We are a frightening and fragile species. Our puppies would not survive without the care of the group, supported for many years. A tiny virus is able to put our daily lives in check, plunging us into uncertainty without even trying. Our fears led us to invent imaginary beings that we postulate to be favorite creatures and to believe these stories with great devotion. And despite all this, we embarked on the irrational adventure of trying to understand Nature in its overwhelming totality. The contrast between our fear and our audacity is poignant.
We bet on a hypothesis full of wisdom: the keys to understanding the physical universe reside, we think, in its constituents and fundamental laws. Under the influence of this conjecture, we have come a long way. We discovered a fascinating microscopic reality: atoms made of quarks and electrons, the Higgs boson, a handful of other elementary particles we’ve seen in accelerators, and four fundamental interactions. All of this in the maddening legal framework provided by quantum.
If we had to choose a single scientific article that represented this colossal achievement of our species, I think there would be unanimity in the choice: A lepton model (A model of leptons).
In less than three pages, Steven Weinberg built into this work the heart of the Standard Model, the most accurate description of Nature ever conceived. The fact that the title of the article is “A model” instead of “The model” or, better, “The theory”, reveals that the author was not aware of the exceptional importance of what he had just written. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for that. Peter Higgs thinks he deserved to have also shared the one he won in 2013, but who would dare to give two Nobel Prizes for a single article so short!
If those who read these lines risked the possibility that the previous title was a matter of humility, it’s because they don’t know the character. Steven Weinberg was fully aware of his unique intelligence and talent because of his brilliant stint at New York High School, classmate – and, a few years later, Nobel – of Sheldon Glashow. His legend as a physicist was forged from an early age through essential publications that he almost always wrote as a single author. But not just for them. His books are the closest thing to sacred texts one can imagine in theoretical physics. “When I want to understand a subject and read what has been published, I invariably get the feeling that it has been misinterpreted; that’s why I write my books,” he told me over lunch three years ago, with the tired tone of someone dealing with a scientific community incapable of reaching its bottom line.
Along with his deep, powerful voice, his penetrating gaze, and the unusual precision of his colloquial language, Weinberg’s proverbial arrogance had a charming twist. His character’s fascinating magnetism immediately made him the center of attention. When he was proposed to leave Harvard to settle in Austin a few years after receiving the Nobel Prize, his contract had an implausible clause: his salary had to be the highest at the University of Texas. University officials forgot that clause a few years later when they hired a football coach for a millionaire. Weinberg paid a courtesy call, of course, with contract in hand…
Although the enormity of his work seems typical of someone who has not rested a single minute of his life, Weinberg has always been clear that a creative mind must carelessly inhabit time: «There is a common, crucial need for artists and scientists. You have to be willing wasting time following false leads.
In a lecture on the Origin of the Universe he gave at Harvard nearly 50 years ago, Weinberg explained in detail what happened in the first three minutes of his existence and said: “After those first three minutes, nothing remarkable happened in the rest of his life. life. history.” The comment did not leave the eminent sociologist Daniel Bell indifferent, who asked him to write a book on the subject. The first three minutes of the Universe, a unique gem in the world of popular science, which was later followed by other equally extraordinary books.
Perhaps I should have started these lines by clarifying that on Friday, July 23, at 4:15 pm, Steven Weinberg’s heart stopped beating. It is also true that it would have been unfair to give such importance to a painful event, true, but quite common. Just the step towards immortality of someone who has become intimate with the elementary particles and forces of Nature as perhaps no other person has done.
At that lunch we shared in Austin, I was wondering what you thought today about the last sentence of The first three minutes of the Universe: “The effort to understand the Universe is one of the few things that raises human life above the level of farce and gives it something of the elegance of tragedy.” His response was immediate: “I should have emphasized some of the other things they do too: love other people and enjoy beauty. But the fact that our condition is tragic… we all face our own extinction, the death of the people we love. And I don’t think there’s anything that comes later. And I think we have to do our best, as Yates says, to have deserved to be part of the work, even if in the end everything is nothing more than nothing. Boy, you deserved it, Steve.
To Juan Forn, for his loving invitation to continue writing about science in these pages.
José Edelstein: * Theoretical Physicist, IGFAE, University of Santiago de Compostela ([email protected])
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