In the year 2099...

by Craig Williamson, August 1999
Published in Physics World, November 1999 (© 1999 IOP Publishing)

Physicists have rightly been labelled as love machines - after all, we have been credited with causing over 90% of all divorces.  We drink too much, break too many laws, and provide far too much material for daytime television talk shows.  Naturally, this means that the youth of our world absolutely worship us.  Young children have posters on their walls of the most talented and attractive physicists, usually pictured wearing nothing more than a pair of protective goggles.  Paris fashion shows are awash with models trying to mimic the waif-scientist look.

It is not unusual for the 'Australian Soap Star Syndrome' to hit our scientific community quite hard as well.  Buoyant from their success, it is commonplace for young scientists with a few published papers and some constants named after them to make the move into pop stardom.  All it takes is for them to drop their last name and start up a pop music career, before they forget about physics altogether.

There appears to be no end in sight for the debauched image of physicists.  Our current crop of students at the country’s universities has a laughably small workload.  It is all too easy for them to walk straight into highly paid jobs after bagging an easy 2:1 degree.  Contrast this with the fortunes of our downtrodden arts students; working every waking hour, hoping to eventually scrape a 3rd class degree and make a living in a low-paid research position.  Physics is too often seen as the easy option for students who don't have the intelligence or motivation to make it in a really worthwhile subject.

The over-inflated status of university physics is not helped by those who teach it.  It is the Physics lecturers at Universities who are all too commonly the 'loose cannons' of academia.  Their stylish clothing and generous deadlines make them popular in the confines of their own faculty, but a nightmare for the campus authorities.  Local police are constantly receiving complaints of depraved activities in physics buildings, usually the result of over exuberance at the now legendary office "party" hours.  Previously, the office hour had been a time for questions to be raised about lecture material, and for students to seek assistance on their homework.  Today, lecturers are using it as a singles bar to help them meet all of the star struck youngsters on campus.  Leather sofas, disco glitter balls and slowly pulsating red lights adorn offices that were once a sea of textbooks.  Video walls exist where whiteboards full of equations once hung.  Distilleries sit in the corner of rooms where previously Unix workstations were situated. 

Out in industry, matters are reaching a critical stage.  Fly on the wall TV documentaries are glamorising the industrial science laboratory and causing a public outcry.  Animated language is often exchanged between colleagues, and electrical equipment is often hurled through windows in fits of drunken rage.  The men cannot do any productive work, as they are far too busy fending off the attention of all of the women at their workplaces.  This is to be expected when you consider that women outnumber men by over 20 to 1 in industrial science, leaving a dangerous imbalance that has the whole industry clambering to employ more men. 

The everyday social scene is by no means immune to the riotous influences of physics.  There isn't a man alive who has not, at one time or other, attempted to impress at a night club by claiming to be a scientist.  Those females who are foolish enough to fall for the charade, beg their prospective partner to whisper sweet physics into their ears.  Those men who have done the correct research for the role will proceed to lament about how they have in depth knowledge of thermal conduction.  They can then follow up with a detailed discussion of harmonic motion and fluid dynamics, in order to secure their bed for the night.  Lesser experienced men will make the classic mistake of mentioning travelling at greater than the speed of light, and of sound being heard in a vacuum.  Elementary errors that make some people very lonely at night.

It is the pin-up physicists of today that will drive all of our children to lives of sexual and chemical excess.  If only we could dissuade public interest in physics, and show them that it isn't all one big ride on the party train.  If only we could shake off this big ugly stigma and get back to what it is really all about - the physics.

Imagine a world where physics was looked upon as a geeky subject - far too complex and unfathomable for the layperson to understand.  Imagine if we could retain all the top physicists and stop them from pursuing pop music careers.  Imagine if students thought of physics as one of the toughest subjects around, and so only the smartest and most dedicated people would take it up.  Imagine if university lecturers stopped their incessant partying and started wearing tank tops.  Imagine if pick-up lines in nightclubs had no mention of physics whatsoever.  Surely a dreamworld.  Nevertheless, if only life could be like that, if only . . .