2005 - Fall - The Physics of Primitivo...Trapping the Elusive Hedon Particle |
In our zeal to rote memorize high school physics and chemistry, some of us failed to ask some impertinent questions. For example, why should protons and neutrons huddle in the nucleus instead of wandering off aimlessly and bumping into things? And, why do electrons whiz around in microspace instead of collapsing into the arms of those voluptuous protons, reducing the planet to a very dense basketball?
Some of those answers emerged in Scientific American and NPR. Subatomic particles (or energetic photons, depending upon your relative inclination) like mesons, muons, positrons, leptons, neutrinos, and quarks somehow glue our atoms together. These little guys are hard to find, of course, and some just zip through the Earth without stopping to prove their existence. Some live mostly in the fertile imaginations of Nobel Laureates with unruly hair. But a piece of the puzzle was still missing…until this September.
The fully waxed Harvest moon cast blue shadows while four graying guys pranced among lava boulders strewn on a bald dome of Navajo Sandstone in Southern Utah. A corkscrew twist into a pirated barrel sample of 2003 Late Harvest Primitivo turned the key to Enlightenment. We now know what holds our magnificent Universe together.
Some of those answers emerged in Scientific American and NPR. Subatomic particles (or energetic photons, depending upon your relative inclination) like mesons, muons, positrons, leptons, neutrinos, and quarks somehow glue our atoms together. These little guys are hard to find, of course, and some just zip through the Earth without stopping to prove their existence. Some live mostly in the fertile imaginations of Nobel Laureates with unruly hair. But a piece of the puzzle was still missing…until this September.
The fully waxed Harvest moon cast blue shadows while four graying guys pranced among lava boulders strewn on a bald dome of Navajo Sandstone in Southern Utah. A corkscrew twist into a pirated barrel sample of 2003 Late Harvest Primitivo turned the key to Enlightenment. We now know what holds our magnificent Universe together.
The answer was smiling in front of us all the time: Hedons. Invisible but versatile, Hedons defy conventional science by inexplicably pulling things together when logic, age, and politics should otherwise push them apart. Hedons create light and music, flirt with gravity, and replenish lost energy when it really matters…or when it’s really matter.
Hedons can be hard to find these days unless you know where to look. (Forget about Washington DC and Texas.) Open your eyes in the red rock canyons, the high gritty granite, the booming rocky shore, the swaying dappled kelp, and the windswept dunes. When good friends hug, frisky Hedons surge to the surface, multiply, and glow. When people sing, Hedons fill the air and carom giddily off cliffs, clouds, and clover. When I get a kiss from Sandie, they swirl like yellow finches around a desert flower.
People who search for wild Hedons in airy places are sometimes dubbed “Hedonists” by dour non-believers and jealous Puritans. These lugubrious mongers of gloom create black holes—dank tarns of drudgery—which quench warmth and submerge laughter. Fortunately, Nature supplies enough bright Hedons to overcome that negativity.
Garlic and Gruyere, capers and coffee, chanterelles and chocolate, jalapenos and bacon abound with Hedons. Yellow labs find them in your socks. Salamandre wine positively overflows with them, especially that Primitivo. You can have some, too! Come visit….
Hedons can be hard to find these days unless you know where to look. (Forget about Washington DC and Texas.) Open your eyes in the red rock canyons, the high gritty granite, the booming rocky shore, the swaying dappled kelp, and the windswept dunes. When good friends hug, frisky Hedons surge to the surface, multiply, and glow. When people sing, Hedons fill the air and carom giddily off cliffs, clouds, and clover. When I get a kiss from Sandie, they swirl like yellow finches around a desert flower.
People who search for wild Hedons in airy places are sometimes dubbed “Hedonists” by dour non-believers and jealous Puritans. These lugubrious mongers of gloom create black holes—dank tarns of drudgery—which quench warmth and submerge laughter. Fortunately, Nature supplies enough bright Hedons to overcome that negativity.
Garlic and Gruyere, capers and coffee, chanterelles and chocolate, jalapenos and bacon abound with Hedons. Yellow labs find them in your socks. Salamandre wine positively overflows with them, especially that Primitivo. You can have some, too! Come visit….