Antimatter

Over at Not Even Wrong, Peter Woit has a reference to a new article on the Garrett Lisi affair, this time in Outside Magazine. Lisi is the physicist who received a great deal of media attention earler this year when he posted a paper on the ArXiv server on a new classification of elementary particles based on the group E8, superbly titled ‘ An exceptionally simple theory of everything’. The paper was picked up by science magazines and newpapers all over the world, with prominent articles in outlets like the New Scientist, and The Telegraph, all of whom made a great deal of the fact that Lisi is an untenured academic, who spends much of his time surfing and snowboarding…

The Outside Magazine article is a good place to start if you’re unfamiliar with this story. Given his lifestyle, I imagine Garret probably appreciated this article more than any of the others. I didn’t know what to make of the Lisi story at first, but I’m glad it’s resurfacing, it’s a bit of light relief in our dull lives. ..

A few points strike me

1. Every time journos draw a comparison with Einstein, Lisi patiently points out that the lack of tenure is the only similarity - so it’s not his fault they keep making this comparison

2. I don’t see the problem with the surfer angle - surely it makes a welcome change from the usual media view of scientists. Besides, if Lisi is not a full-time academic, it simply means he probably has more time to think than the rest of us, not having to deal with endless admin, emails, proposals, teaching etc!

3. I’m delighted to see group theory get some attention - few outside the field have the slightest idea of the importance of group theory in particle physics. It seems some experts think that the whole E8xE8 thing may turns out to be a fairly trivial classification, but I enjoyed Lisi’s paper no end. It’s interesting that Dad’s book on group theory (chap 10) makes it clear that the E8 group had long been of interest to the supersymmetry gang, for reasons I don’t begin to understand. Technical stuff aside, the whole story is reminiscent of Gellmann’s eigthfold way, no bad thing.

Go Garrett!

All in all, I think scientists are inclined to react strongly against media attention, especially if we feel there are more deserving cases. We need to get over this, because such stories probably do far more for the public perception of physics than any number of well-intentioned school visits!

Update:

I probably should have explained what a Theory of Everything (TOE) is - it’s a theory that incorporates a description of the elementary particles and all their interactions (as opposed to a Grand Unified Theory, which is a theory that unifies three of the fundamental forces). If gravity is included in a unified framework like this, it’s called a Theory of Everything, because that’s all the forces we know. Unfortunately, it has proven very difficult to incorporate gravity with the other three interactions, not least because we don’t have a quantum theory of gravity (all the others are quantum theories). In short, Einstein’s famous quest for a unified field theory now continues under the title ToE, and is still the Holy Grail of theoretical physics.

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This month’s issue of Physics World has a super article on the GLAST satellite, the new gamma ray detector to be launched by NASA this month. Unlike in optical astronomy, gamma ray teleccopes study the universe at the highest energies of the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s a fascinating area of physics that has really exploded (oops, sorry) in recent years.

For many years, the high energy gamma ray bursts (GRBs) seen in the sky were a big mystery -nobody was sure what caused them. We now know that the universe contains a rich variety of gamma-ray emitters, including pulsars, supernova remnants, and coolest of all, supermassive black holes. (The Sun also produces gamma rays by accelerating charged particles in solar flares and coronal mass ejections, and our galaxy glows brilliantly with gamma rays due to interactions of high-energy cosmic rays with interstellar gas). One of the key reasons to extend our observations of celestial gamma rays is to look for signatures of as-yet-unknown fundamental physical processes.

The launch of the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) will open this high-energy world to exploration, and follows on from the spectacular success of the ESA’s INTEGRAL satellite. Just as with the cosmic microwave background, there is a need for satellite measurements to get around the problem of absorbtion in the earth’s atmosphere (albeit in a vastly different energy range). With GLAST, astronomers will have an awesome tool to study how black holes can accelerate jets of gas outward at fantastic speeds.

Physicists will also be able to study subatomic particles at energies far greater than those seen in ground-based particle accelerators. And cosmologists will gain valuable information about the birth and early evolution of the Universe. Wow.

You can read more about the GLAST launch on the official NASA website here.

I spent the weekend in the midlands, doing some walking with my Mum and her walking group. Sunday was a real scorcher and we had a long walk by the river Barrow. More a trudge really., with only the odd river cruiser negotiating the locks for company. Like all walks, it turned out to be at least an hour longer than planned. What I mainly took out of it is that there is a big difference between walking up a mountain and walking along a river - one stretch along a river is much like another and you think it’s never going to end.

