The Rapolla Sarcophagus Mystery

 

Our Little Piece of Heaven Circled in Yellow at 
Sunrise Just below Calitri’s Castle

The Rapolla Sarcophagus Mystery

Right now, at this precise moment, I can envision our Calitrane rooftop terrace, unoccupied and silent though far from forsaken.  We built it on a gamble in 2014.  Ours hadn’t been a bout of intense labor where we’d pulled down stone walls, had to mix cement and shuffled terracotta roof tiles about.  No, though I’d loved to have taken part, our labors had been from a distance, done remotely.  Back then, our commitment on whether we should make the investment at all to transform our vision into reality was fleeting at best, for any agreement to proceed would come as fast as it would vanish with a “no, let’s not”.  Once we’d finally made up our minds and committed to do it, details like where it should go and how to access it somewhere up on the roof where all in play — an elevator maybe?  How about a dumbwaiter to shuttle those savory delights up and down?  A more practical and economical solution, stairs, won out, although these days the frequent ups and downs with trays in hand, though still worth it, can be a drag.  Where should the stairs go?  Should we raise the terrace’s back wall for some privacy and afternoon shade, could a metal railing do the job instead of a wall at the edge of a three story abyss?  Decisions, decisions.  We knew what we wanted, access to an amazing vista.  It was only a matter of expressing it clearly on paper or in a sketch now and then to Italian workmen from another place we also called home in the States, where we inhabit a forest surrounded by silence.  Early discussions with our builder, Nicolo, transformed our ideas into sketches before we had to leave.  From then on, the Internet would support the design’s evolution and issues as they popped-up.  All that dithering from “let’s do it” to “no, let’s not,” had stolen our time in Calitri.  We had to leave and missed out on the demolition and the eventual fun part, the construction.  I doubt Nicolo minded.  He’d made terraces before, and though this one happened to be up in the air, replacing a roof, he didn’t have us, especially me, mucking about and getting in the way.  For Maria Elena, she’d avoided a caravan of laborers trekking through the house and one gigantic mess.  Months later when we returned, as Pharrell Williams is like to croon in his hit, Happy, our bedroom had become “a room without a roof.”

The agita involved is now long behind us.  It turned out to be a safe bet with the dividends going well beyond our monetary investment, for as Mare is wont to say, “It’s only money.”  How do you value a morning sunrise above a cloud deck lying in the undulating riffle of valleys below us that appear like a misty shoreline?  Then, there is that view toward a jagged sawtooth caldera that dominates

Morning View from our Rooftop Perch

our eastern skyline. Today, thankfully, it is an extinct volcano that each morning serves as an altar to host the rising sun.  From this ancient fixture, wooded hillsides laced every which way with farmhouses and quilted fields unfurl across the countryside.  By night, a spider web of roads lit by headlights lead to and from a network of crested hill towns like Pescopagano, Rapone, and Sant’Andrea that dapple distant ridges. Worth a dollar a day or would you go all in and call it priceless?  

There have been many late afternoons when Maria Elena and I have taken in the steely expanse of an impossible blue sky there on our terrace.  By day, it is a sky bruised with popcorn clouds.  By evening, they’d fall away to gradually be replaced with a riotous splattering of stars that ignite a sky show of twinkling lights.  Soon, they in turn would give way to share the night sky with the moon’s silver luminescence.  So bright, so many, and appearing so close, you imagine that like low hanging fruit you could reach out to touch them.  This drama occurred daily as the shadow-line of evening, cast by a retreating sun, gradually moved up a nearby mountainside topped by a sentinel of a church, now rarely used.  Much like a blanket being drawn up, this phalanx of an ever-advancing dusk slowly ascends the slope as the first rumor of nightfall makes its appearance.  Gradually, day is erased, replaced with a veil of blackening dimness.  Sitting there, we’d strain to spot the first pinprick of light appear in the blackboard night sky and make a wish.  

