Hello, and welcome to the Physics World weekly
podcast.
I'm Hamish Johnston.
In this episode, I'm in conversation
with the particle physicist and author,
Michael Albro.
Originally from The UK,
Michael has held academic positions at the University
of Birmingham,
the University of Stockholm, and at Fermilab in
The US, where he's currently
scientist
emeritus.
Michael has been involved in collaborations
that made two of the most important discoveries
in particle physics.
The top quark at Fermilab
in 1995
and the Higgs boson at CERN
seventeen years later.
Since his retirement, Michael has devoted much of
his time to the public understanding of science
through writing and collaborating with visual and musical
artists.
We sat down here in Bristol to talk
about this third age of his career in
physics.
We began by chatting about Michael's book, Space
Times
Matter,
100 short stories about the universe,
which is now out.
It's a collection of brief essays on a
wide range of scientific
topics.
Many were published in Michael's
local paper,
Positively
Naperville.
And I began by asking him about the
book.
Hi, Mike. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you
for having me. So, Mike, your book is
subtitled 100
short stories about the universe.
And each story is short. I mean, no
more than two pages long, I think. And
I think there's even a couple that are
just one page long. So why did you
choose this format?
It wasn't really a choice. You see, when
I retired officially from Fermilab
about eight years ago,
I'm still doing things there, but I wanted
to spend more time doing things like writing.
And I contacted a local paper, a monthly
freebie, and they had they had columns from
your local dentist and fashion and so I
said, we'd like a science column, because I
happen to meet the editor. I said, sure.
If you don't want paying for it, we
could try that.
And but keep it to 400 words. That's
the column length. So so I did that,
and I had a monthly deadline to do
that. So every month, oh, I've got to
do that by tomorrow, and I did one.
And then after five years, I had about
60 in there. And,
they stopped it then. They need more advertising
space.
But I'd also written about 24 pieces
of science to go with an art exhibition
that we could talk about later.
So then I had 60 plus 24, and
I made it up to around 100. And
I thought, these pieces, people have read them
and put them in the trash maybe, but
I'd like to get them together and make
100 short stories.
I call them stories. It's it's like
flash fiction, which is limited about four or
500 words, but it's flash nonfiction. You see,
so people can just browse browse the pieces
in no particular order. And
so that's how how that happened. And I
was thinking,
you know, about a year and a half
ago, it'd be nice to have them in
a book. And,
I was going to meetings with the Chicago
Writers Association, and they met a publisher who
said they were interested in doing that. So
so that's how that happened. And,
and,
yes. So I think I
would I wanted to write a popular science
book, but I wouldn't have had the patience
to sit down and write a whole book,
you know, like that. And also, I think
it's a format that people like because they're
interested in science,
but they don't necessarily want to read through
a whole book.
But to browse
lots of short pieces is something that that
they they like, you know, it gives them
enough information to get started.
That's right. Yeah. And I I mean, I
do. I I immediately
saw you know, see what you mean by
stories because they are,
you know, sort of self contained, and, you
know, there's an interesting nub in there. And,
you know, often you're relating it to current
events or or a historical event that, you
know, happened on this day Right. Way back.
So, yeah. I I I I think I
see what you mean. You can
you can get through the book Yeah. Very
quickly, or at least feel like you're going
through quickly.
And,
it doesn't feel like you're sort of slogging
through Right. A lecture on on sites. It's,
you know, very breezy and,
yeah. Yeah. So every month when the deadline
came up,
for that month's
column, they called it column,
I thought it's a special month or some
celebration or something or something new in the
new in the news that's interesting to talk
about.
And,
often there was, and sometimes the pieces are
specifically dated, and I put the date there
when it's relevant. But sometimes there was nothing
seemed to be
special, and I just wrote about, you know,
something more general. And I put those in
a special section at the beginning of the
book that they weren't specifically about particles or
space or cosmology or something like that. So
I call those values, but, an introduction.
So there's pieces like,
you know, encouraging girls to to do science,
or
distinguishing between science and nonsense or science and
nonscience and nonsense. And and I think those
are I I like those pieces because so
many people don't distinguish between science and nonsense,
you know, or truth and truth and false
truth or whatever. Fake news is done.
