Snarks, quarks and Mr Smith

Does anyone still read by Lewis Carroll? I ask because of the latest news of subatomic particles. Fifty years ago the world of subatomic particles consisted of hard plastic balls. These were called protons and neutrons and they clung to each other like frightened children to form a nucleus. Attached to the frightened children by wobbly springs were smaller plastic balls called electrons.

It was made clear to us, however, by Dan Smith, the chemistry master, whose most celebrated achievement was to walk full tilt into the corner of a desk one Thursday afternoon and give himself a hernia, that the plastic balls weren’t made to scale. Electrons were actually so small that the inside of an atom consisted of effectively nothing.

Had we bothered to think about it, it would have seemed remarkable that the very solid and very stationary desk on which Smith herniated himself consisted of effectively nothing, but we did not bother to think about it. We took more interest in the world that we inhabited and that seemed to make sense. We were happy to take subatomic stuff on trust.

But that was then. These days you can hardly call yourself a physicist if you haven’t discovered a subatomic particle of your own: neutrinos, positrons, gluons, bottom quarks – and haven’t we all met a few of those? – every one of them odder than the last.

Excited scientists have built huge underground accelerators to study things so tiny that they are simultaneously both wave and particle – not that I know what that last clause means. The scientists’ aim, of course, is the same as that of the first man to look up at the night sky and wonder how it all works. They’re seeking the big answer, the grand theory of everything. They’re hunting the Snark. They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with

care:

They pursued it with forks and hope;

They threatened its life with a railway share; They charmed it with smiles and soap.

Early man found the Snark in the gods who ran things, and who needed appeasing. Later man boiled the Snark down to one god, who still needed appeasing. Newton found his Snark in the unbending rules of maths and physics. Einstein showed that Newton’s Snark actually bent quite a bit. And now the subatomicists have come up with a Snark called the Standard Model that predicts how subatomic particles behave.

But then this week came news of misbehaving muons. A muon is formed when a larger particle disintegrates. It lives only a fraction of a second before it too disintegrates, but during that fraction of a second it wobbles, and according to the Standard Model it wobbles in a precise and predictable way.

But now, underground in Illinois in one of these giant particle accelerators, scientists have spotted muons wobbling in a way that they shouldn’t. This means there must be unknown forces acting on them. And this means that the Standard Model is wrong. So the hunt goes on.

Stephen Hawking, who knew a lot more about this stuff than most, reckoned that science would catch the Snark by the end of this century. We would then know exactly how the universe works. He may be right.

But Lewis Carroll suggests otherwise. At the end of the poem the baker believes he’s caught the Snark and cries out with delight, then falls dramatically silent.

In the midst of the word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee,

He had softly and silently vanished away – For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.