Named after a founder of modern physics, the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen has for 95 years been the forum where many brilliant minds explain their cosmic insights.
Last month it hosted a meeting, the implications of which may change the course of science.
Nobel laureates, renowned theorists and even Prof Stephen Hawking made time for a meeting 16 years in the planning.
Many participants thought they knew what the centrepiece of the meeting would be – confirmation of a theory taking them beyond Albert Einstein to a better understanding of the cosmos.
Known as supersymmetry, it has long been viewed as key to creating an ultimate Theory of Everything – a single set of equations describing all the forces and particles in the universe.
Simply, it points to an underlying unity between components of the cosmos that otherwise seem unrelated.
Some theorists believed that supersymmetry was so elegant and its implications so astonishing that it had to be right. Some were so convinced that in 2000 they drew up an agreement with sceptics, offering bottles of cognac if they were proved wrong.
That proof was expected to come from the Large Hadron Collider.
If supersymmetry is right, then the LHC should find a host of particles never before observed. And the supporters of supersymmetry believed those particles would be found within a decade.
Finally, this summer, years later than expected, the LHC reached the energies expected to produce these particles. Last month, the teams involved in the search reported their findings.
They had observed nothing.
For some at the Copenhagen meeting, this came as no surprise. They had always regarded the arguments for supersymmetry as less than compelling, and were sceptical that the LHC would be able to find the particles, if they did exist.
But the theory’s supporters do not see it that way. They conceded they have lost – but only on a technicality. Sooner or later, they insisted, they would be proved right. The predicted particles would be found, if not in the LHC then in a bigger, more powerful accelerator.
Even so, the LHC’s failure to find any sign of supersymmetric particles created unease among some of the world’s most celebrated theorists.
At the Copenhagen meeting, Prof Hawking tried to lighten the mood with a joke, saying that he had not taken sides in 2000 – but if he had, he would have been on the winning side. As a long-time advocate of the wonders of supersymmetry, it was a classic, if esoteric, example of Prof Hawking’s sense of humour.
Some of those at the Copenhagen meeting found the situation rather less amusing. “It’s striking that we’ve thought about these things for 30 years and we have not made one correct prediction that they have seen,” said Nima Arkani-Hamed, professor of particle physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, after the LHC announcement last month.
Across scientific fields there is mounting concern that the grand projects of science are not delivering.
Since the 1990s, billions of dollars have been spent on research into the human genome but the long-heralded medical revolution has failed to emerge.
Despite decades of study, astronomers still cannot understand what is propelling the universe, or the nature of “dark matter”, the principal form of mass in the universe.
Meanwhile, the international quest for harnessing nuclear fusion – the power source of the stars – is teetering on the brink of collapse after decades of unfulfilled promises.
Do not expect to hear much about all this from those involved, however. Public admissions of failure with grand projects is widely regarded as unhelpful. That is what could make last month’s meeting in Copenhagen a turning point for science. It may mark the beginning of the end for Big Science, with its multibillion-dollar costs and decade-long timescales.
Across the sciences, there is a growing sense of unease about the lack of progress on so many fronts. Scientists say that has to do with the relentless demand to produce papers and bring in funding.
The result is “bandwagon science”, where researchers focus on fashionable ideas most likely to be accepted by journals, and lead to more funding. As more of these fashionable ideas fail, bandwagon science is starting to look as clever as investing huge sums into a handful of start-ups.
It is time for what smart investors have been doing for decades: diversification. What is needed is not bigger science, but smarter, broader and riskier science.
Ironically, one of the leading advocates of supersymmetry put it best in confessing his disappointment. “It’s a good time to scare the hell out of the young people in the audience and tell them: ‘Don’t follow your elders’,” said theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate David Gross.
“Go out and look for something new and crazy and powerful and different. Different, especially.”
The question is whether there are enough scientists willing to risk jumping off the bandwagon in the quest for cosmic insight.
Robert Matthews is visiting professor of science at Aston University, Birmingham.
newsdesk@thenational.ae