Where is that magic carpet, another transformative veil, when Maria Elena and I need it most to whisk us away from where we’re from to where we want to be, to that other place we consider home in Calitri?  It would surely take magic about now in the COVID depression of a locked down world.  In this stay at home existence, I’ve finally become overwhelmed with Broadway Joe Namath TV Medicare ads, by those constant appeals to be sure to ask your doctor about every sort of unpronounceable new drug, and the insatiable droning on and on about leaf gutter guards and the unfathomable danger of using a ladder.  It’s a wonder I haven’t yet dreamed that I took a ladder, climbed onto my roof, ingested a handful of pills I couldn’t pronounce, got dizzy, slipped on the leaf guard, fell, and wound up in the hospital fortunately covered by Medicare insurance I’d purchased through Joe.  Yet in frustration, I’ve wandered just a wobbly bit here away from our terrace experience at home in Calitri, high up as it is.

When I pause to think about it, is home where we lay our heads at night?  Could it simply be where at end of day we plug in our cellphones and laptops?  Is it possibly where we hail from, the place our story began, or could it be as elementary as where our mail is delivered, maybe the address where, beyond our laundry, we store our possessions?  Still, these are all merely locations that I’ve prefaced with the word “where,” followed by another “where.”  Just maybe they’re a little too materialistic in nature when home might better be described as where we build our lives and attach meaning with family.  More than a place, it’s a feeling we ache for, an ache beyond homesickness, where we find the most happiness.  There I go, I’ve wondered off again, haven’t I.

Our enchantment with this big sky dominated landscape is not exclusive to us.  When our son-in-law emerged onto the terrazzo that very first time, he verbalized our sentiment precisely when he remarked, “I’m never leaving.”  More than simply being “the money,” Maria Elena and I had been its

End of the Appian Way, Brindisi

creators and now serve as caretakers.  We cherish this privilege as we gaze off at those rolling mountains, teeming with history, as they in return just might contemplate us, the current interlopers.  In the time yet before us, if only there could be hundreds more such occasions ahead, to drink in the ambiance there like hummingbirds on our Italian perch.  Oh, I’ll admit there are sunny days and starry nights elsewhere in Italy, so I wouldn’t say our corner of Italy is any more particular in that way.  Still, across the valley laid out at our feet and at times known to run high atop that distant mountain ridge where earth touches sky, lies an ancient causeway that in coexistence with the past, crowns this area as indeed special.  

The trail I’m referring to begins at the ancient bullseye of early Rome, the Roman Forum.  From there it courses its way south then easterly until it ends at the entrance to a port where in antiquity Roman infantrymen set off for the eastern empire.  Built beginning in 312 BC, its purpose was to support the quick movement of military forces and supplies as well as commercial traffic.  The road led

Route of Appian Way Antica

many a young legionnaire off to police an empire from this seaport.  Years later, for the lucky ones by then considered seasoned veterans, it would lead them a step at a time all the way back to their homes.  Lying on the Ionian Sea, the port was known as Brundisium, to the Greeks, Brentesion.  Today, we know it more efficiently simply as Brindisi.  This relatively straight road was the kind Romans loved to build.  Why bother to go around anything when up and down will do just fine?  Essentially the first highway in history, on the order of England’s M1 motorway or the A1 Autostrada from Milan to Naples, it was referred to as Regina Viarum, the queen of all roads.  We know it as the Appian Way, the oldest and most prestigious of Roman roads.  Approximately 435 miles (700 km) in length, and in places still paved with large basaltic stones typical of Roman roads of the time, it was a revolutionary development in its day and the origin of the expression, “All roads lead to Rome.”

Departing Rome along Via Appia from its beginning close to the Circus Maximus and Baths of 

The Remains of Porta Capena, Rome
Where the Appian Way Begins

Caracalla, an ancient Roman traveler passed first through a gate that bore the name Porta Capena overhead.  Passing through the Servian Wall that surrounded Rome at the time, its name, Porta Capena, served as a giant road sign, proclaiming the first major destination along the roadway, namely Capua.  In 73 BC, a slave uprising against Rome, led by an ex- gladiator, Spartacus, began in Capua and continued for over two years.  Spartacus attempted to escape Italy by getting to Brundisium.  He and his army of 120,000 never made it.  Pinned between armies led by Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) and Marcus Licinius Crassus, the slave army was finally defeated in 71 BC not far from Calitri.  In the defeat, thousands of the ex-slaves were captured.  The Romans, having judged that the slaves had forfeited their right to live, crucified 6000 slave prisoners along the 200 km stretch of the Via Appia from Capua to Rome.

