The Edge of PhysicsNew book highlights research about the universe in AntarcticaPosted April 2, 2010
Anil Ananthaswamy began a long trip in October 2005, one that would take him to a Chilean desert to Siberia and South Africa to the bottom of the world in Antarctica and beyond. This wasn’t some backpacker trip around the world, with a dusty rucksackslung over his shoulder. But like many such travelers, Ananthaswamy was on a quest to understand the universe. The difference was that his journey to the ends of the Earth took him to the planet’s cutting-edge experiments — a telescope in the Atacama Desert, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ![]() The Edge of Physics Here Ananthaswamy talks about his motivation behind writing the book, crossing eight time zones on an unreliable aircraft to Lake Baikal, and opines on the chances of ever really understanding dark matter, let alone the rest of the universe. 1. Why did you want to write this book?To communicate the sense of wonder that comes out of understanding what’s being done in physics — especially cosmology and particle physics. Words like “particle physics” tend to put off many people, and I wanted to reach out to them by approaching the subject in a very different manner. The Edge of Physics is a personal travelogue, in which I visit many remote regions of our planet, from the Atacama Desert in the Chilean Andes to the South Pole, to see cutting-edge telescopes and instruments. I use the narrative to tell the story of what is happening in physics, particularly cosmology. The hope is that the allure of these far-flung places will draw in otherwise reluctant readers. 2. What did you learn from the experience of writing the book — not necessarily about the science but about people and their motivations to pursue these grand experiments?I came away impressed by the sheer persistence of experimental physicists. All these experiments are incredibly complex, and most of them are being done in hostile places, such as Lake Baikal in the peak of the Siberian winter, or at the South Pole. And what’s even more amazing is the fact that the experiments are looking for things that may not exist in the form expected by the physicists. So years, even decades, of work could go waste. Still, they persist. Two quotes from the book will help illustrate the point better. Michael Dragowsky Fabiola Gianotti, the spokesperson for the ATLAS experiment |