Freedom Calls

(Dedicated to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions at Brookhaven National Laboratory as an exciting experiment goes online.)

From the perspective of a beam quark.....

Is it possible that we could be free?
Really free?
I have never known freedom.
Is there life outside my hadron home?
Is there freedom from confinement?

I am a tiny quark,
one of three,
residing in a peripheral proton
in a nucleus of gold.
Our daily chores are to change "color" like chameleons
as we toss and catch "colored" gluons.
All around quark-antiquark pairs
Of different flavors
Float in and out of existence.

We have "freedom" to move,
As long as we stay inside our hadron home.
Escape or even "stepping out" is unheard of!
Confinement is a law
That is strictly enforced.

Why then, this talk of freedom?
And how did I hear about it?
Oh-it was from a quark,
Who heard it from a gluon,
who heard it from a photon,
Who found out from an electron.

We are part of a race, where we all run together, -
Our nucleus, and millions of others.

The "humans" have planned it all.

We are part of a "beam".
And will crash "head on" into another beam of gold.
The incredible "smashing" may give us a taste of freedom, -
though very very brief.

Life without confinement,
will be like the primordial soup
of an infant universe,
As it exploded into existence.

Even if we are to be confined again,
Will the brief taste freedom make up for an eternity of confinement?
We will not know till we try it.

Who amongst the zillions of us crashing
will breathe the air of freedom?
Who amongst us will tell our tale of escape
in the detectors waiting to hear it?

Our freedom is anxiously awaited
by the querying humans, who have toiled for it.

As for me?
Its prospect excites me,
as I fly towards my destiny,
At speeds close to the incredible one of light.
I await the collision,
And my chance to join fellow quarks
In the exotic dance
of sheer, de-confined freedom.

Lali Chatterjee
Kendall Hunt Publishing Co, Iowa, August 2000

Detais:  www.kendallhunt.com