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Friday, Oct 15, 2004

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DOMAIN OF THE IMMENSELY SMALL

THE NOBEL PRIZE in physics for 2004 is perhaps the last of the prizes that acknowledge significant foundational developments in the scientific understanding of three of the four fundamental interactions that govern the behaviour of all known forms of matter. At the beginning of the last century, the only known fundamental particle was the electron and the only known forces were electromagnetism and gravitation. It was not even clear that atoms were real, material entities. In less than a hundred years, there emerged what physicists refer to as the Standard Model. This is a fundamental theory, not complete but with basics well tested by experiment, that provides a coherent framework for understanding the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism, the first two being found in the study of radioactivity. In the strange domain of the very small, the theory of the strong nuclear force has perhaps held more than its fair share of surprises; the discovery honoured in this year's Nobel Prize is one among these. While the details of the Standard Model will continue to engage high-energy physicists worldwide, and the pursuit of the unified theory of all fundamental forces including gravitation will move towards centre-stage, it is likely that this year's Nobel will mark the triumphant culmination of a scientific odyssey that began a little more than a hundred years ago with the discovery of radioactivity.

This journey, whose eventual course and successes were perhaps not even dreamt of by those who took the first steps, has been marked by fundamental conceptual revolutions that include quantum mechanics and the special theory of relativity, and their subsequent integration. These developments have changed forever the scientific understanding of space, time, and the nature of mechanics at the microscopic distances characteristic of atoms and their constituents. The early 20th century understanding of fundamental particles as unchanging marble-like entities that could not be created or destroyed was swept aside. The notion that all matter was built out of a few fundamental entities was transformed from little more than philosophical speculation into an experimentally identifiable discipline, which simultaneously uncovered several levels of the hierarchical organisation of matter.

Alongside these conceptual revolutions, a whole new world of experimental physics has developed. This ranges from the medium scale world of small accelerators and nuclear reactors to large projects at huge particle accelerator laboratories that harness a wide variety of cutting-edge technologies to study the world of the ultra-small at very high energies. Few scientific projects can compare with those of high-energy physics in terms of enormity of scale, which leads even scientifically advanced nations enthusiastically to seek international cooperation in this area. As one of this year's Nobel laureates, David Gross, put it in an interview to Frontline (February 16, 2001), this is not "big [but]... immense science." It will be ironical if the gigantism of this scientific quest proves to be the Achilles heel of this branch of modern science, resulting in a gradual decline of public enthusiasm and government support for its pursuit. One way out will be for physicists to develop radical new technologies that lower costs and scale for the same level of scientific results. But it will be equally helpful if a significant section of civil society everywhere can be persuaded that the expenditure on modern scientific projects, however enormous, is dwarfed by the expenditure on military science and technology, which has far less socially beneficial results. A world where the pursuit of knowledge takes precedence over the pursuit of military might — whenever that miracle happens — will be an incomparably better world to live in.

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