When science becomes indistinguishable from magic

Guest post by: Becca Randall

Attending the below talk last night, it occurred to me that in many ways, we have entered the realm of science becoming indistinguishable from magic.
I should say now, that I have very little background in physics and simply went along to this talk because it sounded rather amazing, and I wanted to know something about that big tunnel under Switzerland/France (otherwise known as the Large Hadron Collider) and what it does.

What I found out was, amongst other things, that it is rather possible that we live on the ‘Brane’ which is part of the ‘Bulk’ – the Bulk being made up of… well… something (there are probably some very clever physiscists who can explain this, but I’m not one of them)

Walking out of the talk, having had my mind blown with this and many other amazing facts (I recommend listening to the talk), I was struck with the desire to write science fiction because, honestly, it seemed as if the talk that I had just been to could have been taken directly out of a novel by Anne McCaffery, Terry Pratchett or some other such great science fiction author.

I guess that this is always the way of progress, and that somewhere along the line we will become aware that the Bulk does or does not exist, and we will either hope to experience it, or at least be aware of its existence, and that will become ‘normal’.

More than anything this motivates me, and I think it should motivate everyone, to investigate that areas of science that we don’t normally inhabit. Being a psychology major, there is rather little that can amaze me about what humans are capable of – but I can easily be blown away by the simple realities of theoretical physics.

Here’s the link to the talk:

http://billboard.anu.edu.au/event_view.asp?id=64690 – it also contains a biography of the amazing woman who presented the talk.