Liverpool - return to the synchrocyclotron

Back in 2010 I posted about the synchrocyclotron that was built by the Physics Department of the University of Liverpool: Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral: Location of the UK's first synchrocyclotron.

Now, the May 2022 issue of the Institute of Physics magazine Physics World carries a feature on The Legacy of Liverpool's forgotten synchrocyclotron. The article does include an account of some of the research undertaken using the synchrocyclotron, and may be a bit technical for the non-physicist reader. However, there is enough of the history for it to be worth a read.

A Matter of Sound

 ... is the title (in its print edition) of an article in the January 2022 issue of Physics World, the magazine of the UK Institute of Physics. It appears on the Physics World website under the title Sonifying science: from an amino acid scale to a spider silk symphony.

The notion underlying the article is that vibrations or movements at molecular levels can be represented as sounds and, therefore, in the form of music. And, equally, vice versa - a musical form can be used to predict a structure at a molecular level. The main substance of the article applies this notion to the amino acid structure of the proteins that occur in living things.

...we developed a systematic way of translating a protein’s sequence of amino acids into a musical sequence, using the physical properties of the molecules to determine the sounds (ACS Nano 13 7471). The system translates the 20 types of amino acids (figure 1) into a 20-tone scale. Any protein’s long sequence of amino acids then becomes a sequence of notes. The sounds are transposed in order to bring them within the audible range for humans (20 Hz–20 kHz), without affecting the structural features by following the concept of transpositional equivalence. Indeed, the tones and their relationships are based on the actual vibrational frequencies of each amino acid molecule itself, providing a physical basis for protein sonification.

It is worth listening to the "amino acid scale" embedded in the original online article. It is impressively musical to the ear, though we would not recognise it as a scale in the conventional sense. The musical representation of the Lysozyme enzyme, also embedded in the article, is considerably less pleasing to the ear.

It would be very easy to make more of this idea in philosophical terms than the idea itself really justifies. Nevertheless, it is interesting to reflect on the suggestion that the structure and behaviour of key molecules that make up living things can be understood in a form of music, albeit a form that noticeably differs from our usual understanding to musical form (for example, it being based on a 20-tone scale rather than a 12-tone scale). It suggests an aesthetic form that might be seen in those molecules, and in the life based upon them, something that a classical metaphysics would denote by the term "beauty". Whether or not the specific musical form suggested by the authors of this article proves to withstand the scrutiny over time of scientific peers, there remains the suggestion implied in it that the molecules at the heart of living things are capable of being represented by an aesthetic form.

A couple of further points. Whilst each amino acid in a protein is represented by its own tone, the higher order structure of the protein - its folding and the sequencing of different amino acids in the chain of the protein - are expressed as rhythm and note volume. The musical representation is therefore, in principle, able to express increasing complexity in protein molecules.

The article also refers to work done on different coronaviruses, including the virus causing the current COVID-19 pandemic. We have heard much about the "spike protein" of this virus, and the way in which it binds to a receptor in our human cells, leading to the infection of the cell by the virus and the subsequent reproduction of the virus. 

Previously, researchers looked at biochemical mechanisms when studying how spike proteins, which give coronaviruses their distinct crown-like appearance, interact with human cells. Instead, we used atomistic simulations and AI to study the mechanical aspects of how the spike proteins move, change shape and vibrate.

The authors of the article were able to establish a correlation between how infectious and dangerous a virus might be and two particular features of the vibrational motions of the spike protein molecules in coronaviruses. This offers a potential technique for quickly screening emerging virus variants to assess their potential risks; and the possibility of treating coronaviruses by finding a molecule that will bind on to the spike proteins so that their vibrations are limited or cancelled out altogether.

Why free will is beyond physics

"Why free will is beyond physics" is the title of a comment article in the January 2021 issue of Physics World, the member magazine of the UK Institute of Physics. It can be accessed on the site physicsworld.com here.

The argument of the article, which is offered in response to a newly published book which argues that free will is a mirage which hides outcomes of deterministic physical law, is summarised in its strapline:

Philip Ball argues that "free will" is not ruled out by physics - because it doesn't stem from physics in the first place.

