Knocking on Heaven's Door (63 page)

Technology also makes each of us the center of our own universe, as we see physically in MapQuest or metaphorically on any social networking site. But the problems of the world are far more extensive and global. Technology can enable solutions, but they are more likely to come when also prompted by clear and creative thinking—the kind we see in the best scientific work.

In the past, our nation’s attention to science and technology—along with the recognition that we need to make long-term commitments and stick to them—has proved to be a successful strategy that kept us in the forefront of new developments and ideas. We now seem to be in danger of losing these values that have worked so well for us before. We need to recommit to these principles as we seek not just short-term advances but also to understand the costs and benefits for the long term.

Rational inquiry about the world deserves more credit, so that we can use it to address some of the serious challenges that lie ahead. Bruce Alberts in his lecture also advocated scientific thinking as a way of arming people against rants, simplified TV news, and overly subjective talk radio. We don’t want people to drift away from the scientific method, since that method is essential to reaching meaningful conclusions about the many complex systems that societies today must deal with—among them the financial system, the environment, risk assessment, and health care.

One of the key elements in making advances and solving problems—whether scientific or otherwise—has been and will be an awareness of scale. Categorizing what has been observed and understood by scale has taken us very far in our understanding of physics and the world—whether the units are physical scales, population groups, or time frames. Not only scientists, but political, economic, and policy leaders too need to keep such concepts in mind.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a speech to the Ninth Judicial Circuit, referred not only to the significance of scientific thinking, but also to the important contrast between “micro” and “macro” thinking—words that apply as much to the small-scale and large-scale elements of the universe as to the detailed and global ways we think about the world. As we have seen in this book, one of the factors in addressing issues—scientific as well as practical and political—is the interplay between the two scales of thought. The awareness of both is one of the factors that contributes to creative ideas.

Justice Kennedy also noted that among the elements of science that he likes are “the ridiculous solutions [that] often turn out to be the ones that are true.” And this is indeed sometimes the case. Nonetheless, good science, even when it leads to superficially far-fetched or counterintuitive conclusions, is rooted in measurements that show these conclusions to be true, or in problems that call for the apparently crazy solutions we conjecture might be real.

Many elements combine to form the foundation of good scientific thinking. In
Knocking on Heaven’s Door
, I have attempted to convey the significance of rational scientific thought and its materialist premises, as well as the ways in which scientific thinking tests ideas through experiments and discards them when they don’t measure up. Scientific thought recognizes that uncertainty isn’t failure. It properly evaluates risks and accounts for both short- and long-term influences. It allows for creative thinking in the search for solutions. These are all modes of thought that can lead to advances—both in and out of the laboratory or office. The scientific method helps us understand the edges of the universe, but it can also guide us in critical decisions for this world that we now live in. Our society needs to absorb these principles and teach them to future generations.

We shouldn’t be afraid to ask big questions or to consider grand concepts. One of my physics collaborators, Matthew Johnson, got it right when he exclaimed, “Never before has there been such an arsenal of ideas.” But we don’t yet know the answers and are waiting for experimental tests. Sometimes answers come more quickly than expected—as when the cosmic microwave background taught us about the early exponential expansion of the universe. And sometimes they take longer—as with the LHC, which still has us waiting.

We should soon know more about the makeup and forces of the universe, as well as why matter has the properties it does. We also hope to learn more about the missing stuff that we call “dark.” So, as our “prequel” ends, let’s return to the line from the Beatles song that accompanied the introduction to my earlier book,
Warped Passages
: “Got to be good-looking ’cause he’s so hard to see.” New phenomena and understanding might be challenging to find, but the wait and challenges will be worth it.

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Page references in
italic
indicate illustrations

acceleration, 71, 86–87, 98–101, 103–7, 123, 131–36

accuracy

in particle physics, 208–10

use of term, 203

Adams, John C., 368

Adler, Fred, 40

Adoration of the Magi
(Giotto), 28–29,
29

aesthetic criteria

in art, 264–68

in science, 268–70

Alberts, Bruce, 413, 415

Alda, Alan, 128

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), 164, 216

Al-Kindi, 23

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02), 392

alpha particle, 97–98,
98

AMANDA (Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array), 393

American Heritage Dictionary
, 45–46

American International Group (AIG), 183–84

AMS-02
see
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

anarchic principle, 311

Anderson, Carl, 99

Angels and Demons
(movie), xix

angular momentum, 80–81

animal magnetism, 9–10

ANTARES, 393

anthropic principle, 339, 351, 375

antimatter, 99–100, 375–76

antimuon, 244

antineutron, 99, 392

antiparticles, 107–13, 244, 292–93,
297
, 380, 390–91

antiproton, 99–100, 108, 111, 376, 392

antiquark,
84
, 84–87,
86

antitau, 244

Apparatus with Super Conducting Toroids
see
ASCOT

Applied Minds, 300

Aprile, Elena, 387–88

ArDM (Argon Dark Matter), 384

argon, 229–30, 234, 384

Aristotle, 29, 35, 269

Arkani-Hamed, Nima, 318

Armstrong, Karen, 47

art

and beauty, 264–68

science, and religion, 40–46

ASCOT (Apparatus with Super Conducting Toroids), 219

“As Time Goes By” (song), xxiii, 421
n

astrophysics, 121–22

asymptotic states, 262–63

ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS), 127–28, 151–52,
214
, 214–36

