Sunday, July 12, 2009

A brief encounter with a madman in a bus station

The Atlas of Curiosities: Part 24

In Switzerland we were fortuitously taken in by an old woman who agreed to be our host and show us to the bus station.  She was telling us her life story, a long and somewhat tiresome tale of lost love which she believed, after all of this time to be not only requited but an essential part of her existence.

Arriving at the station, we were encountered by a man with wild hair who asked us if we had change to spare for a bus out of the area.  His appearance was not socially impressive; his clothes were ratty and a stench hung in the air around him that would have offended those with constitutions weaker than our own.

When we were able to produce the change, he sat down on a bench and proceeded to ramble on about something which sounded strange to our ears.

“Particles, right?” he said. “Particles, that are tiny tiny tiny.  Quarks.  They have spin.  It’s observable, I mean, you can measure what the spin of one of these things is.  It isn’t hard to do, with the right equipment.  We found out that at that level, that tiny tiny tiny level, there exists this property of entanglement, which basically says…”
The man lit his cigarette.
“Which basically says that there can exists two particles, and no matter what distance the two of them put between each other, they will have opposite spins.  So take particle one, and take particle two, and separate them by 1 million light years.  If you have one particle with you in a lab, and you measure its spin, you can be sure of the spin of the other particle, even though it is literally worlds away.”

“What is this you are talking about?” we asked him. We perceived him to be insane, so rapid was the onslaught of the torrent of words. He read our expression, and shrugged.

“It is madness,” he said. “It is magic.  It is nonsense, I mean.”

“It’s also true,” our host said.

The man turned his head sharply towards our host. “Yes!” he said.  “True!  Talk about fairy tales and magic and all that shit until you’re blue in the face.  It’s all true.  It’s our instinct, right?  We know it is true even though we can’t see it! Go big enough or small enough and there exist other worlds where all of these things are true.  The only problem is that in this world, in our world we are blind, and we can’t see it working on the human scale. It doesn’t mean it isn’t there.  We’re trapped in our own bodies and our own size and we can’t see anything for what it really is.  Do you have any idea how intricate and massive the universe is?  No!  You don’t!  You know just enough to know that you know nothing.  Call it perspective. Damning perspective.”

The bus arrived the man tossed his cigarette, got on the bus, and left.

“Interesting,” we said. We went about our business.  We checked schedules.