The midlife crisis of a physicist
While the hucksters feed at the public trough in the name of “science,” there are real scientists around exploring real phenomena and mysteries. We laugh at those who confidently predict what will happen in 50 years, when it is pretty obvious that we know so little about this grand and glorious universe. Richard Panek in the NYT:
[The] universe…is made of only 4 percent of the kind of matter we have always assumed it to be — the material that makes up you and me and this magazine and all the planets and stars in our galaxy and in all 125 billion galaxies beyond. The rest — 96 percent of the universe — is…”dark”…
in the 1970s, astronomers began noticing something that didn’t seem to fit with the laws of physics. They found that spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way were spinning at such a rate that they should have long ago wobbled out of control, shredding apart, shedding stars in every direction. Yet clearly they had done no such thing…astronomers called this mystery mass “dark matter.”…
in 1998, the two teams announced that they had each independently reached the same conclusion, and it was the opposite of what either of them expected. The rate of the expansion of the universe was not slowing down. Instead, it seemed to be speeding up….
That same year, Michael Turner, the prominent University of Chicago theorist, delivered a paper in which he called this antigravitational force “dark energy.” The purpose of calling it “dark,” he explained recently, was to highlight the similarity to dark matter. The purpose of “energy” was to make a distinction. “It really is very different from dark matter,” Turner said. “It’s more energylike.”…“I’m not embarrassed to say it’s the most profound mystery in all of science.”…
dark-matter physicists are hanging their hopes on the Large Hadron Collider, the latest-generation subatomic-particle accelerator, which goes online later this year at the European Center for Nuclear Research on the Franco-Swiss border. Many cosmologists think that the L.H.C. has made the creation of a dark-matter particle — as George Smoot said, holding up two fingers — “this close.”…
[Physicist] Juan Collar: “I know I speak for a generation of people who have been looking for dark-matter particles since they were grad students,” he said one wintry afternoon in his University of Chicago office. “I doubt how many of us will remain in the field if the L.H.C. brings home bad news. I have been looking for dark-matter particles for more than 15 years. I’m 42. So most of my colleagues, my age, we are kind of going through a midlife crisis.” He laughed. “When we get together and we drink enough beer, we start howling at the moon.”
As one physicist in the article said: “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant” (cf Lileks’ Doctor Poppycock). The humility is admirable. The global warming crowd is overdue for a midlife crisis of their own.
March 11th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
While the hucksters feed at the public trough in the name of “science,” there are real scientists around exploring real phenomena and mysteries.
True, but the differences between hucksters and “real” scientists sometimes may be fuzzier than laypeople think.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…
March 27th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Is it worth considering that dark matter particles might only be detected with machines made of dark matter and powered by dark energy?