Alpinkatze im Partikelstrom
by Harald Havas on 07/02/10 at 11:16 pm
Kate McAlpine
Sie ist 24, ihr CERN-Rap wurde auf YouTube über 5 Millionen mal gesehen und in zahlreiche Sprachen übersetzt. Aber eigentlich ist Katherine McAlpine Wissenschaftsautorin und -journalistin und erklärt uns gerne die wundersame Welt der Teilchenphysik. Exklusiv auf wienerpost: Das Interview – uncut & OV.
Let’s start with a personal question. The first time I heard about you I thought “Alpinekat” was a clever name for your rap-personality, with CERN being in Switzerland and all. Then I found out your real name was McAlpine. Where does it come from? Mc sounds Scotttish, but Alpine?
McAlpine is indeed Scottish. Apparently there was some fellow named Alpan running around early Scotland, and Mac means “son of”. By the time you get to the first king of Scotland, he’s going by a Gaelic equivalent of “MacAlpin”. Somewhere between Scotland and the US, my ancestors dropped an a and added an e…
What’s your current position and profession?
I’ve kept my ties to CERN, working part-time with the ATLAS e-News to keep the 2500 or so physicists updated on what’s happening with the experiment although they’re scattered around the world. I write articles and update the website.
The rest of my time, I describe myself as a struggling freelancer. Last year I had two rap commissions, one of which is online and the other was for an event, and I made a couple of podcasts for the American Physical Society about cool research. I only wrote a handful of articles outside of the e-News, but it’s the New Year and so far, I’m doing well for my resolution of writing more.
This kind of flexibility has given me the chance to accept talk invitations in Vienna in 2008, and Michigan and Stockholm last year. Spreading the word about science rap!
Is online-communication your main occupation?
Yeah, I’d say online communication is my main occupation since the bulk of my articles aren’t printed, plus the website, video, and audio work.
What does ATLAS do?
Big question! ATLAS the detector is sort of like cylinders stacked inside one another. And very simplified, the innermost cylinder is made of trackers — these see where the particles go. The next cylinder out is made of calorimeters — these stop the particles and measure how much energy they have. The last layer is muon detectors — they’re after particles called muons, which can blow past the rest of the calorimeters. Muons are a good indicator that something cool happened in the proton collision.
From the information they get out of these detectors, the physicists can reconstruct what happened in the collision — kind of like police officers arriving at a car crash after the fact, and trying to figure out from skid marks on the road, the position of the cars and broken glass, what exactly happened.
But when two cars crash, all you get is stuff that was there before — now it’s just in a different form. When two protons collide at high energy, Einstein’s E=MC^2 really comes to life. This equation means that energy changes to mass, just like you can change a Euro to a dollar (only the exchange rate is really low). So you can get anything out of these collisions, provided you have enough energy to “pay” the universe for it.
ATLAS is looking for anything that hasn’t been seen before. It may confirm the existence of theoretical particles, like the Higgs Boson, dark matter, or supersymmetric partners to the particles we already know. They might also see evidence of wilder ideas, like extra dimensions, but they’ll need years’ worth of data to show that what they’re seeing is really evidence of an extra dimension — not just something that can be explained with what we already know.
Tell us a little bit about the success-story of your Science Raps. How did that happen, what were your biggest and most interesting successes with them?
The success of the Large Hadron Rap was entirely unexpected. The N3UROCH!P had been online for almost a year, and it had just over 600 views (614 is the number that sticks in my head). What’s more, the Large Hadron Rap was almost a disaster — Will Barras had put together such a cool track, and the YouTube compression made it extremely irritating, fading it in and out.
But it kept getting passed along anyway, and around 100,000 views, YouTube fixed the audio. I had put it online just before I went on vacation, afraid that the LHC might start up and I’d miss the deadline I had set for myself. By the end of the actual start-up week, with media attention from five continents it had over 2 million views.
I’ve been surprised at how well it continues to do, getting over a thousand views almost every day. It’s a success I think will be near impossible to replicate.
I warned the folks building FRIB, some of my former mentors and professors, that I couldn’t make any promises with the Rare Isotope Rap, but though its progress is much slower, it has gone further than their previous web media outreach efforts even in its first month.
We’ll see what happens with the black hole rap. The project started back when there was a lot of talk about black holes, a lot of fear (and fear-mongering), but it met with so much difficulty that it came out much later than initially anticipated. If people aren’t freaking out about black holes, that’s alright by me. But if the hype starts up again, the rap is there to explain why there’s nothing to worry about.
There are several translations too…
Yeah! This is one of the most exciting things. People have performed translations of the rap in Spanish, Portuguese, and German! There were subtitling projects in French, Italian, and Dutch as well. Also, the Spanish and German versions were just a couple of guys, over in Venezuela and Germany, who thought it was cool enough to share in their own language, and took it on as a spare-time kind of project.
