The learner as far-seer

I recall a trivial incident from December 13, 2011, which was the day when the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) announced a possible sighting of the Higgs boson particle. It was not so much an incident as something I'm observing now: when the announcement was being made by Fabiola Gianotti, who's in-charge of ATLAS, I had to pause the live-streamed video once every few seconds to look up what she was talking about. A 20-minute-long presentation took more an hour to be understood.

The reason I remember the experience is that, more often than not, one doesn't know when the learning phase of life ends - many, like me, don't even know what comes after it if it ends. However, earlier today, when I was reading a journal article on using laser-induced plasma and the technology's application in particle accelerators, I surprised myself by understanding the entire thing without stopping even once; I could get what the authors were saying even when they were speaking only via formulae.

It was strangely dejecting because one of the most likeable things about particle physics in my opinion is its tendency to throw up previously unknown information just when we least expect it. In fact, even the one thing we thought we knew about this universe - the highest speed possible - was defied last year by some 15,000 neutrinos. And in such a scenario, when the picture suddenly becomes clear, when I can see the jigsaw puzzle board and the different empty shapes here and there waiting to be filled, it's as if I'm ready to start answering the bigger questions and leave the smaller ones behind.

[caption id="attachment_21624" align="aligncenter" width="334" caption="Clinton Davisson (left) and Lester Germer conducted an experiment since named after them - as the Davisson-Germer experiment - in 1927. Six years earlier, Einstein had won the Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery that particles were discrete encapsulations of energy called quanta. In 1927, French physicist Louis de Broglie presented his thesis that all particles have a wave-like characteristic. In the Davisson-Germer experiment, the two Americans stumbled across an electron diffraction pattern where they were expecting an electron diffuse-reflection pattern while studying the surface of nickel.  This proved de Broglie's informed conjecture true."][/caption]

I feel like the depressed man whose psychiatrist suggests he witness a performance by a clown in town. The depressed man then admits he is that clown.

At this point, I see two outcomes. The first one hints that I only want to keep learning and I'm not as interested in "deploying" that knowledge usefully. That is only partly true because, hey, I don't have a particle collider in my backyard that introduces new particles into my life so I can piece the universal puzzle together better. The second outcome suggests that my knowing a lot of things - science-wise and not - is, for the most part, a product of this fear of what-will-or-won't-come-next.

The first outcome doesn't bother me much because I've discovered I like teaching. Even though I may not be using my knowledge of IC engines to fix vehicles on desolate highways, I try and ensure as many people as possible understand how such engines work and do what they want with that knowledge. The same applies for particle physics. However, in this case, the dimension of teaching acquires more weight because its capacity to be misunderstood is great: it's a developing field whose foundations are currently under fire, whose experiments are so complex that multiple governments are helping fund it, whose conclusions are so counter-intuitive that the layman and the physicist are today many perspectives apart.

The second outcome is something I learnt while writing this post. The impetus that holds my two-decade-long learning spree up is nothing but fear, a fear of the unknown. Not learning something on a given day, with me, seems like forgoing a chance to imagine something we might not physically live. It's like the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics - a.k.a. Schrodinger's cat: for as long as I don't open the box, the cat is both dead and alive, the experience is both there and not there.

Saying "I learn not because I want to" is too bland: I learn because I want to look into the darkest corners of the universe and not see something that I can't understand or gauge in some way.

The popularly perceived notion of beauty comes with inexplicability: the capacity of an entity to defy definition and/or predictability, to defy structure and exhibit a will of its own in form and function. However, the silent reminder we are everyday given that, no matter how far out into the universe we venture or how deep we probe into the atom, the laws of physics are the same is the soul of beauty. And the inexplicability I seek to defy by learning is simply understanding how the same thing that gave us the dung beetle also gave us the Carina Nebula, that the same thing that gave us the Monarch butterfly also have us black holes.

[caption id="attachment_21625" align="aligncenter" width="335" caption="This image of the Carina Nebula is composed of multiple shots taken from the Atacama Desert in South America."][/caption]

I think that's a fear I've enjoyed and enjoy having.