Physicists working in Europe announced yesterday that they had passed through nature's looking glass and had created atoms made of antimatter, or antiatoms, opening up the possibility of experiments in a realm once reserved for science fiction writers. Such experiments, theorists say, could test some of the basic tenets of modern physics and light the way to a deeper understanding of nature.
This is fascinating, if arcane, stuff. Using an ingenious sequence of "catching" and "mixing" traps made of magnetic fields, the scientists superimposed clouds of anti-protons and anti-electrons. Although they couldn't observe the the anti-hydrogen directly, the characteristic signature of its destruction was evident as the atoms collided with the regular matter of the chamber's walls in a shower of pions and gamma rays.
One of the "advantages" of procrastination is that you get to a point where the work simply has to be done and there is a definitive, and clearly finite, amount of time in which to complete it.
I achieved that state of post-procrastinatory focus on Tuesday night, and finally put the pedal to the metal. The work I'd done in advance (which consisted of what can best be described as a lot of mulling, and a few scribbles) got taken off the back-burner and brought to a swift boil. Sixteen hours later I was sitting in the client's office showing them a prototype website replete with new logo ID and site architecture. They loved it.
This is a mixed blessing. Once again, I have pulled the rabbit out of the hat. Ta-Daaaah! Once again, I suffered the tortures of the damned in the process. It is not a work pattern I recommend to anyone, and the fact that somehow, each time, I manage to teeter closer to the edge of complete disaster ~ well, it's not encouraging. Part of me wishes I'd fail spectacularly just once, so that I could break myself of this habit once and for all.
It would be much more adult of me to simply mend my ways.
After a two-hour nap in the afternoon, I drove up to Baltimore for my first jewelry class this semester. I spent four hours happily sawing and filing metal. I love making things with my hands, and it was positively therapeutic after the ethereal and cerebral activities of the previous night. I sang along (loudly) with the radio the whole way back to DC at 10pm, feeling giddy and strong and wide awake.
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