New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | March 3, 2005

Ron Bailey kicks out the strangelets at a Richard Posner lecture on catastrophe planning.

Comments

|3.3.05 @ 4:45PM|#

Good piece, but notice that Bailey doesn't criticize the conclusions surrounding asteroid strikes. I think Posner is actually right that asteroid defense is under-funded.

|3.3.05 @ 5:28PM|#

Strangelets? I must look into this particle. Do they really think that their experiments have a chance of shrinking, then exploding the earth? Not that I think they should be worried about, because the whole idea seems rather absurd to me. But then again, I'm not a theoretical physicist.

Mike|3.3.05 @ 5:38PM|#

Do they really think that their experiments have a chance of shrinking, then exploding the earth?

Lots of info at Wikipedia, but the key bit seems to be:

There is some concern that ordinary matter, upon contacting a strangelet, would be compressed into additional strange matter by its gravity; strangelets would therefore be able to "eat" any ordinary matter it came into contact with, such as planets or stars. Mainstream physicists, while acknowledging this possibility, tend to downplay its probability.

|3.3.05 @ 5:44PM|#

Ah, another one of these theoretical particles that we have no fucking clue whether they exist or not.

I like science and theorising as much as the next person, but sometimes I wonder who's putting up the money for these people to do "research". (And before people start jumping all over me, if it's private money, I'm alllll for it, cuz I think it's "neat" and "cool", and I realise that sometimes they're right and it ends up advancing "science" in some way, but still...pretty far out there.)

|3.3.05 @ 5:47PM|#

Nope, sorry, after reading the rest of the Wikipedia article, I have to say that there is no chance that these particles actually exist.

|3.3.05 @ 7:11PM|#

Lowdog-

FWIW, lately the trend in universities is toward more industrial funding of science research. I've been involved with that trend. More than half of my time in graduate school has been privately funded, which is very unusual (even at private schools that would be unusual). However, that's mostly true in areas like materials physics, nanosience, solid state physics, optics, biophysics, and fluids.

Astrophysics and particle physics is still heavily reliant on gov't. Although some private foundations are starting to get involved there as well. For instance, the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics here at UC Santa Barbara has attracted a lot of private money.

Once upon a time there was an excellent national security rationale for funding particle physics and astrophysics: It was crucial that the US remain at the top of the nuclear physics game and space exploration (i.e. satellites). Whoever pays gets first dibs at it, and far better that first dibs go to the US than the Soviets. However, the frontier of particle physics has strayed quite far from anything even remotely useful for weapons research. And most of what astrophysicists do has very little use for improving spy satellites or developing space-based weapons. Well, some of the detector technology used at particle accelerators has applications in national security contexts, as well as gamma-ray telescopes, but that's a small slice of the pie.

As to whether the folks at Brookhaven could destroy the planet: My hunch is that, even if hypothetically they created these particles (assuming they even exist), it's not a matter of creating a single particle and letting it gobble everything around it. Presumably this particle has a very short half-life (probably orders of magnitude shorter than a picosecond, but that's just a guess). A doomsday scenario would probably require some sort of chain reaction, and if the particles are kept relatively isolated during their short lifetime the chain reaction will never take off.

|3.3.05 @ 7:27PM|#

thoreau - good for you. I'm glad that you've been so fortunate. I've got some friends in academia that are almost totally reliant on the gov't, which, as I'm sure you could imagine, makes for a lot of long discussions! :)

As to what branches of physics would be more apt to be privately funded, and why, I more or less figured what you said to be true.

Thanks for your views on strangelets...which is why I'm sure they've decided they're not much of a threat. But I still stand by my assertion that no such thing exists, without any proof of my own, of course. And I have read a little about quantum mechanics and the like, so it's not like I'm claiming the earth is still flat. These particles just seem like some ad hoc, hypothetical thing that get made up in astrophysics and theoretical physics, that's all.

|3.3.05 @ 7:38PM|#

Lowdog-

I've also been involved in another trend: For-profit colleges. I teach at one in the evenings while I'm writing my dissertation. However, before you start thinking I'm the next Hugh Akston or something, keep in mind that a lot of our students get federal financial aid and the parent company is facing a shareholder lawsuit over dubious business practices. Hardly a model of capitalist education.

