DR. MARK BENECKE: WGT Diary 2022 (26/60) – Hawaii? Festival Goth? Nosferatu? (2/4)

Automatic translation. Improvements are constantly being worked on.

Morning: Ines is in a chatty mood. “Look, I have a new outfit,” she says. It seems to me that it’s a normal outfit that she wears all year round. To which Ines responds, “I’m not a festival Goth!” Besides fashion issues, there are more serious problems that Ines discussed yesterday with our astrophysics professor. Mark: “Is light two-dimensional?” Ines: “Shall I bore you with physical details now?” Mark: “Yes please!” Ines: “The higher the speed of an object, the more a shortening of length takes place, around the direction where it is moving, to a shortening in… so when an object has light speed, the third dimension has theoretically dissolved. That is, it should be two-dimensional. Light has light speed. It consists also of particles and they must be two-dimensional then.” More about this in the next Orkus! WGT special “Particle Physics.” After we get vegan, typical Leipzig larches – a local pastry – I experience the strangest moment of the year, possibly of my decade. We see two cybers, who don’t really exist anymore, walking straight into Primark. (Text & photos: Mark Benecke)