The world of physicists seems distant from the lives of most people. But every so often physicists come up with a discovery that has the potential to shake the real world. What will the next one be?
That question was debated earlier this summer in England by a group of astronomers, particle physicists and theorists from Cambridge University, along with some undergraduate and graduate physics students from elsewhere. This wasn't a formal gathering; we were debating in the back garden of a pub, sipping pints of Guinness and Abbots Ale under a starry sky.
We weren't so much interested in which discovery would win the next Nobel Prize -- because, let's face it, most of those discoveries are only exciting to other physicists. The question we posed, instead, was: What breakthrough would actually change people's lives?
There's a keen competition to see who will be first to detect a very subtle leftover from the Big Bang, which occurred some 15 billion years ago. Scientists, meanwhile, are putting the finishing touches to gravitational wave detectors in the United States and Germany, and whoever is first to confirm the existence of gravitational waves is a shoe-in for a Nobel. But from the perspective of everyday folk, we're talking ancient history. Very ancient history.
How about the new multibillion-dollar underground particle accelerator in Switzerland that's scheduled to be switched on in 2005? Smashing protons together at extremely high speeds to see what kind of new and exotic particles they might produce excites the heck out of particle physicists. But it's unlikely to stir much interest in the general public. Most people can live out their days without ever knowing if the Higgs boson really exists. Or even what a Higgs boson is. (Should you care, the Higgs boson is a particle predicted by theory; if confirmed, it might help physicists solve the mystery of why some particles are light and others heavy.)
What about the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence? Certainly, contact with beings out there could shake up our world, as was demonstrated in the movie Contact. But it has been 40 years since physicists started scanning the sky with radio telescopes in hope of hearing a signal from another part of the universe, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project has yet to produce any evidence of intelligent beings on other planets. That's not to say there couldn't be something tomorrow, but 40 years from now we may still be waiting.
Well, how about the discovery of an Earth-type planet? Now that would have an impact on ordinary people.
Our group of physicists and physics students could only begin to explore this issue. We didn't hear the bartender's last call nor did we notice that the other patrons had disappeared. To break up the party, the publican finally resorted to flashing the garden lights off and on in a most irritating fashion.
The possibility of finding another planet much like Earth raises some interesting questions about how we would respond, and it's a discovery that may not be far off. Astronomers have already found more than 40 Jupiter-sized planets. The most recent discovery is a mere 10 light-years away, which in astronomical terms is practically in our back yard. The sun it's orbiting can be seen from Earth with the naked eye, a star in the night sky.
The problem is that astronomers can't actually see planets very well, especially small ones such as Earth that are only about a fraction of the size of gas giants such as Jupiter. To make it easier to find small terrestrial planets, the Americans are set to launch a space mission to take a closer look at 50 stars deemed most likely to have Earth-sized planets. That mission is scheduled for 2006.
Once astronomers locate an Earth-like candidate, they can analyze the radiation coming from it, and look for signs of gasses such as oxygen, ozone and carbon dioxide that might indicate it's capable of supporting life. We could know if there is an a new Earth out there -- a New World -- within the next 10 years. We might not be able to travel there for another 100 years, but we'd know it was there.
If people knew there was another world they could reach within several generations, would it change how they live now? Would people care as much about the depletion of the ozone layer? Would open water at the North Pole make front-page headlines?
It's not hard to see that if there is somewhere else to go -- if Earth isn't all we've got -- that concern about environmental issues might change. Those who care passionately would still care; those who don't would continue not to. But the balance could shift toward greater environmental recklessness.
It's likely that those vested in the exploitation of Earth's resources will quickly cast a covetous eye on the New World and its resources. Which raises the question of who would have the right to stake a claim on the new planet: Is it whoever gets there first? What if beings, intelligent or otherwise, already live there? What about their rights?
Obviously, there are parallels to the "discovery" of the North and South American continents by Europeans. Explorers were willing to venture into uncharted territories, some for adventure, some for the promise of new sources of great wealth, some for empire-building and strategic military expansion. Rights to the lands and anything on or in it went to whomever planted a flag first in the name of the mother country.
The most powerful allure for colonization of a New World may be as it was in the 17th and 18th centuries, when ordinary folk boarded ships bound for the Americas to escape religious and racial persecution, poverty and landlessness. Those problems were not resolved by relocation; they're still with us.
As long as there is an escape hatch -- a Plan B in the form of a New World -- what incentive is there for people to deal with them, and to clean up the environmental messes here? Will Earth become disposable?
It may be five or six generations before colonization of another planet becomes a reality, but simply knowing that there is somewhere else to go can have an immediate effect on how people live here and now. Maybe we should start talking about a protocol for interplanetary colonization. And not just over pints of Guinness on a starry night.
Sheilla Jones is a Canadian journalist who is becoming a physicist.
Copyright © 2000 Globe Interactive
###
