Scientists at CERN reported Thursday that preliminary data suggest that neutrino particles sent to the Italian Gran Sasso laboratory 732 kilometers away showed up a tiny fraction of a second earlier than expected as dictated by the speed of light.
Faster-than-light particles would overturn much of the basis for modern physics. However, the researchers are extremely hesitant in declaring their data to be conclusive. Instead, they are publishing their findings in an effort to either corroborate or falsify their claims.
Though the team has run the experiment some 15,000 times, there is a high possibility of "systematic errors" that could prove a false-positive for faster-than-c speeds.
Antonio Ereditato, who holds a doctorate and is part of the CERN research team, hopes "that another, independent experiment finds the same thing - then [he] would be relieved." No conclusions yet, but the implications would not be insignificant.
Elsewhere Thursday, in science or art or both, researchers at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum discovered a second portrait under Francisco Goya's "Portrait of Don Ramón Satué." The unfinished work depicts a French general, or possibly Napoleon Bonaparte's brother, Joseph. Researchers used an X-ray technique developed by the University of Antwerp and the Delft University of Technology.
The painting's alterations reveal the political context in which Goya worked: Following Ferdinand VII's restoration, he sought to distance himself from the previous French rule, thus re-purposing the portrait.
Having attended UF, I cannot help but feel that the humanities and the sciences are in opposition. Perhaps I overstate the dichotomy. Perhaps I am too vested in the humanities.
However, I do not think it is hard to see that the humanities are not well, here or abroad. Underfunded or unproductive, the debate rages. Regardless, this university is a research university, and in this cathedral we worship science. Gatorade or Tim Tebow is our savior.
This is not a useful way of thinking, though. The aforementioned "scientific" discoveries make it salient that you must reject the binary. The humanities and the hard sciences need not be opposed; there is no hierarchy of thought. Rontgen showed us the second painting, proved that it exists, but art history interprets and makes meaning.
One could argue that I am making much ado about science offering new insights into art. And I am. But I must stress that it is a two-way street. Scientific thought is mediated and interpreted by art. Insofar as art's purpose (art does not have a purpose) is to describe man's relation to his situation, the goal of science greatly coincides.
Modernist literature is marked by alienation, skepticism and chance. At times, as in the dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht, it sought to evoke alienation as a means of challenging conceptions and spurring critical thought.
At the same time Albert Einstein was publishing his theories of relativity, Erwin Schrodinger and Werner Heisenberg were inventing new physics and Edwin Hubble expanded knowledge of the universe. Einstein had some things to say about time, but so did Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.
If you have ever walked the "Waste Land" and heard "What the Thunder Said," you no doubt understand the new fractured reality of the 20th century.
Yes, it is dangerous to conflate the advances of science and literature. If I over-speak, very well. Nonetheless, art and science are the scions of inquiry and philosophy. They are equal yet different translations of the same thing: experience, whether it is physical or mental. The sum is far greater than the parts when they are allowed to dialogue.
Ryan Fenton graduated from UF with a degree in English.
