Serendipity,
It's looking for a needle in a haystack,
and finding the farmer's daughter.
Pek Van Andel
WHAT COULD WE FIND right next to WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR?
In March 2006, the Antares underwater telescope, installed off Toulon at a depth of 2400 meters, was connected for the first time. It aims to detect very high energy neutrinos coming from the sky of the southern hemisphere. They go through the earth like a colander, except for a few extremely rare shocks.
Antares' 900 photomultipliers, strung like beads on big cables fixed at the bottom, wait for certain neutrinos to collide with a molecule of water, producing a muon, a charged particle that will emit a photon - and this is what we want to catch. Total darkness is a must if one of these sensors is to have a chance to see these photons. Imagine the paradox -- this giant device is deployed on the ocean floor like a cubic eye of a fly covering 13 million cubic meters, trying to catch the neutrinos that come up through the ground. It is very dark at 2400 meters, but not completely. Very small abyssal organisms can emit tiny sparks of light, sometimes to attract prey, sometimes to seduce a breeding partner. There are also bacteria in the abyss that can emit light continuously. The luminous background noise is generally between 40 and 200 kHz and does not interfere with the telescope. But in 2009 and 2010, two bursts of bioluminescence at 9000 kHz suddenly dazzled Antares. What were they? A mollusca party?
All hands on deck to understand the phenomenon: double checks, hypotheses, related measurements. We noticed that the peak coincided with a change in the temperature and salinity of the water. This is an indication of a link between bioluminescence and large-scale convection movements. We have finally understood that during a dry, cold winter, large amounts of surface water can "sink", bringing nutrients and oxygen to the bottom, and this sudden change causes a boom in biological activity. It was indeed party-time below!
As a result, bioluminescence itself is now being studied. Measuring this could become the best method to continuously monitor deep water biomass activity. First step: identify all the organisms responsible for the two discharges of light observed by Antares. Then, develop a specific instrument to continue the observation of this light in the abyss. It is not known yet whether the Antares telescope will work miracles with neutrinos from distant galaxies, but it has revolutionized the detection of biological activity. It's like brandishing a butterfly net and harvesting earthworms.
If the painter Miquel Barcelo had thrown out a pile of drawings he found in a corner of his studio in Mali, on the pretext that they had been eaten by termites, he would have continued to paint what he had decided to paint. But he looked at them, looked at them carefully, and concluded that the drawings were better with the holes than without the holes. Subsequently, he put piles of paper on the ground to get help from the termites.
Ironically, the royal method of making discoveries is an counter-method, one that we do not control. Serendipity, or the art of taking advantage of random good luck, cannot be controlled more than chance can be.
On the other hand, there is an attitude that lets random good luck create further benefits, that is the one that
1) agrees to take risks,
2) notices the unusual. From that point, one can see changes of the course of his/her day, or of his/her life.
Assuming the brio of chance, accessing coincidence, going into the orbit of an event, picking up the unexpected, nose-to-nose with luck, thinking of an event as a pearl, sniffing the format of opportunity, following a ball on a pinball machine, accompanying whatever is coming, playing tag with the unknown – means making findings without waiting for them.
In March 2006, the Antares underwater telescope, installed off Toulon at a depth of 2400 meters, was connected for the first time. It aims to detect very high energy neutrinos coming from the sky of the southern hemisphere. They go through the earth like a colander, except for a few extremely rare shocks.
Antares' 900 photomultipliers, strung like beads on big cables fixed at the bottom, wait for certain neutrinos to collide with a molecule of water, producing a muon, a charged particle that will emit a photon - and this is what we want to catch. Total darkness is a must if one of these sensors is to have a chance to see these photons. Imagine the paradox -- this giant device is deployed on the ocean floor like a cubic eye of a fly covering 13 million cubic meters, trying to catch the neutrinos that come up through the ground. It is very dark at 2400 meters, but not completely. Very small abyssal organisms can emit tiny sparks of light, sometimes to attract prey, sometimes to seduce a breeding partner. There are also bacteria in the abyss that can emit light continuously. The luminous background noise is generally between 40 and 200 kHz and does not interfere with the telescope. But in 2009 and 2010, two bursts of bioluminescence at 9000 kHz suddenly dazzled Antares. What were they? A mollusca party?
All hands on deck to understand the phenomenon: double checks, hypotheses, related measurements. We noticed that the peak coincided with a change in the temperature and salinity of the water. This is an indication of a link between bioluminescence and large-scale convection movements. We have finally understood that during a dry, cold winter, large amounts of surface water can "sink", bringing nutrients and oxygen to the bottom, and this sudden change causes a boom in biological activity. It was indeed party-time below!
As a result, bioluminescence itself is now being studied. Measuring this could become the best method to continuously monitor deep water biomass activity. First step: identify all the organisms responsible for the two discharges of light observed by Antares. Then, develop a specific instrument to continue the observation of this light in the abyss. It is not known yet whether the Antares telescope will work miracles with neutrinos from distant galaxies, but it has revolutionized the detection of biological activity. It's like brandishing a butterfly net and harvesting earthworms.
If the painter Miquel Barcelo had thrown out a pile of drawings he found in a corner of his studio in Mali, on the pretext that they had been eaten by termites, he would have continued to paint what he had decided to paint. But he looked at them, looked at them carefully, and concluded that the drawings were better with the holes than without the holes. Subsequently, he put piles of paper on the ground to get help from the termites.
