895 research outputs found
The Time Capsule and the Cut Up: Negotiating Temporality, Anticipating Catastrophe
The first feature film made about the design and deployment of the atomic bomb, The Beginning or the End (1947), begins with fake newsreel footage depicting the burial in a time capsule of a copy of the film and a projector to show it on. The scene, with its funereal overtones yet grim optimism that, even in the face of catastrophic destruction, the germ of civilisation will endure, recalls the ceremonies surrounding the interment of the Westinghouse time capsule at the New York World's Fair in 1939. Time capsules, this article argues, stand in a complex relation to war and temporality, seeking to at once anticipate and work through the challenge posed to futurity by the threat of global conflict. As a container, the capsule attempts to deliver and control the reception of a legible inventory of the present, yet the principle of selection and the impossibility of predicting how information might be received in the deep future – if it is received at all – threatens this aim. The dilemma faced by time capsule curators is, we argue with reference to William Burroughs' and Brion Gysin's so-called cut -up method of writing, one of control. By reading the time capsule through the cut-up, anticipated catastrophe can be seen to be functioning proleptically in the present and already active as a challenge to the capsule as proof against disaster
Solar Energetic Particle Events in the 23rd Solar Cycle: Interplanetary Magnetic Field Configuration and Statistical Relationship with Flares and CMEs
We study the influence of the large-scale interplanetary magnetic field
configuration on the solar energetic particles (SEPs) as detected at different
satellites near Earth and on the correlation of their peak intensities with the
parent solar activity. We selected SEP events associated with X and M-class
flares at western longitudes, in order to ensure good magnetic connection to
Earth. These events were classified into two categories according to the global
interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) configuration present during the SEP
propagation to 1AU: standard solar wind or interplanetary coronal mass
ejections (ICMEs). Our analysis shows that around 20% of all particle events
are detected when the spacecraft is immersed in an ICME. The correlation of the
peak particle intensity with the projected speed of the SEP-associated coronal
mass ejection is similar in the two IMF categories of proton and electron
events, . The SEP events within ICMEs show stronger correlation
between the peak proton intensity and the soft X-ray flux of the associated
solar flare, with correlation coefficient 0.670.13, compared to the
SEP events propagating in the standard solar wind, 0.360.13. The
difference is more pronounced for near-relativistic electrons. The main reason
for the different correlation behavior seems to be the larger spread of the
flare longitude in the SEP sample detected in the solar wind as compared to SEP
events within ICMEs. We discuss to which extent observational bias, different
physical processes (particle injection, transport, etc.), and the IMF
configuration can influence the relationship between SEPs and coronal activity.Comment: http://adsabs.harvard.edu.ezproxy.obspm.fr/abs/2013SoPh..282..579
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