PeterDonis Interview – Physics Mentor on Science & Tech
PeterDonis is a Physics Mentor at Physics Forums.
Table of Contents
About PeterDonis
I have been interested in science since childhood. I hold two degrees in Nuclear Engineering (focused on fusion rather than fission), which are effectively degrees in plasma physics. I was also Navy ROTC and served six years in the U.S. Navy after graduation. After that service I moved into what is broadly project management, a field I had worked in during part of my Navy career. I am married, have no children, and we have two dogs that think they are people.
What drew you to physics?
I began reading Isaac Asimov’s non-fiction while still in elementary school. For years he wrote a monthly column for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; collections of those columns often covered physics topics that captured my interest. I eventually read his three-part series Understanding Physics and enjoyed it.
Between my junior and senior year of high school I took a class in special relativity that used the first edition of Taylor & Wheeler’s Spacetime Physics, and I was hooked. I took all the standard physics courses in college, but relativity has always been my favorite. In graduate school an office mate had a copy of Misner, Thorne, & Wheeler; borrowing it started my interest in general relativity as well as special relativity.
Science heroes
My all-time favorite physicist is Richard Feynman. He was not only brilliant at physics but also brilliant at explaining it, and he conveyed a deep love of the subject—perhaps more than any physicist except Einstein. He also had a great sense of humor.
Among living scientists, Freeman Dyson stands out to me as an example of what a scientist should be. He is willing to express non-mainstream opinions, supports them with data and reasoned arguments, and appears to have no ideology beyond understanding how the universe works. He also has extraordinarily broad scientific experience.
Favorite books, movies, and music
Books (fiction)
- The Lord of the Rings
- Day of the Jackal
- All of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories
- The Doorbell Rang (one of the Nero Wolfe mysteries)
Books (nonfiction)
- QED — Richard Feynman
- The Character of Physical Law — Richard Feynman
- Godel, Escher, Bach
- Freedom Evolves — Daniel Dennett
- The Ancestor’s Tale — Richard Dawkins
- The Lives of the Caesars — Suetonius
- Parkinson’s Law
Movies
- Strangers on a Train
- Rear Window
- Dr. Strangelove
- Buckaroo Banzai
- The Sting
- Silverado
Musicians
- Billy Joel
- Mozart
- Bach
- Gilbert & Sullivan
Roleplaying games
My main RPG experience is D&D across multiple editions (including Original, and 3.5 as a “half” edition). I have tried Traveller and GURPS only briefly.
Python and open source
I have programmed since high school and have used Python since the early 2000s. Python is my favorite language because it matches my mental model of programming, which makes me productive. It is high-level, so you can accomplish a lot with relatively little code. I have used many languages, including BASIC (the original PC BASIC), DOS batch files, x86 assembly, Pascal, C, C++, Visual Basic, Java, JavaScript, Lisp, HTML/CSS, Unix shell scripts, PHP, and Python.
I like open source because it allows me to inspect internals and understand how things work—useful when I write programs that rely on a language or library. For example, I’ve spent considerable time examining parts of Python’s source to learn how its internals work. Open source also raises freedom issues, which I care about.
Censorship and net neutrality
I view personal computers and the Internet as the biggest advance in individual freedom and empowerment in human history. I do not want that undermined by centralized-control models pushed by some industry players. A site like Physics Forums could not exist under a model where regulatory burdens and bandwidth costs make connectivity feasible only for large corporations; that’s why those models are promoted by large companies.
So far the tech community has mobilized effectively (for example, opposing SOPA and PIPA in the U.S.), but the fight over open access and fair network rules is ongoing.
Advice for someone with a new theory
See the discussion thread for fuller detail: Why Won’t You Look at My New Theory? (discussion) 
Boiled down: before trying to construct a new theory, learn everything currently known in the relevant field. Before asking others to evaluate your theory, be ready to explain precisely what existing theories fail to account for (in terms experts will accept) and how your theory includes those missing pieces.
Technologies and scientific advancements of interest
Technologies
- Nuclear power: advanced fission reactors (e.g., pebble-bed, thorium) and fusion reactors. When I was earning my Master’s Degree, fusion ignition was expected soon — and that expectation keeps being reset even decades later.
- Solar power: both advanced photovoltaic cells and solar thermal systems — vast amounts of energy are available from the sun and it’s sensible to capture more of it.
