Maybe Chris Martin of Coldplay had it wrong in the band’s 2002 hit “The Scientist” when he sang, “Questions of science… do not speak as loud as my heart.”
Maybe physics is the medium that brings us together. As we seek the ethereal nature of matter, we inevitably stumble into each other and find a different sort of relationship between two stationary bodies: love. You could call it serendipity, but I’d prefer to call it emotional gravity.
As demonstrated by geeky engagements and nerdy wedding cakes, those that fall in love with physics sometimes also fall in love with each other.
Readers who submitted to our “My Physical Romance” readers' challenge found love through physics and, sometimes, physics through love. But in all scenarios, they show the passion that physics can inspire.
Reader submissions:
“It was like a lightbulb going off in my head. What, you mean I can use the math that I like to describe the world around me? How cool is that?!”
- Lynn Garren, Computing Division, Fermilab
Roses are red,
Violets are approximately blue,
A paracompact manifold with a Lorentzian metric can be a spacetime,
if it has dimension greater than or equal to two.
- Josh, quoting Sarah Kavassalis
Some quarks are red,
Some quarks are blue,
If we were both quarks,
I'd make a meson with you.
- Flip Tanedo, graduate student, Cornell University
“One morning, as we were eating our cereal, my boyfriend told me he thought I'd be happier with women. I stopped eating with my spoon mid-air, thinking... hum, interesting. So a couple weeks later, I walked into a women's bar for the first time of my life. I met a woman there who happened to be from San Francisco. What the heck! I dropped my permanent teaching job and moved there within months. But after a few weeks, since she needed to study for an exam, I was kind of in her way, so she sent me to visit SLAC [National Accelerator Laboratory]. And that's where I really fell in love. Twenty-seven years later, I am still in particle physics and just loving it!”
- Pauline Gagnon, ATLAS experiment, CERN
Aria and Aron Soha met through friends at Fermilab.
“My husband Aron and I originally met in my living room, when Dee Hahn [Fermilab, CDF experiment] brought him to a party at my house. But then we didn't talk again for nine months until M. Backfish [Fermilab Accelerator Division] introduced us again at the Fermilab Users’ Center. We found out that we had both graduated from Carnegie Mellon, but five years apart, so we never met. We spent that night at the Users' Center talking about our physics professors! Our first date was on Sept 20, 2008, and Aron proposed on the 2-year anniversary of that date, at Governor Dodge state park in Wisconsin. We were married on July 3, 2010. Last year around this time we both were sent to CERN; me for the EDIT school and Aron for CMS week. We took a few days after our work week(s) and spent Valentine's Day in Paris! (This year, we're going to stay in.)”
- Aria Soha, Particle Physics Division, Fermilab
Dear Physics,
I beseech thee, this Valentine’s Day so sweet;
Please take me back, and make my heart complete.
If you think I’ve been untrue, while I’ve been away;
Then open your gluon field, and hear what I’ve to say.Oh Physics,
I know I’ve been unfaithful; and strayed into another girl’s arms;
Her name is Physiology; and she has quite a few charms.
But I saw you deep in her eyes, I pleadingly placate!
For her other name is Biophysics, your very own namesake!
Isn’t that like quantum entanglement?
Not something deserving of stranglement!And, Physics,
Yes, I confess, I’ve dallied with website design;
But she’s not the one for whom I longingly pine.
It’s you, Dear Physics, with your beauty and symmetry;
That’s the W and Z, of our super chemistry!Your awesome nine dimensions of superstring theory,
Have made me of our mundane three so weary.
So exciting is the search for your Higgs particle,
I devour every blog and new article!Your faster than light neutrinos,
Are more fun than genoes and phenoes!
Your sun’s coronal mass ejection,
Is sexier than Gaga perfection!Yes, Physics, Dear Physics, I am true blue;
And I have proof My Love is no one but you.
Please read: The Legend of Mighty Mabel;
My love song to you, cloaked in a fable.
For Albert, the genius in my story,
Is your Albert Einstein, in all his glory!That’s proof! Dear Physics, On this Valentine’s Day.
So please take me back! And I’ll be there to stay.
- Vance Avis, author of "The Mighty Mabel"
Curve Of SpaceTime
Cosmos is humming a galaxy song
Sing buccaneer ballads as we play along
Strumming chords of old and memories to hold
Spinning yarns of kin and tales to be toldChart a course for all seasons
Ain’t no reason not to go
On a spin round the cosmos,
Solar wind is on the blowWith your hand on the rudder and the other in mine
Steering nice and easy on the curve of spacetime
Beyond the horizon on the curve of spacetimeSo pull up anchor and cast off moorings
Boson’s whistle says time for boarding
To circle the sun, fresh gale on the run
Yarn to be spun till another year’s doneYarn to be sung till another year’s done
- Wendy and Rick Mouché
