At least, that’s the obvious conclusion from the Royal Society’s Science Sees Further page. The introduction touts it as “a series of articles on some of the most exciting areas of science today,” but what’s striking to me is that none of the twelve topic listed (Ageing Process, Biological Diversity, Cognition and Computation, Cultural Evolution, Extra-Terrestrial Life, Geoengineering, Global Sustainability, Greenhouse Gases, New Vaccines, Stem Cell Biology, Uncertainty in Science, and Web Science) includes any of the most obvious exciting developments in physics. Many of them have some physics component, but none of them are reallyabout physics.
This is kind of a shame, because there’s a lot of really cool stuff going on in physics right now. You’d need to be living in a cave not to know about the Large Hadron Collider, which has the hearts of particle physicists all a-flutter, but there are also great and exciting developments in fields like quantum information and quantum foundations, condensed matter physics (including new-ish materials like graphene, which was the subject of this year’s Nobel winning research, topological insulators, and whole new groups of superconducting materials), and there are plenty of non-accelerator based searches for dark matter and the like just getting underway.
Now, it’s hard to argue that any of these are as materially important to the world as environmental issues (which account for four of the twelve essays), but you might think the LHC at least would’ve snuck in there.
I think the problem with including the quantum stuff in science is just that a lot of it is speculation. Some of the work of Peter Woit is dedicated toward questioning the privileged status we grant quantum mechanics in our culture. The other stuff, although not as technical (what you call not “really” science), is definitely science.
NS
Pure mathematics has been doing great in the last… I would say the last century. One revolution after the other. But exciting, we’re not. Maybe we aren’t scientists.
Hi Chad and Emmy,
I have a Ph.D in physics, but not of the good kind, i.e., it’s not in experimental physics. I just wrote a blog post proposing an experiment in quantum information. If you are not too busy, could you please take a look at it, and tell me if it’s BS or not. here is the link
Regards,
Bob Tucci
Guys like Garrett Lisi are making it exciting. Even for us non-scientific types.
ABSOLUTE NONSENSE!!!
NOT WHEN DONE BY SIEGEL-BAEZ “FUZZYICS”=”CATEGORYICS” (“SON OF ‘TRIZ'”) A.K.A. “CATEGORY-SEMANTICS” REINCARNATION OF PLATO-ARISTOTLE “SQUARE-OF-OPPOSITION” FROM ~ -350 B.C.E. AND USING THE SOFT-SCIENCES OF: COGNITIVE-SEMANTICS/LINGUISTICS; COGNITIVE-PSYCHOLOGY, CATEGORY-THEORY/TOPOI; META-MATHEMATICS; COGNITIVE-SCIENCES; METAPHYSICS/PHILOSOPHY,…!!!
JUST READ MY ABSTRACTS AT AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY MARCH MEETING AND/OR PREVIOUS ONES, BY GOOGLING ME:
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" FUZZYICS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" CATEGORYICS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" FUZZYICS=CATEGORYICS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" CATEGORY-SEMANTICS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" COGNITION > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" SQUARE-OF-OPPOSITION > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" TRIZ > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" SON-OF-TRIZ > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" PHYSICAL-MATHEMATICIST > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" PHYSICAL-MATHSICIST > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" MATHEMATICS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" GIANT-MAGNETORESISTANCE > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" MAGNETISM > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" LIQUIDS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" GLASSES > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" POWDERS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" MICROCLUSTERS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" NANO > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" SELF-ORGANIZED-CRITICALITY > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" ACOUSTICS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" ACOUSTIC-EMISSION > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" PLASTICITY > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" FLYING-WATER > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" SUPERALLOYS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" WHISTLEBLOWER > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" METALLURGY > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" CERAMICS > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" CARBIDES > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" HYDROGEN > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" WATER > ;
< "EDWARD SIEGEL" NUC"EL"AR > ;
DR. EDWARD SIEGEL
PHYSICAL-MATHEMATICIST/MATHSICIST
FUZZYICS=CATEGORYICS (“SON OF ‘TRIZ'”)/CATEGORY-SEMANTICS
ABSOLUTE NONSENSE!!!
