Where the sun rises

You are wondering, of course, what happened when on March 15, during the magnificent student protest in Belgrade, an unusual event occurred, which is connected with the use of the so-called sound cannon? You know very well how social networks and the media were flooded with videos on the same night where everything can be seen and heard (how on which one), but on all of them it is clearly discernible how the mass of people - a mass that was previously at rest because it was in the course of a cathartic fifteen minutes of silence - splits and moves rapidly on both sides of the street, as if a truck, an ambulance or a "sound cannon" is passing through it. This "signal" spreads quickly, everything happens in milliseconds, after which people fall or run, but due to the composure of a really impressive number of surprised people, they shout "Stop!", everyone stops and there is no major stampede. We see dismayed faces, but there is no further panic. And we can see that, along with various details, on all recordings, from all locations.

Be that as it may, not a single whole day has passed since that event, and it became clear that so many recordings and the "sound cannon" are an important topic that dangerously incriminates the regime, that after the tragedy in Novi Sad, Serbia's Tiananmen has now been opened under the regime. As the reader undoubtedly knows, persons holding the highest state functions, some resigned, some not, and with them uniformed persons, as well as various analysts, immediately went public with the claim that no such prohibited weapons were used against the demonstrators, and even that there were no such weapons at all (which was later disputed), and some officials swore in front of the cameras with tears in their eyes. In a report that was allegedly compiled by the BIA a day later, and which was reported by some tabloids, the whole case is described as panic which, according to their thesis, was caused by the circumstance that the student guards took off their vests (as a planned reaction to the attack by rioters from "Ćaciland"), which allegedly terrified people and set the crowd in motion.

All of this again opened the game "we caught you in a lie", which Serbia has been playing with its authorities for a hundred and more days, from the canopy, to people climbing on the hoods of vehicles that hit them, to a policeman who was hit by a colleague (not students), to the staged attack in "Ćaciland". Organizations and individuals have been collecting testimonies about the effects of the "sound cannon" for days, there is a battle for medical reports, event maps are being made, IT teams are programming simulations, the speed of people's movement is being measured frame by frame, and many are analyzing audio recordings, examining the Doppler effect of the impact zone where bleeding from the ears occurred, looking for dominant frequencies in the recordings. Is the distrust in the system really so great that tens of thousands of people not only do not believe, but actively work to debunk the regime's claims, even though it is not in their job description?

A QUESTION OF EXPERIENCE

We could justifiably ask ourselves why so many citizens are now trying to prove the existence of experimental weapons? Why, after all, do they believe that the simple claim that simple panic caused the event in Ulica Kralja Milana during the March 15 protest is untrue?

No, it's not just because the people in government positions who claim that are often untruths. It's not even because of the crucial question of why such a weapon would be used at all on peaceful protesters (when they will certainly disperse in a few hours, and there are too many of them for anyone to confront them without major consequences) and whether there was a hellish plan in the background to cause a large stampede that would lead to a terrible number of deaths and transfer the blame to the students, thus extinguishing not only the student protest, but also every form of civil disobedience, from now on forever. These are important questions, but they are still political questions that come later.

People do not believe the government's claim that nothing happened because the truth is, in fact, clearly visible on literally every video of this event.

Another question is whether citizens can easily articulate what they see into an opinion based on expertise in such a way that it refutes the authority of official claims. People, no matter how widely educated, understand many things based on their immediate experience and live with it quite well without explaining them to themselves, because they are completely outside their expertise and are part of the specific knowledge of some sciences that they simply did not have the opportunity or need to learn. When someone challenges them, they may find themselves in doubt, and even be recruited into some kind of conspiracy theory, but in general, no matter how much scientific knowledge is necessary for civilization, it is not at all necessary that every individual possesses each of these knowledge. The thirst for knowledge makes us human, but what we don't know is so vast that life would be quite impossible if it were necessary for us to know everything.

SUNRISE QUESTIONS

Let's imagine the following hypothetical situation - if the authorities say that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow, with all the cannonade of claims from tabloids, official announcements, announcements about hybrid war from various parts of the world, threats from the prosecution to prosecute false claims about the east, visits by generals who explain that there are no sides of the world in the Serbian Army, the service of an eastern akathist in the Temple of Saint Sava, accusations that this undermines the country's neutral position between the two sides of the world, BIA reports on the spread of sunlight with footage of shadows from surveillance cameras, as well as an Instagram address with a picture of the sunset over the Presidency and, in addition, a measured attitude from Brussels that membership in the Union means reforms both in the East and in the West.

Would you believe it?

