William Donnelly discusses the details of a phenomenon known as the Unruh Effect with colleagues on a public-space blackboard at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Image courtesy of Perimeter Institute.
The almighty blackboard. At some institutions, it is becoming a relic, gone the way of the Dodo, replaced by a wipeable whiteboard or an interactive smart board beamed out of a ceiling-mounted projector. However, at Canada's Perimeter Institute, in Waterloo, Ontario, blackboards reign supreme. The institute sports 11 public spaces infused with natural light, each space outfitted with blackboards where theoretical physicists work, mingle, and wrangle with fundamental questions about the universe.
“They are used by faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and they are good ‘attractors,'” says theoretical physicist and faculty member Luis Lehner. “It's common that you are discussing some idea on the blackboard with a given group, and other researchers will pass by and join in.”
William Donnelly, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo who recently completed a graduate fellowship at the institute, says the blackboards are always in use and always covered. “Somehow, ideas just flow differently than if you're writing on paper,” he says. “I spent more time in those open spaces than I did in my office.”
In this photograph, Donnelly discusses the Unruh Effect, a compelling bridge between acceleration and temperature that theoretical physicists have been mulling over for 37 years. According to the Unruh Effect, an observer accelerating at high speed through empty space will nevertheless detect particles. Tote up the energies of all those ghostly particles, and the observer can find a temperature in that supposed vacuum.
Simply put: Swing a thermometer in empty space, and it will record a temperature. The Unruh Effect implies that an event horizon can develop in the absence of a black hole; on the blackboard behind Donnelly, that event horizon appears as a point with lines emanating from it.
Theoretical physicists in general may suffer from an unfair reputation as being hermits, locked away in their offices and hunched over computers. Although many researchers do work solo, a social gathering around one of Perimeter's blackboards can help push ideas forward.