4004 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 2A3, Canada
Not far from the warmth of life that emanates from the farm comes destruction and rupture, all in the pursuit of discovery. Our human senses can’t detect this ongoing chaos because it is happening on the quantum scale. Just Southeast of the UBC Farm sits a research center dedicated to the pursuit of innovation and discovery through the mechanisms of annihilation. This research laboratory, the TRIUMF (TRI-University Meson Facility), is Canada’s particle accelerator center. Founded in 1968 by Simon Fraser University, UBC, and the University of Victoria, the TRIUMF is one of the globe’s many facilities built to search for the particles that have eluded physicists for decades. Now before I dive into the egocentric behavior of physicists and their obsession with technological innovation, let me explain what particle accelerators do and why the hell they matter.
As described by a long line of White, European-descended physicists, the Universe is made up of a finite amount of mass that originated from a single point, designated as the singularity. This singularity became the structure of today’s universe through what we know as the Big Bang. Through colossal timescales, this mass evolved into gas, dust, and eventually, through the mediation of gravity and heat, stars, galaxies, planets, and solar systems. But, what is this mass actually made up of? Physicists have been able to answer this question to some extent through theory and experimentation. This mass can be broken down into molecules; for instance, water is essentially a collection of H2O molecules. These molecules, in turn, consist of atoms—H2O is comprised of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Atoms, the building blocks of molecules, are themselves composed of particles. Hydrogen, the simplest atom, is constructed of two particles: one proton and one electron. Now, this is where things get muddy. Particles are made up of, well, smaller particles which scientists have denoted as subatomic particles such as quarks, leptons, bosons, yada yada. These subatomic particles are excellent at playing hide-and-seek. Using enormous magnets in a circular structure, particles are accelerated in opposite directions until they collide and, if enough energy is built up, these particles will break down into their smaller pieces or merge to create more massive particles for physicists to observe and analyze. This process has allowed a deeper look into the structure of the Universe and has had varying levels of success with the most recent being the discovery of the Higgs Boson (Aad et al., 2012). However, the often fragile reputation of Western science and the reliance on technological solutions has blinded physicists, project funders, and the quest for discovery.
Although these particle collider initiatives have yielded some success, the physics community navigates with blindfolded confidence, guided by theoretical frameworks, Uniformitarianism, and the allure of techno-solutionism. When a collider project comes up short, which is often the case, unoriginal yet “inspiring” responses are provided to the project funders: “the collider isn’t big enough”, “there’s not enough energy input”, and “we need better technology”. As Sabine Hossenfelder discusses in her book Lost in Math, physicists are so deeply entrenched in subatomic particle theory that rather than go back to the drawing board and question the theory, they invest in technology and hope that it is the safety net that will save them (Hossenfelder, 2018). In the age of the Anthropocene, I argue that this idea extends beyond the quantum realm. Techno-solutionism is a plague that has riddled market-driven societies.
Capitalism has seeped into every corner of our planet. Extracting for production in every way possible, from ferally mining precious metals to taking advantage of non-European cultures and livelihoods. We live in the Capitalocene, an age of consumerist tendencies encouraged by the nine-to-five, platformized economy (Davis et al., 2019). This is the same economy that has put us in the climate crisis. Like physicists, relying on the technological advancements that have yet to slither their way into our greedy hands, those with power continue to sit back, collect their extracted profit, and wait for the demons that are techno-solutions. For example, many climate activists believe that transitioning from oil-based transportation to electric-based transportation is a powerful shift in the fight for the planet. This is just another band-aid on a broken limb. Electric vehicles require lithium batteries and where do you think that lithium originates? Mining and production of lithium is embedded in colonialism through extraction and pollution of Indigenous land (Jerez et al., 2021). Politicians continue to push for an eco-friendly future through technological solutions but these so-called solutions are still bending the knee to the system that brought us to this point. We need to stop chasing the pace of extraction and production and reconfigure our timescale to match the ebbs and flows of Mother Earth. We need to slow down and reexamine the building blocks, the theory of our system in order to create true and meaningful solutions that go beyond technology. Otherwise, we’re just lone particles, accelerating until we finally collide and annihilate.
Read more about the complexities of this Site of Rupture.
References:
Aad, G., Abajyan, T., Abbott, B., Abdallah, J., Abdel Khalek, S., Abdelalim, A. A., Abdinov, O., Aben, R., Abi, B., Abolins, M., AbouZeid, O. S., Abramowicz, H., Abreu, H., Acharya, B. S., Adamczyk, L., Adams, D. L., Addy, T. N., Adelman, J., Adomeit, S., … Zwalinski, L. (2012). Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Physics Letters B, 716(1), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.020
Davis, J., Moulton, A. A., Van Sant, L., & Williams, B. (2019). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, … Plantationocene?: A Manifesto for Ecological Justice in an Age of Global Crises. Geography Compass, 13(5), e12438. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12438
Hossenfelder, S. (2018). Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (First edition). Basic Books.
Jerez, B., Garcés, I., & Torres, R. (2021). Lithium extractivism and water injustices in the Salar de Atacama, Chile: The colonial shadow of green electromobility. Political Geography, 87, 102382. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102382