NOT WHEN DONE BY SIEGEL-BAEZ “FUZZYICS”=”CATEGORYICS” (“SON OF ‘TRIZ'”) A.K.A. “CATEGORY-SEMANTICS” REINCARNATION OF PLATO-ARISTOTLE “SQUARE-OF-OPPOSITION” FROM ~ -350 B.C.E. AND USING THE SOFT-SCIENCES OF: COGNITIVE-SEMANTICS/ LINGUISTICS; COGNITIVE-PSYCHOLOGY, CATEGORY-THEORY/TOPOI; META-MATHEMATICS; COGNITIVE-SCIENCES; METAPHYSICS/ PHILOSOPHY,…!!!
JUST READ MY ABSTRACTS AT AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY MARCH MEETING AND/OR PREVIOUS ONES, BY GOOGLING ME “EDWARD SIEGEL” (skip one space for subject-category filtering, then variously::
FUZZYICS; CATEGORYICS; FUZZYICS=CATEGORYICS; CATEGORY-SEMANTICS; COGNITION; SQUARE-OF-OPPOSITION; TRIZ; SON-OF-TRIZ; PHYSICAL-MATHEMATICIST; PHYSICAL-MATHSICIST;
MATHEMATICS; MATHS; GIANT-MAGNETORESISTANCE; MAGNETISM; LOCALIZATION; LOCALITY; GLOBALITY; METAL-INSULATOR TRANSITIONS; HUBBARD-MODEL; LIQUIDS; GLASSES; POWDERS;
MICROCLUSTERS; NANO; SELF-ORGANIZED-CRITICALITY; JAMMING; ACOUSTICS; ACOUSTIC-EMISSION; PLASTICITY; FLYING-WATER;
SUPERALLOYS; WHISTLEBLOWER; METALLURGY; CERAMICS; CARBIDES; HYDROGEN; WATER; NUC”EL”AR
DR. EDWARD SIEGEL
PHYSICAL-MATHEMATICIST/MATHSICIST
FUZZYICS=CATEGORYICS (“SON OF ‘TRIZ'”)/CATEGORY-SEMANTICS/ LA JOLLA/LAS VEGAS
I don’t know, but as of recent physics does seem a bit boring.
We had a lot of excitement about carbon nanotubes, but then after 15 years hearing about them we got almost zero real products using them. Certainly no space elevators and super-batteries.
Now we have the same excitement about graphene.
notedscholar,
I don’t think the status of quantum mechanics in our culture is too privileged. As far as I’m concerned, wider interest in and understanding of quantum mechanics would be wonderful (kudos to Chad and his dog for doing their part). Now, string theory, that’s a different subject….
notedscholar said:
“I think the problem with including the quantum stuff in science is just that a lot of it is speculation. Some of the work of Peter Woit is dedicated toward questioning the privileged status we grant quantum mechanics in our culture.”
Woit is referring to String Theory, which is untested and possibly untestable. By contrast, non-relativistic quantum mechanics is the science behind transistors (thus computers), lasers, the automatic door at the grocery, etc. There are more quantum mechanical calculations going on every second in your living room than people on earth. It drives me batty when I hear people with a thimble-full of physics understanding make the argument quoted above. Get your facts straight, please.
Sure, quantum mechanics is of practical importance (although I am not convinced that we would not have transistors without QM – we just would not have the same depth of understanding of how they work). But QM was exciting physics when it was developed, some 80 or more years ago. Back in the early 20th century there were fundamental advances in physics that quite quickly came to have fundamental impacts on people’s lives. Most obviously, nuclear weapons (the development of which required both QM and relativity) changed the whole face of international relations and the way people understood the future prospects of the human race.
