The Scientific Method

Anatomy of a Near Miss

According to Gray's Anatomy, the sphincter ani externus -- also known as the anal sphincter muscle -- is an flat muscle about 3 1/2 inches long and an inch wide. It completely surrounds the anal canal, where -- how do I put this politely? -- it prevents us from pooping our pants.

Not a glamorous job, to be sure, but an essential one, all too easily taken for granted.

In certain circumstances -- when we are under great stress, or in a state of abject fear, for instance -- the Sphincter ani externus (along with it's smaller companion, the sphincter ani internus) gets a bit of a workout. It contracts involuntarily, increasing it's stranglehold, if you will, on the anal canal. This phenomena -- known as the "pucker factor" -- is familiar to anyone who has jumped out of an airplane, driven a race car at 180 mph into a greasy west turn, or spent a moonless night casting size 6 marabou streamers to unseen noises in the dark.

But, even discounting these rare episodes, the healthy sphincter ani externus, like most muscles, exists in a state of perpetual contraction.

Some would say that this is a perfectly normal response to life.

Perhaps.

In any event, I became acutely aware of my sphincter ani externus as I was sliding sideways down a snowy patch in the left lane of I-84 this morning. Or rather, I became aware of it once I had managed to redirect the front of my car north towards Yakima, following a few of those slow-motion moments when the whole world seems to slow down, with the exception of the 18 wheeler that is cruising along in the lane next to you, inches from your front bumper.

Getting crosswise and fishtailing at 50 mph was a fine way to get the adrenalin flowing. But as I slid, sheepishly, back into the right lane and took my place amidst the more cautious truckers doing an oh-so-responsible 40 mph down the freeway, I hoped that the next fish tails I encountered would be of a somewhat fishier nature.

Ernest Rutherford and Hans Geiger Go Fishing

In 1910, a physicist named Ernest Rutherford had a crazy idea. Aided by his graduate student, Hans Geiger (known, I suppose, as someone who could be counted on), Rutherford decided to shoot a beam of alpha particles at a thin sheet of gold foil.

As expected, most of the particles simply sailed through the foil. It was a thin foil, after all (one imagines being able to see a bright light held behind it), and alpha particles -- essentially, single helium atoms stripped of their electrons -- are very small.

But a few -- fewer than 1 in 10,000 -- of the particles bounced straight back towards the alpha source. "It was as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a sheet of tissue paper and it came back to hit you," said Rutherford later, in describing the results.

It was a great example of using subatomic particles to probe the inner workings of our universe. Indeed, this result helped lead Rutherford to the conclusion that atoms were mostly empty space -- and in later collaborations with Neils Bohr, to a model of the atom which is very close to that we know today.

Rutherford, who once dismissed all of biology by claiming that "All science is either physics or stamp collecting," probably wasn't a fly fisherman. But somehow, I can't help but think of him and his experiments each time I tie on a tiny midge emerger in hopes of probing the obsidian depths of a river in winter.

I mean, here I am, casting a fly I cannot see, in hopes of finding fish I cannot see. And on rare occasions -- more often, perhaps, than once in 10,000 casts, but not by much -- this subatomic fly will bring about the most amazing result: a swirl on the surface, occasionally a flash of chrome beneath. And if I lift the line just right, not too fast, not too slow -- sometimes, I discover a fish on the other end. Usually, it's not a large fish. Indeed, most winter trout are nothing special when compared to the fish I catch all summer, in the same way a diamond is unremarkable because it's so much smaller than a chunk of coal.

But they are trout, nonethless, taken on dry flies in the winter. And in the process, they teach me something of the inner workings of this river I call home.

Quantum Entanglement

In my opinion, String theory has to be one of the most deliciously perverse intellectual advances of our time.

No longer content to confuse the layman with three dimensions, or even four (counting time), physicists have recently been wondering if the universe might not be made up of nine, or even eleven, dimensions. These extra dimensions may hold the key to one of the mysteries of modern physics -- which is, basically, "something's missing!"

But more about that in a moment.

Now, don't go looking under the sofa for these extra dimensions -- they are tucked away, or so string theorists seem to think -- in miniscule strings, which are so small that they make my size 22 midge emergers seem almost large by comparison. Everything in the universe -- and possibly in universes unknown -- is made up of these strings, which vibrate and wriggle away like subatomic chironimid larvae.

The reason that physicists get so warm and fuzzy when talking about string theory is that it may just explain the fact that the universe seems to be so much smaller than we'd expected.

You see, it turns out that in order to make sense of the Big Bang, the universe ought to hold a lot more stuff than it does. I don't pretend to understand the math, but the basic idea is that we think there's a lot of matter out there that we can't see.