 In Ball's account of the newly published book, each level of complexity in our world provides the underlying explanation of the next level - a constructionist approach which believes that the explanations of the more complex systems in the physical world can be found in applying the  fundamental laws of the simpler systems which in a sense precede it. This is the fundamental idea that Ball sets out to refute in his article.

The most interesting aspect of Ball's article is his reference to an article entitled "More is Different", by P. W. Anderson, a condensed matter physicist,  published in the journal Science in 1972. The full text of that article can be found here; it is a more challenging read than Ball's own article! Ball summarises Anderson's article thus:

The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe. The behaviour of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviours requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other.

 What Anderson does in the body of his article is argue this case across a range of examples, suggesting that at each successive level of complexity the symmetry (in a more precise scientific sense than the everyday understanding of the term) of the preceding level is broken and a new symmetry needs to be adopted to provide successful explanation at the new level of complexity. Particularly interesting are Anderson's (to an extent speculative) suggestions about the types of broken symmetry which occur in living things. The spatial regularity/symmetry of the DNA molecule contains information, not because of the spatial symmetry, but because each section of the molecule (gene) can vary in the way it combines four bases and so code for different proteins. He also identifies regularity or pulsing in time as a feature associated with living things. This appears to be associated with the way in which living things gain energy from their environments to establish a stable existence; and it provides a means of handling information. Anderson cites human spoken language as an example of this latter. 

It is thought provoking that, as scientific understanding reaches the levels of complexity associated with living things, it encounters a coding of information that is determinative, firstly, of physiological outcome and, secondly, of communication. [See my posts from some time ago here and here, if you want to explore this thought further.]

Those who are familiar with the thought of Fr Edward Holloway and the FAITH Movement (see here) will recognise in this an echo of two things. The first is the idea that the universe has developed in a way that is, at each point in time, equational and balanced; that the evolution of each new physical or biological phenomenon occurs in a directed way, and is determined by, an environment to which they are entirely relative. The second idea is that of a discontinuity in this determined evolution which occurs with the coming of humankind. At this point, the proportion between the capacity to act with freedom over and against determination by the environment demands the existence of a spiritual principle of action.

Returning to Philip Ball's article, he observes before his reference to Anderson:

There is good reason to believe that causation can flow from the top down in complex systems...

After noting that an understanding of what he terms volitional decision making in animals requires an understanding of how brains work, Ball points out that this understanding does not share the same epistemic language as Newtonian and quantum mechanics:

To talk about causation in science at all demands that we seek causes commensurate with the phenomena: that's simply good science and good epistemology.

But when he applies this principle to free will, and the moral responsibility for human action that follows from it, Ball's conclusion is a little infelicitous:

Moral responsibility is not a physical principle but a construct of human psychology and society. It expresses the view that we must strive to choose some behaviours and reject others.

Philip Ball's article usefully defends the notion of free will against the incursion of the notion of determinism, and even, through its citation of P.W. Anderson, hints at a certain directedness in the steps to increased complexity in the universe. As the strapline to his article says, free will doesn't stem from physics in the first place. But, in concluding that moral responsibility is a construct of human psychology and society, he fails to do justice to the phenomenon of human conscience. Psychology and sociology do not provide an explanation that is commensurate with the phenomenon of human conscience. For that a newer, and higher, symmetry is required.

The Swedish physicist revolutionising fertility awareness

I have slightly altered the headline of the BBC news report. The story first came to my attention through the "Once a physicist" feature in July 2017's Physics World. That story was headed as follows:

Elina Berglund is the chief technology officer and co-founder of Natural Cycles - a fertility app that helps women to prevent, plan and monitor pregnancies. As a physicist, she was part of the team that discovered the Higgs boson at CERN in 2012.

The Physics World feature gives an indication of the particular contribution that Elina Berglund's background in physics has made to the development of her algorithm, and what may constitute a novelty in relation to other natural methods (corrections on this point via the comments box please if necessary). The use of temperature as an indicator of the fertile time in a woman's cycle is itself well known, but it is the improved analysis of the data that may make this app a genuine innovation.

