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Scientific Sense Podcast

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

BELLA rules

Recent news that the Berkeley Lab has achieved an energy of 4.25 Giga Volts in a miniature accelerator, 9 centimeters long on a desktop, continues on a profitable path to next level of discoveries in Physics. Traditionalists, steeped in the philosophy of “size matters,” have been on the wrong track for over 50 years. They dug tunnels and abandoned them in Texas and they dug longer on the other side of the pond, that could prove pretty much anything in the midst of mind-numbing noise in the data. Size and volume do not matter, insights do.

It is ironic that scientists bow to engineers in an effort to make fundamental discoveries. Engineers, bored out of their wits, need no invitation to build ever bigger guns. This combination is deadly – it is costly and it takes away any possibility of fundamental discoveries in Physics – Not the Nobel seeking ones, but real ones. Einstein's obscure paper on LASER would have given a favorable direction 100 years ago for the brilliant minds of this century. But in the midst of mediocrity, some even nourishing visions of accelerators, the size of the solar system, it was all about size. BELLA thinks differently – and that ultimately could make a difference to the “dark” ages of Physics – where anything inexplicable is tagged with “dark.”

Few provide insights – but many publish, build and run experiments.

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