I give lots of public lectures on various topics in physics, from quarks to the cosmos
so to speak. And I really enjoy doing it.
One of the most enjoyable aspects is the Q&A after the presentation. For 15 or maybe 30
minutes, I field questions on all sorts of topics, ranging from the Higgs boson to black
holes to the creation of the universe itself.
But a very common question I get is something along the lines of “what good is studying
particle physics?” And that’s a very good question and a question with several different
answers, each of which that resonate with a different audience.
So let’s start with why my colleagues and I do what we do. Just what is it that gets
us out of the bed in the morning and causes us to drive into the lab. I can summarize
it in a single word. Curiosity.
For as long as we have kept written records, mankind has looked at the world around us,
wondering about some very deep questions. These questions include such classics as “How
did the universe come to exist?” “Does the Universe have to be this way?” “What
are the most fundamental rules that govern the cosmos?” There are others, but, but-
these will do for a start.
Over the years and millennia, we have come up with a series of answers. Where once we
ascribed lightning to Zeus’s wrath writ large across the sky, we now talk about the
laws of electromagnetism.
People once speculated about the motion of the planets invoking crystalline spheres and
the beating of angels’ wings, but we now know first of Newton’s and now Einstein’s
theory of gravity.
We still have much to learn and our journey is by no means complete, but that’s the
basic reason we physicists get up in the morning. We hope that we might push back the frontiers
just a little bit. At least that’s what I hope.
Now I recognize that this argument doesn’t persuade everyone. Some people just don’t
have the curiosity bug that is needed to be a successful scientist. For audience members
like that, I use a more pragmatic approach.
For the practical person, I point to the many technical breakthroughs in the history of
modern physics. For instance, without transistors, the computer revolution would have never happened.
Keeping the discussion closer to my own field of expertise, without particle accelerators,
there would be no radiation treatment for cancer. Without the development of large accelerators
with superconducting magnets, it would have been a long time before medical MRI magnets
would have been available.
Even more recently, particle physicists can point to the World Wide Web, which was originally
designed to facilitate communication between researchers and has evolved into a way to
play “Words with Friends” and has brought us such classics as cat videos and catchy
memes.
It seems that exploring the rules that govern the universe can be profitable. Not for me
personally, or even for the government laboratory system, but for the nation as a whole.
Of course, these discoveries of the past are no guarantee for discoveries for the future.
And there is no doubt that there are people who believe in funding only research with
a short term payoff. On the other hand, in my opinion, this is completely short sighted.
While it is difficult to quantify exactly, most estimates put the annual return on federally
funded research at between 20 and 40%. Now think about that. If you’re lucky enough
to have money in the bank, they’re paying about 1% these days. Even the long term average
for the stock market is about 8%. Funding science is way better than that. Even if we
take the lowball estimate of 20% return on investment, after a mere four years, you double
your investment. Compare that to the 9 years it takes to double your money in the average
stock market and 70 years it would take in a bank By all measures, federally funded research
is a great investment.
And this doesn’t take into the account the occasional high fliers. The invention of penicillin
has saved hundreds of millions of lives, as had vaccines. After all, not all successful
science is physics.
But even in physics, the harnessing of electricity revolutionized the world. Lasers, quantum
mechanics and the transistor are responsible for today’s telecommunication and computer
technology explosion. Einstein’s theory of general relativity is a crucial component
to GPS. And, of course, I can’t help but pointing out that you’re probably watching
this via the World Wide Web, which started out at CERN as a way for scientists to communicate.
So I don’t know which of these various reasons convince you that science research is a good
thing. I suppose maybe none of them persuade you. But, if they don’t, then shame on you.
Science and technology has done more to raise the standard of living of mankind than any
other intellectual endeavor of humanity.
But I hope to persuade you that the real beauty of science is the way in which it ennobles
the human spirit.
A brilliant example of this was stated when Fermilab, my own intellectual home, was being
proposed. Robert Wilson, who was the director of the lab at the time, was being grilled
by a Congressional committee on the value of the accelerator towards the defense of
the country. Wilson said that, well, he couldn’t think of any. When pressed, Wilson responded
with the following classic statement. He said-
Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to
do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we
really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about.
In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing
to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.
Now, I can’t possibly compete with Wilson’s words, but I’d like to simply say that my
colleagues and I view science as a great love, indeed a love of the ages. For centuries,
our ancestors have looked around us and wondered why. Incrementally, each generation has added
a bit to the knowledge of humanity. Each scientist aspires to do nothing less than write a fresh
page in the book of knowledge, a book whose first pages were penned over two thousand
years ago. And, if the fact that we have collectively learned so much about the universe doesn’t
make you just a little bit proud to be human, well then I don’t know what will.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the lab.