Over the (southern) summer, I am digging into N-body dynamics as I start work on a couple of new research problems. To warm up, I wrote a simple code which tracks the motion of a handful of particles interacting via their mutual gravitational attraction. Watching the intricate dance the particles made in my simulations, it struck me that I had also inadvertently invented an algorithmic story-generator.
The Particle at the End of the Universe is one of the best. Carroll's account provides an excellent account of what we have learnt about the particle realm, capturing the excitement of the hunt and the grandeur of what has been discovered.
So, my take is that even if you can generate a spacewarp in the lab, a quick estimate says its gravitational effects would be billions or trillions of times below the threshold of detectability. The problem is not that warp drives are impossible, but that this description of them does not seem to be self-consistent.
SciFoo is -- in part -- a celebration of science, but problems within science and problems science has made for the world were key themes of SciFoo, turning it into something more than a mutual admiration session. But scientists like to fix problems, and for me that was the most rewarding aspect of the conference -- after SciFoo, it is easy to believe that the world can be a better place. Thanks.
But as we talked, we realized we shouldn't hog the fun for ourselves -- and that we would love to see (for want of a better name) a Science Fair: a chance for everyone to find out who scientists are, what we have discovered, and what we are up to -- and get involved with science themselves.