And, I wanted to ask you specifically about
values. You do I mean, you just mentioned
values there, and, you know, I think the
word appears
in your book. What,
I mean, what what do you mean by
values and and sort of communicating the values
of science to to the public? What what
do you mean by that, and why is
it important?
Well, the word values, I wasn't quite sure
about what what word to use for these
general things, but, but the values that scientists
should should have, I mean,
that those are things like, you know, curiosity
and and truth, and
and being ready and able to
put aside something which is clearly not it
may be a beautiful idea, but if it
disagrees with nature, then you have to put
it aside.
And an example of that is Fred Hoyle's
steady state theory of the universe, you know,
and he said the universe should look the
same at all times and all places
to call the perfect cosmological principle.
And then the big and then they found
the you know, it's expanding. It's not static.
Well, he said, well, maybe a new hydrogen
atom is produced every cubic meter every every
year or something like that.
But, so he was reluctant to give up
his big his his steady state theory.
And,
but, you know, one has to give up
ideas even if they're beautiful if they can
be demonstrated before.
So those values and other values are, you
know,
really are
honesty, you have to be honest in science.
You can't pull over people's eyes. You can
try sometimes, but you'll be found out. You
know? And that was, for example, the cold
fusion fiasco,
where it could
be demonstrated
that, and
a lot of people jumped on that idea
to see if they could there was anything
to it,
but there's nothing to it in the end.
You know? And
so the sort of values
businesses have to have are things things like
honesty,
distinguishing truth from non truth, or things like
that. And is that you know, as our
society becomes
increasingly reliant
on science and technology,
and
I suppose science and technology
becomes more complicated and difficult to understand,
Is it
is it becoming more and more important to
try to help society
deal with
those sort of values in the sense that,
it's even more imperative that people understand the
scientific method. And,
you know, for example during the pandemic, understand
why
the advice from scientists
changed,
simply because the scientists were doing their best
to understand, and their understanding
changed.
I mean, is that I I think some
of you you were writing in that period.
Am I right in thinking? Well, true. Because
I started about '8. So you're absolutely right.
And there's an increase, at least in The
USA,
probably here too. But especially in The USA,
there's a movement away from science and people
not
you know,
when they see that a scientist changes their
mind about something, they think, oh, you're flip
flopping or whatever. You don't know what you're
talking about. But we have to change our
minds when when when we're going down the
wrong path.
And,
but there's this very worrying tendency in America
for people to mistrust science, including
including at the highest levels, you know. And,
things like, you know,
the the pandemic came and everybody was so
worried about it spraying. We're wearing masks. We're
getting vaccinated finally. Thanks to science developing the
vaccine. And if that hadn't happened, then who
knows what could have happened? I mean, exponential
growth in in this pandemic.
And one piece in my book is about
pandemics and the big bang
and both exponential growth.
The population as well. The population is is
growing exponentially. We can't it can't keep happening.
Nothing can keep growing exponentially, I think, except
in mathematics, but I believe also in the
in the universe itself
that the expansion of the universe
is now sort of exponential growth, but it
can't happen forever.
And that's another part of the story,
because
exponential growth,
is is got to be limited. And so
the population of the Earth, which at the
moment has a doubling time of about sixty
years or something like that. But, maybe we
could cope with a factor of two more
population, but
it's gonna be very difficult. And if we
don't do something to control it,
then,
nature will control it by pandemics or major
disasters or something. So it it's so we
have to be careful about about,
dampening down the exponential growth of population and
and other things.
And so, Michael, you spoke briefly about space.
A good number of the stories,
are related to space. I suppose that's not
surprising if you're trying to convey scientific concepts
to to the general public. Space is a
great place to start.
Why why do you think that that space
has captured
human imagination
for eons? Is this I mean, I I
think in in in your stories, you do
write about how you,
as a as a young boy, were were
Yes. Enamored with space.
Yes. But I think space has been fascinating
for eons, you'd say, back in back in
the days of our caveman ancestors that,
people saw the
sky. They didn't know what it was,
but it's beautiful.