Closer to Rome, although shifted in time to 1943 in the throes of World War II, this same stretch of the Appian Way would be lined not with crucified slaves but with German armor racing to push the

Via Appia Today

Allies into the sea at Anzio.  The Allies had landed on the coast of Italy close to Anzio at Nettuno.  In fact, Maria Elena’s “Uncle Sweet” was wounded there.  They were keen on breaking the stalemate at Monte Cassino and taking Rome.  Upon landing, they found the place undefended.  Their intent had been to move along the line of the Via Appia and take Rome, outflanking Monte Cassino and its defenders in the process.  It never went as planned, which is how wars usually go.  They didn’t move fast enough and were pinned down by artillery fire as the German army surged to counterattack.  A costly quagmire ensued along a four mile front that lasted four months before the Allies broke through and following the Appian Way, captured Rome.

I’m uncertain about your experiences along roadways but from time to time, all I ever seem to find by the side of the road is a shoe.  Never a pair mind you, just a single shoe.  I’ve seen enough of them that when I put my shoes in the car, I take a moment to tie the

A Typical "Solo" Lost Shoe

laces together.  At least then, whoever finds my loss has a pair and if they fit, who knows where they might lead.  I’ve yet to come across a pair myself but it’s within the realm of possibility.  I’d be willing to bet though that I’ll never ever find a sarcophagus out there, but others have.  In fact, one was discovered by chance along the route of the ancient Via Appia in the countryside near the town of Rapolla, about 20 miles from Calitri off in our panorama to the east.  The exact date of the discovery in 1856 is uncertain but it was triggered when a road construction crew found it in the countryside between Melfi and Venosa, where I confess, we often go to fill our jugs with bulk wine.  Was such a find uncommon or might it be on the ancient equivalent of finding a lost shoe?  Truth be told, since dead bodies were regarded as polluting, burials inside Rome’s Servian Wall were forbidden.  In terms of convenience and ease of access, you might expect the next best option

Servian Wall (in red) Circling Ancient Rome
with Porta Capena Circled

would be just beyond the gates along the Appian Way and it was.  Today, that beginning stretch is a tourist attraction due to the ruins of numerous monumental tombs lining Via Appia there.  I’d think it unusual, however, to find a tomb or single sarcophagus very far from a major Roman city.  Situated like that, it might attract grave robbers.  Regardless, being located in such a remote area in far off Basilicata seems to have been the case.  Possibly there may have been a villa of a noble family nearby who in keeping with funerary rules had the sarcophagus placed nearby along the road.

This snow white sarcophagus was the centerpiece of an empty unadorned room, blacked-out but for a beam of light that bathed it from above in a white glow.  Western made sarcophagi are decorated only on the front side.  In this case, all four sides are richly decorated in elaborate relief statuary murals inspired by ancient mythology.  The fact that all the outer surfaces are decorated indicates to scholars that it originated in Asia Minor, likely present day Turkey.  It is considered among

The Magnificent Rapolla Sarcophagus with a Caricature of Aemilia Csaurus
Reposed Atop as We Observed it in Melfi Castle

the best examples of funeral art from the period.  The top lid portrays the marble figure of a young woman lying on her bed as though she is sleeping.  A little dog lies on her lap, but all that remains of it today are its paws.  Finally, a cherub stands nearby holding a garland of flowers in one hand, and a torch pointing downward in the other, adopting a pose which, in Roman funerary iconography is an illusion to death.

When I saw what is referred to as the Rapolla sarcophagus that first time at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale del Melfese Massimo Pallottino located in the Norman Castle in nearby Melfi 
and read what information there was concerning its discovery, I wondered who the young woman

The Norman Style Melfi Castle

immortalized on the lid had been.  Unfortunately, this apparently abandoned “marble shoe” by the side of the road did not come with an inscription that might have offered some clue to confidently identify the deceased.  Without an inscription to help settle matters, the name of the young woman may remain a matter of scholarly speculation forever.

