30 May 2005 - chaotic regime

As we turn up the particle accelerator to higher and higher energies, more and more different kinds of particles appear, and the rules that they follow get complicated. If you’re familiar with chaos theory, you may recognize that as the signature of the transition to a chaotic regime. Above some critical energy, the accelerator will produce infinitely many types of particles, and we’ll lose all ability to predict what happens next. I think that quasars must be the signs of civilizations early in the universe discovering this... briefly. That’s why no space aliens have come visiting.