Another thing that ocurred to me as we trudged along is that there are land people and sea people. On a hot day, I’d far rather be on the sea, and get quite frustrated inland. Somehow those small, dusty towns are worse in the sun. To me, it doesn’t really matter if you’re sailing, windsurfing, surfing or whatever. If you like the sea, that’s where you need to be. Luckily, I live in a village by the sea!

Which reminds me, I must buy a dinghy this summer. I keep putting it off, as I travel a lot in summer. Last year, I had a nice windsurfer I got great use out of, until someone stole the board out of my garden. Now it looks like I’ll need a whole new rig. Thanks, pal.

After the long walk, there was a deafening country n western band playing in the hotel. Yippe I-ay etc, at full decibels. This seems to be a permanent feature of hotels in the midlands, I wonder why. Something to do with farmers and cowboys? Strange.

Today was the last day of the conference, with plenty of good talks, although many of us were tired after last night.

Yesterday evening, we were treated to some traditional Irish music courtesy of Dr Collete O’ Mahony, one of the conference participants and director of the WIT Traditional Music Group. The group played some great music and we even had a full ceilidh, with fear-an-ti showing the visitors the steps (ok not just the visitors!). So much more fun than the usual ‘live entertainment’ of some bloke with a mike playing rock music far too loud. Only the Irish could have a ceilidh at a theology conference…

Today’s talks were very interesting, with one on sin, guilt and forgiveness by Fergus Hogan of WIT. Not your average technical science talk then..

The conference finished with a plenary talk by Professor Eamonn Conway, a well-known theologian from Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. This was a serious full-on talk on the role of theology in modern society. From a scientist’s perspective, it’s very interesting to see the difference between these guys, the thinking theologians, and the fundamentalist types, a very different species. I took about 3 pages of notes, but I think the presentation will be on the conference webpage in a few days.

Eamonn in action: I didn’t know theologians used graphs (or blackboards)

One good quote we got from Eamonn arose from a comment of mine to Fergus - I had pointed out that guilt doesn’t need God as a reference point, to which Eamonn responded “something isn’t wrong because the Church says so…the Church says so because it’s wrong”

I was also pleased Eamonn referred to Jim Mackey quite a few times - Mackey is a very good philosopher and his recent book The Critique of Theological Reason has been under attack from some theologians recently…

After lunch, I was sorry to see the conference come to an end. I wouldn’t mind going to a few more of these in the future, not at all what I expected…

Update:12th May

Rysiek has a whole bunch of photos of the conference - you can see the whole lot here, they’re very very good. We’re still waiting for the podcast..

Well done Rysiek!

You’d think it’d be an easy week for staff while the hapless students prepare for exams - in fact there seems to be a huge number of conferences around the college this week. Not least of which is the SophiaEuropa Conference ‘Knowledge, Truth and Wisdom: Science, Religion and Culture in Shaping Europe’, mentioned in previous posts.

The conference started yesterday morning with a sociology session. There’s far too much to list here, but I must say I thoroughly enjoyed The Search for Meaning: Between Science and Religion, by keynote speaker Pofessor Tom Inglis of UCD. Dr Gary McDarby also gave an interesting talk, Technology Enhamced Evolution in the Absence of a Loving God, where he highlighted concerns that the pace of technological discovery has far outstripped our consideration of its effects on society.

There were a whole bunch of talks this morning that were also interesting. I think there will be a description of the talks on the conference website soon, but I must say I really liked Thomas Moellenbeck’s talk on the famous argument from design (see posts below). Thomas presented a comparison of the argument from design as articulated recently by Cardinal von Schborn (’intelligent design’), and that of Cardinal Newman - it seems Newman felt such arguments lead straight to atheism!

I gave my own spiel then, a truncated version of my public seminar on the Big Bang (see The Big Bang and the Mind of God posts below). Of course I used up most of the session presenting the basic evidence and theory of the model, before getting to the philosophical implications, but I think that’s the price you pay for tackling modern subjects. It’s worth doing this - after all, not everyone knows that a prediction of modern physics is that the universe may not have a ‘before’ (from general relativity) or even a ’cause’ (from quantum). There wasn’t really time to go into Hawking’s analogue of God and the Queen (below), but I enjoyed giving the talk. Afterwards, the questions were tough enough, as you might expect in a roomful of theologians.

