Column: Dispatches from the home office

I was supposed to be in Philadelphia this week, at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society. It was going to be my first proper weeklong, out-of-town conference in ages, and I was looking forward to it. I was even going to see some old friends from grad school.

Obviously that’s not where I am. The conference, like many other events, was canceled due to the outbreak of COVID-19. But you don’t need me to tell you how quickly and profoundly the pandemic has turned the world upside down. When the American Institute of Physics (my employer, which publishes Physics Today) told us on Wednesday, 11 March, that we’d all be working from home starting the following Monday, it seemed at the time like a decision made out of an abundance of caution. In hindsight, it looks like just the right amount of caution. I headed to my local IKEA that weekend to get a desk and chair for my new home office; by the following Wednesday, all IKEA stores in the US were closed. In just a few short days, we went from life as usual to something radically different.

The mechanics of my job haven’t changed much. Most of my work—reading papers, sending emails, writing, and editing—is solitary, and I can do it anywhere in the world with an internet connection. The hardest part for me so far has been keeping my mental focus during this scary and uncertain time. Like a lot of people, I’ve been finding it difficult to tear myself away from news coverage of the pandemic, watching the numbers of confirmed cases go up and up, trying to make sense of all the statistics, hoping we’re doing enough to flatten the curve, fearing that we’re not, and wondering how all this is going to end for me, my family, my friends, my colleagues, my community, my country, and the world.

Miller’s Diary

Physics Today editor Johanna Miller reflects on the latest Search & Discovery section of the magazine, the editorial process, and life in general.

But in times of crisis, I think it’s important not to let the crisis totally consume us and to keep sight of all the beauty and wonder around us that’s worth pulling through for. Because you’re here reading a physics magazine, you probably find some of that beauty and wonder in scientific ideas and our capacity to understand the natural world. Those ideas aren’t going away. Although human society is experiencing a disruption larger than most of us have seen in our lifetimes, all the same oxygen and nitrogen molecules are still swarming around us in the air we breathe, all the same photons are streaming the 150 million kilometers to us from the Sun, and all the same dark matter is doing . . . whatever it is that dark matter does.

Physics Today remains open for business, and as long as there’s science in the world, we’ll keep writing about it. We’ve had some COVID-19 coverage already, and we have more in the works. But we also have a lot of great content coming your way that has nothing to do with the pandemic—including, I hope, future installments of this column. I worry slightly about running out of things to write about now that I have to draw most of my inspiration from within the four walls of my living room. But then I remember we once ran a story that was literally about watching paint dry . You can find fascinating science everywhere, even in the most mundane of things, if you know to look for it.

So let’s get through this. Stay home if you can, keep social distancing and washing your hands, and maybe I’ll see you at a conference somewhere down the line.