That’s the best part for me, connecting with people who are just as enthusiastic, and happy to spend their own time communicating how fun and interesting science can be.
Your videos are free and have been viewed millions of times. Is there any money in them too? Like, are there DVDs or CDs for sale? And if not why not?
I keep getting these messages from YouTube about joining their partner program, which puts ads on videos and lets users earn money. But there are two main problems: the ads, and the money.
I definitely have to put in the most time to make a video happen, but the dancers who also spend time behind the camera give their time too, and then there’s Will, doing the beats. Or with the Rare Isotope Rap, there was a whole team behind that, camera people, animators…too complicated. Besides, in the Black Hole Rap, I’ve borrowed a lot of content. I’m a lot harder to sue when I have no money ;)
A few people have asked me why I don’t have an iTunes account or donation scheme set up. I might look into the iTunes idea…I give away the tracks to whoever wants to download them, because the main thing is to spread the word, but it would be interesting to see if anyone would buy them as a sign of support. Things’d be simpler with music only – just Will and me to worry about.
You write the lyrics and perform them. Have you a hand in the composition of the music too?
Not since N3UROCH!P, and most would say that’s a good thing! I like what Will does, and except for the Rare Isotope Rap, where we were funded for the project, he makes the tracks in his spare time. Occasionally, I have some request or other, but he’s really easy to work with.
Who are your collaborators on the raps?
So many! Backup dancers come from wherever I happen to be…other interns at 1 Physics Ellipse for the N3UROCH!P, summer of 2007, communications interns at CERN during the spring of 2008 for the Large Hadron Rap. Actually, I wound up marrying one of them (Colin Barras, Louis zoomed in on him at 3:00 in the LHR), which makes Will my brother in-law….
Apart from the students and profs who had contributed moves to the Rare Isotope Rap, there was Geoff Koch, who pushed to get me hired, Karl Gude, who drew the innards for the targeted radiotherapy and supervised the student animators John Allison and Matthew Bambach, and Amol Pavangadkar who supervised the filming by students Adam Rademacher and Josh Farris, and the editing which was taken on by Adam. Much bigger production, as you can see.
The Black Hole Rap was more like the Large Hadron Rap, only some of the interns had moved on. But, some Colombians from CMS joined in the fun — they’d danced on stage with me in the autumn of 2008.
What are the reactions to your Raps, especially in the science community?
Mostly, the reaction is good. People like the raps and like the way that they help spread the word with a five minute summary, introducing ideas that seem so tough that a lot of people are afraid to try to understand. I think that’s what the raps have been best at: getting over that little wall people build when they think a topic is just plain beyond their comprehension.
You do part of the shooting inside of CERN – what are the reactions there?
Oh, even the second time around some were a little skittish of letting us into the caverns. The first time I tried getting permission, asking to film a rap video in the cavern, I got a request for more information from the head of the press office. But in the end, we respect safety regulations, and we have supervisors who make double-sure we don’t get ourselves into trouble.
Your new video is out but hasn’t been viewed by that much people yet, does it need more publicity? And why are the subtitles hidden? They seem to be very helpful for most people.
The subtitling is really helpful, but like I said, this film has been a struggle all the way. Because iMovie HD’s subtitling scheme doesn’t have the flexibility of Windows Movie Maker, I opted to make a subtitle file instead. The advantage is that you can turn it off if you don’t like it, and I could have multiple language options if others started translating again.
The disadvantage, as you discovered, is that not all people realize that there is an option for closed captions!
You are a science writer. How do you view your Raps, information, entertainment, education? What’s your aim?
I think my raps are very good for information and education value, at least to the extent that is possible in five minutes or less! Entertainment, now that’s a subjective issue. I think they’re entertaining to make, and I have on several good authorities that they’re entertaining to watch.
The aim is to goof off and have some fun with science. Trying to convey our enthusiasm is just as important as conveying the information, which is something that all the science rappers I’ve talked to seem to agree on.
Do you have music plans outside of Science Raps?
Not really. I used to play the piano, and I’m waiting for the day I stay put long enough to get one of my own! I also play the pennywhistle from time to time (hence some of my YouTube favorites).
How often do you perform as a Rapper?
Not very! I performed three times in 2008, at the CMS, ATLAS, and LHC start-up parties. Then last year, I rapped along with eight other physicists at the event which marked the end of Peter Jenni’s 16 years as Spokesperson of ATLAS. And the last was at a nuclear conference just after we finished the Rare Isotope Rap in June.
CERN prepares for the next round. What’s the current plan and goal?
As far as I can tell, the plan is to start sending beams around in mid-late February, slowly working up in energy. Since a trillion electron volts doesn’t mean much, I’ll just say that 1 TeV beams is the top energy of the last big accelerator built, the Tevatron at Fermilab.