And, so
space has always been fast or things in
space have been fascinating. The the sun and
the moon, what are they? They make gods
out of them, you know. And,
but now
space our knowledge about space has changed so
enormously in the last decades, you know. When
my when my father was a was a
kid, we thought that, you know, we knew
the Milky Way was,
was around us was made of stars, and
we thought we're in a in a galaxy
that was the universe.
And,
it's only really in the lifetime of my
father and myself that we've gone from thinking
that, you know,
the whole universe is is our galaxy. We've
now found a 100,000 galaxies. We know they're
roughly bare by counting them in a small
pinhead area and then multiplying up.
But,
and then space has been fascinated with
science, science fiction, and so on. So
but, yeah, as a small boy,
you're right. I I I started at the
age of about 10. I even remember before
that
being puzzled by the moon. What's that doing
up in the sky? And I remember my
dad waking me up late one night, to
go and see a total eclipse of the
moon. He knew I was interested in those
things.
So when I was,
11, 12,
I started a small astronomy club with kids
kids in the neighborhood, you know, and we'd
meet and and
and then
it that was my main hobby through my
teen teen years as astronomy.
And,
I was very lucky,
that not far away from me, I lived
in Crawley in Sussex, and at East Quinstead
about eight miles away was Patrick Moore, who
was then unknown. He was a school teacher,
actually, and but starting to write books, Guide
to the Moon, Guide to the Planets.
And,
he was president of the Junior Astronomical Society
that, that I I I joined there, and
I wanted to go to a meeting in
London.
And my dad didn't want me to go
by myself, but he
saw that the president was Patrick Moore, who
lived not far away, called him up and
said, would he take me to the meeting,
which we met at the railway station? And
my dad was immediately impressed with him, you
know. So but but
then, I could cycle over to his house,
look through his backyard 12 inch telescope and
the moon and planets, and that was so
exciting. And then sometimes I'd be there,
and it was cloudy,
and he was be sitting there typing away
on his next book on an old typewriter
that he used throughout his whole life, his
old typewriter.
And,
and I could sit there, and he had
his wonderful books and magazines about astronomy, so
I should read them. So and
so that was,
that was great to have a mentor like
that to sort of encourage me. He took
me for my boy scout's astronomy badge, for
example.
And I think may maybe for our,
readers outside of The UK, I think would
it be right to say that that this
is on par with sort of hanging around
with Carl Sagan? I think it would be
a very for for an American, sort of
a similar thing, wouldn't it? It? Probably. I
would ignore as a, you know, a great
sort of promoter of scientific thought Right. Especially
in the space. Yeah. He he,
yeah, he's not well known in the in
The USA, but I think in in England,
people pretty well know him because at that
time,
there were only two black and white TV
channels. We didn't even have a TV ourselves
at home, and, he started his monthly program
of Sky at Night. And the very first
episode
of that was in April
1957.
I remember the date because
we didn't have a TV. I didn't know
what was going on, but I found later
that his episode was
about a new comet, Aaron Roland, in the
sky. And it was gonna be a bright
naked eye comet, so I was excited to
look for that,
night after night. And, eventually, on the very
same night as first,
emission of the sky at night,
the,
I saw it. I was on a cycling
trip away from home and
been watching it every night. And I saw
it, and it was so exciting.
And I noticed,
actually, that there was a
a beard, a sort of anti tail pointing
in the direction seems to be pointing in
the direction of the sun. I thought that's
odd. I I knew comet tails pointed away
from the sun being blown by the solar
wind.
Anyway, I drew I drew this, and night
after night the next night, it was gone.
And,
so I drew drew this and
and wrote a little note about it to
the Junior Astronomical Society magazine.
And,
they they
they referred to this
observation as an anti tail.
I had no idea what it was at
the time.
Later, I found out what it was, which
was a dust trail left in the orbit
of the comet
and only visible on rare occasions when the
Earth passed through the orbit of the comet.
And it really is going away from the
Sun, but by perspective and the right angles
between the comet and the Earth and the
Sun,
it looked as if it was pointing towards
the Sun. It wasn't really.
