Muon/Vortex

The work is activated by muons—particles created when cosmic rays collide with Earth’s atmosphere. Muons pass silently through matter, rarely interacting with anything they encounter. When one does activate the detector, it produces a brief flash of light that sets water into motion. Vortices form, accelerate, relax, and dissolve. Extended pauses allow the surface to settle into reflective calm, while clustered arrivals drive turbulence that carves ribs and channels through the flow.

When a cosmic ray strikes the upper atmosphere, it collides with atomic nuclei at extreme energy, triggering a cascading shower of secondary particles that unfolds within microseconds. Among the earliest products are pions—unstable particles that exist for only about twenty-six nanoseconds before decaying. Some decay into photons, while others decay into muons and neutrinos. It is these muons, created high above the Earth, that carry the event downward toward the surface.

The installation detects muons using two stacked scintillators. When a muon passes through a scintillator, it excites electrons in the material, producing a tiny flash of light lasting only billionths of a second. Light sensors register these flashes, and only when both scintillators fire simultaneously is the event recorded, confirming the passage of a single particle through both detectors. This coincidence requirement filters out background radiation, isolating events that originated in the atmosphere above.

Every muon detected here is already near the end of its existence. After passing through the installation, it decays into an electron and neutrinos, disappearing as quietly as it arrived. The work gives this brief interval—between creation and decay—a material presence, linking galactic timescales and relativistic physics to immediate, embodied experience. Energy that has traveled for millions of years is allowed to briefly inscribe itself into water before vanishing again.