Deep Astronomy in Mexico

There is a school of thought, Deep Mexico, by Guillermo Bonfil Batalla: "Mexico Profundo" is a book where he presents his ideas. As I see this work, I think of different scales of time connected all together. In Mexico we have had continuous human habitation for more than five thousand years. We live inside various worlds without being aware ourselves. You look right, there is aMcDonald joint, you look left and an Indian Shaman is walking by unnoticed, I guess he likes it that way. I feel like Pedro Páramo's son, Juan, walking the streets of Comala among the dead. In this masterpiece by one of the greatest Mexican writers, Juan Rulfo, one feels this multilayered time experience we have here.

These past days I was in Taxco, Mexico. At the first Congress of the "Red de Física de Altas Energías" financed by the Mexican agency, "Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología", that holds the purse strings for the treasure directed towards science, and to a lesser extent technology. I witnessed two events that belong, I believe, in Deep Astronomy in Mexico.

The first was a conversation by the greatest theoretical physicist in high energy physics in Mexico, Prof. Arnulfo Zepeda Domínguez, and Engineer and inventor Horacio Lobo Zertuche: they were sipping coffee, Prof. Zepeda matter of factly ordered a set of several thousand plastic tanks to hold water without freezing in the winters of the State of Colorado in the United States. Ing. Lobo took the order in stride also, and I am almost sure the Auger North site had settled an important aspect of its design. The South version of this Pierre Auger Observatory in Malargüe Argentina already made history, by announcing at the end of 2007, the first strong evidence that the highest energy cosmic rays come form specific directions in the sky. Now Ing. Lobo is hard at work to solve the specific problems of the water tanks in the frigid temperatures of Colorado.

I felt I was in the presence of two Mexican shamans.

The second deep astronomy event in Mexico I was fortunate enough to witness, was the operation of a wireless channel between a muon detector and a cheap laptop at distances of more than thirty feet. We were walking through the halls of the hotel where we stayed, singing a Posadas song. It is not Christmas yet, but I couldn't resist expressing in some kind of ritual way, the very important event I saw. Now Mexico has the possibility to connect a bunch of those plastic tanks, Ing. Lobo invented, at the top of the Sierra Negra observatory in Mexico, not that far  from where María Sabina became famous. The modern Shaman in charge of this ritual was Dr. Luis Manuel Villaseñor Cendejas. His collaborator was Dr. Humberto Salazar Ibargüen.

I felt I was in the presence of two Mexican shamans.

This is fun. I just did a google search; deep astronomy in mexico; and number one was this note! Today is Monday March 9, 2009, it is 9:45 hrs. here in Chilpancingo.