Yes, controversy swirls around the identity of the person once laid to rest in this pristinely preserved tomb.  I tend to get behind the traditional explanation presented in the museum that contends the sarcophagus contained the remains of Aemilia Scaurus.  Aemilia or Emilia was the 18 year old daughter (100 - 82 BC) of the Roman patrician and consul, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus (163 - 89 BC) and his wife Cecilia Metella Dalmatica.  Aemilia's father, considered one of the most illustrious and influential politicians of the Republic in his day, was the orator of the senate and prestigious princeps senatus (senate president).  While this museum claim as to the occupant of the tomb lacks strong supportive evidence, there are also arguments against it being Emilia, mostly related to the chronology of the monument and customs.  Her hairstyle, for instance, is just one of them.  The style presented on the reclining figure was typical of women who lived much later (96-196 AD) in the time-period known as the Antonina Dynasty.  Also, cremation was in vogue by the aristocracy at the time, not internment.  Finally, the location of the find raises doubt that it could have been Emelia who’d been entombed there.  Since Emilia is known to have died in Rome, why would her tomb, itself in question as to its date of manufacture, have been sited in such a remote region of Basilicata, just about at the other end of the Appian Way?  Is it simply a historical misunderstanding?  Could it involve speculative inference by some, or as others might heatedly argue, akin to unquestionable settled science, all relying on a few chiseled curls of hair?

There was a profound amount of human drama intermingled with tragic family intrigue

Thought to Be Aemilia Scaurus
 (100 BC - 82 BC)

surrounding Emilia and the characters in her short life especially from one, Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, commonly known to history as simply Sulla.  He would seize the empire and become dictator in 82 BC.  It gets a bit convoluted but stay with me here for an appreciation of the manipulation she experienced, though did not quite survive.  Her father, Scaurus, mentioned earlier, married Caecilia Metella.  Caecilia would later become Sulla’s third wife, making Aemilia Sulla’s stepdaughter.  Before this marriage occurred, however, young Aemilia had married and was expecting a child.  The same year of her husband’s death, Cecilia Metella married Sulla.  This worked to ally Sulla with a powerful family of Roman plebeian nobility and accelerate his career first to Consul then Dictator by 82 BC.  Sulla’s marriage to Cecilia was celebrated with great pomp, following Sulla's divorce of Cloelia, his third wife, whom he divorced citing “barrenness.”  Aemilia, now Sulla’s stepdaughter, would soon become the second wife of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.  Better known simply as “Pompey”, Sulla persuaded him to divorce his wife, Antistia, and marry Aemilia.  Aemilia, though at that moment pregnant from her first marriage, was forced by her mother and stepfather, Sulla, to separate from her husband and marry Pompey in a scheme designed to forge an alliance with Pompey.  After Pompey divorced Antistia, the latter's mother committed suicide, cursing those who had harmed her daughter, now dishonored.  In noble families, it was customary to build the political careers of their 

Cecilia Metella's Mausoleum Built by
Sulla on Via Appia Just Outside Rome

important men through marriages.  In case after case, the women, in addition to being brides were also victims.  It didn’t stop there, and while it had begun tragically, it ended just as appallingly when Aemilia died in childbirth at Pompey’s home shortly following her forced marriage to him.  There was no consideration of Aemilia’s plight in these affairs since, at that time, citizen women were considered little more than chattel, with the maturity of a child, thus in need of the perpetual oversight of a guardian.

Like a lost shoe found along the road, its owner nameless, it remains a mystery as to who exactly the beautiful young woman immortalized by the Rapolla sarcophagus had been.  There are many historic mysteries hidden in plain view, off in the distant terrain visible from our terrazzo, this being but one of them.  Listen hard and long enough and the mountains may hint at, even reveal, their shadowy secrets.  Pulling back the curtain of time for instance, they could share the echoes of legionnaire voices heard above the clatter of their footfalls as they marched along Via Appia toward Brindisi.  Listen closely, there it is, the voice of one forced to pause from continuing his ribald boast of conquest.  Ah, another, a disparaging taunt directed at a fellow soldier just steps ahead, likewise cut short.  Then, fading as well, the faint mutter of an insubordinate curse, though not discernable, addressed to his centurion commander a few paces further on.  All of them had stopped what they were saying, mid-sentence, to step aside and make way for an approaching wagon.  One of them shouted to the men walking alongside the heavily loaded vehicle to ask how far they had journeyed from Brindisi, if indeed it had been their point of departure.  His reply, “Alio modo 135 mille passuum esse Brundisium, mi amice” (Only another 200 kilometers to Brindisi, my friend), told them what the mile markers and their officers had not.  Unfortunately, days more of their unending trek awaited them before they could hope to see rest aboard ship, anywhere for that matter.  Thoughts of their plight hadn’t fully sunk in when their attention was drawn again to the weighted-down wagon now so close they might shift the packs on their backs,

