Writing a weekly column on South African and global political economy is a thrill ride. Society, the country, the world and all its institutions (more than just organisations) and everything that holds them together or tears them apart is gripping reading. The first three or four hours of my day always start with reading news from around the world; and there is always something new coming from almost anywhere in the world.
Then I switch to the latest developments in science, mainly in physics, astrophysics and astronomy. I really don’t know much about these topics to speak or write about them with any confidence, but having just completed a hybrid-memoir I realise I should have included a section on how I wished that I could have had uninterrupted schooling (because of the group areas shuffle, I may have attended about eight different schools before I turned 15), and my parents could afford to pay for my education to get a doctorate in physics. As it goes, I was “worth” more working at the age of 14 than it cost to keep me in school…
Anyway, over the past few days I turned away from current affairs, political economy, state and society – we do seem to be on a loop of corruption, crime, violence, and quite diabolical ethical lapses – towards physics, more specifically the Large Hadron Collider’s (LHC) restart. Hereafter, I am being very careful and I ask that the reader indulges me; I am not a physicist.
The LHC, the largest particle accelerator was “down” for maintenance and upgrade for more than three years and was “restarted” last week. Briefly, without sounding too didactic, the 27km radial, arguably the biggest science experiment in history – if you ignore what the scientific work of the Manhattan Project was used for, but that’s just my opinion – was built to recreate the moments immediately after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. The LHC accelerates protons at almost 100% of the speed of light around the circular structure at about 11,000 times a second, and collides them with another beam travelling in the opposite direction (I’m a bit proud to say I didn’t use a search engine for that).
Although I have very few items on a “bucket list” the first one would be to spend a week listening and learning at CERN, home of the LHC, in Geneva. The second item would be to spend a couple of hours with Martin Scorsese discussing post-war Italian neoclassical cinema.
Nonetheless, the restart of the LHC had me thinking about something I read a while ago about there being nothing left to learn, and that physics had hit something of a brick wall. I would come out and say without even a modicum of modesty (not being a physicist) that we cannot believe that we have reached the end of knowledge production; not in physics nor in the social sciences.
When the Higgs boson, the so-called god particle, was discovered 10 years ago there was a sense that the discovery had placed a cherry on top of what was considered to be the Standard Model of physics. The Standard Model presents an internally consistent description of most of the fundamental forces and particles in our universe. That means the stuff that everything in our observable universe, including you and I, dear reader, are made of. I am especially intrigued and excited by Hubble’s Deep Field of an estimated 10,000 galaxies.
After the Higgs boson was discovered there was a scramble (mainly among science writers, to be fair) that it was time for a “new physics” to emerge. Among the areas of speculation (about new areas of study) are: the mystery around dark matter and dark energy; supersymmetry theory; and to provide clarity on why it is thought that the universe is made up of matter rather than antimatter. Because I am not a physicist, just writing that hurts my head.
Physicists (theoretical, particle, astronomers etc) certainly have not sat down quietly. Since the discovery of the Higgs boson, researchers have detected gravitational waves (2016) that are generated by awesome collisions of black holes. This discovery, rather the “basics of gravitational wave theory”, gave further weight to Albert Einstein’s “field equations” And then, of course, there was the first photograph of a supermassive black hole at the centre of Messier 87.
Yet, the restart of the LHC may open up new fields, and if anything, it may give rise to new theories about the observable universe. I am excited about the “neutralino” as part of what constitutes dark matter. If nothing new emerges from the LHC over the next decades or so – I certainly hope something does; it’s worth remembering that it took about 40 years to confirm the Higgs boson – there are already plans under way for a next-generation collider (a 100km ring as opposed to the LHC’s 27km), and a linear collider of about 40km. Let’s leave that to actual scientists. Not to people who pretend, and don’t even know what they’re pretending…
In the meantime, we will (at least I will) pay close attention to astronomy, especially the James Webb Telescope, and the science around landing humans on Mars, then colonising and terraforming that planet. Just don’t mention the new owner of Twitter.
Of particular interest, as part of the global shifts in power, in the sense that it affects and shapes our national and global political economy, the Perseverance and Tianwen-1 rovers landed on Mars by the US and China respectively in 2021 should provide us with great insights. Personally, I would like to believe that there may be conditions for life (water) on one of Saturn’s moons, Titan, though I doubt that we will find multicellular intelligent life, such as ourselves, in our universe. ( Jupiter’s Europa moon is understood to have twice the amount of water our own Earth harbours.)
It’s a bit disturbing to include some members of our political elite in the basket of “intelligent life,” but as far as I know the Milky Way has given us the genius of Einstein, Stephen Hawking as well as Julius Malema or Andile Lungisa.
I have no doubt that the late Richard Feynman, one of my intellectual heroes and Nobel Prize Laureate, had this absurdity in mind when he published The Meaning of it All. My favourite passage from The Meaning of it All is Feynman’s observation that “doubt is not to be feared, that it is to be welcomed as the possibility of a new potential for human beings. If you know that you are not sure, you have a chance to improve the situation”.
I think that is why I like physics – and science in general – because unlike politicians, physicists don’t mind being proven wrong. Physicists don’t cling to theories that have been proven to be wrong, catastrophic and destructive to societies. Again, we should not traduce that which is done with scientific achievements – like the bombs dropped on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If, for physicists, the evidence does not support their theories, they simply discard them.
I cannot imagine being a member or supporter of a political party or liberation movement that has learnt nothing from time and place, or from anything that came before – and unquestioningly clings to theories or the words of people who died decades ago. DM
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Ismail is one of my favourite writers, always informative and entertaining. As a ‘would be physicist’ myself, his column today is evocative and intriguing. If you want an irreverent and fascinating long read, his book is a must.
Wonderful writing!
A great thought provoking article.
Thank you, Ismail. One of your nicest columns!
I really appreciated Ismail Lagardien’s learned treatise plus the concept that scientists, as opposed to politicians, dispassionately discard disproven theories. I had never thought about this. As someone who often looks up at the stars with wonder, I simply cannot appreciate arithmetical concepts pertaining to numbers such as the Big Bang 13.8 million years ago (or R1.5 trillion lost in State corruption somewhat more recently), as well as concepts such as the Higgs boson and Black Holes. As one of many people that have bought and (never) finished Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” I can only stand in awe of the genius of the great scientists as well as Lagardien’s juxtaposition of the alternative genius of Julius Malema and Andile Lungisa (he who told us that Louis Armstrong’s landing on the moon was faked as a ploy to embarrass the Russians). Thanks for that Ismael, but I must say my head also hurts now.
Do I note a tone of Tyilo in the reference to ‘political elites’ and twitter ? However … asking politicians to give up or change their ideas and theories, is like asking religious ‘leaders’ to give up their touting of ‘beliefs’ … especially for their congregants. Some politicians have even combined religious and political beliefs and discovered how ‘rewarding’ it can be ! Do we need to look any further than Trump and his pal Modhi ? Being of an artistic persuasion with no ‘physics’ inclination, I cannot comment on ‘matter/non-matter’ issues, but I am surprised Ismail has not included a flip into space aboard one of the richest men’s spacecrafts, as several ‘men’ (not sure when women will join in!) with ‘unlimited resources’ (however acquired) are doing. BUT then, it is possible he may be waiting for the trip into another galaxy rather !