by Steve Brown and Timothy Wheeler, Ignite Channel, Sci-Fi-London Film Festival, 19 May
SOME 1.3 billion years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, two black holes collided. This cosmic violence was over in seconds, but it took until just over three years ago for its aftershocks to reach Earth. Or at least, reach the twin detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in the US.
On 14 September 2015, lasers pinging up and down within LIGO鈥檚 detectors experienced a tiny flexing in the distance they were travelling, equivalent to a hair鈥檚 width difference in the journey to Proxima Centauri, our next-nearest star.
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This first direct detection of a ripple in space-time 鈥� a gravitational wave 鈥� eclipsed even the discovery of the Higgs boson by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It was the crowning triumph of general relativity, Albert Einstein鈥檚 century-old theory of gravity. And for the researchers most associated with the project, Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne, it brought a Nobel prize.
This classic story of rewarding precision, patience and brain power bookends Chasing Einstein, a documentary about big physics premiering in the UK next month. Nestled in between is a more nuanced tale of the motivations and sacrifices science demands.
There are hard questions. Does triumph blind us to failure? And are institutional conservatism and unquestioning adherence to established theories leading us down a blind alley?
For all its successes, physics of the LIGO/LHC type is in a funk. As Barish sums up in the film, 鈥淥K, Einstein was right. Now what?鈥� General relativity describes the universe鈥檚 larger workings better than any other theory, but to make it work, we must accept that gravity is acting on six times more matter than we can see.
The so-far futile search for dark matter is told in Chasing Einstein through well-chosen 鈥渃ast members鈥�. There is James Beacham, the bullish young American for whom the failure to produce dark matter just means we need a bigger machine. There is Italian experimentalist Elena Aprile, who divides her time between Columbia University in New York and the caverns of Italy鈥檚 Gran Sasso National Laboratory as she hunts down dark matter.
Her desire is to follow her hero Marie Curie and win a Nobel. But in more unguarded moments, she is also open about screwing up her relationship and missing her kids鈥� birthdays because experiments demanded all 鈥� and how it might all be better if she could only find a hint of being on the right track.
If she and Beacham represent the establishment, Erik Verlinde and Margot Brouwer are the insurgents. For all his modesty, Dutchman Verlinde would like to be a new Einstein, creating a theory of gravity to render dark matter redundant. Brouwer is the new PhD, who would play Arthur Eddington to Verlinde鈥檚 Einstein, verifying his theory, as Eddington did for general relativity with his 1919 solar eclipse measurements.
鈥淥ne question is becoming louder: must Einstein, the iconoclast, now be toppled?鈥�
Cree Edwards, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, voices the outsider鈥檚 frustration at the impasse when he cross-examines Beacham and Verlinde after inviting them to his Oregon ranch to observe a total solar eclipse.
There is a lot to like in the film鈥檚 interplay of characters, but it remains inconclusive in its central thesis that established ideas impede new ones.
What is striking is the patience with which people listen to each other. Minds are open to change, even though they might not be willing or able to deliver it. The film captures that stasis and change, the joys and frustrations of a field with no new answers, or answers raising new questions.
One scene stands out. Aprile and her colleagues on the XENON experiment at Gran Sasso 鈥渦nblind鈥� their data to see if they have found any dark matter. Their faces say it all, as Nobel dreams ebb away. It is a reminder of the nature of science.
Set against that is the privilege of being able to ask the big questions. Among them, one is becoming louder: must Einstein, the iconoclast, now be toppled?