But but,
I found out later it had been seen
only once before on a comet in
eighteenth century.
And,
so it's a real thing. And,
you know, it was exciting. I it was
a discovery. I mean, of course, other people
saw it, but not so many saw it.
Yeah. And you and you you reported it.
I reported it. You had the sense to
report it. Yes. And I still have my
notebook at the time with the whole series
of of a comet drawings. I drew in
white ink on black paper. So
Oh,
that's fantastic.
Yeah. And there's another comet that year, naked
eye comet, co comet Murakos. And, that was
also exciting, but the first one was was
really great. And I you I use that
story
of having seen something new in the sky
as a 13 year old to encourage kids
to
to you could you could you even kids
can make a discovery
if they look at the sky or if
they search for fossils and so on, or
they they can actually if they know what
to expect and see something they didn't expect,
that
is fun anyway, and it could even be
a new dinosaur you found or something like
that or,
or other things happening in the sky. It's
all things happening in the sky. And
and even even a naked eye observation
can can
can become important.
Certainly interesting.
And I was lucky because we lived in
Crawley, not so far from London, but,
but the skies outside the house were dark.
I could go outside at night to see
the Milky Way. And Wow. Just a moment.
And drop in the galaxy. Guess with my
naked eye. Gosh. Yeah. 20 miles south. I'm
guessing you can't do that today in Cromwell.
Unfortunately, the sky is so polluted.
It's sad because I think so many kids,
for example, living in the city of Chicago,
they've not really ever seen a night sky.
You know?
And I think it would be great if
you have I there's a night skies a
dark skies association that I I joined.
But it would be nice if maybe for
one evening a year, we
shut stuff all put that put off all
the switch off all the lights. Right? And
and so the kids in the cities
can maybe see the night sky, but even
then, the sky is the air is polluted.
But taking kids out of the city
in, like, a summer camp to some place
where you can see the sky is, inspiring
for them,
and that would be good.
And sort of moving fur further into your
book,
there there's quite a bit about particle physics.
You you're a particle physicist and,
you, I suppose had the great privilege of
being involved
in the discovery of both the top quark
and the Higgs boson.
But what's next for you? I mean, if
you could,
if you could, will,
another
breakthrough in particle physics, what would it be?
Is there a a particle that you would
like to see discovered? Or,
Yes.
Right. I'm still I'm still I'm still doing
working on it even though
I I
so
the real interest is related to dark matter
because
cosmologists, astronomers tell us there's more mass out
there in the universe that we don't know
what it's made of. It's not atoms.
It could be lumped coal or rocks or
whatever, but,
normally, we expect it's made of particles we
haven't yet discovered.
Either because
they're they're they're too massive for the LHC
or they're too weakly interacting with normal particles.
And theorists scream up all sorts of possibilities,
and
it could be that these dark matter particles
don't interact at all with normal matter particles
except through gravity,
which would make it very hard to actually
find them,
unless
they're big solid lumps or something or micro
black holes or something like that. But
but they think there may be particles that
called portals,
windows to the dark side, if you like.
So dark matter particles, which have to be
stable because they're still around,
but these particles could couple
weekly
to normal matter particles like protons
and dark matter particles.
So they could be produced in the Large
Hadron Collider,
and then decay back to,
normal matter particles if they have,
you know, if they have the right couplings
and strength and so on. So
people are looking very actively for these so
called portals. There are many examples serious
propose,
including a dark photon,
which has the same quantum numbers as a
photon, but it's got a mass. And,
it would decay
back to electron positrons or muon pairs or
whatever depending on its mass.
But the most exciting one possibility, I think,
is that there's another Higgs but another Higgs
type boson,
which could be quite light actually. It could
be
ten, twelve, 15 GeV.
And the Higgs
we found at massive one twenty five GeV,
could decay to two of these.
So
the
the Higgs we know and love to two
of these new Higgs is
and they could be.
So
they could come this this Higgs
the these light Higgs's or scalars,
could would then decay back to normal particles,
but maybe they travel
typically
a 100 meters, and a place to look
for them might be down the beamline direction.