Ironically, the royal method of making discoveries is an counter-method, one that we do not control. Serendipity, or the art of taking advantage of random good luck, cannot be controlled more than chance can be.
On the other hand, there is an attitude that lets random good luck create further benefits, that is the one that
1) agrees to take risks,
2) notices the unusual. From that point, one can see changes of the course of his/her day, or of his/her life.
Assuming the brio of chance, accessing coincidence, going into the orbit of an event, picking up the unexpected, nose-to-nose with luck, thinking of an event as a pearl, sniffing the format of opportunity, following a ball on a pinball machine, accompanying whatever is coming, playing tag with the unknown – means making findings without waiting for them.
To PUT it in another way
Availability
There is no shortage of opportunities. We are the ones who miss them.
Tibor Fischer
Asset
There is an intermediate range between "an act" and "opportunity" where creates, or attracts opportunity.
Franz Kafka
Mill
To welcome errors is not to contradict luck but to corroborate it.
Jorge Luis Borges
Source
Nobody knows why I say this sentence, nobody knows that I heard it on the bus. Life on the 24 is part of my most intimate record. I always had the impression that what was happening on this line concerned me directly.
Tale
This chance arises when we least expect it, the Anglo-Saxons call it "serendipity", a word created by Horace Walpole, named after the title of an Oriental tale called The Three Princes of Serendip.
In this tale, three young Sinhala princes, who have gone in search of treasure, are making interesting discoveries where they least expected them. In their ardent desire to learn, the princes left their luxurious palace to become wandering knights. Their luck comes from their receptiveness, their openness to everything, without preconceived ideas. Any man they meet may have a secret; any place deserves to be explored. Intellectually, they are ready to recognize the importance of a fortuitous event.
Florence Vidal
Third way
"Float" does not mean to move towards or to freeze, but to let yourself be moved and renewed at the whim of the world’s inclination.
François Jullien
School
To learn English, I bought a French-English conversation manual for beginners. I copied the sentences from my textbook to memorize them. So, I learned, not English, but surprising truths: that there are seven days in the week, for example; or that the floor is below, the ceiling above, which suddenly appeared to me to be as amazing as it was unquestionably true. I doubtless have enough philosophical sense to have noticed that what I copied in my notebook was not the French translation of mere English sentences, but rather fundamental truths, profound observations.
Eugene Ionesco
Astounding
1910. It was almost dark, when Kandisky put his key in the lock. He leaned his drawing board against a table and stopped short, upset "by the sight of an indescribably beautiful picture that radiated an intense light. A painting where we could only distinguish shapes and colors without meaning”. Could someone have brought this painting in his absence? Kandisky came closer, looking for a signature, a scribbled word. But no ... this painting was one of his own standing upside-down. The discovery of the inverted painting would lead Kandisky to paint his first truly abstract watercolor, entitled Improvisation. Then, he resolutely entered a new world of abstract art, of which he would become the main founder.
Florence Vidal On Strindberg
Faced with shapes created at random, for example on his pillow, the artist has the same feelings as when he sees marble sculptures, and he perceives strange faces in the pieces of coal he has removed from the chimney.
Strindberg Catalog
Nap
When one discovers that a place not designed as a chair, is a perfectly comfortable is a seat, one is seized with absolutely mystical happiness: this is one of the deepest joys, the most well founded in life.
Miklos Szentkuthy
Player
He asked us to wire as soon as we arrived in Bariloche, if we actually got there, because he wanted to play the telegram number in the lottery, which seemed excessive to us.
Ernesto Che Guevara
Dialectic
In his poetic register of places and signs, André Breton relies on "objective luck", a notion he created to indicate that a dialectic binds our inner demand to the offer of the world. As long as we are on the lookout, external reality, by the more or less broad availability of attention, offers us what can satisfy our desire. This is a precise definition of magic. It implies being vigilant about the relationship between the inside and the outside.
Jean-Philippe Domecq
Prelude
The planned phase of my night expedition stops here. From now on, all that happens will result from the electrical encounter of chance and will.
Alona Kimhi
Necessary
Even the chance elements were made necessary by the action they exerted afterwards on the whole.
Franz Kafka
Prepare
In the field of observation, chance only favors prepared minds.
Louis Pasteur
Intractable
John Cage was so adept at chance that he refused to let himself be guided by the fact that he considered a find to be good or bad. His taste should not interfere in any way in his decisions, because it would give too much room for small reactions of the ego. Leaving his tastes and intentions aside, he relied on pure chance.
Lewis Hyde
Unexpected
I like to ask actors to rehearse scenes that are not in the script or that will not be in the film, because we try to establish their characters, and for me a good interpretation is being able to react.
Jim Jarmusch
Cascade
If I do not understand Einstein, it doesn't matter. It will make me understand something else.
Pablo Picasso
Germ
To become art, are needs something that is outside of it.
Theodor Adorno quoted by François Laplantine
Shortcut
A chance meeting is like a hole in the social net, which frees us, offers us a passage.
Lewis Hyde
Master
This curious world, republic of the wind
Which has chosen accident as king.
Gabriel B