Professor Eamonn Conway of Mary Immaculate College, Eric Weislogel (Executive Director of Metanexus, sponsors of the conference), and I then went off for a radio discussion on WLR. I must say I thought the DJ (Billy McCarthy) did a very good job of probing our different positions on life, the universe and everything, with Eric acting as umpire between Eamonn and I. It goes out tomorrow morning sometime, must remember to record it while we’re at the conference…

POSTSCRIPT

When I finally made it back to my office this afternoon, I noticed a Materials Conference in full swing in the adjacent building. I had a look at the posters and the schedule of talks. You know what, I don’t miss technical research at all. I far prefer interdisciplinary debates with philosophers and theologians on the meaning of science etc…pity it took me so many years to figure this out!

The experience with my car (below) made me think a bit. In fact, I often get asked about my position on global warming, now that I’m a ‘public scientist’. I don’t know about ‘position’ - but I do know something of how science is done. Meaning that scientific discovery is based on evidence, evidence that is interpretetd by PWKs (people who know what they’re talking about). So if the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists tell us we have something to worry about, we have something to worry about.

The key discovery was in the 1970s, when it was first realised that global climate might be an unstable system, i.e. a system where a small perturbation could easily result in a large effect. (There is a very nice description of this discovery in the book ‘The Discovery of Global Warming’ by Spencer Weart).

Nowadays, there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that

(i) the atmosphere is heating up (the part near the earth, that is)

(ii) the rate is unprecedented

(iii) the phenomenon is almost certainly due to human activity (e.g. carbon emissions)

These results have been confirmed by the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, an unprecedented global coalition of scientists. Despite much debate over details, there isn’t much debate about the overall trend (except among a tiny minority of scientists, some of whom who have an industry bias). Of course there are also genuine scientific doubters, but the consensus is pretty clear…

The debate now more concerns what action to take - in other words how to reduce emissions without triggering a recession. There is certainly sharp disagreement here, but on close inspection it is more between scientists and economists. For example, it’s worth noting that Bjorn Lomborg, the prominent skeptic, is not in fact a scientist at all. Lomborg, and several other economists and political scientists, claim that tackling emissions would be very inefficient and essentially a waste of money that would be better spent elsewhere. However, scientists point out that many such commentators have two things in common -

1. They tend to play down the evidence of warming (Lomborg’s infamous book The Skeptical Environmentalist is a prime example of this)

2. They ignore the possibilty of a tipping point. What scientists worry most about is that a threshold may exist, beyond which there may be no going back as positive feedback mechanisms kick in … a frightening scenario

So the great global warming debate is beginning to look like a debate between scientists (who don’t really understand economics) and economists (who don’t really understand science). For my part, I find Lomborg’s grasp of scientific uncertainty highly suspect (economics can be spectacularly wrong in a way science never is)..pretty worrying in a man who was recently voted one of the 100 most influential people on the planet by Time Magazine…

What happens if Lomborg’s wrong? I often wonder if those who make a career out of questioning the consensus ever doubt themselves. If we do sail past a tipping point, thanks to delayed action due to the skeptics, they will have a lot to answer for…

I finally got the report on my car from the garage a few days ago.

It needs, ah, a new engine, the guy said apologetically.

I was too shocked to say anything at first - of course, I had known there ws something up with the car for some time - the temperature needle kept jumping up from time to time, and she needed water every week or so. ‘Sounds like a head gasket’, my mechanic opined wisely some time ago.

I never got round to leaving the car in, partly because I was busy and he was busy. Now it appears I sailed blithely past some sort of tipping point and the damn thing needs a whole new engine. So do I spend a couple of grand on an engine for an 03 car? Or do I just move on?

Does this remind you of anything? At least I can buy a new car…you can’t buy a new planet

Phew, that’s over. Contrary to expectations, we got a very good turnout for last night’s seminar ‘The Big Bang and the Mind of God’ (I got the title from the last line of A Brief History of Time). Many thanks to those of you who came along, a good crowd always makes for a good atmosphere…

I probably let the science part of the talk go on a bit long, but I wanted to give a decent overview of the evidence for the Bang, and the theory behind it, before tackling the theology side of things. I’ve left the slides I used for the talk on the My Files page of this blog in case anybody’s interested (just click on the My Files tab at the top of this page and select the file from the list) or here

The discussion session afterwards was great - absolutely loads of questions, from all parts of the religious spectrum. For the discussion, I was joined by the chair Dr Micheal Howlett, who is both a scientist and a theologian and between our different answers to questions there was probably a good balance. A good representation of what the SopiaEuropa project is all about, I suspect. In any event, the discussion continued until the porters threw us out, a good sign.