I was in a stable relationship and I did not want to use hormonal contraception anymore. We looked into "natural family planning solutions", but there was nothing out there that was easy and reliable to use. Such a solution is prone to human errors if you analyse the data yourself; while the few devices that were available were outdated, expensive and, most of all, used simplistic algorithms. Using my statistical and programming skills from analysing data in particle physics, I developed an algorithm that analyses a woman's body temperature to detect ovulation and pinpoint fertile and non-fertile days. Although the algorithm was at first only for my own use, I quickly realised that this was something many women wanted and needed. Several of my physics colleagues started measuring their own temperatures as well and sending them to me to run my algorithm and give them a "green" or a "red" day. My husband, also a physicist, suggested we turn the algorithm into an app, so that all women and their partners could benefit from this innovation.

Physics World's feature also suggests that the reason for the temporary revoking of regulatory approval was essentially technical. It had to do with whether their app was classified as a fertility monitor, which required one regulatory classification, or as a contraceptive device, which required a different regulatory classification. It achieved this second regulatory classification in February 2017.

Elina Berglund's own experience of using the app is within her own marriage, something that clearly indicates a particular context in which it is going to be more effective. It is also a context that significantly reduces the criticism that using the app does not protect against sexually transmitted infections, as women with single sexual partners are much less exposed to such a risk.. The app is clearly going to be less helpful for a woman whose lifestyle involves multiple sexual partners, both from the point of view of STI protection and from the point of view of the willingness of partners to respect a "red" day.

An interesting aspect of the app is the way in which it responds to the data of an individual woman as more data is entered. It adapts to the individual's cycle, rather than imposing a single algorithm on to the data. The potential of the app to monitor a pregnancy, not fully described in the media coverage, might also have interesting application to the care of women in remote locations in less developed countries .... can a medical professional access the woman's data via the app from a different location?

Natural Cycles website is worth exploring, particularly the reviews from users which, leaving aside the question of whether the app is used primarily to achieve contraception, show an appreciation of a better understanding by women of their own bodies.

A fascination with fractals

In July 2010, I posted If you knew SUSY in response to an article in Physics World, the magazine of the UK Institute of Physics. At the end of that post, I cautiously suggested:

But the suggestion that information is in some way embedded in the heart of reality is thought provoking to say the least, and seems amenable to an analogical theological expression. However, some care needs to be taken to make sure that that analogical expression does not say something that isn't what the physics itself says - the pioneer to whom James Gates makes reference towards the end of his article , John Archibald Wheeler, for example, links the information-theoretic aspect to the problem of measurement, the measurement (subjectively) determining the reality that has been measured. James Gates own work, being theoretical, seems to me to present an information-theoretic basis that is independent of this question of measurement.

In June this year - that is, pretty much three years on from my original post - a comment on If you knew Susy alerted me to the very real possibility that my post had caught the attention of the author of the original Physics World article. A blog post that does sound very much like mine is referred to in a radio interview broadcast in the United States: Uncovering the Codes for Reality with S. James Gates. You need to scroll quite a way down the transcript to find the reference to (my) blog post. The commentor who made the link writes on it here: Superstring Theoretical Physicist on the Codes of Reality.

What is interesting, in the light of my own post on the subject, is that James Gates acknowledges in the interview just how stunning it was to the team of physicists and mathematicians working on string theory that error correction codes had such a role in the equations of string theory:

... the kinds of codes we found, which was the most shocking thing for us, is that there's a class of codes that allow your browsers to work in an accurate way. They're called error-correcting codes. We found a role for error correcting codes in the equations of supersymmetry, and this was just stunning for us.

I do appreciate - assuming that it is indeed my blog post to which he is referring - both the way in which James Gates accurately captures the caution of my own suggestion of an analogical theological expression of  the idea that information is embedded in reality and the way in which he responds to that suggestion:

...if the equations of fundamental physics are based on information theory and essentially information theory is at the very center of string theory, how did it get there? And his implication is that indeed this is something for theologians to contemplate. You know, that was, again, for me a stunning assertion and it still has yet to be fully studied. But it probably will not be studied by physicists ..

