Sean M. Carroll does not mince words. On October 17 he also did not cube them, dice them or thinly slice them, even when he was seriously discussing the theory that the moon is made of green cheese. Just to be clear, the discussion was serious, not the theory, when Carroll spoke at the ScienceWriters2011 conference in Flagstaff, Ariz.

A noted theoretical physicist, Carroll is not to be confused with noted evolutionary biologist Sean B. Carroll. The Sean Carroll duality may be one reason that the physicist version often muses about the multiverse.

“How do you know the moon is not made of green cheese?” asked Carroll, a senior research associate at the California Institute of Technology, author of the entropy examination From Eternity to Here and blogger for another publication you can sometimes Discover at magazine stands. “People will say, ‘Well, we’ve landed on the moon, we’ve picked it up, we’ve brought pieces of it back.’” Such people might think that as late as 1969 there was still widespread uncertainty about the moon’s curd content.

“But that’s just the surface,” Carroll Havartily argued. “Of course, there’s a layer of moon dust a few meters thick that sits on top of the green cheese. How do you know that most of the moon, 99 percent, is not really green cheese? And they will say, ‘Well, we know the mass of the moon, the density, and so forth.’ But don’t think that you fully understand the properties of lunar green cheese. This is very dense cheese.”

The physicist yet again posed his provolone problem: “How do you know it’s not made of green cheese?” He then cut the Goudaian knot. “The answer is that it’s absurd to think the moon is made of green cheese.” (If you were hoping for an explanatory equation, mull over the fact that a cylinder of mozzarella of radius z and height a has a volume equal to pi z z a.)

Carroll allowed his reasoning to ripen. “The formalization of that absurdity,” he said, “is that we are allowed to use other things we know about the universe when judging the plausibility of a hypothesis. The real reason the moon isn’t made of green cheese is not because we’ve gone there and brought pieces of it back. It’s because cheese comes out of cows, ultimately, or sheep or goats.”

Ah, but what about any influence from the cow that jumped over the moon? Frankly, I find the story of a cow that reaches escape velocity without the aid of a powerful multistage rocket far-fetched. And I think the absurdity argument can be applied here as well.

“Cheese,” Carroll continued, “was not part of the primordial solar system. We have a theoretical understanding of how the solar system works and how planets are formed that precludes the possibility that the moon is made of green cheese. Just like the reason why we know you can’t bend spoons with your mind is not because we’ve caught people on The Tonight Show faking it. It’s because it would violate the laws of physics. The moon being made of green cheese would violate how the solar system works.” I’ll go further than Carroll. I contend that the moon being made of cheese of any color is impermissible.

“That the moon is not made of green cheese,” Carroll said of his Gorgonzolic gripe, “is not a proof, the way you can prove a statement in logic or math. But science nevertheless passes judgments on claims based on how well they fit in with the rest of our theoretical understanding.”

Despite the existence of well-established and powerful theoretical frameworks, some individuals may still hold an Edelpilz epistemological notion that only the samples brought back by astronauts were truly decisive. Or even that a deep moon core sample is still necessary to settle the lunar Limburger. But such people have truly lost their whey.

This article was originally published with the title Physics Uncowed.

4 Comments

1. 1. sellenwright 04:58 PM 12/30/11

   As a Germanist sci-tech translator and science writer, I must seriously suggest that someone explore the possibility that the Quark particle may under the low-gravity conditions prevailing on the moon have some effect, in which case we are not dealing with green cheese at all, but rather pale yellow-cake, explosive as that thought may sound on first consideration.

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2. 2. Cognosium 09:09 PM 1/18/12

   As with all effective satire the humor in this article runs very close to reality.
   
   The underlying issue, in my view, is the increasing reliance upon specialists for interpretation of gross natural phenomena.
   
   Specialization is, of course, essential and inevitable because of the ever-growing diversity of scientific inquiry.
   
   The downside is that workers in narrow disciplines are often not able to "see the wood for the trees"
   
   And, sadly, the generalist, seems to be a dying breed.
   
   As is underlined in this article, the perspective provided by standing back and considering the "big picture" provided by the main body of science can be more productive than dwelling upon details. Important as those details may be.
   
   An example dear to my heart is what is still quite consistently referred to as "The mystery of consciousness".
   
   Quite bizarre explanations are proposed, some, a la Penrose, invoking quantum effects. Neurologists try to locate it at the level of the synapse. Others still cling to mystical interpretations.
   
   While, in actuality, the "big picture", particularly that part provided by the evolutionary aspects of biology now provides us with a straightforward explanation of the phenomenon on a very well-established evidential basis.
   
   Consciousness is seen to be simply the navigational feature possessed to some degree by practically all organisms. Indeed, it is an evolutionary necessity.
   The level at which it operates depends upon the degree of interaction with its environment required for optimal function.
   For a bacterium, it is minuscule. For, say, a cat, it it moderate.
   For our species, whose interactions with the environment are beyond compare, it is humongous.
   
   It is hard to see why so many folk, including Richard Dawkins, who certainly should know better in this regard, have lost their whey.
   
   My further generalistic (but not dairy product related) views are expanded upon very informally in"The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?"
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

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3. 3. jhollowaymd 01:19 PM 1/20/12

   In the January issue of Scientific American, p 86, Steve Mirsky quotes Sean M Carroll on a lecture about the moon possibly being made of green cheese. Steve then adds his own comment "I'll go further than Carroll. I contend that the moon being made of cheese of any color is impermissible."
   
   Green cheese is not green. The term is used for new cheese that still contains whey. It is not so called for the color.
   
   Sincerely,
   Joel E. Holloway, M.D.

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4. 4. suitti 12:24 PM 2/1/12

   I used to think that the Moon couldn't be made of green (new) cheese because you'd need cows or some other mammal. And, there's (little or) no air there, so there really can't be. But check out this video (35 seconds):
   
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CzFSIjU8sc
   
   Indeed, the generalist is a dying breed. But so are all the other breeds. We're not getting any younger. We're all time travelers. We're going to the future. Pack your toothbrush, it's a one way trip.
   
   On a more serious note, Brian Greene has said that if the Universe is infinite in size, there will be infinite copies of everyone, and one can compute an estimate of how far the nearest is. And that's because for any finite volume of space, there are only so many possible configurations of matter. I've no idea how to compute the distance. For one thing, there are no Earths with a green cheese Moon. And, there are lots of combinations that aren't going to be anywhere. In order to figure out how far the nearest you is, you'll need to know something about what combinations of matter aren't allowed. So, the nearest one is closer than you might think, though sadly, Kepler hasn't spotted one yet. And if you go, say ten billion years or so back in time, there may be none in an infinite universe, as there won't have been enough time to get such a configuration together.
   

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