A couple of interesting points came up - a colleague had a problem with my take on the Church of England (I referred to it being founded on the principle that Henry VIII wanted to get his leg over!) and he made some fair points concerning the English reformation. However, I still feel good ol’ Henry took opportunistic advantage of the upheavals in the Church in his attempts to sire a legitimite son, a good example of how a whole new Church can arise for no good reason….must look up more on this…

chancer

Another speaker felt that arguments concerning evolution were weakened by constant reference to Darwin! Of course science has moved on, but, as far as I know, despite some gaps, the theory of natural selection, as proposed by Darwin, is in very good health indeed, and is regarded as one of the fundamental mechanisms for evolution, resulting in the complexity we see (certainly not chance!).

We managed to record the discussion session, I’ll try and upload it later…..there will be a lot more on the topic of science and religion at next week’s SopiaEuropa conference at WIT…Cormac

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Update

There is a very good overview of evolution in last week’s edition of New Scientist. It’s a nice succinct account and explains how Darwin’s model has stood firm as the bedrock of today’s theory and evidence.

Re the convergence of science and religion, another point struck me during the talk. I was describing how the major religions not only differ, but are mutually exclusive, and how this position has remained essentially unchanged for millenia. It ocurred to me that this is another major obstacle for convergence; how can science converge with religion, if different religions diverge from one another?

Finally, Micheal H commented that I used the phrase ’scientists believe’ a few times during the lecture, pointing out the similarity with religious phraseology! However, I think the similarity is only superficial - in fact, scientists use the word belief in the opposite sense to that of the devout. When scientists say “such-and-such looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, therefore we believe it to be a duck…”, we use the word ‘believe’ to soften the statement. The word conveys the idea that this is the current thinking, which could one day change should new evidence emerge…
By contrast, the devout use the word ‘belief’ in the opposite sense…e.g. “it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but we believe it to be a rhinocerous”, means that the observer will stick to this belief, irrespective of what evidence emerges…and that is the point of faith. A legitimate viewpoint, you might argue…but what happens when this viewpoint collides with known fact, or indeed with contrasting religions?

In preparation for tommorow’s talk on science and religion, I went looking for notes I took at the One-World Conference, a conference on Art, Religion and Science at University College Cork last summer. I wasn’t expecting that much at the time, I really only went along because John Polkinghorne, a well-known particle physicist and theologian who had known my father, was giving a talk on science and religion.

In the event, Polkinghore gave a cracking talk on particle physics, clear and precise. I no longer remember the details (one reason for this blog), but I remember that although I didn’t agree with his conclusions on the implications for religion, it was a very enjoyable talk. We had arranged to meet for coffee afterwards and I thoroughly enjoyed his memories of meeting Lochlainn at conferences…

The philosopher Jim Mackey of Edinburgh University was also at the conference. He too gave a great talk, in his typical blunt style, on the misrepresentation of scripture in art. (I remembered Jim from before, with good reason - once while I was attempting to give a seminar on the philosophy of quantum theory, Jim asked all sorts of difficult questions on the Hesienberg Uncertainty Principle!). There were a couple of other good talks afterwards, but I don’t remember the rest…

At the end of the conference, I gave Jim a lift home - nothing like a 2-hour car journey with a distinguished philosopher! All in all, ‘One-World’ was a very pleasant experience as my first theology conference…hope next week’s SopiaEuropa conference at WIT is of similar standard

A third argument postulated by theologians is the ’something from nothing’ argument; Dawkins doesn’t say much about the physics of this this in his book, but modern physics certainly has an answer. Put simply, the total energy content of the universe may well be zero - if so, it is entirely possible that the universe arose as a quantum fluctuation (see earlier post).

A more serious problem between religion and science is of course scripture - there is quite strong disagreement between several passages in the Book of Genesis and scientific fact e.g.

Earth is not stationary

Sun does not orbit the earth

Age of earth is wrong

Age of sun is wrong

Timeframe of creation is wrong

One solution is to take a non-literal interpretation of the Bible, as suggestioned by Augustine. However, this raises 2 problems

(i) as hardliners point out, where does the slide stop?

(ii) many Christians insist on a literal interpretation, resuting in statements like

Any theory of origins that is contrary to the early chapters

of Genesis is not true and will not stand the test of time’

…not so reasonable