The reason for posting on this now is that the September 2013 issue of Physics World carries an article by Richard Taylor entitled "A fascination with fractals". One aspect of the article is an overview of the history of chaos theory and the fractal patterns that occur in graphical representations of chaotic behaviour. This aspect is not novel, but indicates three components of this area of physics:

 

(1) The evolution over time of complex physical systems that obey deterministic laws is surprisingly sensitive to the original conditions of those systems - the smallest of changes in initial conditions can lead over time to radically different outcomes, rendering unpredictable behaviours that, in principle, are entirely predictable. Systems showing this type of "chaotic" behaviour range from weather systems to chemical reactions and electronic circuits.

 

(2) A mathematical formulation based on taking a basic pattern or expression (a "seed") and then using another rule (the "generator") to repeatedly apply the basic pattern towards an overall outcome. Mathematicians were doing this type of thing as long ago as 1861. It parallels the iterative application of deterministic laws typical of the chaotic behaviour described at (1).

 

(3) A geometric representation in which a shape on one scale was repeated and repeated at smaller and smaller scales to produce patterns that were visually surprising. This was about geometric structures that turn out to be "self-similar" - that is, they look the same when viewed as a whole, and when magnified repeatedly to different scales. When computing power enabled the types of mathematical formulations at (2) to be iterated very many times, the patterns emerging were precisely the visually surprising patterns that we now know as fractal patterns. It was also noticed that many phenomena in nature also displayed these fractal patterns - leaf shapes being one such example. The significance of the coming together of the mathematical formulations (that, in principle, reached back about 100 years) and real examples in the physical world was prompted by the employment of computing power not previously available.

 

None of this is new to physicists. It does represent another situation where the significance of a mathematical formulation for understanding a range of physical phenomena might well be open to an analogical theological expression, as I suggested in my earlier post with regard to superstring theory.

 

However, what is novel about Richard Taylor's article is that he discusses all of the above in the context of an encounter between art and physics. This is what is, apparently, termed "action art". The kind of action involved is that of taking a freshly painted canvas, attaching it to a car and then driving from Paris to Nice with the canvas exposed to the (chaotic) behaviour of the weather during the journey. The canvas records the patterns of the evolution of a dynamic system, and has something of the nature of a "traditional" fractal. Another example cited in the article is that of holding a tin of paint with a small hole in both hands, over a flat canvas. As the artist moves their arms and body over the canvas an abstract piece of art is produced. Comparing the difference between the outcomes when this was undertaken by a 5-year old and an adult - the latter having a much more developed sense of balance to adjust as they moved the paint can over the canvas - indicated that the resulting fractal patterns reflected the differences in development in the physiology of balance of the respective artists. The author has also explored which types of fractal patterns are most aesthetically pleasing, characterising this by a quantity called the fractal dimension, that is, by a measure of the balance of coarse and fine structures in the fractal patterns. Mid-range fractal dimension fractals appear to be most aesthetically pleasing - and most stress relieving - leading to them being termed biophilic fractals.

 

It is the final paragraph of Richard Taylor's article that sparked my interest. The author has both a long standing personal interest in the cultural implications of chaos and fractal patterns, and a more recent professional interest (the article is describing his work across physics, psychology and art). Though he is clearly writing of his own experience in this final paragraph, I do think that he nevertheless indicates another level at which the philosopher or theologian might undertake an analogical reflection as to why a style of mathematical formulation and its geometric manifestation might belong both in nature and in the human person's intuition of culture.

In 1959 physicist-turned-novelist CP Snow warned of the growing rift between the arts and science in influential lecture "The two cultures". In my experience, most people misinterpret Snow's treatise as a declaration that this rift is natural and therefore inevitable. In reality, he was highlighting the need for common language across the arts and sciences to defeat the rift. In my own career, the common language of fractals has allowed me to weave chaotically in and out of art school and physics departments. There really does seem to be a pattern in this unintentional process. I cannot help but thinkg that an underlying model describes how we seek out and explore our creative interests, and that - as in nature - this behaviour is fractal.

