In the late 19th century, the British mathematical physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin, whose bearded visage once adorned the £100 banknote, is reported to have made a remarkable statement about physics. His famous quote – “there is nothing new to be discovered now, all that remains is more and more precise measurement” – is a concise statement of what is thought to be a prevailing attitude at that time: the sense that physics was almost finished.
After all, a student at that time could learn most of our current high school curriculum, including the laws of mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism and optics. Furthermore, the application of these principles to the development of the telephone, internal-combustion engine, electric light and radio would have been almost inconceivably mind-blowing and fantastic, breeding a confidence that seemed set to last forever.
The problem with this account – as is often the case – is that Lord Kelvin never said it.
Although it would take over 100 years for the term “fake news” to enter the popular lexicon, the ghost of Kelvin has every right to complain about slander. He was close enough to thermodynamics to know that major surprises lay around the corner; indeed the next 30 years of physics played like a greatest hits of human intellectual achievement.
Einstein’s famous theory of special relativity arrived in 1905, followed by the discovery of the nucleus in 1911, Einstein’s general relativity in 1916, the discovery of galaxies in 1923 and Schrödinger’s famous equation of quantum mechanics in 1926. As the 20th century progressed, a “Standard Model” of particle physics emerged which describes the fundamental constituents of the universe and how they interact, allowing us to understand the microscopic world with staggering precision.
Flash forward to the present day, and the scientific parallels with the 19 century are as striking as the fashion for ridiculous Victorian facial hair. One often hears the view that “there is nothing new to be discovered in particle physics now, only more and more precise measurements”. The largest particle accelerator ever built – CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, in France and Switzerland – has been running for over a decade, with about 10,000 physicists