All the other searches are looking sideways where
the big detectors are,
focusing on.
But,
so
it turns out there's a place
along the NHC beam lines
after they've gone through steering magnets and focusing
magnets,
and there's a space of, like,
20 meters where there are no magnets. There's
a straight pipe with the two beams going
in in and out through this pipe
before it goes back into the,
the main superconducting
elements of the ring. So that space
could one could put detectors in there to
look for something that's being produced in the
main collision region.
It it's weakly interacting, so it penetrate
up to 50 meters of iron in the
magnets,
and then come out the back of these
magnets and decay back to standard model particles
where we could detect them
using the same detectors being built for the
upgrade,
high precision detectors, calorimetry, and tracking, and so
on.
So the idea is to put the set
of detectors at the back there and look
for these particles
if they come into k. Now
the golden channels would be this if this
is another scalar
that's produced from the
main Higgs that we know and love down
to two of these with a branching fraction
of one or 2%, which is still conceivable,
not ruled out,
then one of them could come in our
direction
and then decay back to,
the heaviest particles it can.
So if its mass is, like,
12 TeV, it can go to,
tau plus, tau minus. They're heavy versions of
the electron in the neuron,
or to charm anti charm pair or to
beauty beauty
anti beauty or b anti b quark.
And this would be a signature,
that is,
sort of unique. So maybe if you can
kill the backgrounds,
you could discover
such a particle
with only half a dozen events if
if, the mass and the lifetime and so
on are in the right range. So that's
it's looking under a lamppost. Other people haven't
looked under, you know, for these particles. That
would be very exciting because that's a new
form of particle. It could be dark they
call people call it dark photon or axion
like particle or dark eggs and so on
or heavy neutral lepton. These are
all particles that theorists dream up, and,
it's exciting to look for them. So so
after my retirement, I've been
working on this, but
as I'm not employed anymore, I can't leave
this, you know, but, I've been working with
it, and I'm hoping we now have a
a group,
who
we we put together a paper recently about
how this, could have sensitivity,
that is,
better than other experiments in this particular
domain.
And,
we're at the stage of we've talked to
the CMS leadership about it. They're interested. We're
talking to the LHC
machine people about it. And I hope that
this year, we can put together
a proposal
to,
first to CMS to see if they would
add this to their
busy
schedule of things to do.
And then,
and and then
it's it's
it's not hugely expensive as these things go
because
it uses it would use about 2%
of the new detectors being built for the
upgrade.
So it's all we say almost in the
spares, you know, but they say, well, you
can't touch our spares right now. Anyway, we'll
see. I mean, that's still exciting project for
me, but,
don't hold your breath because it would be
at least
five, six years before it could get in
there, then maybe it's ten years before you
have a discovery. But I I don't just
call it a search for, I call it
discovery hog.
And, Michael, that's the LHC, which, you know,
still has a few good years left in
it. Do you have any thoughts about what
should come after the LHC? Should there be,
another,
possibly bigger, more energetic
particle collider built?
And if so, do do you have a
favorite candidate? Are you looking at
a a bigger version of the LHC or
a linear collider? What, what would you like
to see built after the LHC?
Well,
because CERN CERN wants to have a long
term future. It it it so it's it's
developing the idea of a future CERN collider,
which would have about seven times the energy
of the LHC. It's a huge machine,
but nearly a 100 kilometers in circumference.
And
the present
idea, I think, is you start with electron
positron collisions in that in that in that
tunnel,
much low energy.
And then
after some period of doing that, you put
superconducting magnets in and do proton proton collisions.
And when you have proton beams, you can
also put heavy ion beams like, lead nuclei
and so on.
But I I'm not
an expert about all the practical issues, but
I think
why not,
build the tunnel such that you can have
at the same time an electron ring in
there and a proton ring in there. And
then you have the possibility, not only electron
positron,
but with the same but also proton proton,
proton nucleus,
electron nucleus, and so on. And,
you know, you don't do them
at the same time, but you have the
machine in there. You don't have to wait
wait six or eight years before you replace
the electron positron machine with a proton proton
machine. I call this omnitron. It's for everybody.
So it has all these possibilities.
And that would be I I I I
don't know about the technical difficulties of that
or how much it would cost upfront to
make the tunnel
the right shape and size for this, but,
but that would be a good machine. Other
other and
but I'm skeptical
about, for example,
well, maybe maybe supersymmetric
particles, which we we we think would be
wonderful to find a whole new particles,
a beautiful sim new symmetry.
But there's no reason why a factor of
seven in energy
would get you there. Then maybe you need
a 100 in energy. I don't, you know,
I don't know. Yeah. It's the the unknown
unknown, isn't it? Right. It's very difficult to
plan for that sort of thing. So we
haven't supersymmetry is a nice idea, but we
haven't found any supersymmetric particles. And
and for example, the electron
should have a partner called the SUSY electron
or Selectron,
but we haven't seen it up to a
TV and energy,
which is like a a million times heavier
than the electron. So if it's a symmetry,
it's a very badly broken symmetry.
And it
so it could be that you'd need
a a much higher energy collider, which is
to to find them, or you find them
a different a different way.
And then
other possibilities called a muon collider is on
people's radar, and people are working about at
Fermilab as well, developing the idea
of having on the Fermilab site, you could
have a muon collider.
And, technically, it's a huge challenge because the
muons, you have to produce pions, and muons
decay. You have to capture them,
make beams of them, and then accelerate them
very quickly.
Of course, they're decaying all the time. But
the faster they go, the longer their lifetime
is. So
and then
and then you could,
study,
things like the Higgs boson and height with
high precision in different ways and so on.
So that would be
that would be an interesting future, but it
doesn't really replace the large hydrogen chloride. It
does
specialized thing.
And,
of course, Fermi now is much into neutrino
physics, which is a big, very interesting
channel hand channel. We don't understand the neutrinos
and how the three flavors and three masses.
But a breakthrough could come in
developing
either very rapid acceleration techniques with so called
wake field accelerators
to get very high energy in a short
distance
or,
in
superconducting magnet developments. So there's no
there's no thing like speed of light limit
as far as I know that prevents
you having magnets with 10 times the field
if you can develop them. And then you
could, you know, you could
build high energy machines without
going to huge sizes.
So these these are I'm not competent to
judge the practicalities of these things, but there
are there there's a future. And then, of
course,
we have the year of the the laboratory
in the sky of cosmic rays,
which should deserve, of course, I mean, being
studied in many ways, of course, but
but there could be
that they take us to collision energies that
are thousands of times higher than the Large
Hadron Collider.
And
one simulates the collisions of these particles in
the atmosphere.
And
there have been sometimes abnormalities like more muons
than you expect and so on. So this
really followed up because maybe they are pointing
to something new happening at a higher much
higher energies than the LHC.
I was part of
this project,
which is ultra high energy cosmic rays.
At the beginning, developing
this,
Jim Cronin,
who got Nobel Prize for CP violation, but
he he then said, look. Well, we should
really understand the highest energy cosmic rays, where
they're coming from.
There's the top energy
the top end of the energy spectrum
is a cutoff
because,
for example, protons
above the energy
would hit photons in the microwave background,
and they'd be blue shifted to high enough
energies that you can create pi mesons in
the proton plus microwave background,
events.
And that's a cutoff. It makes the universe
transparent on a scale
of galaxy scale.
So
seeing them,
above that's cutoff would mean they're very local.
So
they built,
this Auger Observatory cosmic ray observatory in Argentina,
finding
the place where the darkest very dark sky
is away from city lights but still accessible.
And I was down there at the beginning.
We'd chosen the site,
and they built 1,300 water tanks.
About,
1,300 water tanks
spaced by kilometer,
so covering an area about three times the
area of the city of Chicago.
And sometimes with these very handy cosmic rays,
they make showers in the atmosphere that spread
over many square kilometers of the ground,
and the particles come into a dozen or
so of water tanks
and make make light in the tanks by
Cherenkov light.
And by timing
precision timing, you can tell where the cosmic
ray came from,
to within about better than half a degree,
the size of the full moon.
And they have now,
started to see sources like,
a galaxy
or galaxies that seem to be emitting these
cosmic rays.
The highest energy ones, you need them to
do astronomy because
most of them get bent by galactic magnetic
fields, and they don't point back to the
source. But when you get to the really
high energy ones, they tend to point back
to the source, and they've started to see
them. So that's a new era of cosmic
ray astronomy.
Then,
other non electromagnetic
astronomy is now with we've got neutrino astronomy
with IceCube project, which is amazing, a cubic
kilometer of ice and Antarctica
instrumented.
That that's brilliant. The way they
vary thousands of protomultipliers
deep in the ice with hot water melting
columns.
And then there's gravitational wave astronomy. So these
new astronomers coming in, we we now detect
so many black hole and neutron star mergers
and so on.
So these are new windows on the sky
that I think is an exciting
future for that.
But that's
okay. It's related to
particle physics, of course, specular neutrinos are, not
so much gravitational waves, but, neutrinos and cosmic
rays are.
So, Michael,
I mean, beyond your your work in physics,
you have a long standing interest in art,
visual art, and music.
And you're currently collaborating with, the Indian American
visual artist,
Shanti Chandrasekhar.
Can you talk a bit about that project?
Yes.
So
the Fermilab, we had an art exhibition,
rotating art exhibition, and Shanti Chandrasekhar
came and had an exhibition of her abstract
art as beautifully done,
but inspired by science. She came from a
science family in India,
and she had pieces about black hole and
big bang and space and time and energy.
And she gave a colloquium about it, and
I was
I thought this is wonderful. And I was
able to take her and her husband to
dinner and said,
you know, I really think you should have
a a coffee table book of your art.
And if you want if you ever do
that, and she hadn't done it,
maybe I could write a bit about the
science behind your inspiration.
So she has a beautiful piece inspired by
time,
and
I wrote,
not to go with it. And
a few years later, she called me, and
she said she'd been invited to do an
exhibition at the,
American University in DC at the Katzin Gallery,
and would I like to collaborate with her
and write science behind her pieces? You know?
Her
I didn't
so
that was great fun, and we had an
exhibition with 24 pieces of her art, and
each one had my science writing beside it.
And
and
that we published a catalog or a book
of those pieces. It wasn't a coffee table
book, but,
and
it went
quite well because the gallery said we'll print
50 copies of this catalog, but they went
quickly. And so they print another 100, and
they're it's out of print now.
But, that was fun. So
then,
we followed up with three further smaller exhibitions,
some using the same pieces and others new
pieces.
One at the Cosmos Club in DC and
two at the Kennedy Center.
So and now
the National Academy of Sciences
asked if she would be interested in doing
an exhibition there.
So because, yes, of course. So we put
a proposal in.
She has many more pieces that she's done,
and I would write pieces of science to
go with them. So that proposal is in
waiting because the National Academy is now not
sure about its situation funding wise and so
on and so forth. So but I hope
that,
will happen.
But even if that doesn't happen,
I think we will be talking to publishers
about maybe making a
coffee table book about these pieces, 40 pieces
or 50 pieces of soap with writing. So
that was that. That's the art connection. I'm
I I don't actively do art. I I
was doing art for two, three years in
Geneva.
That was fun. And my daughter's a very
good artist, by the way. And,
but,
then the music is another story
because
about twelve years ago, I went to a
concert,
in Chicago or in Naperville in the suburbs
about Holts planets with Holts Planet Suite, and
they showed
together with the music, in fact, synchronized with
the music, beautiful video of the planets,
that was put together by an astronomer,
Jose Francisco Salgado,
who is also a videographer.
And,
that
so I I saw that and thought that's
great. And then two years ago, I was
at another concert in Chicago.
I met by chance,
Anne Barlow, who had started
this
science and symphony,
organization. They've since done
14
different productions
of different science tub with with with with
a symphony music. Some of it's,
already
composed. Some pieces, they get specially composed for
the for the for the pieces. Is that
KV265?
That's a technical KV265.
Right. Okay. Yep. Do you know what that
mean?
