Scientists on television

By Martín Bonfil Olivera

Published in Milenio Diario, July 28, 2010

The other day, I was talking to a friend and mentioned something about the Big bang theory, and the inevitable reference turned up: "yo mean the TV show?".

The thing is, The big bang theory, the wonderful sitcom that debuted in 2007 and has turned into a world success, represents a conflict for people, like this columnist, who have a scientific education.

On the one side, it is really good. It has endearing characters, among which the problematic Sheldon Cooper stands out, a theoretical physicist with two PhDs, and an IQ of 187, whose total lack of social abilities, humor and modesty (there are people who think that it has a slight form of Asperger's syndrome, a type of autism) makes him unbearable, cute and very funny, all at the same time.

Together with his friends Leonard, Howard and Rajesh, Sheldon works in the prestigious CalTech (California Institute of Technology), in Pasadena, and the adventures of this quartet obsessed with science and technology –but also with comics and other elements of geek culture– make every chapter a mixture of references to scientific theories and concepts –which are surprisingly accurate: the program has good scientific advisors– combined with very funny situations. A true delight for people who, beyond comedy, can appreciate the scientific jokes and references (even George Smoot, Physics Nobel laureate in 2006, of whom we talked here last week, participated in a small sequence at the end of one of the chapters).

But, on the other hand, the sitcom presents a series of stereotypes against which the science community has fought for a long time: it shows scientists as antisocial beings, misfits, geniuses but incapable of doing the easiest tasks, obsessive, absent-minded, ultra-logic and humorless.

Actually, scientists are just human beings… although, as anybody who lives near one –physicists, in particular, or even worse, mathematicians– can testify, all these stereotypes have a certain measure of truth. Maybe that's why we scientists love The big bang theory, even though sooner or later we have to pay the price of having our friends tell us that we're just like Sheldon.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Other realities

By Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published in Milenio Diario, August 26, 2009

In 1957, Hugh Everett III, a United States physicist with a prince's name (not Rupert Everett, a British actor as, I mistakenly stated in the printed version of this column on Milenio Diario), proposed one of the most intellectually stimulating ideas in modern physics: the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

It is not clear whether this theory can be really called "scientific" because, like a lot of cosmology, it does not have direct evidence, although it does have a coherent physical and mathematical background. It tried to solve a big problem of the most popular version of quantum mechanics (the Copenhagen interpretation): that the equations predict that particles can exist in "superposed states", unless these are observed.

To ridicule this idea, Erwin Schrödinger, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, postulated the mental experiment of the cat that shares his last name, which would be simulotaneously "dead and alive" as long as it is not observed. Something contrary to common sense.

Everett's version proposed an astonishing solution: the moment the particle -or the cat- is observed, instead of randomly choosing one of the two possibilities, the universe bifurcates, giving birth to two parallel universes: in one universe, the cat lives; in the other one, it dies.

Although in a recent interview in Discover magazine mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, one of today's most brilliant minds, labeled it as "insanity", the fact is that Everett's odd -but not absurd- theory still is of interest to a lot of physicists.

But in 1941 Jorge Luis Borges, one of the glories of Hispano-American literature, had published his extraordinary short story The Garden of Forking Paths, where he prefigured the many-worlds theory. Sometimes the connections between science and literature are as amazing as the most audacious scientific theories.

Last August 24, Borges would have turned 110 years old. Maybe in another possible reality, where he is more long-lived, he does. In another one, it is normal to be that old.

Maybe there are alternate realities where the Mexican educational system is not in wrecks, where future teachers don't massively flunk the test to select them. Where their union leader is not elected for life, and can pronounce words with more than two syllables such as "epidemiologic", or initials such as "H1N1" without confusing numbers "1" with letters "l".

Where vital parts of Mexican history are not omitted from school textbooks, such as the Spanish conquest or the three centuries of colonial domination.

Maybe.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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