I have absolutely no objection to for-profit education, but the current model could stand some tweaking. So mostly I just ignore the business model and have fun teaching optics.

|3.3.05 @ 8:17PM|#

Hey, I work for a community college here in Phoenix and we just foisted a huge ~$1 billion bond initiative on our children 30 or so years down the road, so you can call me something of a hypocrite. It's ok, I do all the time!

|3.3.05 @ 8:21PM|#

Yes that basically describes how many a for-profit school works in my experience, they would go out of business without student aid and their business models are ethically dubious (mostly some fraud like things going on). Needless to say they impart some knowledge and serve some useful function in society.

|3.3.05 @ 8:31PM|#

js-

My one cause for hope concerning for-profit higher education is that, despite some of the business practices, the programs tend to have more muscle than fat. The school where I teach has an excellent faculty and excellent instructional facilities. However, when I compare them with more traditional colleges of comparable size, they lack the expensive amenities (student centers and whatnot) and bureaucracies. Don't get me wrong, we have a lot of paperwork, but the number of administrative personnel seems small compared with other colleges.

There is still much to be said for the more traditional college experience, but there is also much to be said for a lean and specialized school that delivers cutting-edge technical education without the frills of the traditional college experience. There's a place for both in society, and competition from the leaner model might help to contain costs at more traditional colleges.

Of course, first we have to shake off the dubious business practices. I don't know whether my school in particular has been involved in any of the shenanigans alleged to occur at corporate headquarters. I do know, however, that my bosses act like people who have something to hide.

I just hope we don't throw out any babies when we get rid of this bathwater.

|3.3.05 @ 9:44PM|#

Hmmm... I always suspected Long Island would have a hand in the Apocalypse.

s.m. koppelman|3.3.05 @ 9:56PM|#

I notice Mr. Bailey put "abrupt global warming" in air quotes, as if to imply he wants readers to think of the concept as orders of magnitude more preposterous and dismissable than the textually unadorned bioterror attack and asteroid strike.

No industry agenda being nudged along there by Reason's uncorruptible "science correspondent", no sir.

|3.3.05 @ 11:37PM|#

thoreau,

Presumably this particle has a very short half-life (probably orders of magnitude shorter than a picosecond, but that's just a guess)

Geez. I hope you're right. Otherwise Maxwell's Demon exists and we're all doomed. AHHH! The Demon is a Particle!


Me, I are an engineer who got a PhD to go into academia. By the time I'd finished my PhD I could no longer stand the idea of academia. Affirmative action was the final nail in the academic coffin. I'm the minority nobody wants (nooo! not a white male!). The deck is stacked against you at hiring time, it's stacked against you for promotions, it's stacked against you for research funding (most of which is gov't even for engineers).

I'm surprised that there's significant research $ outside gov't for physics. Engineering profs find it hard to live without the NSF.


If modern technology is about managing risks, what's the probability that global warming research has hit the wall of diminishing returns?

The current environmental fad is like Madonna, here today and gone tommorrow. I hope I'll live to see that tommorrow, when (theoretically) people will be more rational in dealing with speculation.

|3.4.05 @ 12:09AM|#

pragmatist-

On the level of industrial funding: Don't get me wrong, my lab would shut down without NSF, DOE, and DOD. But there are people (like me) who have mostly worked on projects funded by industry. I don't know what fraction of my advisor's equipment budget is industrial, but his personnel budget has probably averaged more than 20% industrial over the past 5 years (which is a huge amount in academia). 20% certainly leaves much room for improvement, but the encouraging thing is the upward trend.

As for career paths, I have mixed feelings on academia. I'm going to do a post-doc in biophysics because I'm interested in it, and then I'll decide if I want to do academia. I like teaching, and I like research, so academia would seem a natural fit. But I also have the option of working in industry and teaching in the evenings (sort of like what I do now, where I work on an industrial grant by day and teach at night).

Even if I decide to go into academia, I think I'll work in industry first to develop the contacts to get industrial funding.

|3.4.05 @ 12:26AM|#

Old at Reason: the huge number of articles with the tell-nothing headline New at Reason.

Nothing personal, guys, but give me a break. Your blog messages are the slowest-loading I've seen on the Internet by at least a factor of four, and some of us are on dialup connections. If it's worth publishing, it's worth letting us know the subject before we commit to waiting for the article -- especially when the article is nothing but a one-line link (which takes just as long to load).

Gloria Mundi|3.4.05 @ 12:37AM|#

How will it all end? Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

http://www.exitmundi.nl/

|3.4.05 @ 1:03PM|#

I am getting really sick of Mr. Koppelman impugning Mr. Bailey's honesty every time he say somthing that "mr" koppelman doesn't care for. Ad hominem attacks are scurrilous and unwarranted. If you've got evidence, then by all means reveal it, but otherwise, fight fair.