ABSTRACT
In 1964 M. Gell-Mann [29] and G. Zweig [30] independently from each other hypothesized that all hadrons are built of three particles of the unitary triplet. Wishing to emphasize the unusual properties of new blocks of matter, Gell-Mann called them “quarks.” The term was borrowed from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. If one compares this novel with War and Peace by L. Tolstoy, then the first thing that comes to mind is that Finnegans Wake was written in at least 26-dimensional space-time, which never experienced the joy of compactification. During the act a protagonist Humphrey Chimpden Earwicher is constantly changing his appearance. He is reincarnated at one moment into Mark, the King of Cornwell, at another into his sons, Sham and Shaun, and so on. Earwicher’s children (he has a daughter as well) are far from being simple and they also can be transformed into their father. There is an episode in the novel when the protagonist being reincarnated into King Mark, sends his nephew, the knight Tristan, by a wedding boat to bring the king’s bride Isolde. As expected, during their travels Tristan and Isolde happen to have been struck down by Cupid’s arrow practically on the spot. The seagulls circling above the ship are completely informed about the events taking place on the ship, as demonstrated by their song starting with the words: “Three quarks for Mister Mark.” If one distracts from the remaining part of the song, then the above-mentioned phrase can be unambiguously viewed as a prediction of the fundamental triplet. Setting the imagination free, one can assume that Mister Earwicher with his transformations chain reproduces the hadrons spectrum and his children are nothing else but three quarks. However, the whole content of the bird’s opus suggests that the phrase “three quarks” may be treated as evidence that the old king was deceived triply. Time will show whether that is the excited indication on the analogous fate of the quark hypothesis, the development of which physicists have been devoted to already for half a century.
