Eros & Psyche

In the spirit of the holiday, eat some chocolate and feast your pheromone-addled minds on these: Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance by Dennis Overbye and Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss. Then spend some time gazing at Canova's "Eros and Psyche" (or "Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss") which is, I think, the most romantic sculpture of all time. The beauty, the tragedy, the science: your hearts will pound.

The Neutrino Effect

Last week, science geeks everywhere awoke to potentially astonishing news: the OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment, which analyzes subatomic particles as they travel unimpeded through miles of underground tunnels, has recorded a neutrino traveling (slightly) faster than the speed of light! It seems impossible according to everything current physicists know about quantum mechanics; in fact, if this result can be corroborated (Fermilab and others are already attempting this), Einstein's special theory of relativity may be thrown into doubt. (Probably not, but more on that in a minute.) Scientists everywhere are understandably dubious, and some even responded by saying that such tentative data shouldn't have been released to the public to begin with, since it's very likely that the experiment was affected by yet-unidentified human error. Additionally, science tends to be unfriendly (if excitable) toward data that doesn't support their existing paradigm--which, for now, rests solidly with the Standard Model and special relativity. But this finding exhibited a six-sigma deviation, which is suggestive enough to raise a lot of eyebrows.

There are a couple of reasons this is so exciting, and why prominent physicists are saying that this could re-write our fundamental understanding of the universe and the way it works. The speed of light, and its relationship to energy and mass, is one of the most revered equations in the history of science--to question it would result in chaos in cosmology, QM, QED, and other fields. However: it's possible that this result can be interpreted in a slightly different way; instead of assuming that the neutrino is literally moving faster than the speed of light, it could be that it found a shortcut by slipping through a different dimension. This idea is as revolutionary as exceeding the speed of light, but with completely different stakes: suddenly, theories that predict multiple dimensions via theoretical math (string theory/M-theory) have empirical evidence! It may not be the Higgs, but it's enough to allow critical analysis of the Standard Model to emerge into more mainstream scientific circles.

If (and right now, it reamins a massive "if") this result can be corroborated, we may be in the midst of what Thomas Kuhn would call a paradigm shift. In his seminal text The Structure of Scientific Revolutions he argues that movement from one paradigm to another (in this case, possibly from the Standard Model to string theory) must be preceded by an evidential anomaly (the neutrino moving faster than the speed of light) which, if scientists are repeatedly unable to solve using current data problem sets, leads to a scientific crisis. A crisis in this case would result in physicists being forced to re-examine some of the aspects of science that they've long taken for granted--like our perception of only four dimensions, or the speed limit of light. A true paradigm shift would occur if the scientific community is able to change their world view (and attract enough scientists to that community) regarding how certain tenets can be re-interpreted in light of new data. The result is adoption of the new paradigm and scientific revolution.

My fingers are crossed that we'll get to experience this revolution in our lifetimes: if the neutrino effect proves accurate, and physics moves past the Standard Model--but importantly, retains Einstein's special theory of relativity--into a realm of competing multi-dimension theories, there could be some dramatic truths revealed about the universe and our role in it. Pursuit of a grand unifying theory may have gone out of fashion in the past quarter century, but it's still a romantic ontological goal. It could be that the string theory boom of the 1990s was the start of the paradigm shift, and with CERN and OPERA able to articulate experiments beyond the wildest imaginations of scientists fifty years ago, we're just now seeing data that has the kind of anomolous strength required to presage a true revolution.

Ebooks and Science

Carl Zimmer et al. will host a panel on scientific ebooks tonight at Rockefeller University; it's sold out, but Science Online NYC will livestream it here starting at 7pm EST. Should be a fascinating take on the future of books; having spent all weekend hanging with zealots of the written word at the Brooklyn Book Festival and related events, I know people are still reading, and are excited about change. (Ebooks are a promising model for writers in terms of profit and intellectual control, too.) I may never get past my adoration of offset paper and vintage paperbacks, but for science books especially (and for trees everywhere) electronic distribution is huge: imagine embedded videos, links to referenced articles or bios, and a built-in dictionary right at your fingertips. Plus, you'll no longer have to lug your copy of Einstein: the Life and Times around with you.

