A previous note explains why I believe we are going back to fundamental physics, my overarching interest. A friend of mine was interviewed by La Jornada,, an important Mexican newspaper. Also Yuri Milner made Alan Guth - one of my most respected acquaintances - a millionaire !
This is not the place to tell how I met these deserving physicists. Nevertheless I do want to tell you what they did.
Gerardo Herrera Corral , moved forward the field of Experimental High Energy Physics in Mexico, which Mexican pioneers, like my professor Clicerio Avilez Valdez, started here at Fermilab, a few miles away from where I'm writing this. Gerardo has been a successful physics leader.
Alan Guth invented Inflation.
Why is this important?
In the note before, I wrote that plutonium will move Curiosity on Mars, if it lands as planned. That battery was made by humans, based on our Fundamental Physics knowledge. Most of the plutonium at hand is "artificial", the primordial one, decayed long ago.
What about Inflation?
That was the ultimate Free Lunch!
Alan proposed that at the beginning of time, energy was stored in a fundamental scalar field, the inflaton, just waiting for us to show up, and develop that piece of plutonium waiting in Curiosity, to start another stage of human evolution.
Alan Guth must be happy today:
"The $3 million has already appeared in Dr. Guth’s bank account, one that had had a balance of $200. “Suddenly, it said, $3,000,200,” he said. “The bank charged a $12 wire transfer fee, but that was easily affordable.”"
NYT
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment