Remarks Prepared for Delivery by
Dr. Raymond L. Orbach
Under Secretary for Science
U.S. Department of Energy
17th DOE National Science Bowl®
Washington, DC

April 30, 2007

It’s a great pleasure to welcome all of you to the 17th DOE National Science Bowl® and to today’s awards ceremony.  Let me begin by saying congratulations to each and every one of you who have competed here since yesterday.  Some 12,000 students from across the country participated in this year’s National Science Bowl®, and all of them wanted to be sitting where you are sitting today.  But here you are, and it’s quite an achievement.  You should be proud of yourselves, as we are proud of you.  You made it to the nationals, and we’re delighted to see you here.  Please go ahead and give yourselves a hand.

This is a very happy event for us each year at the Department of Energy, and especially in the Office of Science.  In a sense, it reminds us of why we’re in business.  Nearly everything we do in the Office of Science at DOE is aimed at ensuring a better life and future for our nation, and for the world, through supporting research and promoting transformational change in our energy future.  And when I look out at you, I see the future.

I want to say a word of thanks to some people who helped make this year’s National Science Bowl® a success.  First, I would like to thank one of the strongest friends that you contestants have here in this room, Mrs. Diane Bodman.  Mrs. Bodman is a distinguished attorney, a former professor of law, and the wife of Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman who welcomed you here on Day 1.  She has been very active volunteering with the Red Cross on behalf of our wounded service personnel.  She has also been a believer in, and supporter of, the National Science Bowl® ever since Secretary Bodman came to DOE.  We’re honored to have you here with us, Mrs. Bodman.  Thank you so much, and thanks also to the Secretary, for his encouragement and steadfast support. 

I would also like to thank Dave Zahren of Washington’s ABC station, WJLA-TV, for serving once again this year as master of ceremonies.  Dave is giving freely of his time, he’s a terrific emcee, and we’re honored to have him here with us today.

Each year about 5,000 volunteers from across America--including quite a few here in Washington and at DOE--pitch in to help us with the National Science Bowl®.  Many of you volunteers are here, and I want to express our sincere gratitude to you for the very generous gift of your time and talents.
         
There’s one person in the DOE Office of Science whose job it is to bring the National Science Bowl® all together, year after year--and this is no small task.  You all know her.  Please join me in thanking Sue Ellen Walbridge and her team for their magnificent effort once again this year.

Finally, the late Eddie Robinson, college football’s all-time winningest coach, used to say, “You can’t coach people if you don’t love ‘em.”  His players said that “Everybody who played for him believed that they were his favorite player.”  So it is with your coaches and you.  Coaching is indeed a labor of love, and each of you must feel the same as Eddie Robinson’s players.  Your coaches have put in countless hours and great effort and care to help you get here to the national finals.  So, contestants, please give your coaches a warm round of applause.
         
A moment ago I mentioned the future, and you may be wondering just what is your own future? 

Should you stay in science, and I dearly hope you will, you will have opportunities that no one else has had in the history of humankind.  You will be the first generation with the tools and the ability to provide rigorous answers to two of the greatest questions since the very beginning of human reflection:  the origin of our universe and how did it develop, indeed, what led to our existence; and the nature of consciousness, including the nature of imagination—what makes a human being.  Science is, after all, powered by the imagination.  You will be the first generation, I believe, with the capability to fully address these fundamental questions.
         
The tools available to you are enabling us to look backwards in time, to millionths of a second after the Big Bang, as you heard from Nobelist George Smoot.  They are enabling you to probe matter down to ever smaller scales, to the atomic and subatomic levels, and to observe actions taking place there in the shortest of intervals of time. 
The effect is to shatter the boundaries that bracketed the scientific world when I was majoring in physics in college. 

For example, in my day, we used to think of astrophysics and elementary particle physics as very different fields.  But today these fields are converging.  We are using powerful particle accelerators such as the Tevatron at Fermilab and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory to probe deeply the nature of matter and at the same time to recreate conditions as they existed in the very early universe.  As we gaze more deeply into the nature of matter at the particle level, we also look backward in time.  We are using space probes to examine the properties of light that was generated at creation, at the moment of the Big Bang.
         
Likewise in my school days, we used to think of biology and the physical sciences as very, very different fields.   But these fields are also converging today.  As we gain an increasing capability to observe matter in action at the molecular and atomic level--with tools like the Linac Coherent Light Source we are building at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center—biology, physics, and chemistry become virtually identical.

These tools will empower us to probe the frontier between living matter and what we call consciousness, imagination, or mind.

The mystery of consciousness is especially intriguing.  What we call mind, consciousness, and imagination has a physical foundation in our brains.  As I speak and as you listen, millions of neurons are firing.  The neurobiologist and Nobel Prize winner Gerald Edelman noted: “The cortex of the brain, that wrinkled structure you see in pictures of the human brain, if unfolded, would be about the size of a table napkin.  It would have 30 billion neurons, and one million billion connections.  If you calculate the number of possible paths, it’s 10 followed by millions of zeroes.” The question is how to bridge the gulf between that neuronal complexity and what we call consciousness, imagination, and mind.

Edelman developed a biological theory of consciousness based on the principle of natural selection.  According to Edelman, consciousness arises as a process of billions of interconnections forming continuously among neurons in the cerebral cortex and thalamus, in response to inputs from experience.  In Edelman’s theory, experience prompts the formation of “neuronal groups,” involving “hyperastronomical” numbers of interconnections among neurons.  Experience over time causes some groups to survive and strengthen, selecting out and eliminating others, through an evolutionary process.   Every brain evolves uniquely; no two are alike.  Over time, the brain becomes organized in a series of evolving neuronal “maps” that match particular tasks and experiences; concepts constitute maps of maps.  “Values” are essentially driven by the endocrine system, and higher-order consciousness in human beings arises in evolution as the brain becomes larger and more complex. 

Ideas such as these structure an area of investigation that your generation will be able to probe with ever-increasing power and precision.  Neuroscience has already made enormous strides over the past twenty-five years, thanks to development of powerful new tools for imagining the brain, including CAT scans, MRIs, and PET scans.  Interestingly, the underlying technologies of all three of these devices originated in accelerator programs sponsored by the DOE Office of Science and our predecessor agencies going back to the Atomic Energy Commission.

So there it is: a world ahead for you to explore at depths never before achieved by humankind, if you choose a career in science.

We in the DOE Office of Science will do our best to keep American science healthy.  But ultimately the survival and the success of American science will depend on you.  America needs you and your enthusiasm and your wonderful talents.  I hope the experience of the National Science Bowl® lights a fire in your hearts and in your minds, and you will join the ranks of this bold new generation of scientists reaching to understand the core of our existence.  Thank you.