detectors,
220
, 221–25,
223

electromagnetic calorimeter, 229–31,
230

endcaps,
233
, 233–34

general principles, 217–21

hadronic calorimeter, 231

and Higgs boson discovery, 293–94

magnets, 224, 225, 234–36

muon detector, 231–32

trackers, 225–29

atomic clock, 207–8

atomic physics, 15–16

atomic scale, 77–81

atom, 15, 69, 77–87,
78
, 97–98

AT&T Bell Laboratories, 357–58

Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory, 175

Augustine, 47–49

Avatar
(movie), 349

Aymar, Robert, 149

background events, 209, 241

Bacon, Francis, 23

Baldo-Ceolin, Massimilla, 27

balloon analogy, 354–55,
354

Barings Bank, 183

beam-beam collisions,
101
, 101–3

beanbags, 237–38

beauty, 261–64

in art, 264–68

in science, 268–70

vs. the sublime, 41

belief, xv, 4, 45–46, 50–51

see also
religion

Bellarmine, Robert, 33

Bell Laboratories, 357–58

Bernanke, Ben, 196–97

Berners-Lee, Tim, xxii, 239, 329

Berra, Yogi, 236

beta decay, 114, 245

Bevatron, 99

Bible, 47–49, 57, 59, 62

Big Bang, 47, 122–23, 352–59, 362–64

Biogen, 360

biology, 74–76, 198–99

Bisphenol A
see
BPA

Bjorken, James, 100

black holes, 166–77

calculations, 169–72, 193

decay, 169, 171–73, 175, 194

see also
LHC black holes

Blake, William, 402

blood circulation, 74–75

blue shift,
353

Bohr, Niels, 10, 80–81, 244–45, 273

Born, Brooksley, 196

boson,
254–55
, 304–6

see also
gauge boson; graviton; Higgs boson

bottom quark, 217, 247, 292–93,
293

bottom-up theories, 355, 363

BPA (Bisphenol A), 206–7

BP oil spill (2010), 183, 185

Brahe, Tycho, 31, 37–38,
38
, 202, 421
n

brain and consciousness, 53–54

brane,
315
, 315–16,
323
, 324–26,
325
, 337

braneworld, 316,
317

broken symmetry, 268

Brooks, David, 400

Brooks, James L., 131

Broom Bridge (Dublin), 22

Brout, Robert, 117, 423
n

Browne, Thomas, 44

Büchmann, Anna Christina, 3

Buckley, Matthew, 226–27

bulk, 324, 329

Bullet Cluster, 370–71,
371

Burj Khalifa (Dubai), 348

Burke, Bernie, 357

busbar,
158
, 158–60

Byrne, Rhonda, 10

Calandra, Alexander, 407–8

calorimeter, 225, 229–31

Calvin, John, 64

Cambridge Roundtable on Science, Art and Religion, 63–65

Cameron, James, 348

capillary system, 74–75

carbon collimator, 141–42

Casablanca
(movie), 401–2

Cassano, Joseph, 183–84

Catholic Church, 46, 47–49, 60–62

CDMS
see
Cryogenic Dark Matter Search

CDO
see
collateralized debt obligation

celestial body, 35–36,
36

Centro Culturale Altinate (Padua), 27–28, 39

CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), xix, 108–9, 130–31, 144–51, 189–90

funding, 130, 146–47, 149–50, 151, 190

history of, 144–48

see also
LEP; LHC

CERN Council, 148, 150

CERN Scientific Policy Committee, 148

Chamberlain, Owen, 99

Chang, David, 409

charge, 84, 108, 109, 114,
114–15
, 116,
254
, 254–55, 307

and dark matter, 383

and detectors,
220
, 223–29, 231–32, 234–35, 243–45, 249–51, 383

and electromagnetic force, 85, 108, 223–25, 243–45, 254–55, 307, 383

and leptons, 242–46,
242
,
254

and Standard Model, 242–46, 249, 251,
254
, 254–55

and strong force, 104, 223, 246, 254–55, 262, 307, 425
n