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Physics
A recent atomic physics workshop was outside my dark matter comfort zone, but learning about science beyond my usual boundaries was invigorating, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Shutterstock/Creative-Touch
A century ago, it was possible for a physicist to know almost everything there was to know about physics. Now, this is far from the case. It isn’t that the physicists of today are less competent. The problem is that humans simply know so much about the inner workings of the universe that it is impossible for someone to be deeply familiar with all of it. As a result, today’s tendency is to produce specialists.
For example, I trained initially as a relativist: general relativity and quantum extensions of it, applied to cosmology, were my specialist areas of physics. Eventually,…
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