The discovery

The story of Stonehenge Garching begins with the construction of a new physics laboratory on a research campus close to the pulsating town of Garching, near Munich.

The new laboratory was to be located at the north-eastern outskirts of the research campus, where modern urbanity gives way to uncharted wilderness. The frontier of civilization had to be pushed further into the Bavarian badlands to clear the ground of the construction site, claiming the lives of five workers that fell victim to tropical diseases and the uncontrollable fauna of that area.

It was in the course of this dangerous pioneering effort that workers stumbled across Stonehenge Garching, waking it from age-long hibernation hidden in impenetrable woods. Recognizing it at once as a historical site of incredible importance, the authorities revised the original building plans to ensure the preservation of this new discovery.

The origins

The origins of this prehistoric site are shrouded in the mist of time. A radiocarbon analysis tentatively dates the time of creation back to the 1830s, however scientists are at a loss to explain the details of its construction.

The Garching region is known to have been inhabited by a scattered and primitive people at that time, while the creation of Stonehenge Garching would have required manpower and craftsmanship comparable to that of an ancient civilization, well beyond the scope of the worthy local population.

The scientific community must therefore turn to other theories to explain the origins of Stonehenge Garching, many of which have emerged since the discovery. They attribute the construction to a variety of external powers, including aliens, an obscure phallic cult, frustrated astrophysicists, and most controversial of all, an artist.

The purpose

The theories regarding the purpose of Stonehenge Garching differ according to the supposed creator.

The alien theory claims that Stonehenge Garching is the burial site of several extraterrestrial individuals who perished during a botched research exchange with a young Dr. Theodor Hänsch. Brutal experiments on early frequency combs (lasers) may have ended in tragedy, while also giving rise to the quote that „anything will lase if you hit it hard enough amk“. Presumably, the aliens’ metabolism did not respond well to atomic population inversion. Critics of this theory point out that Dr. Theodor Hänsch was in fact born two decades after the alleged time of construction and that it is very questionable that space-traveling aliens, with the whole planet open to them, would visit Garching.

The theory of a phallic cult being at the bottom of Stonehenge Garching explains it as a place of worship. In its favor it can be said that most research institutions in close proximity to Stonehenge Garching have a long history of very hierarchical and overwhelmingly male-dominated structures. Such environments have repeatedly been proven to promote the formation of said cults, the most prominent historical examples being the military, the church and conservative governments. A weak point to this hypothesis is that it puts a doubtfully low bound on the artistic skill of the cult members, or instead postulates a dramatic change in human anatomy since the erection of the site.

Those supporting the theory of frustrated astrophysicists state that the sometime in the late 18th century, the prolonged failure to detect the faintest trace of dark matter or energy may have caused parts of the community simply to crack. According to this theory, Stonehenge Garching was then build out of the need to give physical form to the state of complete inner upheaval into which the desperate scientists were plunged by the continued absence of significant data. It is speculated that they chanted in plain LaTeX to appease whatever gods they believed responsible for their scientific dead end. When asked to comment, members of the TUM chair of Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics refused to interrupt their attempts to frantically renormalize the departmental coffee budget, which had blown up in their faces after they assumed it to be a small perturbation (story of their lives).

The artist theory proposes that Stonehenge Garching is not a scientific or religious relic at all, but a conceptual art installation. According to this view, the stones were arranged by an anonymous artist aiming to explore themes like critical space abundance, the color grey, and the inspiring solidity of rocks. Critics point out that this is completely ridiculous, while supporters counter that that is precisely the point, that the critics clearly didn’t understand the deconstruction of objecthood in a post-anthropocentric epistemological framework, and that they should read Karl Popper and Adorno before talking to them again. Concluding, it can be said that in the context of contemporary art this theory, while unlikely, cannot be fully ruled out.