If you knew SUSY

Now, I don't really know SUSY (supersymmetry) very well at all. Actually, I don't know SUSY at all. But I have just come across a new word in the realm of particle physics: adinkra. Now if you think that word is strange, remember that quark was once just as strange, though it has had a charmed existence since. And the choice of the word adrinka is just as arbitrary (from the physics point of view) as was the choice of the word quark.

My source for this new addition to my vocabulary is an article in the June 2010 issue of Physics World by James Gates entitled "Symbols of Power" and featured under the generic heading of "Physics and geometry". James Gates is a theoretical physicist (ie his physics is theoretical, not James himself) at the University of Maryland in the United States.

This is the rough idea.

Physicists like equations - indeed, the article suggests that physicist belong to a company called "Equations-R-Us". Key points in the progress of physics are marked by the adoption or discovery of key equations that describe a phenomenon of physics - Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism, Einstein's equations for General Relativity, Schrodinger's equations for quantum mechanics, etc - and then it becomes a question of solving the equations for every imaginable situation.

Then it so happens that the equations can sometimes be represented geometrically. This helps make sense of the equations, but calculations using the geometry can also suggest new predictions from or solutions to the equations. The best known example of this sort of thing is probably the use of Feynman diagrams to solve problems in quantum electrodynamics. In the Standard Model, the different symmetries of particles such as photons, protons and neutrons can be represented geometrically. It was the observation of patterns in these geometric representations that led to the suggestion that the particles concerned must be made up of smaller, more fundamental particles, what we now happily call quarks.

What SUSY does is suggest that each particle in the Standard Model, which already has its own symmetry properties, also has a "super partner" particle that obeys the equations of supersymmetry. This has the effect of achieving a unification among different types of particles. These super partner particles have yet to be observed (looking out for experimental evidence of their existence is reported by the article as one of the main tasks of the Large Hadron Collider). But meanwhile, how about trying to develop a geometric representation of these super partner particles and their physics equations, in the hope that the geometry will reveal more about the equations and about SUSY? After all, this is a strategy that has been very successful before. These geometrical shapes are what the researchers have called adinkras. Of course, it turns out that three dimensions won't do if you want to represent equations that have any physical meaning; four dimensions is the least number.

All of this is just the preamble for the really interesting bit - so stay with me.

Adinkras made up of four or more dimensions can be separated to give two adinkras representing fewer particles, these two adinkras also obeying the relevant equations. It's a bit like splitting a set into two sub-sets that can be added together again to give the original set. The technical term for it is "folding", the merging together of different points on the geometric shape following careful rules for doing so. Understanding why some "foldings" work and others don't ... well, this has been achieved by representing each point on the geometric shape by a binary number ... and realising that foldings that preserve the properties of SUSY all obey one of the simplest error correction codes familiar to the digital transmission of data. The required sum of the binary numbers of folded points is 1111..

The punchline: the mathematical relations between these super partner particles seems to be intimately bound up with information theory.

For the most part [information theory] is a science that has largely developed in ways that are unrelated to the fields used in theoretical physics. However, with the observation that structures from information theory - codes - control the structure of equations with the SUSY property, we may be crossing a barrier. I know of no other example of this particular intermingling occurring at such a deep level. Could it be that codes, in some deep and fundamental way, control the structure of our reality?... As for my own collaboration on adrinkas, the path my colleagues and I have trod since the early 2000s has led me to conclude that codes play a previously unsuspected role in equations that possess the property of supersymmetry. This unsuspected connection suggests that these codes may be ubiquitous in nature, and could even be embedded in the essence of reality.

