Measurement, Matter, & Meaning

Today's results that suggest neutrinos cannot travel faster than the speed of light should have surprised no one; there were too many variables, too much opportunity for human error, and too little evidence that such results can be explained without a profound revision of our understanding of quantum mechanics. The entire episode is something that may not have played out so spectacularly in the media if not for the open-source nature of scientific data-sharing; certainly, physicists were reluctant to assume anything prior to rigorous empirical verification. I suspect that, most of the time, errant results like the too-fast neutrino would remain out of the public eye until seriously considered viable by a large swath of the scientific community.

Alternatively, three months after the initial Higgs results were announced from CMS and ATLAS, further data analysis still points strongly toward a SM Higgs somewhere around 125 GeV/c^2.  This is significant, again because of the nature of subatomic experimentation: both the theory behind quantum field theory, and the machinery designed to execute experiments that may support the theory, are unbelievably complex. No one wants to crow about the discovery of the Higgs without being absolutely sure--and even that is complicated. Most of the calculations behind the Standard Model have been verified within an extremely small percentage of error, but this kind of new physics simply may not yield such certainties. Brian Greene writes about this as it relates to multiverse theory: eventually, the culture of physics may have to adjust to the fact that our current language of investigation--be it mathematical, experimental, or both--lags behind, requiring (ahem) faith in the numbers.

It's a tricky epistemological state: traditional models of knowledge construction require experimental verification, period. Just ask Alan Sokal. But one of the things that fascinates me most about our relationship with information is that the very act of measurement affects the matter under analysis: Neils Bohr writes at length about this, arguing that there are no inherent boundary characteristics of bodies, and that apparatus necessarily affects measurement. The particle-wave duality of light is a classic example of the fact that objects can exhibit contrasting properties under different experimental circumstances (the scientific term for this is "complementarity"). Bohr, rather than concluding that there are different kinds of light, proposed a theory of the phenomenal whole: waves or particles are simply differing phenomenal expressions of light, as enacted by differing experimental cuts. Therefore, the experimental apparatus itself--and, logically, its human operator--always affects the experimental result.

Karen Barad takes Bohr's philosophy one step further, arguing that all matter and meaning is mutually constructed and constantly reconfigured. She calls the onto-epistemological differences in phenomenal expression "agential cuts," or articulations of agency based on local material definitions. Light as a wave is the result of one particular agential cut; light as a particle is another. This logic can be applied infinitely, I think: the Higgs boson is both an expression of calculus and a simulated visualization at CERN; gravity may be an expression of both cosmology and quantum physics.

I could write about this forever--but you can see how experiments with neutrinos and bosons, which require the most conceptually advanced and technically sensitive apparatus in the history of science, imply quite a bit about the co-constitutive nature of matter (neutrinos) and meaning (whether they can travel faster than the speed of light). Implicit in every scientific endeavor is, ultimately, knowledge: and as any fan of Foucault  will tell you, knowledge is power, and power is the ultimate material. Just like quantum jitters, if you look closely enough, it's always there: you just need the ability to measure it.

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.

Spotted: The Neutrino Chameleon

A bit of exciting news coming from Italy's OPERA experiment at the INFN's San Grasso Laboratory: for the first time ever, researchers have directly observed a muon-neutrino changing into a tau-neutrino! This is significant because, since the 1960s, physicists have predicted such an oscillation must be the cause of an apparent deficit in muon-neutrinos arriving to earth from the sun. Rolf Heuer says "This is an important step for neutrino physics...we're all looking forward to the new physics this result presages."

This discovery could also have significant impact on string theory research--or, at least, it bolsters the notion that the Standard Model is incomplete by effectively proving that neutrinos have mass (which is required in order to oscillate; the current Standard Model theory holds that neutrinos have no mass). Should scientists uncover the math behind this inconsistency by observing one or many of the "missing" neutrinos at CERN, many of the most profound questions about mass may be resolved, including the tantalizing mystery surrounding dark matter.

Speaking of that elusive stuff (which accounts for about 25% of the universe), this month CERN is releasing the brilliant ATLAS pop-up book in the United States, which colorfully examines what the universe is made of, where it came from, and how it works. It's a wonderful, intricately drawn introduction to the exciting things happening in theoretical physics right now, but also, it's just awesome!

And finally, today marks the start of the 2010 World Science Festival in New York. You'd be remiss not to check out the LIGO telescope at the Broad Street Ballroom, The Search for Life in the Universe at Galapagos Art Space, or The Moth storytellers at Webster Hall. And that's just a tiny sampling of the glut of science events hitting the city--it's a great time to be curious.