{"id":13114,"date":"2018-01-29T09:45:12","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T17:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=13114"},"modified":"2018-01-29T09:50:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T17:50:51","slug":"guest-post-nicole-yunger-halpern-on-what-makes-extraordinary-science-extraordinary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/29\/guest-post-nicole-yunger-halpern-on-what-makes-extraordinary-science-extraordinary\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: Nicole Yunger Halpern on What Makes Extraordinary Science Extraordinary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" Nicole Yunger Halpern is a theoretical physicist at Caltech’s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM)<\/a>.\u00a0 She blends quantum information theory with thermodynamics and applies the combination across science, including to condensed matter; black-hole physics; and atomic, molecular, and optical physics. She writes for Quantum Frontiers<\/a>, the IQIM blog, every month. <\/p>\n

\n

What makes extraordinary science extraordinary?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Political junkies watch C-SPAN. Sports fans watch ESPN. Art collectors watch Christie\u2019s. I watch scientists respond to ideas.<\/p>\n

John Preskill<\/a>\u2014Caltech professor, quantum-information theorist, and my PhD advisor\u2014serves as the Chief Justice John Roberts of my C-SPAN. Ideas fly during group meetings, at lunch outside a campus cafeteria, and in John\u2019s office. Many ideas encounter a laconicism compared with which Ernest Hemingway babbles. \u201cHmm,\u201d I hear. \u201cOk.\u201d \u201cWait… What?\u201d<\/p>\n

The occasional idea provokes an \u201cmhm<\/em>.\u201d The final syllable has a higher pitch than the first. Usually, the inflection change conveys agreement and interest. Receiving such an \u201cmhm<\/em>\u201d brightens my afternoon like a Big Dipper sighting during a 9 PM trudge home.<\/p>\n

Hearing \u201cThat\u2019s cool,\u201d \u201cNice,\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m excited,\u201d I cartwheel internally.<\/p>\n

What distinguishes \u201cok\u201d ideas from \u201cmhm<\/em>\u201d ideas? Peeling the Preskillite trappings off this question reveals its core: What distinguishes good science from extraordinary science?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been grateful for opportunities to interview senior scientists, over the past few months, from coast to coast. The opinions I collected varied. Several interviewees latched onto the question as though they pondered it daily. A couple of interviewees balked (I don\u2019t know; that\u2019s tricky…<\/em>) but summoned up a sermon. All the responses fired me up: The more wisps of mist withdrew from the nature of extraordinary science, the more I burned to contribute.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll distill, interpret, and embellish upon the opinions I received. Italics flag lines that I assembled to capture ideas that I heard, as well as imperfect memories of others\u2019 words. Quotation marks surround lines that others constructed. Feel welcome to chime in, in the \u201ccomments\u201d section.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One word surfaced in all, or nearly all, my conversations: \u201cimpact.\u201d Extraordinary science changes how researchers across the world think. Extraordinary science reaches beyond one subdiscipline.<\/p>\n

This reach reminded me of answers to a question I\u2019d asked senior scientists when in college: \u201cWhat do you mean by \u2018beautiful\u2019?<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 Replies had varied, but a synopsis had crystallized: \u201cBeautiful science enables us to explain a lot with a little.\u201d Schrodinger\u2019s equation, which describes how quantum systems evolve, fits on one line. But the equation describes electrons bound to atoms, particles trapped in boxes, nuclei in magnetic fields, and more. Beautiful science, which overlaps with extraordinary science, captures much of nature in a small net.<\/p>\n

Inventing a field constitutes extraordinary science. Examples include the fusion of quantum information with high-energy physics. Entanglement, quantum computation, and error correction are illuminating black holes, wormholes<\/a>, and space-time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Extraordinary science surprises us, revealing faces that we never expected nature to wear. Many extraordinary experiments generate data inexplicable with existing theories. Some extraordinary theory accounts for puzzling data; some extraordinary theory provokes experiments. I graduated from the Perimeter Scholars International Masters program<\/a>,\u00a0 at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics<\/a>, almost five years ago. Canadian physicist Art McDonald<\/a> presented my class\u2019s commencement address. An interest in theory, he said, brought you to this institute. Plunge into theory, if you like. Theorem away. But keep a bead on experiments. Talk with experimentalists; work to understand them.<\/em> McDonald won a Nobel Prize, two years later, for directing the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO)<\/a>. (SNOLab, with the Homestake experiment<\/a>, revealed properties of subatomic particles called \u201cneutrinos.\u201d A neutrino\u2019s species can change, and neutrinos have tiny masses. Neutrinos might reveal why the universe contains more matter than antimatter.)<\/p>\n

Not all extraordinary theory clings to experiment like bubblegum to hair. Elliott Lieb and Mary Beth Ruskai proved that quantum entropies obey an inequality called \u201cstrong subadditivity<\/a>\u201d (SSA).\u00a0 Entropies quantify uncertainty about which outcomes measurements will yield. Experimentalists could test SSA\u2019s governance of atoms, ions, and materials. But no physical platform captures SSA\u2019s essence.<\/p>\n

Abstract mathematics underlies Lieb and Ruskai’s theorem: convexity and concavity (properties of functions), the Golden-Thompson inequality (a theorem about exponentials of matrices), etc. Some extraordinary theory dovetails with experiment; some wings away.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One interviewee sees extraordinary science in foundational science. At our understanding\u2019s roots lie ideas that fertilize diverse sprouts. Other extraordinary ideas provide tools for calculating, observing, or measuring. Richard Feynman sped up particle-physics computations, for instance, by drawing diagrams<\/a>.\u00a0 Those diagrams depict high-energy physics as the creation, separation, recombination, and annihilation of particles. Feynman drove not only a technical, but also a conceptual, advance. Some extraordinary ideas transform our views of the world.<\/p>\n

Difficulty preoccupied two experimentalists. An experiment isn\u2019t worth undertaking,<\/em> one said, if it isn\u2019t difficult<\/em>. A colleague, said another, “does the impossible and makes it look easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simplicity preoccupied two theorists. I wrung my hands, during year one of my PhD, in an email to John. The results I\u2019d derived\u2014now that I\u2019d found them\u2014 looked as though I should have noticed them months earlier. What if the results lacked gristle? \u201cDon\u2019t worry about too simple,\u201d John wrote back. \u201cI like simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another theorist agreed: Simplification promotes clarity. Not all simple ideas \u201cgo the distance.\u201d But ideas run farther when stripped down than when weighed down by complications.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Extraordinary scientists have a sense of taste. Not every idea merits exploration. Identifying the ideas that do requires taste, or style, or distinction. What distinguishes extraordinary science? More of the theater critic and Julia Child than I expected five years ago.<\/p>\n

With gratitude to the thinkers who let me pick their brains.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicole Yunger Halpern is a theoretical physicist at Caltech’s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM).\u00a0 She blends quantum information theory with thermodynamics and applies the combination across science, including to condensed matter; black-hole physics; and atomic, molecular, and optical physics. She writes for Quantum Frontiers, the IQIM blog, every month. What makes extraordinary science […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-post","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13114"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13127,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13114\/revisions\/13127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}