Felix Flicker is a theoretical physicist doing the job on the quantum underpinnings of issue. Born in Devon, he analyzed at Oxford, the Perimeter Institute in Ontario, Canada, and Bristol College, where he done his PhD. Now a physics lecturer at Cardiff University, he is also a kung fu instructor and previous British winner of shuai jiao (Chinese wrestling). Flicker, 35, has just released his 1st ebook, The Magick of Matter: Crystals, Chaos and the Wizardry of Physics, checking out the normally ignored discipline of condensed make any difference physics, which underlies our present day entire world.
What prompted you to create this ebook?
Condensed issue physics is the greatest region in physics – about a 3rd of all physicists work on it – but nobody’s at any time listened to of it. Just one purpose is because it is the examine of common stuff – states of make a difference and their transformations. It is also realistic: it sales opportunities to most of the technological innovation all over us these days. Currently being useful and acquainted would seem to be at odds with being magical. I wrote the ebook to tackle that.
You invoke wizards to solid light-weight on the subject matter. But is not physics a repudiation of magic?
I do not think they’re at odds at all. [The folklorist] James George Frazer claimed: “Magic like science postulates the get and uniformity of nature therefore the attraction the two of magic and of science, which open up a boundless vista to all those who can penetrate to the top secret springs of character.” His sights can be pretty out-of-date, but I feel there’s a large amount of real truth in that. Some persons don’t like science, or are informed from a young age that it is not for them, whilst everybody is interested in magic to some diploma. By emphasising that connection, I imagined there could possibly be a way for a broader assortment of people today to become interested in science.
How did you get interested in science?
I don’t have a fantastic answer for you, due to the fact I’ve wished to be a scientist for as prolonged as I can bear in mind. Actually, I believe it was the extravagant words – these types of as “photon” and “special relativity”. They run like magic text, in that they notify you something about the earth but you really don’t definitely know what. And there’s this set of exalted men and women who do know what it signifies and you just have to rely on them. I observed that quite reassuring.
Define condensed make a difference physics.
It’s the review of subject – of the states of make a difference and how to completely transform amongst them. It is also seeking to understand how the common globe all-around us, which is totally composed of matter, comes about from the rather paradoxical and counterintuitive planet of quantum mechanics.
The e-book raises the concern: “What is issue?” but retains providing us distinct responses.
There is no correct reply, but I’ll give it a go: make any difference is the entire that is a lot more than the sum of its sections. For example, when water is in vapour sort, you can consider of it as person h2o molecules, by and massive. But when it condenses into liquid type and then ice, it is no lengthier individual molecules, it is clumped together to come to be its have thing, and it has properties that are not current in any of the particular person molecules. That is what I mean by the entire remaining additional than the sum of the components.
The physicist Wolfgang Pauli dismissed condensed subject physics as “the physics of dirt”. I think he did not suggest it in a pleasant way.
No he didn’t. Pauli was just one of the developers of quantum mechanics, and in the early days they ended up hoping to understand the earth on the smallest scales – what are beams of light made of, and that sort of matter. It was a lot later on that we started to be superior adequate with quantum mechanics that we could consider a lot of distinct atoms and molecules interacting. That appears like an unmanageable process if you consider that, inside a one lump of things, you may possibly have 1023 atoms. Pauli thought of this review of make a difference as even more absent from the pure, esoteric scientific studies of physics at the time.
What was Pauli overlooking? Or to set it one more way: why need to we treatment about condensed make any difference physics?
Actually we do care about it a whole lot. We would not have desktops, telephones, contemporary lighting, the internet and so substantially additional without the need of it. It underlies fairly a great deal our complete planet. And it’s developing toward the future as nicely, fundamental developments these types of as the transfer in the direction of greener vitality. But I consider that ubiquity and practicality are why we are likely not to examine textbooks about it, simply because it is really hard to speak about the magic of every little thing all-around you.
What are some of the most thrilling technologies rising from condensed issue physics?
Quantum pcs is 1. We’re right on the cusp of people getting useful. In point we already have them – you can use IBM’s quantum desktops for absolutely free online.
The present day philosopher’s stone, you generate, is the room-temperature superconductor…
That’s in all probability the most pressing matter in condensed make a difference physics. Superconductors are a person of the most important routes to trying to make quantum computers. But also, they conduct electric power beautifully with no reduction. If you built energy strains out of them, you would do away with the [loss] of electricity as electricity travels down the strains. It isn’t a whole pipe desire. Superconductors are setting up to be employed to hook up up even bigger energy networks to stability the load throughout them.
Would you get in touch with yourself a techno-optimist, in terms of fixing our way out of the climate disaster?
No I would not. I feel we will need to have technological innovations, but the a great deal larger difficulty is the way we assume about items. If we acquired the engineering to deliver electricity at half the expense tomorrow, we would just use 2 times as considerably. In condensed matter physics, you can not consider of items in isolation: you’re on the lookout at collective conduct. And I assume which is legitimate of how we need to think about the world. The concept that researchers are independent from the stuff they’re finding out goes hand in hand with the notion that the natural environment is this matter that we can just get from devoid of possessing an effect on it. But we’re studying really plainly that that is not the situation.
You have wildly various references in the e-book, from ancient Taoist texts to 1990s motion videos. What do cultural references allow for you to do apart from entertain the reader?
When I was a master’s scholar, two of the gals in my class had been influenced to research physics by seeing Dana Scully in The X-Documents, who is a supernaturally gifted scientist. That definitely trapped with me, the idea that a fictional role model can encourage individuals to do [science] when they may well usually never ever have finished it.
You conclude by indicating that any individual can be a wizard, by which you indicate theoretical physicist – or scientist a lot more broadly.
That is really the hope. There are nonetheless underrepresented teams in science. So the extra people that can be enthused about it, the greater diversity we’ll realize long time period, which is actually crucial to the well being of the topic. This thought of a lone genius is really harming and incorrect. The broader a set of backgrounds that are represented and carry suggestions jointly, the more rapidly we’ll make advances.
You practise martial arts, which include praying mantis kung fu. Did physics advise your option of martial art? Does it make you a superior martial artist in any way?
Possibly, but it is much more that martial arts support me be a much better physicist. They train you inner willpower, which is how you are ready to work prolonged hrs to learn all the things you need to have to master to be a scientist. Also, a good friend requested me at the time how I can give community talks about science since isn’t it complicated? It by no means truly struck me as complicated because I have been executing martial arts for a lengthy time. In contrast with preventing a further individual with a load of folks viewing, offering a talk about physics is not a difficulty.
Nobody’s likely to arrive out of the viewers and wallop you.
Precisely. I imagine: “What’s the worst situation situation in this article?”
This write-up was amended on 5 November 2022. Felix Flicker referred to “a single lump of stuff” obtaining 1023 atoms, not 1,023 atoms as an previously version reported because of to an mistake released in the course of modifying.
