Working at the Physics Center is a charming experience. It is a summer
symposium for physicists from all over the planet. It takes place on a
wooded campus at the west end of the town of Aspen. Many of the physicists
are what you'd imagine: think Albert Einstein. We have worked with several
of them enough over the years that we're friends, and it's good to renew old
acquaintances every year. One of them we can talk fishing with. Some we
can share stories about kids, grandkids, or pets. Some don't talk much at
all. We work with Nobel Prize winners. We work with the Dean of Yale.
When Pierre, our French friend, saw us for the first time this year, he
declared this to be "shark week". That turned into a continuing theme.
We read the board announcing the talks for the Physicists to choose from:
- The large scale distribution of mass and light in the
universe.
- Challenges for theories of star and galaxy formation from
high-redshift observations.
- Neutrino mass in SUSY GUT models.
- Split fermions and leptogenesis.
- Gravitational baryogenesis.
- Constraining galaxy populations, AGNs, star bursts, and
galactic outflows.
This international community of physicists is united by a common language.
In contrast, Jane, who runs the day-to-day operations of the Center, and is
not a physicist, has a sign over her desk: "Yeah, right. But what is the
speed of dark?"
Pierre is the guy who illustrated a point to Judy last year with a story
about dog poop. We listened to him give a talk about neutrinos. Neutrinos
are small: subatomic. They have no mass. They come from the center of the
sun. They come from other places too, but most of the ones that hit us come
from our sun. We are being constantly bombarded by neutrinos, with no
effect. They don't hit anything because, on an atomic level, solid objects
are composed primarily of empty space. Neutrinos are so small, they just
pass right through. They aren't especially reactive, anyway. They don't
really want to react with anything.
After the talk, Judy accused Pierre and his colleagues of running an
elaborate scam. They get billions of dollars for research projects on
particles so small they cannot be seen, they cannot ever be seen, and if you
were ever able to see one, you would change the nature of the particle just
by having seen it. The only way you can demonstrate the particle exists is
by documenting its effect on something else. Pierre responded with a series
of questions: Judy. (You have to read this with a French accent). Judee.
You take a walk in the park. You see dog poop on the ground. Do you see
the dog? You don't see the dog, but do you know the dog has been there?
What a great illustration! That's it! Pierre and his colleagues get
billions of dollars to study dog poop.
We talked to Pierre a little more about neutrinos this year. Update:
Neutrinos have mass.