The first goal for this year is 3.5 TeV beams, which means there will be 7 TeV energy in the proton collisions. So far, they’re aiming for around the 25th of March. They’ll run for a while with beams at this energy, letting the experiments collect the first real set of ground-breaking data. Then in May, they’ll try to bring the energy up further — how much further will be decided in early February. They’ll run like that until mid-October, when they’ll start setting up for lead ion collisions. Those should happen through November, and in December, everyone will be ready for a rest.
This is just the current schedule — sometimes things go faster, like the progress last year, and sometimes, a problem slows things down… With all the upgrades to the magnet safety system, though, we hope the machine is safeguarded against any more serious damage!
About the Higgs boson – some say if CERN proves it doesn’t exist particle science had to start from scratch. Is this true?
Well, the theoretical framework that makes sense of all the particles and forces would need a major overhaul. The Standard Model, the name for that framework, is a lot like a puzzle with just a couple missing pieces. The Higgs boson is arguably the most important of these missing pieces — there’s no other explanation for why anything has mass, substance.
If it doesn’t exist, then the Standard Model says that the W and Z bosons, which handle the weak force, should be massless like the photon, which handles light, electricity, and magentism. But in reality, the W and Z bosons are over eighty times the mass of a proton! We’d need some other explanation.
And if they find it, the problems of atomic particles are solved for all time? And what would CERN try to do next?
Ha! Name a physicist who said that ;) CERN would keep working on the other problems. Like dark matter and energy, supersymmetry, quark-gluon plasma, extra dimensions, why the universe is made of matter and not much antimatter, what antimatter is like (they’ve got a dedicated accelerator for this), and why neutrinos can change from shapeshift from one kind to another if you give them enough time (for this one, they’ve got a beam of neutrinos headed for another lab in Italy’s Gran Sasso). There are plenty of other puzzles to solve!
Foto: Max Braun
Okay, now finally tell us why we are not going to be eaten by a CERN-created Black Hole!
Didn’t you watch the rap? First, we’re pretty sure Hawking’s right about his Hawking radiation. All over the universe, on a tiny scale, particles are popping in and out of existence with their antimatter twins. These pairs are created at the edges of black holes, too. I think of them as “borrowing” energy from the universe. Away from the black hole, the particle and anti-particle would meet again and repay their debt. But if one of the pair falls into the black hole while the other jets away, then the black hole has to pay for them, losing energy. From a distance, it looks like the black hole emitted a particle.
A big, well-fed black hole can continue to grow despite this effect, but the tiny ones made in the LHC will have a tough time accumulating anything. They’ll lose mass to this effect very quickly, evaporating away, but hopefully, they’ll leave the physicists a signature in the detector.
I glossed over this in the rap because it’s easier to understand that we’re constantly under bombardment from cosmic rays, and a whole lot of them hit the earth every day. Ultra high energy cosmic rays have energies over a million times higher than the LHC’s collision energies. Over a single square kilometer of Earth, they’re estimated to come once a century. But the earth is so huge that over the whole of the planet, we should get about 800 per second. If there was going to be a dangerous black hole created by a particle collision, it should have happened right in our atmosphere by now.
But some people argue that the black holes from cosmic rays wouldn’t get stuck on the earth, they’d just fly off elsewhere, even right through the planet. And maybe that’s true, but one place they couldn’t escape is a neutron star. If a tiny black hole was created on one of these super-dense stars, it wouldn’t be able to fly on through. It would be trapped among tightly-packed neutrons, which it would then consume until the neutron star became a black hole. This process would happen so readily that we shouldn’t see neutron stars at all. But we do.
Three good reasons not to worry.
Something you would like to add?
Just a note on the black holes — I put in the last verse of the black hole rap after talking to a physicist who took it rather personally that so many believed that he and his colleagues would put the planet in danger. Sometimes, I think there is this perceived disconnect, like scientists who do very technical work aren’t like ordinary people. It’s a “mad scientist” they imagine destroying the world for the sake of an experiment. And of course there are eccentrics, but most of these physicists have friends, spouses or partners, children — they’re as invested in their lives as they are in their work. They wouldn’t do something that would actually put the planet at risk.
DIE FAKTEN
Katherine (Kate) McAlpine, auch bekannt als „Alpinekat“, 24, Amerikanerin, geboren in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, verheiratet, lebt in den USA und der Schweiz. Sie ist studierte von 2003-2007 an der Michigan State University, wo sie einen doppelten Abschluß in Physik und profesionellem Schreiben machte. Sie arbeitet derzeit als E-Journalist und Webmaster für das ATLAS -Projekt in CERN und als freie Wissenschaftsautorin.
Darüber hinaus gibt es mittlerweile vier Wissenschafts-Raps auf YouTube, die sie auch live performt und über die sie auch Vorträge hält, wie etwa 2008 bei der SciCom in Wien.
Die deutsche Übersetzung erscheint – gekürzt – im WIENER Nr.343 (Februar / März 2010)
funky49
Feb 8th, 2010
Comment Link
Nice interview Kate!