Aemilia Scaurua?

reach out, and touch it.  Pulled slowly by a laboring team of white podolica cattle, its overburdened load, a gleaming white sarcophagus, so long it extended from the back of the cart, was clearly visible.  As the abrupt snap of the team leader’s whip hastened the wagon along, each of them caught a glimpse of the beauty, rivaling Venus, lying atop her milky white marble vault.  Frozen in the silence of stone, like a victim of the Gorgon, Medusa, the scene caused each in turn to pause just a moment to remember recent shadows from their past, fragments of memory of those they had left behind — the sweetheart, daughter, wife, — all about her age, everyone they had ever loved, who with each step they distanced themselves from further.  They, like us, had gazed in awe wondering who she had been, curious to know her name, a secret you see, layered in time, well-kept to this day.

 

From That Rogue Tourist

Paolo

Quantums of Nothingness

 

Quantums of Nothingness

Caution: The Science Described Here May be Mind-Boggling

While clicking about on YouTube recently, as I’m like to do occasionally, I came across a video.  Of all things, it was on the subject of theoretical physics, Quantum

That Impression Making Book

Physics to be exact.  It’s a topic that, to be honest, no one really understands no matter what they may say.  Be that as it may, it’s clearly heady stuff.  But why not when F-18 fighters chasing Good & Plenty candy shaped UFOs is old news.  It reminded me of when as a kid, I had a paperback spanning everything from Number Theory to Relativity entitled “One Two Three … Infinity.”  I was mesmerized when physicist-author George Gamow described a hypothetical printing process operated by monkeys hitting typewriter keys at random.  Together, all of them, and if you were to count their number, they would total a figure equal to the number of atoms in the universe.  It was mind-boggling in the nature of its scope.  That incredible number, all together pounding away on typewriters at the speed of light, when given enough paper, ink, typewriters, time, and of course monkeys, could print all the English works that have ever been or ever will be printed.  Much would be gibberish of course but eventually, everything from an inventory of King Solomon’s treasure trove, even if it may have never existed, to the Declaration of Independence would eventually emerge.  Starting at the beginning of time, only an infinitesimal fraction of the total job would be completed by now.  It was beyond my comprehension and better reading than that hoard of Blackhawk Squadron comics

Blackhawk Squadron Comics

at my Saturday morning barbershop in those days.  I was enthralled by the idea, the sheer size of the effort, the unfathomable time needed, the utter randomness of the task, and the concept of that lazy eight on its side, ‘∞,’ symbolizing infinity.  It was a life-changing paperback.  That book, “One Two Three … Infinity” would be with me all my life until it was lost in a house fire along with everything else.  It made such an impression on me it may have set the trajectory for my professional life as an engineer, while those Blackhawk comics where André, with his pencil-thin mustache uttering old French profanity like "Sacre bleu!” set me on course to be a military pilot. 

I mentioned that my “One, Two, Three” paperback discussed Relativity.  Fortunately, it did at my laymen’s level of understanding.  In the time since 1947 when the book first appeared, the field of physics has come a long way.  It has advanced so far in fact, that today there is a disjoint between Relativity, long a mainstay of physics, and the emergence of Quantum Theory.  This rift is difficult to describe here other than to mention that while the classical mechanics of Newton was eventually eclipsed by Relativity, it in turn is being challenged by Quantum Theory.  This came about when physicists’ interest in nature delved into examining ever smaller particles in yet smaller worlds, where things get really weird.  It was Quantum physics that emerged in an attempt to explain nature’s behavior in this domain.  In this smallest of small worlds, Relativity Theory crumbles.  Likewise, Quantum mechanics has its limits.  It doesn’t explain how our world functions in its entirety, just in infinitesimal space.  In this tiny scaled-down world it runs into serious trouble when physicists attempt to extrapolate it to very large dimensions, on the order of cosmic proportions, that is to say, into the realm of Relativity.  If mankind is to move on to a better understanding of our world, a unified theory that simultaneously explains observed phenomena in both worlds is urgently needed.  