The fact that the Sun rises in the east, although a lesson in the lowest grades of elementary school that is known to preschool children, is actually only an immediate experience for most people - this means that it does not arise from knowledge of celestial mechanics. But how can the people in power and who possess a powerful propaganda apparatus prove, based on experience alone, that the star will be on the eastern side of the world in the morning? What arguments? Obviously, with this incredible lie (which, paradoxically, with this regime doesn't even seem completely impossible, does it?) something similar to the "sound cannon" would happen - people would immediately reach for astronomy lessons, there would be guest appearances and posts on social networks about the Earth's revolution, about Copernicus and the path of the planet around the Sun, biologists would explain how flora leans to one side, builders about the position of buildings, the Internet would be flooded with videos showing where the sun was in Saturday, but also with Botov's answers, critics, those who remind us that energy is wasted in the west, and also flat-earth posts that claim that "they have always said that there is nothing of that".

Your immediate experience, what you saw and understood about the world, would be just a ripple on the powerful wave of infrasound swirling around you.

QUESTION OF DANGER

When it comes to a "sound cannon" event, it tells you that when people run to one side, what they are running from is on the other side. Isn't it? Does experience tell you otherwise? People run away from danger, they don't go towards it. And where are the people running in all the videos? To the edges of the street, and there is no footage to show otherwise. Where, then, is the danger from which people flee? In the middle of the street. People with their neuroplasticity, acquired evolution and so much running away from predators, in this case recognize not only that the danger is in the middle of the street, but also that it is not static, but that it is moving quickly in the direction of Slavia. So what do we see in the footage? Danger, some force of unknown origin for sure, which is moving quickly in the middle of the street. People remove themselves from it and then, although dismayed, calm down amazingly quickly and do not continue running.

But what is this force that moves from Terazi onward and creates a gap, forcing people to run to the edges of the street? Invisible, apparently. Barring paranormal explanations, the two invisible things we know of that could blow through here are some sort of electromagnetic wave (like a radio signal or, perhaps, some kind of gamma ray) or a mechanical wave (sound or some kind of movement like wind). The first option is almost impossible because EM waves move much faster, the highest speed in nature, for us humans it is quite instantaneous and we would not notice any of its movement. The second option, therefore - in the middle of the street from Terazije to Slavija, at the protest on March 15 in Belgrade, a strong mechanical wave passed, which people experienced as a danger and quickly moved away from it.

Was it panic after all? Immediate experience, like where the sun will rise, tells you it isn't.

PHYSICS QUESTION

What does physics say? For a physicist, the mass of people is a multi-particle system, and it is not uncommon for physicists to model movements through such a medium in their research and simulations. In it, information is transmitted from particle to particle, from head to head, from person to person, and thus "waves" can move through the mass of people, like those when the mass shouts "Pump-pai!", then you hear the slogan coming towards you, people suddenly start shouting, and then they move on. Panic is transmitted similarly, therefore, within a group of people, where everyone sees their neighbor and by his behavior concludes that there is some danger (although he does not see where it is). In that case, a person moves and does not have a preferred direction because he does not know where the danger is, except to follow the mass itself.

Such movements of larger systems are, as physicists say, isotropic. An unpleasant term, but isotropy is a feature present throughout the world as we know it - it is the general tendency of large groups to move in all directions equally. Namely, whenever something in a larger system moves freely, without constraint, it will move isotropically; that's how treetops grow, that's how gases spread, that's how the mass of frightened people moves in the meadow - in all directions. When there is coercion, when a tree grows next to a wall, and the mass runs along the street between the walls, the mass is directed, that is, the isotropy is broken by the coercion itself.

Panic is a self-organized critical phenomenon and spreads from the agent onwards without any external coercion. Therefore, people who do not see the danger itself (otherwise they would run away from it), and those are people at distances of only a few tens of meters, can learn about the danger only from their neighbors and will move in the direction dictated by the crowd, and not in the direction of the danger they do not see. It will therefore move isotropic. However, the preferred direction can clearly be seen in the footage from Kralj Milan. You can clearly see the split in the crowd in the middle of the street. And it shows in all the recordings. Such a split is possible only in the continuous presence of an external coercive force. It is against physical laws, it is against isotropy, which people intuitively understand based on their experience, although they may not know the concept itself, that panic spreads so that the mass is continuously split in half. In Kralja Milan Street, there are no barriers in its middle, and the only thing that moves people can be some kind of coercive force, which is obviously some kind of mechanical wave.

The concrete nature and origin of this wave is another question, one that should be resolved by the institutions. But if we know that it was used, than the question of what kind of device was used to produce the wave, what kind of weapon was used on peaceful citizens of Serbia, the mentioned question is much more important - why was it used? Because of a failed attempt to cause a big, bloody stampede? Or a plan for the sun to rise in the west?