The Return of the Physicist, for Maybe the First Time

Back in the year 1990, as a first year graduate student at the University of Texas, I wrote a research proposal as part of a competition sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Among the prizes for the competition were free hours one could use on one of several Cray supercomputer, the fastest machines in the world available at the time, which were located in California. With ten hours one could do a lot of number crunching for projects that require that kind of thing. 

I can't remember why I was motivated to enter the competition, or even how I heard about. I wasn't particularly interested in the computer time. Nevertheless I decided to enter it, and I wrote a short essay of several pages proposing a research program into what at the time was my favorite subject in all of physics--the spiral structure of spiral galaxies, including the Milky Way. The idea that conglomerations of tens of billions of stars in quasi-random movement could form and sustain such large-scale ordered structured seemed to me to be mind boggling.

It is not as if we don't have good theories as to why spiral galaxies have the form they do. To say it is an open question, or a mystery, is not to say we are completely in the dark. It means we don't have definite, conclusive proof of any one particular theory as to why spiral structure exists. It is one of the questions that astrophysicists continue to study, from the expanding data gathered by astronomers.

I mention this because lately I have found myself thinking deeply about the structure of spiral galaxies again, including the Milky Way. This time it is not about the star structure---the luminous spirals--but rather a more subtle spiral structure that is invisible to the naked eye, and which has emerged in recent years as a very controversial topic. It is the apparent existence of a spiral structure of plasma (charged particles) that is essential huge spiral version of the solar wind, but which pervades throughout the galaxy. 

As I mentioned, it is a very controversial topic, more so than one might think. The reason for it being controversial is very fascinating, but I am hesitant to discuss them here, beyond saying that it may have deep implications for the future of the human race.

I became aware of all this recently via Youtube, from a channel I found which discusses space weather (sunspots, solar corona mass ejections, solar storms, etc.). The person who runs it is an amateur but he does a daily review of published papers in astrophysics that is like catnip for someone like me. I have learned more from him in the last couple months than I have in many years. I am thinking of diving into his references for my talk next year in Prague (if that conference happens, and if I can even get there).

I have felt physics to be dead for many years. All of a sudden it has sprung back to life for me, and I am fascinated again by old questions. I feel I have the jump on much of the physics world in studying new and exiting things, in part because I am not bound by adherence to the dogmas that one has to use to explain certain atmospheric phenomena in regard to geomagnetism (cough, climate change, cough).

Not only do I feel interested in physics again, I feel as if I need to participate in it because I have a role to play in it. Whenever I feel this, it is a powerful feeling. 

By the way, as it happens, I won second place in the nationwide NSF competition with my galaxy essay. This was rather stunning to me, as at the time I was barely holding on in graduate school by my fingertips, and I was constantly questioning whether I even belonged in the program. Technical writing, however, is one of my strengths, so in some ways it was easy to shine.

Those ten free hours became part of leverage I used I getting my position at the Stat Mech Center. I never used them, however, as I never needed them. Probably my laptop is as powerful as those Cray Machines from thirty years ago (maybe not).

Those Cray machines in California, it should be mentioned, were, I think, the original "backbone" of something called the Internet. It was something physicists used back in the early Nineties. I remember telling my people about it. I'm not sure whatever became of it.