    A major dust-up, the inevitable clash between the relativity’s deterministic repeatability and the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, is underway.  Others using String Theory, fraternizing with both sides, try to lash them together to keep the boat, which we call theoretical physics, afloat.  What eventually emerges, as we delve into the big secrets of this small world, could be another revolution in physics, an all-encompassing theory by which to interpret the universe.  Undoubtedly, its implications will be staggering.  Whether we like the unrelenting speed of technological change or not, the dividends of yet unimaginable technology rest in its realization.  Beyond that, it could shed light on the nature of what we call reality, the very fabric by which nature operates, even whether the universe is built on quantum probabilities or whether it is fundamentally deterministic, where every event is linked to a definite cause (relativism).  Might Sir Isaac be soon relegated to the dust heap of archaic theories, the nouveau Aristotle?  

Whatever the outcome, which undoubtedly will only be temporary in such a fast moving field, be it the unification of Relativity with Quantum Physics or the emergence of some totally new way to understand how the inherent nature of matter, space, and time work, it will rely on experimentation to show the way.  Experiments have and will continue to nudge us along the pathway of discovery by turning theoretical math, so dominant here, into accepted theory.  Much like great Italian composers like Vivaldi, Verdi and Puccini could transpose the tunes and rhythms in their heads into symphonies, so brilliant Italian minds are today at work to conceive and create the tools necessary to perform experiments yet beyond definition.  These investigations may result in a complete paradigm shift in current thinking and ultimately lead to that much sought, all for one and one for all, unified approach, a theory of everything.  

In the past, I’ve written of men like Da Vinci and Marconi, yet there are many other Italian scientists and researchers who reside on the sidelines of notoriety but nonetheless change the world every day by making important contributions.  There is one Italian physicist in particular, who day by day is renowned for creating nothing.  I think that’s quite a nice job if you can get it.  His only professional focus in life is to create nothing.  Wow. Just imagine a sinecure like that.  I imagine that if someone were to ask him what he’d been working on that day, he could honestly reply, “Nothing.”  That’s correct, I said his job is to create nothing or more precisely, nothingness.  But before I get to him, there have been many who preceded him as pathfinders, who also sought nothingness.  The ‘nothingness’ I’m referring to here is what is commonly known as a vacuum, something familiar to each of us, yet so important for conducting experiments in physics.  Sounds a lot like the Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on First” (click to see video) doesn’t it?  In physics, “vacuum” means a truly empty space, a void, an environment with nothing in it.  No matter, and I mean the noun here, is present whatsoever.  But nowadays, in the technospeak of Quantum Physics, that is no longer true (more later).  Early interest in vacuums began with Aristotle’s idea that there was no true empty space, for nature

Torricelli Conducting His
Famous Experiment

fights nothingness.  Aristotle had claimed that a vacuum was a logical contradiction and went on to coin the phrase: Horror vacui, “Nature abhors a vacuum.”  Aristotle was onto something.  It turns out he was right about nature abhorring empty space.  It’s always working hard to fill it.  

Theories are one thing but action to create a vacuum had to wait until Italian physicist and mathematician Evangelista Torricelli appeared on the scene.  Evangelista was born in Faenza, Romagna, then a Papal State of Rome in 1608.  His father, Gaspare, a modest textile artisan, his mother, Caterina, and two younger brothers were very poor.  It was Gaspare who first appreciated his son’s remarkable talents and appealed to his brother, Giacomo, a monk, to see that Evangelista received a basic education.  In 1624, Giacomo enrolled Torricelli into a Jesuit College to study mathematics and philosophy.  Then in 1626, uncle Giacomo sent Torricelli to Rome to study science under the tutelage of Jesuit monk Benedetto Castelli, professor of mathematics at the Collegio della Sapienza, today the University of Rome.  Castelli had been a student of Galileo.  It’s interesting to note that Torricelli filled the gap in years (1608-1647) between Galileo and Newton, first as a student of Galileo where beginning in 1641 he moved to Florence to serve the elderly astronomer as his assistant and secretary during the last three months of Galileo’s life.  Evangelista’s career did not end until Newton was a child in ‘nappies’ as my British friends are accustomed to calling diapers.  