I am not a proponent of immediately drawing theological conclusions from the physical sciences - there is a mediating role for metaphysics, in particular, the idea of analogy of being, between the raw physics and theological understanding. But the suggestion that information is in some way embedded in the heart of reality is thought provoking  to say the least, and seems amenable to an analogical theological expression. However, some care needs to be taken to make sure that that analogical expression does not say something that isn't what the physics itself says - the pioneer to whom James Gates makes reference towards the end of his article , John Archibald Wheeler, for example, links the information-theoretic aspect to the problem of measurement, the measurement (subjectively) determining the reality that has been measured. James Gates own work, being theoretical, seems to me to present an information-theoretic basis that is independent of this question of measurement.

PS. The Large Hadron Collider might, of course, show that SUSY's super partner particles don't exist any way ....

Physics World: May 2009

Edwin Cartlidge, a regular writer for Physics World, has a two page spread about the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the May issue. An idea of the work of the Pontifical Academy can be gained by visiting this page at the Vatican website.

The Physics World article is useful in that it communicates in some way that the Catholic Church does engage with scientific thought. One paragraph tells the story of how work undertaken by the Pontifical Academy on the dangers of nuclear weaponry was subsequently presented to the United Nations in the name of Pope John Paul II. But it is unhelpful in making some rather silly statements.

It is unlikely, though, that the academy is entirely independent of the Pope as it is ultimately there to serve him.

The Academy certainly exists to be of assistance to the Holy See and to the Church as a whole, but to characterise this by the word "serve" is rather strange.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is therefore the only institution within the Church not made up exclusively of Catholics.

I expect that there are other Ponitical Academies that have non-Catholic members; and certainly one of the features of many of the new movements (I think of Focolare and Mothers Prayers as I write this) is their ecumenical engagement.

.. as scientists celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of the telescope to do astronomy, the mere existence of the academy shows just how much the Catholic Church's attitude towards science has changed over the centuries.

The Physics World article, only two paragraphs further on, describes the origins of the Pontifical Academy in the Accademia dei Lincei, of which one Galileo was a member. Arthur Koestler's book The Sleepwalkers contains an account of the engagement of the Jesuits at the Roman College in the scientific work arising from the telescope, and Cardinal Robert Bellarmine's familiarity with and understanding of that work. Rather than the Church having an oppositional attitude to the new discoveries of Galileo, she was instead in the thick of the debates and research surrounding them. The Pope received Galileo in audience, and the Roman College gave him an enthusiastic welcome, during a visit to Rome in 1610.

The Physics World article is unfortunate in presenting the work of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences within a hermeneutic of "the Church was anti-scientific and is now struggling to accept science", a hermeneutic that is not supported by historical scholarship.

Einstein and religion

Physics World magazine has a page of what I can only describe as newsy anecdotes, entitled "Seen and heard". The February 2009 "Seen and heard" page includes the following snippet:

Einstein on the buses
If you have been in a major city in the UK in the last month, then you may have noticed the slogan "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" on the side of one of 800 buses involved in the UK's first ever atheist advertisement campaign. Some of the buses also contain a quote from Einstein: "I do not believe in a personal God and have never denied this but have expressed it clearly". This is not the first time that a religious or atheist camp has tried to pigeon hole Einstein. But surely Einstein's religious beliefs are far more subtle than this. After all, he famously said "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind", which seems perfectly to capture his thinking.

A quick research of the biography of Einstein by Abraham Pais, looking up the references to "religion" in the index, indeed shows that it is very difficult to say exactly what Einstein's religous beliefs were. His family background was Jewish, but from a family that did not live Jewish practices at home. As a child he went through a very religious, Jewish phase but this did not last. Thereafter he did not practice a religious faith. However, this does not mean that he did not have beliefs that had a religious aspect to them. He turned away from religious practice towards science - but an account that he gave when in his sixties suggests that this was a turning away from the subjective and individual towards the objective, towards "it" (Pais p.39). He therefore appears to have been a realist, in the metaphysical sense, with a trust that there are laws and patterns to be discovered in the study of the material world. I am not really sure that one can claim that Einstein believed in the existence of God as creator; he seems to have used the word "God" more in a passing, poetic way than as a statement of belief in God itself, and the word "religous" in a way that reflects the way the word "spiritual" (in a non-religious sense) would be used today.