In related news, Lisa Randall's new title Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World was released today, meaning you could be reading it right now on your Kindle. (Also, Zimmer's Brain Cuttings and A Planet of Viruses are on sale as ebooks for just $8 each.) Instant gratification, and on sale: how can you resist?

Barthes on Einstein

Few subjects escape the cultural analysis of Roland Barthes in his seminal collection Mythologies, published in 1957, and Einstein is no exception. His essay "The Brain of Einstein" asserts that the publicly revered scientist's "brain is a mythical object," and that "Mythologically, Einstein is matter," a fabulously loaded double-entendre. (Mythologically, is Einstein energy, too (divided by the speed of light, of course)?)

Barthes goes on, with no little touch of sarcasm: "Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula," and no fewer than six times, uses the word 'magic' when referring to the myth of Einstein and his search for a unifying theory, concluding that "In this way [having not discovered the unifying theory] Einstein fulfills all the conditions of myth, which could not care less about contradictions so long as it establishes a euphoric security: at once magician and machine, eternal researcher and unfulfilled discoverer, unleashing the best and the worst, brain and conscience, Einstein embodies the most contradictory dreams, and mythically reconciles the infinite power of man over nature with the 'fatality' of the sacrosanct, which man cannot yet do without." (If only Wilczek's theory that matter is light had been available to Barthes, his essay may have expounded enthusiastically on this metaphor in regards to the " 'fatality' of the sacrosanct", no?)

Barthes' selection of Einstein's brain as a subject of myth is interesting, particularly in light of contemporary theories like the Holographic Principle, etc., which carry connotations far beyond what our conceptual aptitudes can handle (for the most part). Even the complex theoretical mathematics behind a hypothesis like string theory is nothing more than a signifier of the meaning of life, or at least of the origin of it. The Higgs boson, for example, carries enormous mythological heft, especially in the media's sensational treatment of its pursuit, something I'm sure bugs physicists; I've read in many places that the colloquial term "The God Particle" is reviled by scientists the world over.

Barthes also, interestingly, makes reference to Einstein, while still alive, having his brainwaves measured by electrodes while thinking about relativity. ("For that matter, what does 'to think of' mean, exactly?") If the mystery of consciousness resolves itself to be a form of matter, is Barthes here making the most prescient pun in the history of literature? I'm kidding, but it is interesting to attempt to apply Barthes' myth structure to this kind of wildly transcendent concept, and to wonder how he would have interpreted particle physics via the structuralist system.

As an aside, The New Yorker recently published a series of diary entries Barthes wrote during the weeks after his mother's death, lending a touching humanism to his critical oeuvre.

World Science Festival 2009

This weekend wraps up the World Science Festival in New York, and there are still many great events lined up, featuring lots of familiar names: festival co-founder Brian Greene, Sean Carroll, Frank Wilczek, Andy Borowitz, Leon Lederman, Bobby McFerrin, and Oliver Sacks.

I especially recommend:

Friday:
Picturing Earth: The Story of Life in Images
Da Vinci Detective
Matter: Stories of Atoms and Eyes
Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus

Saturday:
Avian Einsteins
Infinite Worlds
Time Since Einstein
Time: The Familiar Stranger

Sunday:
World Science Festival Street Fair @ Washington Square Park
Author's Corner

See you there...

Science and Democracy

Dennis Overbye for the Science Times: "Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth."

Peter Steinberg and Ken Bloom at CERN react; Adam Frank, author of The Constant Fire, Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate talks to Melissa Lafsky at Discover (part I and part II). This is a debate that will go on, most likely, forever: regardless of how many amazing and fundamental truths are revealed in this eon of scientific exploration, I doubt that any TOE will encompass "God created the Earth and everything in it, including quantum physics." (Right off the bat, wouldn't that theory need to be revised to include the universe and everything in it? Or, rather, multiverse...)

