In the know: Fast-moving particles
By Daily Bruin Staff
Sept. 28, 2011 12:04 a.m.
Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) recently released news of having observed particles moving faster than the speed of light.
The international scientific community is currently racing to corroborate or refute that statement.
As usual, the noble caution and humility of the scientist is in plain view, with several throats cleared to remind us that the task at hand is one of meticulous verification and not of high-flown commentary.
Still, some such commentary has managed to surface. Apparently, the finding goes so much against contemporary scientific orthodoxy that several physicists are willing to bet blindly against its truth.
Jim Al-Khalili of the University of Surrey said, “If the CERN experiment proves to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV.”
Brian Greene of Columbia University said, “I would bet just about everything I hold dear that this won’t hold up to scrutiny.”
The scientific community combusts over a potential discovery of magnitude like this once in a while, and it always leaves me frustrated.
It is reminiscent of the devastation I felt upon hearing Richard Feynman’s Messenger Lectures wherein he asserted that it is simply impossible to have any deep appreciation of the grandeur of reality without a sure grasp of mathematics. One can hear echoes of Galileo’s “It (the universe) is written in the mathematical language.”
The fact is, the majority of us who are not versed in the sciences are by default exempted from some of the more vibrant areas of human intellectual endeavor.
We helplessly look at the scientist, whose excited eyes suggest unimaginable vistas and untranslatable secrets, but no amount of patience on his part and desire in ours will give us any full or deep access to his world.
It reminds me of a line from Salman Rushdie, who diagnoses my current situation perfectly as “the dull irritation, the slow anger, of the fool.”
– Compiled by Rohan Viswanathan
