I’m wriitng a story that involves physicists at an imaginary Eastern university. It’s necessary for the story that the physicists be working on either a revolutionary new discovery in physics, or an amazing new application of cutting edge physics.
Unfortunately I don’t know a lot about physics.
Right now,
What are some cutting edge things going on in physics? What would the next big thing to unravel be? I mean, it doesn’t have to be unravelled, just, what question could next be answered that would be cool?
Could someone explain Bell’s Theorem to me in a way a moron could understand it?
An episode of Law and Order I saw recently featured a professor who believed he was close to finding The Theory of Everything - one short list of equations that can accurately describe everything in the universe. Newtonian physics is pretty much sufficient for everyday problems, but when you get really fast, really small, or really big, there seem to be problems. Einsteinian physics gets closer, but still isn’t the theory of everything, because there are things it doesn’t describe correctly. That’s about where my understanding of physics ends.
Sci-fi novels work best when you leave the physics vague, and concentrate on the social implications of the engineering applications.
Bell Theorem is one thing, but Bell connectors in consumer, or military electronics is an entire different roast pig. A submarine that can maintain connections with other subs, the surface, or even its own torpedoes, is a major new weapons system. A space vehicle with constant, reliable two-way communication changes the whole nature of space travel. A fleet of them does things does wonders for space exploration. Talk about your unmanned vehicles!
The old room temperature superconductor kicks down a few hard barriers in engineering as well. The combination is potent enough that a whole lot of people would find murder, mayhem, or war an attractive alternative to not having control of the phenomenon. A really efficient photocell, which is very cheap to make could be a social bulldozer, certainly worth blowing up, if you happen to own a lot of energy stock.
Or, a combination, using nanotechnology and superconductors to manufacture fist sized one farad capacitors in a factory the size of an SUV. Now you have a place to store all your cheap photoelectric power. Heck, you could put your factory in an SUV, and remote control it with your Bell Connected computer remote control. Power the whole thing off the photo array on the roof of your SUV, and maybe a garage or two. Can you send power across the bell connection? Why not, it’s sci-fi! So you put a string of your photo-arrays here and there in sunny places, or on boats in the big oceans. Now you got power all the time, and you store more every second that input is greater than output.
I think that sucker eventually has to make sparks!
Probably the sexiest real area of study: Grand unification theory - the theory that all the fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetic, strong, and weak) may be manifestations of one force at extremely high energies. This is called the “theory of everything” by science journalists and such, but I don’t think its a term used by those in the field from day to day.
Other areas:
String theory (related to grand unification) - check out The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene for a relatively comprehensible explanation.
High-energy physics - the completion of the Large Hadron Collider promises to offer a wealth of new experiments to try to find some particles which are predicted by theories, but are too light to be observed with our current particle accelerators. The most famous of these is probably the Higgs particle, which supposedly explains why objects have mass.
Superconductivity - certain materials can, typically at low temperatures, offer no resistance to current passing. This phenomenon was unexpected and has huge potential to affect the day-to-day world, but is not yet fully understood.
Biophysics - discovering physical mechanisms behind biological phenomena, and developing new techniques or devices for purposes such as artificial tissue.
Envision computer systems that are made of your own genetic material and running in your body. A certain string of DNA is injected in your body that your body then goes off and builds. This could, for instance, cause a radio antenna in your back and circuits that relay and modify your photoreceptors to include 3D computer images in your field of vision–all controlled by your brain.
Masamune Shiro has studied such a bit, but his work seems a bit light compared to a lot of the issues that would need to be solved in terms of security and how the world would look. How do you allow computer generated advertising to be shown, but make it not possible for people to be able to set off a “light bomb” that blinds everyone with computer generated white?
Brian Greene’s second book, “The Fabric of the cosmos” has the clearest explanation of Bell’s theorem that I have seen. In fact, for the first time, I really really understood it. Of course, as a mathematician I may have a leg up, but it doesn’t really use mathematics, except for extremely simple probabilities.
