Front-Page Physics
WHY THE NEWS FROM BEYOND IS BEYOND US.
Written by syndicated columnist- Charles Krauthammer

The news from physics is not good. It seems that an X-ray satellite has discovered evidence 
of enormous amounts of "dark matter" in the far reaches of space, perhaps enough to stop the 
expansion of the universe and cause its eventual extinction in the Big Crunch, a spectacular 
reversal of our birth in the Big Bang.

Some people find this news depressing, it foretells the end. Not me. After all, the expanding 
universe is no picnic either. It too ends-in a state of infinite, frozen dissipation. Given 
the choice between fire and ice, I hold with those who prefer the world to end in fire.

What I find more depressing than the prospect of the End is the epistemological void 
illuminated by these flashes from physics. Front-page physics is noteworthy less for the 
knowledge it imparts the layman than for the invincible ignorance in which it leaves him.

What, after all, is "dark matter"? The New York Times blithely, and no doubt accurately, 
refers to it as an "invisible material of an unknown kind." What possibly can that mean? The 
fact that there might be 10 times as much of this invisible stuff around as ordinary chairs 
and tables does not make it any more solid or comprehensible.

Consider another recent piece of physics news: 315 scientists using a massive atom smasher, 
whose particle detector alone cost $65 million, were unable to find the squarks and gluinos 
required for the theory of "super symmetry." Interesting news, with serious policy 
implications-Congress is planning to spend $8.2 (8.6) billion on an even stronger squark-hunt
ing gismo in Texas. But what does it mean? Super symmetry-a way to unify theories of 
electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear forces-is even more opaque a notion than dark 
matter, which at least has some analog in magic.

Why is physics so difficult? The reason is at its heart is math of astonishing complexity. 
One either devotes a lifetime to penetrating the math-two winters ago I worked my way 
through a 700-page calculus text in preparation for an assault on the Everest that is 
physics, before capitulating in exhaustion at base camp 1-or one tries the shortcut of 
metaphor.

Problem is, metaphor doesn't work. Stephen Hawking's best-selling "A Brief History of Time" 
is all metaphor and, as anyone who has read it can tell you (I read it twice), entirely 
incomprehensible. A recently done film version of the book is engaging but even less 
illuminating.

Or take James Gleick's wonderful new biography of the great physicist, Richard Feynman. 
Gleick, perhaps the country's finest science writer, is a master of metaphor. (My favorite: 
batches of cards in a primitive computing system passing each other "like impatient golfers 
playing through.") He illuminates for us the life of a man who for amusement picked the 
locks of his co-workers' safes while working on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. But what is 
there to understand about Feynman's theory of quantum electrodynamics which won him the 
Nobel Prize in 1965? When asked by newsmen about his discovery, Feynman was tempted to say: 
"Listen, buddy, if I could tell you in a minute what I did, It wouldn't' be worth the Noble 
Prize." In fact, he cannot really tell you in a book.

Why is any of this important? For reasons of policy obviously-$8 billion is real money. But 
even more for reasons of theology. In this age of science, physics is a form of revelation. 
For Einstein it was the purest form: God's rule book. Einstein saw in the order and beauty 
of the universe evidence of a benign intelligence. Other physicists have been driven to 
contrary conclusions. It was said of the great physicist and atheist Paul Dirac, "There is 
no God and Dirac is His prophet." It would be nice for ordinary mortals to be able to judge 
between these views, or even to understand them. But they remain impenetrable to laymen.

The layman's only comfort is that just as he cannot penetrate physics, physics cannot 
penetrate theology. "It seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on 
the mystery of creation," writes astronomer Robert Jastrow at the close of his book "God and 
the Astronomers." "For the scientist...the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the 
mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over 
the last rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for 
centuries."

Jastrow is a scientist with, one might say, a layman's appreciation of the mystery of 
physics, its deeper meaning being as hidden from the physicist as the underlying equations 
are from the layman. He puts his hopes in a current NASA experiment listening for signs of 
sentient life in the universe. He calculates that any intelligence capable of signaling us  
must be millions, perhaps billions of years more advanced than us. Enough time, Jastrow 
reckons to have worked out, for the sharing, the theological conundrums that bedevil us. 
So he proposes his own shortcut to true knowledge: Check the mail. Got a better idea?