I will admit that religion has its place, and has historically contributed both good and ill to developing societies. However, it's high time that religion admit to being less viable as The Great Explainer of Life--or at least separately viable--and allow science to move forward without today's myriad attempts to bamboozle. (I'm looking at you, intelligent design.)

To quote Einstein: "It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom."

The Great Grid Theory

'Looking down on the valley of everyday reality, we perceive much more than before. Beneath the familiar, sober appearances of enduring matter in empty space, our minds envision the dance of intricate patterns within a pervasive, ever-present, effervescent medium. We perceive that mass, the very quality that renders matter sluggish and controllable, derives from the energy of quarks and gluons ever moving at the speed of light, compelled to huddle together to shield one another from the buffeting of that medium. Our substance is the hum of a strange music, a mathematical music more precise and complex than a Bach fugue, the Music of the Grid.'

Meet Frank Wilczek, the physicist who won a Nobel for his work on quantum chromodynamics (QCD) when he was only twenty-one. (QCD is now the bedrock of particle physics and explains the strong force interaction between quarks.) The excerpt above is from his new book The Lightness of Being, so titled for its theory of matter being built from particles of almost--but not quite--zero mass. Flipping Einstein's fabled E = mc² equation into the more provocative m = E/c², Wilczek proves that pure energy--E--is really the component that gives matter its mass, via a dynamic Grid that is the makeup of all "primary world-stuff." Imagine it this way: superimposed over everything is a grid that bustles with fluctuating quantum activity, quark-antiquark condensates, the metric field that defines gravity and space-time, and dark energy (more on that later). Space, no longer empty at all, is a conduit of energy, which (according to Einstein's equations) gives everything its mass. Suddenly, the unification of forces has a medium to work with, and indeed, Wilczek manages to tinker with equations to produce a facet of SUSY that incorporates gravity (albeit roughly)!

For Higgs enthusiasts, this might dampen the "God Particle" quotient, since energy gives matter its mass instead (according to Grid theory). However, this only accounts for matter that is bound up by atoms, which (while it makes up nearly everything on our planet) accounts for only a microscopic percentage--5%--of a universe that is made up of almost all dark matter and energy. That's where the mystery and adventure remains: dark matter is surely explainable, especially with the LHC rearing to discover stuff; Wilczek writes that "dark-matter is ripe for solution." SUSY, again, may be the deus ex machina; the lightest SUSY partner just might be dark matter. Wouldn't that be cozy?

Einstein on Religion

Einstein's reputation as an eccentric mathematical genius can sometimes overshadow his accomplishments as a writer and philosopher: throughout his life, he published more than 300 books and papers, and while most revolved around his groundbreaking theories in physics, many express his ideas about religion, politics, and ethics.

Of particular interest to me are his essays on religion. I've often found it difficult to express my affinity for the notion of science as religion; that is, believing in a universal force as a divine principle. In a piece titled "The Religious Spirit of Science," Einstein is much more articulate:

'[The scientist's] religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reaction.'

He continues in "Science and Religion":

'But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. ... To put it boldly, [science] is the attempt at the posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. But when asking myself what religion is I cannot think of the answer so easily. ... This qualification has to do with the concept of God. During the youthful period of mankind's spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man's own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine the phenomenal world. ... In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, to give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. ... The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.'

I imagine a realignment of faith like this: replace the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient God who governs mankind's thoughts and actions with an omnipotent, omniscient and mathematically definable religious paradigm that still allows for free will but imparts no judgment, acknowledges no guilt, and affects everyone equally, regardless of nationality. Best of all, its missionaries would have to be exceptional minds, people who care deeply about reaching that elusive fundamental understanding and who are qualified to explore it. Quantum physics still presents a "leap of faith" in the sense that none of it is evident, or even intuitive; our innate yearning for the belief in something bigger than life is still satisfied, and in a more complete way. Scientific explanation doesn't just replace the need for religious parable, it provides the ultimate fodder for inward exploration: not "why are we here?" but "how did we become?"

Both essays are excerpted from Einstein's Ideas and Opinions. I also recommend his The World As I See It and the biographies Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark and Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson.