We spend a lot of time talking about the limits of science. What we usually talk about are the limits of what science can explain.
What we often lack is the influence of boundaries within science itself. By this I mean the walls that exist between different disciplines. If you want to learn about life, go to the biology department. But if you want to learn about matter, go to the physics department. These boundaries were never very rigid until the 19th centuryth century, when science began to become more professional. They are now starting to erode, thanks to new tools such as Big Data. But significant challenges remain that different domains talk to each other. I am reminded of these challenges as I head to this week’s meeting that brings together practitioners from four different disciplines.
Laser focus on language learning
From May 5 to 6, researchers from across the country will gather in Rochester, New York, for a meeting of the Center for Atomic Pressure Matter (CMAP). The center is a collaboration between universities and laboratories funded by the National Science Foundation, through their centers for the frontiers of physics.
The goal of CMAP is to study matter at densities that are deep inside the planet. To do this, researchers use large lasers such as those used to study fusion energy. Lasers can compress samples so strongly that in a few nanoseconds they are as dense as the interior of, say, Super-Earth exoplanets. CMAP is located in the Laboratory of Laser Energy, Laboratory of the Department of Energy Fusion at the University of Rochester.
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The fascinating thing about this project is how much of our effort is aimed at attracting researchers from different disciplines to learn each other’s languages. The team includes plasma experimenters who know the deep and difficult details of how lasers create small regions of hot, dense material. We also have condensed matter theorists who use computer codes to understand what happens when matter is compressed so hard. Then there are planetary scientists, who understand how planets come together. Finally, we have astrophysicists studying objects such as exoplanets outside the solar system.
Basic problems
You may think that since everyone involved is at least trained in physics, we should have no problem understanding each other. Interestingly, this is not the case. Each area has its own traditions, its own methods and its own ways of approaching the subject. It may take some time to bridge these differences if we really want to work together.
Problems can be basic as well as understanding which questions a field believes it has answered and how, on the other hand, those questions are seen outside the discipline. I got an insight into this during discussions about Jupiter’s core, which the introductory textbooks told me was small and rocky. Talking to planetary scientists has taught me that this conclusion is still in doubt.
Science must follow the example of nature
Over the last year, we CMAP researchers have made a lot of progress in learning to talk to each other. Because of this progress, we are forming specific research questions that can be solved in laser experiments. I’m really excited to see what will come out of this this week. But our experience shows how much effort is needed to cross the boundaries between scientific disciplines, even when the sciences are closely linked. Imagine, then, how difficult it is to get biologists and physicists, or physicists and social scientists, to talk to each other usefully. I use these two examples because I have been involved in projects on the borders of both (physics of life and social physics).
The question of borders between science can be just as important as boundaries of science, because the barriers between disciplines are rooted in illusion. Nature is a whole and does not separate into pure and perfectly distilled disciplines. As our tools get better, we find new kinds of unity between disciplines. (That’s the whole point of something like social physics.) But for the science of unity to be the next step, we must first climb over the walls that separate disciplines. What my experience with CMAP shows is how exciting it is to move on to those walls - and how much careful effort it takes.