Why is physics so sexy?

As you may have understood, those following few words aim to execute two things: show
how our fascination for physics is natural, and how to raise that interest. First, let's focus on
our dear Hendrik...

By a dark winter day, Hendrik went back home and, stepping into the darkness of his room,
switched the light on. Miracle: and there was light! He reiterated the experiment
successfully so many times that he gave up the idea of any divine intervention. He thought
to himself: "That is only science."

Nope! This wonder obviously comes from some very advanced technology, but is far from
being science. Where technology implements our knowledge for our everyday life, science
is only concerned by that pure knowledge itself. For instance, physics is not going to
explain how to make the switch but it will explain how it is working and why the laws of
nature make it so that it can be turned on. Enlightened, Hendrik says with passion : "So, It
was divine!"

Is Science a religion?

Here again the border between what is natural and what is miracle gets thiner and thiner.
Some would even say that physics and its laws have almost completely erased their
religious beliefs leaving room for a rational formalism closer to intuition. However those
would have done nothing more than create another God, more logical, more palpable, more
human… A 2.0 version of God.
But the foundation of all demonstration and calculations always lies in primary axioms and
postulates.
Science is not a religion.

The question is not whether or not to believe in the Big Bang. The aim is not to reach what
is called real nor to say what it substantially is but simply to describe what we see. That big
boom Fred Hoyle was referring to – not without sarcasm – is nothing more than a
cosmological model aiming to describe the origin and the evolution of the universe. Yes, a
model. One among others. That one working better than others though: it is consistent with
most of our current observations. The Big Bang is more of a geeky equation than a creation
at the origins of time and space. At the end of the day, the main goal in physics would be to
find the phenomena that can not be explained by the current model and would lead to a
better one. (For sure the dude that finds that would get a Nobel prize.)
...And so on and so forth.

From that moment on, when Hendrik understood the ephemeral nature of the basis of our
reflexion, he could not help thinking: "What is our science really worth?"

Physics is beautiful. That's what makes it so sexy.

Let's take an example: rainbows. No one can claim to be insensitive to the beauty of the
colors of the light spectrum (not even Hendrik). From the child to the old man, we all are
mesmerized by its beauty.
Of course the physicist does not always think: "Well, a rainbow is a phenomenon of optics
that displays a spectrum of light due to the sun shining on droplets of moisture in the
atmosphere." He does not. However, be certain that his scholarly contemplation expands by
a thousands times his imagination's horizon.

That way, free from any spiritual or metaphysical thoughts, let's curiosity be the fuel to
unwrap the mysteries of the Universe and its phenomena; the link between that knowledge
and beauty would come naturally. In the end, what matters is our ability to wonder, our
ability to keep looking at the world the way we used to do as a child discovering the world
around him…

NB: The man on the cover could not in any case be mistaken with our dear Hendrik…

Sophie in cognito