Tag: Matter

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A super position by John Hawkhead

quantum superpositioning myself in her g-B-o-A-o-D-d books

by John Hawkhead

Quantum superposition is the principle that a quantum system can exist in many states simultaneously until it is measured or observed directly. Measurement forces the system to ‘collapse’ to a single, definite state. The concept is demonstrated by the ‘double’-slit experiment which shows that light and matter can act as waves and particles at the same time.

Perhaps the most famous thought experiment associated with this phenomenon is Schrödinger’s Cat which illustrates superposition. In quantum superposition theory a cat, locked in a box with poison in a flask and a radioactive source that may or may not release the poison, is both alive and dead at the same time until the box is opened and reveals the definite state of the cat. The poem is a light hearted response to the theory.

Further reading:

‘Quantum superposition’, Wikipedia article, available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@haikuhawk.bsky.social) is a writer and artist from the south-west of England. His work has been published globally over the last 25 years, including three books of haiku / senryu: ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’ (available from Alba Publishing. http://www.albapublishing.com/) and ‘Four Horse Parable’ (available from Nun Prophet Press).

Read more of John’s sciku here!

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Interactions by John Hawkhead

bosons and mesons
all the stuff we talk about
just interactions

by John Hawkhead

In particle physics, bosons are subatomic particles whose spin quantum number has an integer value and which obey Bose-Einstein statistics. Examples of bosons include the Higgs boson particle and photons (light).

Mesons are a form of boson: they’re hadronic subatomic particles composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks bound together by a strong interaction. Mesons are the interaction agents between protons and electrons, but are unstable outside of the nucleus, decaying to particles such as electrons, neutrinos and photons. Despite their small size (0.6 times the size of a proton or neutron) and instability, they’re observable by particle detectors and have been used to study the properties and interactions of quarks.

Further reading:

‘Boson’, Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boson

‘Bosons and Fermions’, Office of Science, US Department of Energy – https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsbosons-and-fermions

‘Meson’, Vedantu article – https://www.vedantu.com/physics/meson

‘Meson’, Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meson

‘Meson’, Encyclopaedia Britannica article – https://www.britannica.com/science/meson

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

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Axiogenesis by Alicia Sometimes

surplus baryons >
    antibaryons. Whirling
             QCD axions

I was fascinated by the etymology of this word. In Greek ‘axía’ (worth, value, merit) and ‘génesis’ (production, creation, formation, origination). Here, axiogenesis is a mechanism in which the cosmological excess of baryons (a type of composite subatomic particle) over antibaryons is generated from the rotation of the QCD axion.

Raymond T. Co & Keisuke Harigaya (2020) outline how Axions Could Explain Baryon Asymmetry – the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.111602

Alicia Sometimes is an Australian poet, writer and broadcaster. She has performed her spoken word and poetry at many venues, festivals and events around the world. Her poems have been in Best Australian Science Writing, Best Australian Poems and more. She is director and co-writer of the art/science planetarium shows, Elemental and Particle/Wave. She is currently a Science Gallery Melbourne ‘Leonardo’ (creative advisor). Her TedxUQ talk in 2019 was about the passion of combining art with science. You can catch up with her on Twitter @aliciasometimes and at her website www.aliciasometimes.com

Enjoyed Alicia’s sciku? Check out her earlier poems ‘Antimatter’ and ‘The Born Rule‘.