Evangelista is best known for his invention of the barometer, though little known for something equally important.  Using a glass tube about a meter in length, sealed at one end, he filled it with mercury to the top.  Capping it with his finger, he then inverted the tube into a dish filled with mercury and then removed his finger.  He observed that as a result of the inversion, the mercury did not completely flow out of the glass tube into the dish.  He put it this way:

“We have made many glass vessels ... with tubes two cubits long. ….  These were filled with mercury, the open end was closed with the finger, and the tubes were then inverted in a vessel where there was mercury.  We saw that an empty space was formed and that nothing happened in the vessel where this space was formed.”

Close-up of Inverted 
Tube with Vacuum

A portion of the capped top was clearly empty, devoid of matter and
met the requirements of a vacuum.  The settled column had essentially adjusted its height to balance the force of the atmosphere pushing on the surface of the liquid in the bowl.  Eventually, he would realize that the column would move up and down with changes in atmospheric pressure (an early barometer), but he immediately noted the presence of the evacuated space at the top of the tube.  This void, something I surmise he’d surprised himself by creating, was the first recorded instance where a partial vacuum had ever been created.  His barometer got lots of attention, but in its development, a sustained vacuum had been achieved.  Contrary to what Aristotle had said, he just may have captured empty space which became known as a ‘Torricellian Vacuum.’  Today, the torr (not to be confused with the Ford Torino), a unit of pressure used in vacuum measurements, gets its name in honor of Torricelli.  This earliest of steps marked a significant breakthrough that has since brought us to today. 

Maybe it’s not so surprising to appreciate but as the objects of interest have gotten smaller and smaller, just the opposite has happened with the tools employed to

Enrico Fermi's "Chicago Pile,"
The World's First Nuclear Reactor

investigate them.  They have grown larger and larger.  While Galileo used observation and his keen mind, Torricelli a glass tube and mercury, and Einstein relied mostly on mathematics and blackboard chalk, today’s tools can occupy thousands of acres.  Examples include the Fermilab particle accelerator in Illinois.  Enrico Fermi, for which this laboratory is named while he himself is called the "architect of the nuclear age," was an Italian physicist and later a naturalized American who created the world's first nuclear reactor.  It was known as the “Chicago Pile.”  Another, the sanctum sanctorum of physics, is the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located 575 feet below ground near Geneva.  Here, particles far beyond well-understood electrons such as quirky quarks, leptons, and the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson particle, referred to as the “God particle” (which constitute an energy field), are investigated.  At $9B, the LHC is the world's largest machine and the most powerful particle accelerator ever built.  It consists of a tunnel complex

The Vast Extent of the CERN Large Hadron Collider

running along a 17 mile (27 km) dual ring-shaped circuit of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of circling particles to speeds approaching that of light.  To put it into some astonishing perspective, a proton in the LHC will make 11,245 circuits every second in a gravitational control field 100,000 times more powerful than the gravitational pull of Earth.  I sure hope they know what they’re doing with almighty-sounding things like “God particles” and while playing God don’t accidently conjure-up something like a black hole to swallow us.  But what do I know, for such outcomes were never mentioned in my “One, Two, Three … Infinity” paperback.  As a minimum, you’d hope they make you take your watch and belt off at the door!  

In contrast, however, getting back to the topic of vacuums, this may require a greater degree of mental gymnastics to wrap one’s brain around.  Beginning with the familiar, we’re all well acquainted with common vacuum devices such as a typical household vacuum cleaner that produces enough suction to reduce air pressure by around 20% and the ubiquitous soda-fountain straw.  Outer space, that few of us have experience with, is an even higher-quality vacuum.  It may be surprising to learn but a perfect vacuum, so necessary if we are to control circling particles in accelerators like the LHC, has been approached but never achieved.  Like the speed of light, a perfect vacuum is attainable only in theory.  And as I hinted at earlier, tricky Quantum Theory has updated the definition of a vacuum.  It asserts that a vacuum, even a perfectly crafted one, going so far as to certify it empty of all matter, is not really nothingness at all, for it’s not really empty.  Even in what appears to be empty space, forces exist.  Aristotle was right, there is no such thing as truly empty space.  Rather, and according to modern quantum physics, a quantum vacuum is now thought of as a sea of continuously appearing and disappearing particle pairs, matter and anti-matter to be exact, that exist very, very, very briefly.  Hard to believe but these ghostly things, (shall I call them particles?) borrow and return energy through the mediation of those recently discovered Briggs particles permitting them to fluctuate into and out of existence.  Now I can appreciate why they call them “God Particles” for they appear to give and take away life, mass in this case, to particles as they pass through its field.  Have a headache yet?  This is where my layman’s comprehension falters.  Does this make sense?  Have I entered a twilight zone here, some inescapable event horizon of understanding?  Should Scotty beam me up?  Yet didn’t Einstein, as he emerged from a cloud of chalk dust, say with an innocent equal sign that matter and energy were equivalent (E=MC2)?  However, to prove or disprove current theories and unify theoretical physics, if that’s possible, we still need ultra-high vacuums on the order of 10 -13 torr or less for openers.  Achieving these ideal vacuums of infinitesimal torr remains a challenge.  Nevertheless, over the centuries, scientists have found increasingly effective ways of sucking air and everything else out of spaces to produce ever better vacuums, where nature’s true secrets live.  