Einstein's observation about the mutual relation between science and religion is perhaps more significant as a statement of phenomenology rather than of a statement of Einstein's own religious belief. But a realism about the possibility of knowing the laws of the material world is something with significance for both our understanding of scientific endeavour and for arguing in favour of the existence of God.

Physics World April 2008: Prof Michael Heller

The current issue of Physics World carries a news item reporting the award of the Templeton prize to Fr Michael Heller. The Templeton prize is awarded for "progress towards research or discoveries about spiritual realities", and has not infrequently been awarded to a scientist. The Physics World report suggests that Fr Heller is a "former priest"; this appears to be inaccurate (see below) and I think Fr Heller is still "Father", if you see what I mean. The same news report can be found here on the Physics World website, where it has attracted to date some 43 comments. This is far more comments than any other recent news items on the site. A number of the comments are quite aggresively anti-religious in tone, suggesting that the Templeton prize is without any credibility or that to hold a religious belief is to suspend rationality. Some of them do appear rather old fashioned and ill-thought out comments, but I suspect that may be part of the internet phenomenon - the thought put into a comment may well decline in proportion to the increase in ease of publishing the comment. Here, in any case, is one of the responses, from Lublin, Poland. Lublin is the home of the Catholic University of Lublin, the philosophical home ground of Pope John Paul II.

"The aggressive and downgrading tone of the comments by Existenciel, aroman, phizii is an illustration of a lamentable state of physics-centered closed-mindedness of their authors, but not the whole community of physicists. There are physicists who know that knowledge gained by physics as a whole - although crucially important - is not the only one that is possible and valuable. There are other disciplines of science, of philosophy, and theology, that answer to the questions that are not possible to deal with in terms of physics. Therefore, all attempts at limiting this narrow-mindedness stemming from either “imperialistically” oriented science, theology or philosophy, should be encouraged. Templeton Prize serves this end nicely and effectively, even though some may be dismayed by the fact, that some its laureates are not only physicists, but also religious, and – what is more - Catholic. BTW, prof. Michael Heller continues to be a Catholic priest."

And in a post from Moscow:

"It's regrettable but understandable that most opinions of western physicists in comments are so positivistic and atheistic. Rationalism is dominant and there no place for God in their world but it is only their world. To be physicist not equals to be atheist or agnostic."

It is very interesting that Fr Heller intends to use his prize to establish a centre to investigate questions in physics, theology and philosophy, affiliated to the Jagiellonian University and the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow. The centre is reported at the moment as being dubbed the "Copernicus Centre", probably a tribute to the fact that Copernicus studied for a time in Cracow. It would, though, be a fascinating choice of name for what it might say about the relationship between science and Christian faith.

Physics World: February 2008 issue

A trip into London today gave me the chance to read the February issue of "Physics World". This is the monthly magazine of the UK's Institute of Physics, and alone justifies the annual membership fee of that august organisation. As well as carrying news about physics, it usually contains articles that review contemporary developments in physics. Thankfully, a special effort is now made to ensure that those articles are intelligible to those who do not have specialist knowledge of the area of physics concerned (or, like me, whose physics study only reached to undergraduate level and that too many years ago for me to like to admit). Items of interest in this month's issue:

1. "Physicists count the cost of opposition to the Pope"

This is the headline of the coverage of the recent controversy over Pope Benedict's (cancelled) visit to La Sapienza university. To my embarrassment, many of those involved in campaigning against the Pope's visit were staff or students of the physics faculty at La Sapienza. The letter to the communist newspaper Il manifesto, which began the events leading to the controversy in November 2007, was written by an emeritus physics professor of La Sapienza; subsequently, the internal letter to the Rector of La Sapienza protesting against the Pope's visit and endorsing the letter published in the newspaper, was signed mainly by members of the physics department. While Physics World's report makes no reference to the extent of the support shown to Pope Benedict at the Sunday angelus three days after the day of the cancelled visit, it does give a flavour of the nature of the activities taking place at La Sapienza, naming them as "anticlerical activities", and describing the vandalism of a student's meeting room in the physics department at La Sapienza (though the circumstances of this are not clear from the report, the placing of the paragaph hints that it was a reaction against the anti-papal protest, something I find unlikely). One of the letter writers is quoted in the Physics World report as recognising that the often confrontational style of the students was "not so beautiful" and that many of the students did not understand the point of the letter. Physics World's report also describes a uniform negative reaction from the world of politics towards the protests at La Sapienza.

