HOME / the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Malcolm Gladwell and Wendy Kaminer

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re: yo

By Wendy Kaminer
Posted Tuesday, June 9, 1998, at 1:54 PM ET

Hey Malcolm. It's a pleasure to chat with a science writer for a change, especially one who admits not understanding the "Science Times" story about neutrinos. What a relief to know it's not just me. "Science Times" is supposed to be accessible to general readers, like me, but maybe a piece about neutrinos simply can't be dumbed down.

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Your e-mail did inspire me to read the story, however, and while it left me with virtually no understanding of neutrinos, it did provide some insights (which I hope are accurate) into the aesthetics and methods of science. For me, the story is about how much physicists have invested in elegant solutions.

Dr. John Bahcall, of the Institute for Advanced Studies, sounds so wistful "lamenting" the possibility of sterile neutrinos (whatever they are): "I think sterile neutrinos are a very ugly concept. I hope that they will not be needed when all of the experiments now going on are complete." He has an even better line further down in the story: "The MSW effect is a beautiful idea. It would seem like a cosmic mistake if nature did not use this solution." Doesn't he sound like a sweetheart?

If the Times story (or my reading of it) is correct, then physicists initially invented neutrinos, for the sake of order and symmetry. They hypothesized their existence to account for energy that appeared to be lost when neutrons split. I guess energy doesn't get lost (does it), so they hypothesized neutrinos, and energy lost was energy found.

I like the fact that science proceeds by hypothesis, that physicists imagine the universe before they actually discover it. Once I heard Nobel Laureate Dudley Herschbach give an impassioned (and elegant) little talk about the aesthetics of science. Reading the Times story on neutrinos helped me understand what he meant. (I think.)

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