It's possible that it is hiding in these strings. Indeed, some physicists are now wondering if some of the extra dimensions predicted by string theory might not actually tie us to parallel universes. Sort of like using 7x tippet to tie your anchor -- and having it hold.

Whatever. Personally, I think physicists make this sh*t up just to watch us stupid people get confused looks on our faces.

The problem with string theory is that we have no practical way to test the theory experimentally. It seems these strings are just so small, that we cannot find a way to prove they exist.

Until today, that is.

Spending the day wrestling with 7x tippet and 15 foot leaders, I can finally say with complete confidence that I have found proof of existence of the missing dimensions. Because it requires all eleven dimensions to explain some of the knots I had to untangle.

The Nobel Prize people know where I live. I'll be waiting for their call.

Spooky Action at a Distance

As if string theory wasn't confusing enough, there is also the problem of quantum entanglement, or "spooky action at a distance," as it was termed by Albert Einstein, who predicted it as a consequence of quantum mechanics -- but refused to belive his own predictions, believing instead that quantum theory must be flawed to allow such a prediction.

Dear Albert. Even when he was wrong, he was right, it seems.

To the degree that I understand it (which is: not at all), quantum entanglement basically states that two particles can become linked to one another through certain properties (such as spin direction), and having been linked, influence one another even at large distances. Instantaneously.

Clever Australian physicists (did I mention that Rutherford was from New Zealand? It must be something about those counter-rotating toilets that makes the folks from down under see the world a bit differently) have recently used this phenomena to "teleport" a photon from one location to another; essentially moving it faster than the speed of light.

With enough math, physicists swear that they can explain this away, and manage to keep Einstein's theory of relativity intact.

I'll take their word for it.

In any event, spooky action at a distance causes one to question the whole idea of cause and effect. But I don't need Einstein to do this.

I just need to fish at Milepost 9.

There exists, at said milepost, a wide spot on the shoulder, where one often finds a car or truck parked. That is because there is a nice, relatively shallow run down below, where many fine fish can be found for much of the year, during much of the day. In a good caddis or mayfly hatch, you will find large fish feeding here, as evidenced by the pockmarked surface of the water viewed from a perch on the guardrail next to the highway, 100 yards or so from the river.

But here's the spooky part.

Even though the fish on the Yakima do not seem to have any reluctance to rise in the presence of an angler. And even though you are out of sight of the river for much of the walk down, you will find the following to be true: the fish that were rising when you set off for the river, are nowhere to be found when you arrive. It's as if they know you're coming, even before you do.

I don't get it. This is the only place on the river where I have this problem. Up at Milepost 19, for example, I caught all four of my fish within 20 feet of where I stood, and was certainly more visible to them than when I climbed down the hill from MP9.

It's as if some sort of Pauli exclusion principle is at work: I cannot occupy the same state as the trout, in the MP 9 orbital.

I'm with you, Professor Einstein. There must be something wrong with this theory.

Nobody's Fault but my Own

In recent days, we've seen the tragic side of plate tectonics. Though it has become cliche to say so, the disaster in the Indian Ocean is a human catastrophe of near-Biblical proportions.

Sometimes cliches exist for a reason. How else DOES one describe such devastation?

But a quiet day in the canyon serves as a reminder that there's also a bright side to all this seismic dissonance.

That's because, fifteen million years ago, there was no canyon. The Yakima River was already there, but it flowed across relatively flat, temperate landscape. That past is apparent in the numerous twists and turns -- known as embedded meanders -- the river takes through the present day canyon.

See, water flowing down a steep gradient simply doesn't take the scenic route while flowing across a landscape -- it cuts a straight channel, making a bee-line for the ocean, or at least a bigger river. Witness the side channels cut into the hillsides that drain the occassional summer downpour into the canyon.

Straight as an arrow.

So the fact that the Yakima twists and turns like it does, at the bottom of a 1,500 foot deep canyon, tells us that the river was there before the canyon was.

And ultimately, the constant slipping and sliding of continental plates, crashing into one another like bumper cars, had everything to do with the formation of the canyon I've grown to love. About 10,000,000 years ago, the hills started to rise from the landscape as a result of the Pacific plate sliding northward. And all this time, the river dug in, stubbornly holding it's course until it became locked in place by the hills that had risen around it.

And I'm thankful for it. For without the canyon walls the whole ecosystem of the river would be different; there would be no rock gardens (for there would be no boulders falling from up on high); there would be no afternoon shadows. None of this:

I pondered these things, and more, as I drove home on roads that had thankfully been cleared of the morning's snowfall. And though the radio was playing the Mamas and the Papas "California Dreaming," my dreams were much closer to home.