Comments on: You Can Be My Wingman Any Time.

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:07:21 +0000

I think you still get small teams working on stuff, but granted, fundamental physics is a huge industry now; you can’t build an LHC in your basement, for sure.

Also, depends what you mean by big breakthroughs. For example, you still get stuff being named after people who are still practicing scientists (Silk damping and the Magorrian relation, for example, off the top of my head), but these are both effects that probably wouldn’t interest non-astronomers much. Also, I suspect that in this age you wouldn’t get stuff you discover named after you quite so much.

But sure, none of this is “maverick” per se, and even people who have genius ideas that have the good fortune to be correct work through the usual peer review channels. The “maligned outcast” type is usually a crackpot or a fundamentalist Christian trying to prove that evolution is satanic or whatever.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 00:04:19 +0000

The thing is that if there’s experimental evidence to be found someone somewhere has likely done the experiment. It’s only serendipitous discoveries (like the Alvarez’s) or stuff that requires huge amounts of money (like CERN) that still elude us; the former you can’t really account for and the latter is never down to just one person.

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:04:52 +0000

Thanks, this was interesting. Although I have a pretty strong lay appreciation for science, I’m as interested in scientists and the stories that come from the practice of the field (arts student innit), so stories like Alvarez’ are interesting to me,

By: Gap Gen

Gap Gen — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 11:45:25 +0000

Interesting article. I’d add Empire of the Stars by Arthur Miller to your list of examples of venerable scientists blocking progress – it’s largely about how Chandrasekhar, and hence progress on neutron stars and black holes, was blocked by Eddington. It probably poisoned Chandrasekhar’s entire career, which is a shame as he was a great scientist.

There are people who have brilliant insights, which persists to this day in some form or another, although to really strike it big you need a relatively untapped field in something where experimental evidence is forthcoming in your lifetime (so maybe not string theory), which is more and more difficult to find as the scientific community grows and our body of knowledge expands, but it’s still possible. But most people who send e-mails around to physics depts saying I HAVE AN AMAZING THEORY YOU ARE ALL WRONG are crackpots.

Also, I literally get e-mails every week in the summer saying “now it is time for volleyball”.