Nature is far more imaginative than human beings!

Is today’s science fiction really tomorrow’s science fact (*)? If you remember the Star Trek TV series, you will have noticed that extra-dimensions are becoming more plausible than you could have imagined when Captain Kirk was leading the Enterprise. Lawrence Krauss, author of "The Physics of Star Trek", visited CERN on 28 August and told us how the LHC inspires him both as a scientist and as a writer.

Wearing his cosmologist’s hat, Lawrence Krauss met the CERN audience in the Main Auditorium and gave a colloquium entitled "Cosmology as Science? From Inflation to Eternity". Wearing his other hat of bestselling writer, he told us that he finds the LHC a very inspiring human adventure. "The LHC and its experiments", he says, "represent how science can span and bridge human cultures and interests, focusing for an incredibly intense period on questions which may seem esoteric but in some way will give us insights into our place in the Universe".

CERN science has inspired many writers, from Dan Brown (Angels and Demons) to R. Sawyer (Flash Forward), as well as other less well-known authors. Krauss has not written a book about the LHC yet, but when, a year ago, he revised "The Physics of Star Trek", he wrote that the LHC was one of the most inspiring things in human history in terms of bringing human beings and scientists from around the world together. "When I wrote the first edition of the book", he explains, "I already mentioned the fact that physicists were actually searching for remote extra dimensions. However, at that time, extra dimensions were thought to be very small, whereas now scientists think that they might be big enough to contain aliens and other civilizations. This is very similar to what happens in Star Trek and, indeed, it’s one area I’ve changed a lot in the second edition of my book".

Unfortunately, unlike Krauss, some science-fiction writers go much further and imagine things – often dangerous to humanity or excessively obscure – that will simply never happen but that are likely to capture people’s attention. "The links between science and science fiction are often overstated", says Krauss. "Despite the fact that I wrote one of the first science-fiction-related books that later inspired a whole new genre, I think that science fiction should be considered simply as a way to encourage people to learn about the real Universe. People are intimidated by science and afraid of it or bored by it but they are not intimidated by science fiction. There are a few examples where science fiction came up with things that later actually came true but I don’t believe in the causal relationship that some people make a big deal of. In fact, science fiction often misses the things that are the most important. For example, science-fiction writers in the 1960s never thought of the Web. It came out of CERN and has changed our civilization more than almost anything else. The real Universe is far more fascinating than anything that science-fiction writers have ever come up with or will ever come up with, and Nature is far more imaginative than human beings".

The full video interview with Lawrence Krauss

(*) Stephen Hawking in the foreword of the "Physics of Star Trek"