All this prelude leads me to the man with the current best answer, another Italian physicist, Dr. Cristoforo Benvenuti, the physicist I characterized earlier who day by day, as opposed to Torricelli, is renowned for creating nothing.  Yes, here is a man whose

Italian Physicist, Dr. Cristoforo Benenuti 

job sucks.  Dr. Benvenuti's invention is a new type of “getter pump,” that in a Magiver style TV move, mops up stray molecules that could obstruct a speeding particle.  As hard as it is to imagine, the metal walls of the vacuum chamber themselves constitute an inexhaustible source of unwanted gases.  When evacuated in the extreme, it’s difficult to imagine but the main source of residual molecules, after a furious sucking session, isn’t what has been missed but hydrogen atoms dissolved in the CERN stainless steel acceleration chamber walls along with other out-gasses released when particles bombard the walls.  I imagine it much like the contamination tasted when drinking stale water from an old plastic bottle or a hose that has been lying around.  Getter pumps aren’t new.  Unbeknownst to me, while riding my tricycle around the living room as I watched “Howdy Doody” a few years back, this concept in powdered form was used to coat the inside of the vacuum tubes and thus improve on the vacuum in the tubes of our old Hallicrafter TV.  Cristoforo’s invention markedly reduces the possibility of outgas contamination.  His technique applies a thin getter non-evaporable coating to the walls.  This coating

Miles of CERN Stainless Steel Accelerator Tubing

acts like a sponge to absorb any remaining stray gas molecules floating around like dust motes in a sunny room, as well as preventing the release of molecules from the walls themselves.  His version of a getter consists of a thin layer of titanium, zirconium, a few others, or alloys thereof, deposited by means of a plasma discharge.  By adhering to the metal substrate, it forms a shield of sorts, like a spray coating of PAM on a frying pan, which inhibits the degassing from the chamber’s inner metal surfaces.  His invention offers the unrivaled possibility of producing high vacuums of 10⁻¹⁰ to 10⁻¹⁴ torr for particle accelerator systems.  That undoubtedly is major sucking, clearer than a nun’s google browser history.

Many Italians who likely enjoyed doing their math homework as children have gone on to make valuable contributions to the foundations of physics and thus our understanding of the natural order of things.  Contributors span the centuries to this day.  In addition to Torricelli and Benvenuti whom I have highlighted, there are many additional Italian scientists

Fabiola Gianotti - 2012 Person
of the Year Fifth Runner-up

who have joined their predecessors in this quest to reveal nature’s secrets.  These achievers are not restricted only to men either.  A major case in point is Fabiola Gianotti, the Italian particle physicist who led a research team in the discovery of the Higgs boson field, a medium which gives particles mass, who in 2016 was named the first female Director-General of CERN.  Then in 2019, she was renewed for a second term of office beginning in January 2021.  Talk about breaking that proverbial glass ceiling or in Torricelli’s day, a bunch of glass tubes!

If there is a conclusion lurking here on a subject that has no apparent consensus yet concerning the interactions of matter and energy, it just might be that we have a choice.  We might wait until those prescient hard at work monkeys pound out the next eclipsing vestige of theoretical physics.  My guess is that the wait will take a while.  I’d bet quite a while in fact.  Yet there is a charm in something undefined, something quite hidden as we wait for some future particle collision, something yet undiscovered, that allows for imagining what might be.  That is something all the monkeys in the world lack.  Besides, I’d much prefer to see it through much faster, and for that I’d leave it to the Italians, already hard at work at nothing. 

 

From That Rogue Tourist

Paolo