straight bits. Particle physicists have a yen for very long, very straight things, in the form of the linear particle colliders they use to bash things together at ever higher energies to recreate the earliest conditions of the universe/devour huge amounts of cash/consume the world in a black hole (tick as applicable, multiple answers possible).
Advertisement
Deciding where to site such a thing, or who should fund it, has been the subject of much unresolved argy-bargy. Licking his lips and mouthing the word “synergy” with the enthusiasm of a business consultant, Hitlin suggests building a linear collider along part of the southern US border.
To serve its dual purpose of border defence fortification and international particle research facility, the Very Big International Linear Collider or Trump ILC, names floated by Hitlin, would be built above ground, with two arms each 150 kilometres long.
It would be more in keeping with Trump’s original plan for a concrete wall, rather than the latest version to be built of “beautiful steel slats”. But the increased cost need not be a problem. “The Mexican government would likely be more willing to fund this structure as part of an international scientific consortium than to pay for the current single-function wall,” Hitlin writes.
Hitlin observes that a precedent exists in a proposal from physics Nobel laureate Leon Lederman in the 1970s to convert some of the straighter bits of the New York Subway network into a particle accelerator to help out with a black hole in the city’s finances. He also points out that an accelerator of the length of the Very Big ILC would have to take account of the curvature of Earth, a concept that some of the wall’s more fervent supporters may have some difficulty with.
Icon slippage
Our reverie on the beautiful walls of our stationery cupboard office is interrupted by a smartphone on the end of a telescopic selfie stick extending its way through the door. A socially distant colleague – nothing to do with the pandemic, ’twas ever thus – is sharing their screen.
On it is a message in a well-known messaging app about an upcoming trip – such things excite us uncommonly these days – accompanied by an emphasising pictogram of a suitcase on wheels.
Feedback is no fan of wheelie suitcases since they ceased being the sole preserve of airline employees: our ankles were once nearly removed by one deployed like a rapier missile in a famous London department store. The point of interest, however, is that the push notification preview showed the bag icon slanted and blue, while in the message itself it was upright and black.
Even odder (and we applaud our colleague for their investigative verve in pinning this down), the icon actually sent by their correspondent was of an old-school suitcase with a simple strap handle. Much more pleasing all round, IOHO, but in sum Feedback is perplexed, and not a little alarmed. With so much of the emotional, umm, baggage of our messaging now invested in these little pictograms, the news that we cannot rely on them to reflect our true intent shocks our small world. Further instances of such icon slippage to the usual address.
Got an itch?
Reader Steve Powell notes an alarming report from the : “Local officials in Florida have approved the release of 750 million mosquitoes that have been genetically modified to reduce local populations.”
Feedback nods sagely. Anyone who ventures, as we did recently, to the glorious northern latitudes of Scotland in summer will be aware of a similar, long-running experiment: the control of tourist populations through the annual release of the highland midge. Yes, you told us not to scratch it, and we are trying not to.
Ig Nobel cause
Talking of insects: as Feedback shuffles to press this week, the 30th annual , and then think” – is due to take place in the hallowed portals of the internet, rather than the usual cloisters of Harvard University.
This year’s theme is “Bugs” – we see what they did there. Promised delights include a new opera, Dream, Little Cockroach, about a cockroach that (nods to Franz Kafka and Ian McEwan) wakes up to discover it has metamorphosed into a gross human.
An advance copy of the libretto has fallen into Feedback’s clammy hands. It includes a rousing Act 3 finale of Nobel prizewinners singing La Cucaracha. Artistes engaged include Andre Geim, the only researcher to have won both a Nobel (for co-discovering graphene) and an Ig Nobel (for using magnets to levitate a frog). It promises to be quite a show. We’ll bring you a full review next week.
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.