Star Trek Particle Fever

Star Trek and Particle Physics

I just saw “Particle Fever”, a documentary about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland and the quest to the find the Higgs Boson.  This is the story of the largest machine ever built, developed expressly for advancing human knowledge about fundamental physics, and operated by a Tower of Babel of hundreds of international voices.  In the film, one of the Theoretical Physicists is asked by an Economist what the commercial value is of the experiment being conducted.  The physicist responds that the project is motivated by the quest to understand the fundamental building blocks of the universe; solely the thirst for knowledge and not financial gain.  (Although is a nice sentiment, in truth the investment in the new technologies at CERN have yielded and will likely continue to yield real-world products and devices, much like the space race.) 

But the spirit of the quest at CERN reminded me of something a wise Star Fleet captain once said, “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”  In 1964, a young idealistic writer in Los Angeles named Gene Roddenberry envisioned a utopian world where people of all nationalities have set aside their differences and prejudices and come together to build massive machines to explore the furthest reaches of the heavens.  The Enterprise’s continuing mission was to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.  The LHC’s mission is to probe the smallest units of all matter on the most extreme microscopic scale.  

In 1965, Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, published a paper in Electronics titled “Cramming Components onto Integrated Circuits” and observed that the capacity of memory chips doubles “roughly every two years” and expected the trend to continue consistently until 1975 (about 10 years).  This theory, now known as “Moore’s Law” has proven to be far more consistent than even Mr. Moore imagined.  It has remained consistent, dead on every two years for an astounding 50 years!

Some advances in science come due to serendipitous discovery.  But most come through dogged determination and relentless experiment.   With the benefit of Moore’s increasing computing capacity, the ability to experiment and share information has crossed a threshold; connectivity and information explodes at an every faster rate.  The internet, developed in part by CERN to share experimental data, is now available in data streaming through the air into my pocket.  I don’t even have to be connected to be connected.  

It seems as if we have entered a new golden age of scientific discovery.  Just in the last two years we have seen the finding of the Higgs Boson, an explosion of documented exoplanets (now almost 1800), and the confirmation of gravity waves.  It is a great time to be a scientist.

The groundwork for today’s discoveries were laid in the 1960’s as the Unites States and the Soviet Union competed ideologically and militarily for dominance in space.  As mentioned above, the demands of the space race drove technological innovations that are essential to modern life.  Computing power was increased and began to double every two years.  And the anxiety of the threat of nuclear annihilation drove certain people to imagine a world of peaceful, cooperative space exploration.   

Eventually, humans did come together peacefully to explore space; at CERN, it is the exploration of inner space.  The machines, magnets, computers, and miles of cables that make up the LHC seem like a wild fantasy of science fiction.  Fitting then, that the latest Star Trek film, Into Darkness, uses the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to represent the warp core of the USS Enterprise.  

Roddenberry’s vision is drawing ever closer to reality.  Now hurry up and make my tricorder!