Loners and Lovers Are Part and Particle of Each Other
Love is a boson. Who knew?
This insight came from a physicist friend during a conversation reflecting on how some scientists never seem to get enough approval. No matter how many prestigious awards they win, no matter how big their reputations, they remain somehow insecure.
And, my physicist friend concluded, “that’s because fame, like love, is a boson.”
Now “boson” may not be a household word, but it does account for one of two major families of particles that make up our universe.
A particle of light, for example, is a boson.
My friend said love is a boson because bosons don’t know the meaning of “enough.” Bosons can clump together without limit; squeezing together inside the smallest space, there is always room for more. Bosons are bottomless pits.
Contrast this gregarious behavior with that of fermions, the other main branch of the particle family tree. Notoriously standoffish, fermions are loners; only one can occupy the same place at the same time.
This explains why, for example, you can rest your head on the table without falling right through. The table is made of atoms, which in turn are mostly made of empty space. That space is very lightly populated with fermions, which are like those people who sit in airplane seats with their arms and legs spread out, taking up everyone else’s room. Even though they’re small, they manage to preclude anyone else from invading their territory.
By contrast, you can put your head through a beam of light because light is made of bosons.
Bosons and fermions appear to be completely unrelated. But physicists believe that long ago in the very early universe they were very much the same. During this brief honeymoon of primordial harmony, bosons and fermions were all related to each other in one big happy family of particles--like Ozzie and Harriet Nelson.
Today, the family is broken--like the Capulets and Montagues. Physicists believe that if they could understand what split up the family in the first place, they could explain why and how bosons and fermions and everything else in the universe came to be.
What’s more, many physicists believe that each fermion has a long-lost bosonic alter ego hidden in the family closet somewhere, and vice versa. They believe that if they put enough energy into their particle accelerators, they could make these significant others reappear.
It may seem odd to talk about particles in terms of love and family, but in fact, all of particle physics is a study of relationships. What interacts with which? Who is related to whom? How often does so and so interact with such and such?
Like species, particles mate and beget progeny according to very specific sets of rules, often obscure to outsiders. Only certain pairings are possible, under certain conditions, in certain prescribed ways.
Supposedly, the family genealogies are clear and you always know who is who. In reality, it’s a lot more complicated. For example, in the exotic state of matter known as superconductivity, super-cold fermions clump together just like bosons, overcoming their innate reclusiveness.
What’s more, there is a theoretical way to create protons and neutrons--the fermionic constituents of the atomic nucleus--out of bosons. This idea was around in the 1950s but ignored until recently, when physicist Edward Witten “made it respectable,” according to MIT’s Frank Wilczek.
Wilczek is the person other physicists turn to when they have relationship problems with bosons and fermions. (Call him Dr. Frank.) He discovered a particle called the “anyon” which mediates between the two. In three dimensions, particles can only be bosons or fermions, according to Wilczek. But in two dimensions, they can be any combination of the two: thus, the “anyon.” To everyone’s surprise, his theoretical anyon turned out to be real; it shows up in a highly esoteric phenomenon of two-dimensional surfaces called the Hall effect.
Particle families also have their odd ducks (there’s one called the strange quark, for example) and missing relations (like magnetic monopoles, which should be out there somewhere but have never been seen).
Newcomers are not always welcomed into the fold: “Who ordered that?” physicist I.I. Rabi grumbled when the muon appeared uninvited.
But mostly, relationships between particles and humans remind us that, despite outward differences, we’re all closely related. Just as TV’s inimitable “Sopranos” reminds us that the family of a New Jersey mob boss has the elements of all families everywhere.
The more we get to know particles and people, the more we learn about intricate past histories, hidden entanglements, unexpected complications. What seems understood and simple in one moment can change in an instant into something strange and complex.
Love is like that. So are bosons.
