Science writing made readable
L.A. Times science writer K.C. Cole goes embedded at Fermilab for a first-person Column One about the hunt for elusive sterile neutrinos.
It's one of the hardest experiments in physics: an attempt to pin down a particle that leaves no tracks and interacts with nothing — a ghost as hard to grasp as the chill that raises the hairs on your neck.
The only hint that this subatomic poltergeist even exists popped up in a 1995 experiment brushed off as almost certainly wrong by the vast majority of physicists. If confirmed, however, the finding would shake physics to its boots, introduce a whole new family of particles and perhaps help explain why the universe is made of matter.
So naturally, when Columbia University physicist Janet Conrad invited me to help search for the particle at the world's premier physics lab, I could hardly pass up the chance. The fact that I can hardly hang a picture didn't faze Conrad a bit. It's just like cooking, she said. "There's a recipe by which you put it together. It comes out, or it doesn't."
You have to read it to know how the story ends.
11:51 AM Saturday, December 20 2003 •
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The story doesn't end... There should have been a "Discontinued" note. I generally like KC Cole's science stuff, but he is a timid reporter on the frontiers of science. Neutrinos potentially have data from the future and the past embedded in them since they pass through all matter at a speed faster than light. The meaning of these experiments for future science is something the piece and the writer avoid talking about.
Ironically, there is also a story today in the Times about the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez incident. Just before that incident, I had been dreaming for weeks of something that would happen soon, and the phrases "breakthrough" and "disaster" kept popping in connection.
On the day of the Valdez disaster, there was indeed a breakthrough: the discovery of cold fusion at the University of Utah. How curious that one would have forever ended the other's
despotic rule of our economies. I sometimes think the Valdez was deliberately run aground to overshadow the cold fusion story, because they knew that once the $400-billion oil industry could get its p.r. minions on the streets, the fusion story could be branded as a hoax. If you ask more than 2,000 labs around the world that replicated the experiment in whole or in part, some of which are still doing so today, you 'll find that it was not a hoax but a breakthrough. But who has the time and persistence for that story?
The upshot, as they told me personally at the time, was that science writers at the LA Times were fortever "burned" on breakthrough science,
especially when it comes to obsoleting oil. They got played for suckers.
Interesting analysis, Johnny Neutrino. But maybe you should back up and realize KC Cole is a she, not a he. THEN go do the math.
Lew Fisk
Why does the sex of the reporter have any bearing on the piece? Are women, by definition, "timid reporters?
The story doesn't end... There should have been a "Discontinued" note. I generally like KC Cole's science stuff, but he is a timid reporter on the frontiers of science. Neutrinos potentially have data from the future and the past embedded in them since they pass through all matter at a speed faster than light. The meaning of these experiments for future science is something the piece and the writer avoid talking about.
Ironically, there is also a story today in the Times about the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez incident. Just before that incident, I had been dreaming for weeks of something that would happen soon, and the phrases "breakthrough" and "disaster" kept popping in connection.
On the day of the Valdez disaster, there was indeed a breakthrough: the discovery of cold fusion at the University of Utah. How curious that one would have forever ended the other's
despotic rule of our economies. I sometimes think the Valdez was deliberately run aground to overshadow the cold fusion story, because they knew that once the $400-billion oil industry could get its p.r. minions on the streets, the fusion story could be branded as a hoax. If you ask more than 2,000 labs around the world that replicated the experiment in whole or in part, some of which are still doing so today, you 'll find that it was not a hoax but a breakthrough. But who has the time and persistence for that story?
The upshot, as they told me personally at the time, was that science writers at the LA Times were fortever "burned" on breakthrough science,
Posted by: Joe Shea at December 20, 2003 01:51 PMespecially when it comes to obsoleting oil. They got played for suckers.