In the heart of CERN, in one of the many cavernous warehouses which dot this site, sits a stainless steel chamber. It is polished as brightly as a mirror, with portholes just like a bathyscope, ready for submarinal explorations.
Except this chamber is exploring the sky not the sea. To be more precise, the clouds above our head. It is not just the Large Hadron Collider which is switched on this November. The CLOUD experiment, first dreamt up 12 years ago, will create ice clouds and warm clouds within the steely embrace of this stainless cloud chamber, aglow with ultra violet light beams. The purpose is to understand the mechanism of how clouds form, and the clue is thought to be found in the seeds or cloud condensation nucleii, the little core of which remains the same in any of the trillions of droplets which make up a cloud.
How are they formed? At the moment the idea is theoretical - it has not been tested yet. But the thought and theory is that maybe the electrical charge from the naturally occurring cosmic rays, whose positively charged protons travel 10 million light years, interact with possibly the sulphuric acid in the air to form these cloud seeds. And if this is the case, then perhaps it may tell us more information about climate change and the way too in which clouds operate, protecting the earth. It makes blue sky thinking somehow seem far too unimaginative and the saying to have one`s head in the clouds a true compliment. Could anything be more sublime? As Jasper Kirkby, the physicist and architect of the CLOUD experiment say, looking up at the sky above the Jura mountains, flecked with mares tails or cirus in the Autumn afternoon, there is nothing more beautiful than a cloud.
So cool. I hope they learn something.
ReplyDeletesame here. You have to love the human condition,the need to explore the world around us. Science is answering the most basic questions about reality, and most of it we are not even aware of, from the biggest galaxies, down to the smallest consituents of matter. I am inspired every day and awed by some of the findings of the brightest people on our planet. Keep up the fantastic work!!!
ReplyDeleteI was just thinking about this the other day and couldn't find a good answer. Who knew that such a mundane thing could still be shrouded in such mystery. I look forward to the results!
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ReplyDeleteI didn´t knew about this cloudy one... Another good thing to keep watching..
ReplyDeleteWhat about the book "Angels & Demons", there´s some information, but plenty of terror too. Maybe that book could scary some people?
Highly illuminating indeed. It happens to cross deep into one of my investigative research projects. Indeed it touches tangentially at one of my important findings about atomic matter. Clouds are large accumulations of very tiny vapor particles. When subjected to certain atmospheric conditions, raindrops are born from within and escape the mothering cloud. LHC ultrahigh energy collisions will just display subatomic particle formation in detected plasma transformations under stress, strain, electric, magnetic, etc fields. These born particles will escape from mothering matter just like raindrops escape from clouds when there were no raindroplets before ==>LHC collisions will prove matter infinite continuity (continuum) and its inner particlessness. no need to bet what LHC will naturally spit.
ReplyDeleteWell, this is something to really think about. I get this strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. Twenty years ago I started to make what I called Cloud Chambers, small huts, with an aperture in the roof which puts an image of clouds on the floor, like a camera obscura. I really wanted to turn the Earth on its head and have what felt like an underground chamber with an etherial image of clouds drifting across the floor. i have made 14 of these in the world, all different. Next year their will be two more.
ReplyDeleteI knew about the physics Cloud Chambers, and their name was in fact taken borrowed from there, but it is exciting to think that these etherial clouds, which have inhabited the dreams of us humans for millennia, and which I have been putting under the earth, might in fact be protecting the Earth as well as nourishing it. Perhaps I need to make a Cloud Chamber at Cern!
The very interesting thing about CLOUD is how devisive it is. It is an extaordinary experiment, but may proove that Climate Change is not manmade, but rather the result of cosmic change. Imagine that. It could blow the whole notion of Climate Change sky high. It is heretical in this climate of worldwide acceptance of climate change and mankinds responsibility for it. Politically dangerous.
ReplyDeleteThe beauty is that this experiment is allowed to happen. That there is still value here on knowledge for its own sake, outside of political consideration. And any way, the punchline is, that by making these clouds and discovering the cloud seeds, then actually, whether manmade or cosmically made, climate change could be effected by man controlling the clouds. Just think about it...
I thought they found that clouds and raindrops and snowflakes form around a species of bacteria that lives in the air.There are a lot of references on google searching with 'bacteria raindrops', here is one: http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=506
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