Abstract
“Science in the 21st century has become
industrialized,” writes George
Johnson in the introduction to his
new book The Ten Most Beautiful
Experiments. “The experiments so
often celebrated in the newspapers –
sequencing the genome, proving the
existence of the top-quark, discovering
a new planet by analyzing the wobble
of a distant star – cost millions of
dollars,” he continues. “They generate
terabytes of data to be analyzed by
supercomputers…[and] are carried
out by research teams that have grown
to the size of corporations.” But, Johnson
then points out, until very recently
the most earthshaking science came
from individual pairs of hands. His
book pays tribute to those hands and
the minds that guided them.
Original language | Undefined/Unknown |
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Pages (from-to) | 42-43 |
Number of pages | 2 |
Journal | Physics World |
Volume | Aug. 2008 |
Publication status | Published - 2008 |