The stuff that is touted as revolutionary potentially physics today, by contrast seems to have virtually no prospect of impacting any non-physicists life at all, either for good or for ill (and the physicists themselves are not even trying to make the case that it will). Are any of the things the large hadron collider is at all likely to find likely to be of the least technological use? Certainly no-one seems to be suggesting so. If the Higgs boson is found, or not found, that will impact a few physicists careers, but the only impact it will have on the rest of the world is to fill a few column inches in the Sunday paper. The only non-physicists who truly find the LHC exciting (as opposed to mildly interesting) are the people who think it is going to destroy the world. Most of the other stuff that gets touted as “revolutionary” physics is even worse: cosmological theories about what may have happened zillions of years ago, for which the only relevant sources of evidence are tiny spatio-temporal variations in the radiation coming at us from the sky; and string theory (and its rivals) which appears to have no measurable empirical content whatsoever. But even if a way were found to empirically test string theory (or some alternative), its correctness or otherwise shows no prospect of (once again) impacting anyone’s life apart from those of the physicists involved in the research. Of course it is possible that something of practical importance will come out of string theory or LHC experiments or whatever. Unexpected practical payoffs have happened before in the history of science, and I am certainly not saying that this work ought not to be done (though I do wonder about the wisdom of spending billions of dollars on it). However, it remains the case that physics has not come up with anything truly exciting (both scientifically revolutionary and practically significant) for about 80 years, and does not show much prospect of being likely to do so soon (even according to the physicists who try to get the public excited about physics).
Of course there is still a lot of work to be done in physics, and a lot of it is of considerable practical significance, but it is not exciting (in the relevant sense) because nothing about it is particularly revolutionary. The stuff that is (or has a good prospect of being) of practical value does not promise to bring fundamental changes in basic theory (as QM and relativity did), whereas the stuff that is touted as potentially theoretically revolutionary (string theory, high energy particle research, etc.) does not seem likely to have any practical impact. In a way, for the last few decades physics has been living of the excitement it generated in the early 20th century, and that capital is rapidly running out (a lot of it squandered on getting politicians to pay for the LHC!). Chemistry went down the same path several years ago. It used to have the image of an exciting science, the excitement being generated back in the 19th century by fundamental advances in chemical theory that were of huge practical significance. This legacy of excitement has now mostly run out. When I was a kid, 40 years ago, chemistry still looked like an exciting science, and I and several of my friends thought our home chem labs were really cool, and I, for one, went on to study chemistry at university. No kids today see chemistry that way, and chemistry departments have trouble recruiting students, despite all the important practical chemistry waiting to be done. Physics (unless something very unexpected happens soon) seems set to go the same way before long.
Dear Mr. Nigel,
you really don’t know what you are talking about. Just 2 counter examples of physics discoveries/inventions from the last 80 years that have effectively changed the way we live (at least in industrialized economies): transistors and lasers.
Of course there is still a lot of work to be done in physics, and a lot of it is of considerable practical significance, but it is not exciting (in the relevant sense) because nothing about it is particularly revolutionary. The stuff that is (or has a good prospect of being) of practical value does not promise to bring fundamental changes in basic theory (as QM and relativity did), whereas the stuff that is touted as potentially theoretically revolutionary (string theory, high energy particle research, etc.) does not seem likely to have any practical impact. In a way, for the last few decades physics has been living of the excitement it generated in the early 20th century, and that capital is rapidly running out (a lot of it squandered on getting politicians to pay for the LHC!).
Thank you for demonstrating yet again why it drives me nuts when people talk as if particle physics is all there is to physics.
You don’t have to look very far to find examples of physics discoveries from the last few decades that have huge practical importance. The last few Nobel Prizes in Physics should do the trick– CCD cameras, fiber optics, and giant magnetoresistance are all physics discoveries that have revolutionized the world. You wouldn’t be able to read this blog without two of those three, and the digital cameras I use to take pictures for some posts wouldn’t exist without the third.
This year’s Nobel went to researchers working with graphene, another material with the potential to produce important future technology. We also have, within the last few decades, the discovery of high-temperature superconductors first twenty-odd years ago, and then a whole new class of superconducting materials in the past few years. What makes these materials superconductors is one of the great open questions in physics at the moment, and depending on how the eventual solution works out, it could be almost as revolutionary as the transistor.
High energy particle physics is becoming ever more esoteric and removed from everyday applications, it’s true. But high energy particle physics isn’t all of physics. It’s not even the majority of physics.