Bell’s theorem demonstrates that any reasonable “hidden variables” theory of quantum mechanism must fail. I have heard it argued that it still doesn’t put the end of all possible hidden variable theories. I don’t know.
String theory is one possibility for cutting edge physics. One that wouldn’t require any deep knowledge (since no one has any) is dark matter. Perhaps someone has an idea for a dark matter detector that Iran is trying to steal from him.
Something the governments of the world would get all excited about is a good way to detect neutrinos without putting large and sensitive equipment down deep in a salt mine. Since neutrinos can pass through matter almost as easily as a ghost, being able to detect a low-intensity beam of them well enough to pick up modulations would mean secure communications channels nobody could tap.
I’m a grad student in a well-regarded physics department (albeit not an Eastern one.) Most of the suggestions above are good ones, but here are the ones that I wouldn’t be surprised to see within my lifetime:
[ul]
[li]Supersymmetry. It’s hoped that when the Large Hadron Collider turns on, it will be able to discover new particles called “superpartners.” Every kind of “normal” particle is, according to this theory, supposed to have a superpartner; and it is thought that there’ll be enough energy in the particle beams of the LHC to create and study these superparticles.[/li][li]The Higgs boson. The LHC is also expected to have enough energy to create a particle called the “Higgs boson”, which (roughly speaking) is the particle that is responsible for the mass of all other particles. As we understand particle physics currently, this boson should exist; in fact, if the LHC doesn’t find the Higgs boson, it would kick the legs out from under much of our current understanding. So let’s hope we find it.[/li][li]Dark matter & dark energy. High-precision measurements of the Universe and (roughly speaking) gravity have shown us that there is much more mass and energy in the Universe than we can directly see (i.e. stars.) This matter & energy comes in two flavours: “dark matter”, which as far as we can tell tends to cluster with “normal” matter, and makes galaxies rotate faster than they would otherwise; and “dark energy”, which accelerates the expansion of the Universe. Serious consideration is being given to the idea that the dark matter is actually made of supersymmetric particles (see above), but it’s not at all clear that this is the case.[/li][li]Room-temperature superconductivity. This is the one that would have the greatest effect on life on Earth, if it were discovered. Unfortunately, the field has stalled (to the best of my knowledge) since the early '90s or so.[/li][/ul]
Hope this helps.
As many others have said, the Holy Grail of theoretical physics is a theory of quantum gravity. This may or may not unify gravity with the other three forces; the current best contenders are String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity. This is a bit more grand than the so-called Grand Unification Theories; in standard usage, a GUT only unifies the electroweak and strong forces, without addressing gravity. A theory which successfully not only quantized gravity but also unified it with the other forces (string theory hopes to accomplish this) would be a Theory of Everything, or TOE.
For applied physics, I agree with Triskadekamus et al that a room-temperature superconductor would be big, but I think that practical fusion energy generation would be even bigger. Practical fusion would mean cheap, clean, safe electrical power, anywhere in the world, for billions of years. Once you’ve got that, a lot of other things fall neatly into place.
Whether you go with a theoretical or applied problem depends largely on what sort of characters you want in your story, and how you want them to spend their time. Theoretical physicists will spend most of their time programming a computer, scribbling furiously on a board or scraps of paper, or staring blankly off into space. Applied physicists will spend their time adjusting pieces of machinery, making things, and reading off measurements.
As Triskadecamus said, unless you know the science you’ll be writing about, keep it vague. Those who are in-the-know will forgive vague descriptions, but not wrong details.
I suggest going to your local college/university library and read some back issues of New Scientist, Scientific American, and Analog Science Fiction. N.S. has good scientific news articles and a lot of cutting-edge speculative stuff. S.A. has more in-depth reviews about what scientists are doing recently. Analog, besides the excellent hard s.f., has “Science Fact” and “Alternative View” columns designed specifically to explain cutting edge science to s.f. writers.
And of course, us Dopers can answer more any specific science questions you have.