Where You End and I Begin : Notes on Subjectivity and Ethics in the Translation of Poetry

What can translation teach us about poetry and poetics? To what extent is a lyric constellation portable, and to what extent is it embedded in a particular culture or language? How much of a foreign syntax can be replicated before things break down? What is the role of sound in a translation? By discussing poems by three poets whose work I have translated—the Taiwanese poet Yang Mu and the mainland-Chinese poets Zhai Yongming and Wang Yin—this paper explores issues such as the above. It connects these issues with the question of “where you end and I begin” and vice versa, which takes on added significance if the translator writes poetry of their own

Superbubble Origin of Cosmic Rays

After a hundred years of searching for the origin of cosmic rays, where and how they are made has finally become clear. Here we briefly trace that odyssey through both astronomical observations and cosmic ray measurements.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Invited paper in Centenary Symposium 2012: Discovery of Cosmic Rays (AIP Conf. Proc.

The Origin of Cosmic Rays: How Their Composition Defines Their Sources and Sites, and the Processes of Their Mixing, Injection and Acceleration

Galactic cosmic-ray source compositions, (Z/H)GCRS from H to Pb and ~10^8 - 10^14 eV, differ from solar-local interstellar, (Z/H)SS or (Z/H)ISM by ~20-200x. Both are mostly just mixes of core collapse (CCSN) and thermonuclear (SN Ia) supernova ejecta. The (Z/H)ISM come from steady unbiased accumulation over Gyrs. But the cosmic ray mass mixing ratio, universal ISM/CCSN ~4:1 of swept-up ISM and ~10x metallicity ejecta show that (Z/H)GCRS come from basic Sedov-Taylor bulk mixing of homologous, expanding CCSN in their OB cluster self-generated superbubbles, further enriched by highly biased grain-sputtering injection during diffusive shock acceleration (DSA). Moreover, this mixing ratio now reveals that the cosmic rays are primarily accelerated as their evolving reverse shock radius and energy passes through their maxima. Refractories and volatiles, first deposited in fast ejecta and ISM grains in freely expanding ejecta, are simultaneously Coulomb-sputtered FCS by turbulent H and He as suprathermal ions into DSA that carries them to cosmic-ray energies. This bulk mixing selectively increases source mix abundancies (Z/H)SM / (Z/H)SS by ~2-10; and injection by grain condensation and implantation fractions FGC, by another ~6, while Z^0.67 Coulomb grain sputtering enrichments FCS give an added ~4-20. Applying these basic processes of mixing and injection to solar system (Z/H)SS produces grain-injected, source-mix (Z/H)SMGI that match major cosmic ray abundances (Z/H)GCRS to within 35 % with no free parameters. Independently confirming grain injection, (Z/H)GCRS shows no detectable contribution of Fe from SN Ia, although producing ~1/2 Fe in ISM, but there is also no dust in SN Ia remnants, unlike CCSN.Comment: 44 pages, 11 figures, 3 table

Scientific objectives of solar gamma-ray observations

Solar flare neutrons and gamma rays are produced by nuclear interactions of flare accelerated ions in the solar atmosphere. A rich variety of such gamma ray and neutron observations have been made by the Solar Maximum Mission (SSM), other satellite, balloon and ground based detectors, and they have provided a wealth of unique information on the nature of particle acceleration in flares and on the flare process itself. What we have learned from these observations is briefly reviewed, and what we can hope to learn from more sensitive new observations to be made with the Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO), the Max '91 balloon program, and the Nuclear Astrophysics Explorer is outlined