How did a physics professor get interested in crazy ideas?
Physicists are a very curious tribe. Physics, by its very nature, must be open to crazy ideas in order to explain the strange universe we live in. Many ideas in physics are extremely counterintuitive and run counter to our common sense, yet they have proven to be correct, or at least they have not yet been proven wrong. (In an important sense no theory can ever be proven correct, since there are always future tests we can dream up for it to pass.) In my research, I have looked into the idea-perhaps crazy–that some subatomic particles can move faster than the speed of light. Einstein said that such a thing was impossible and I’m a curious enough scientist to want to just test whether he was right. • Aren’t all crazy ideas wrong and unscientific by nature? How can a crazy idea be true? Crazy ideas are bizarre and often run against conventional wisdom. Most crazy ideas turn out to be wrong, when tested against what is found in nature, but a small fraction of them turn out to be right. Cr
