I was asked by editors of the magazine Physics World’s 30th anniversary edition to do a drawing that somehow captures changes in physics over the last 30 years, and looks forward to 30 years from now. This was an interesting challenge. There was not anything like the freedom to use space that I had in other works I’ve done, like my graphic book about science “The Dialogues”, or my glimpse of the near future in my SF story “Resolution” in the Twelve Tomorrows anthology. I had over 230 pages for the former, and 20 pages for the latter. Here, I had one page. Well, actually a little over 2/3 of a page (once you take into account the introductory text, etc).
So I thought about it a lot. The editors wanted to show an active working environment, and so I thought about the interiors of labs for some time, looked up lots of physics breakthroughs over the years, and reflected on what might come. I eventually realized that the most important single change in the science that can be visually depicted (and arguably the single most important change of any kind) is the change that’s happened to the scientists. Most importantly, we’ve become more diverse in various ways (not uniformly across all fields though), much more collaborative, and the means by which we communicate in order to do science have expanded greatly. All of this has benefited the science greatly, and I think that if you were to get a time machine and visit a lab 30 years ago, or 30 years from now, it will be the changes in the people that will most strike you, if you’re paying attention. So I decided to focus on the break/discussion area of the lab, and imagined that someone stood in the same spot each year and took a snapshot. What we’re seeing is those photos tacked to a noticeboard somewhere, and that’s our time machine. Have a look, and keep an eye out for various details I put in to reflect the different periods. Enjoy! (Direct link here, and below I’ve embedded the image itself that’s from the magazine. I recommend reading the whole issue, as it is a great survey of the last 30 years.)
-cvj