The headline of the report refers to another consequence of the events surrounding the Pope's cancelled visit. Lucianao Maiani, a physics faculty member at La Sapienza and a signatory of the internal letter to the Rector, had been selected by the Italian government to head up Italy's National Research Centre (the largest research organisation in Italy, which supports some 4 000 researchers across a range of subject areas). Members of the Italian parliament had been expected to rubber stamp his appointment, but, when they learnt that he had signed "the" letter, they put their decision on hold. Events since then have seen the resignation of the government and the calling of an election - so Maiani's appointment is still on hold ...

2. Book Review - Joseph Rotblat: Visionary for Peace

Joseph Rotblat was involved in the Manhattan Project (the American project that developed and then manufactured the atomic bomb) during the Second World War. He was the only scientist to resign from his work on the project, and subsequently was a leading figure among the scientists who argued for nuclear disarmament. He initiated the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Pugwash being the location of the first meeting. This book is a collection of essays about Rotblat and his work, and includes some of Rotblat's own writings.

I attended a talk some years ago organised by the London Branch of the Institute of Physics, at which Joseph Rotblat was the speaker. In his presentation, Joseph Rotblat talked about his resignation from the Manhattan Project, which came about when it became clear to him that the Germans were not going to successfully develop an atomic weapon and that the American project clearly had an intention as much to strengthen the American hand in dealing with the Russians as it did with defeating the Germans and Japanese. Like many of the other scientists who joined the Manhattan Project, Rotblat did so in the context of a possible German nuclear weapon. Wondering to myself whether his resignation was based more on an ethical view that was in practice pragmatic rather than principled (and I don't mean by this to question in any way the sincerity or integrity of Rotblat's decision), I asked him whether his resignation from the Manhattan Project involved some sort of ethical conversion or change. I do not recall the terms of his answer, but do remember feeling that he ducked the question pretty thorougly.

The Physics World book review sheds some light on this. It describes how Rotblat felt able to join the Manhattan Project on the basis of the nuclear weapon being developed for use only as a deterrent, in the context of a possible German project. When it became apparent that there was no prospect of a German weapon being successfully developed, and he learnt of the political intentions of the nuclear weapon vis a vis the Russians, he resigned. The deterrent principle no longer applied. In his subsequent writing, Rotblat was to be very critical of the nuclear deterrence argument that was his justification for joining the Project. My question was probably, without my realising it at the time, a bit naive on my part and perhaps embarrasing to him in a personal way.

Two interesting points arising in the review, though:

Rotblat firmly held that scientists had a social responsibility for their work, that they could not stay in their "ivory towers" and disregard the ethical implications of their work (this was largely what the Pugwash conferences expressed). He was in favour of a kind of "hippocratic oath" for scientists, and for the implementation of a range of safeguards to prevent the misuse of scientific knowledge and developments.

One of the success factors in the Pugwash Conferences is that each individual attends and speaks only in their own capacity and not as a representative of any organisation or government. This means that they speak according to their own conscience - and are not constrained by policy or principles set by an organisation. It is a sad comment on the way contemporary society works that this should appear so unusual, and shows just how much conscience is constrained.

3. Physics Twins

The letters page contains six letters describing instances of identical twin physicists, following up an article in the January issue. One pair of girls attended Imperial College, both as students in material science, both winning scholarships after their first year examinations, joint winners of a prize as they graduated, joint winners of a prize for their PhD research. They then parted company, as one is still a member of the Institute of Physics while the other "defected" to the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.

Another pair of twins attended the then University College of Swansea for their undergraduate studies and PhDs - R W L Thomas and W R L Thomas. They apparently managed to publish some joint research papers, though they worked on different areas of Physics for their research.