I well You may have read it, but
No. Actually, I don't. So what does what
does that mean? Right. Right. Right. So not
many people know that, but it's the catalog
number of a piece of music by Mozart.
Okay. I thought there might have been a
Mozart connection. Yeah. And and and the tune
is Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
So Oh, that's fantastic.
So now I'm
I'm quite actively involved with Anne and Jose
Francisco.
She's a musician, and he's a videographer astronomer.
And he left the other plan chair, and
he's doing this full time now.
But my vision is that we could bring
the new
the new astronomers into the game by having
a a short films about gravitational waves and
black hole mergers and so on synchronized with
music and neutrino astronomy
and also cosmic ray astronomy. So these are
the new windows on the sky put together
with music, and,
and I'm hoping that will happen.
Timescale is probably two years and so on.
I mean, sort of things sort of things
that Brian Cox does very well,
but
his
this is a bit different because the this
this the symphony is actually
synchronized very well with the visual, so that's
something very special about it. And That sounds
very nice.
Live orchestra
with big visuals or big screen
of black holes merging and so on.
It's it's powerful stuff. And he also does
also when they've reached half a million people
in concerts around the world with these con
with these concerts, actually. And he always does
science talks preceding or after the after the
concert,
you know, talking about the background behind it.
So,
like, all auras and
planets and galaxies in collision, things like that.
So so that's an exciting project. And
and also, another thing keeping me busy. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm I mean, speaking of
of keeping busy, this, I suppose this is
my final question for you, Michael. You've you've
retired formally from Fermilab nine years ago.
But, you know, obviously, you're very active both
in physics and outside of physics.
And, you know, I think these days, we'd
say that you're very much into the the
third age of your life.
So what advice can you give to physic
physicists who want to enjoy a very active
retirement? Should they stay
in touch with the physics, or maybe that's
not necessary? And and how do you get
involved in, you know, things that you love,
for example, like art
and Right. Music? Right. How do you how
did you pull it off, Michael, I suppose?
Well, actually has different tastes and things they
want to do. I I suspect that a
lot of physicists of mine who've retired,
they they they got into physics because they
loved it. They loved the science and so
on in the early days. And maybe as
their career developed, they've had to get more
into administration
or
it's harder to do to write your own
software, which was fun, you know, whatever.
Physics has changed. The big physics has changed.
I'm talking about particle physics experiments and so
on.
But when you retire, you could
you you put aside the responsibilities
you had of admins and budget searching and
so on and get back to the physics
you enjoyed in the first place. And one
way of doing that,
is by outreach to the public.
And
you you can develop your speaking skills, I
suppose. But Paul Manchanai,
he was on the OJ project. He's not
a retired physicist from Fermilab.
So
we found about life what's called Lifelong Learning
Institute, which does lectures for seniors,
55 and better.
And,
so we we started a series there. One
year, we did six talks.
Well, we did one or two talks, and
we got others to do other talks about,
one was about
about the the universe, one was about life
in the life in the universe, and and,
particles and so on. And these are pretty
popular. People would come
in, and, well, we'd had 25 or 30
people, but and then we'd go out to
also to other clubs, like, rotary clubs, for
example, who like to have a twenty minute
talk about what what do we do at
Fermidab. You know? And the other things that
Fermilab has
or had, which is prayer restoration and things
like that. So
so
I think that
in a
you may just want to go fishing or
something like that in your retirement, but
but you could give back to the public
because you you have,
you know, you have more time, you've got
knowledge, and and
you can inspire people and give them back
after the public pays for this. You know?
We say it's like a dollar per person
per year, but,
so but, anyway,
it's important the public understands what we do,
why we do it, and,
supports science, especially nowadays.
Great.
Well, that that's fantastic, Michael. Thanks so much
for joining me today. It was a great
conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thanks very much,
Hamish. It's a pleasure and good to be
here.
Thank you.
I'm afraid that's all the time we have
for this week's podcast. Thanks to Michael Albro
for a fascinating discussion.
I'll put a link to Michael's book, Space
Times Matter, in the podcast notes.
And as ever,
thanks to our producer,
Fred Isles.
We'll be back again next week.