- Advanced biofuels: biodiesel from algae and similar approaches that capture solar energy without diverting food resources (unlike corn ethanol).
These interests all center on energy: cheap, plentiful energy is a prerequisite for a first-world standard of living globally. Our current fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) work but are not optimal — they can often be used more productively than simply burning them.
Scientific advances
- Quantum gravity: and more generally making fundamental physics an experimental science again. The pace of new experimental breakthroughs has slowed since the 1970s.
- DNA sequencing: improving our understanding of how genotypes map to phenotypes — the mapping is far more complex than Mendelian models suggest.
- Aging research: methods to slow or reverse aging would have enormous value.
Thanks for your insights and participation PeterDonis!
I have a BS in Information Sciences from UW-Milwaukee. I’ve helped manage Physics Forums for over 22 years. I enjoy learning and discussing new scientific developments. STEM communication and policy are big interests as well. Currently a Sr. SEO Specialist at Shopify and writer at importsem.com
“So there are reasons why fusion research has not been an obvious candidate for a Manhattan Project/Apollo commitment the way those previous efforts were.”
One of them being that there is no likely strategic military advantage for a nation to go it alone,it only makes sense in the context of international co-operation.
But then beurocracy, diplomacy, etc, and top heavy management.
“to do that requires a commitment something like that of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo program, and tokamak fusion hasn’t had that kind of commitment. ITER has had some PR indicating that it is supposed to be that kind of commitment, but it isn’t.”
I should add that there are some key disanalogies between ITER and the other two programs I mentioned. Unlike in the case of fusion, in the case of fission the controlled reaction yielding energy came first–Fermi’s experiments–and then the bomb. Also, the conditions for a chain reaction turned out to be relatively easy to achieve–the fuel is solid, not plasma.
In the case of the Apollo program, the rocket engines involved were operating at the limits of what could be achieved with known materials and fuels, but the basic physics involved was so simple–basically the rocket equation and orbital mechanics–that there was no doubt that rocket engines of sufficient power could get a spacecraft to the Moon. Whereas with fusion, much of the research over the years has been trying to establish the basic physics–what kind of plasma configuration do you need to achieve the Lawson criterion?
So there are reasons why fusion research has not been an obvious candidate for a Manhattan Project/Apollo commitment the way those previous efforts were.
“Are ITER’s goals technically feasible?”
This is probably worth a whole post and discussion thread in itself (and also there are regulars in the Nuclear Engineering forum whose knowledge is more up to date than mine and could give a better answer). It seems to me that tokamak fusion has ended up being a much more difficult and costly path than it was expected to be. But at least a fair portion of that is due to issues that are bureaucratic, not technical. We know the plasma conditions we need to achieve: the [URL=’https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_criterion’]Lawson criterion[/URL]. We know there are a number of issues that have to be carefully managed to run a tokamak under those conditions; but at least to an extent we can manage them by brute force while we experiment with ways to do it more cheaply. But to do that requires a commitment something like that of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo program, and tokamak fusion hasn’t had that kind of commitment. ITER has had some PR indicating that it is supposed to be that kind of commitment, but it isn’t.
“I just wanted to say I admit I even wrote my own D&D style stories. I think they were pretty good!”
I wrote a bunch of them too; in fact I often wondered if one of my reasons for playing D&D was to generate material for the stories. :wink:
“Have you looked at [URL=’https://www.rust-lang.org/’]Rust [/URL]as a programming language?”
Only glanced at it. The programming I do doesn’t really seem to fit its main use case, which is systems programming. Also, it has the same problem that I attributed to Go in this post on my blog a while back:
[URL]http://blog.peterdonis.com/rants/delimiters-suck.html[/URL]
What a great interview, I do agree that gravity knowledge is stalled at the moment only confirming today’s theories , and my own theory about accelerative expansion (see my discussion on Gravity) is only a confirmation of existing knowledge. I do hope that gravity is explained in my lifetime.
Are ITER’s goals technically feasible?
I just wanted to say I admit I even wrote my own D&D style stories. I think they were pretty good!
Have you looked at [URL=’https://www.rust-lang.org/’]Rust [/URL]as a programming language?
What a great interview, I do agree that gravity knowledge is stalled at the moment only confirming today's theories , and my own theory about accelerative expansion (see my discussion on Gravity) is only a confirmation of existing knowledge. I do hope that gravity is explained in my lifetime.