The Opra Association is willing to question the standard model
Particle physicists with a streak of iconoclasm might just have found their ideal funder. The Israel-based Opra Association is looking to fund research that can solve long-running problems with the standard model of particle physics.
The starting point for the Opra Association is that because such problems have gone unsolved, the standard model cannot be fully accurate. “The idea behind the whole operation started from, let’s say, a poor situation in the community of physicists,” says Ofer Comay, one of the association’s founding members.
No mistakes
Comay says the standard model “dominates everything” in particle physics and that billions of dollars are poured into running particle accelerators every year that “do not produce anything beneficial”. He points out that other areas of physics have led to modern technologies such as smartphones.
“We [at Opra] think the reason is that everything is based on poor theories,” Comay says. So Opra wants applicants who are willing to take on discrepancies between existing theories and experimental findings.
“Most of the physicists, almost all of them, believe that there are no holes…there are no mistakes,” he says.
“There are experiments that were done in the past, 40 to 50 years ago, and there was a storm after they were done because they contradicted so much that people thought before these experiments,” Comay says.
Direct approach
The association has highlighted 18 ‘problem’ topics it will fund research on, grouped into nuclear physics, strong interactions and weak interactions.
While the particle physics community has tended to ignore these problems, Comay contends, the Opra Association wants to tackle them head on.
Grants of up to $70,000 (€63,000) a year for three years are available. The next deadline for proposals is 30 April but those not already preparing bids can start thinking about next year’s competition, which will also run with an April deadline.
The Opra Association’s money comes from private family investments and it is a relative newcomer, having only started offering funding three years ago.
Hagar Kedem, the association’s manager, says it has struggled to attract applications and has so far only backed one research project. “Basically, we don’t receive many applications because we support very specific topics,” she says.
“Every year, we get something between four and seven applications. We want volume, but it’s just really hard to get.”
Comay says the one winner so far was a “well-known professor” at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in the US, and that the grant was for his PhD student.
“They have a very big experiment. They’re still waiting for the results—it’s something that takes a lot of time,” Comay says. The grant is for work on the EMC effect, which describes unexpected behaviour of protons and neutrons inside an atomic nucleus and was first observed at Cern in 1983.
Although that first winner is based at the Thomas Jefferson facility, Comay says it’s not necessary for applicants to be linked to a major research facility. “Everyone has access to the data,” he points out.
Quality control
Opra funding is open to researchers at any career stage, from PhD students to postdoctoral fellows and established researchers. Applications are welcomed from any country.
Kedem says that as part of the application, the association needs to know that the proposed research is supported by a university or research institution, alongside standard requirements such as previous research records and recommendations.
But Comay says success ultimately comes down to the research proposal, and that the association wants applicants to pay close attention to the topics it has chosen.
“There are several findings in the last 50 years that we believe can be connected,” he says, adding that it would be “fantastic” to show that more than one of the unsolved problems can be resolved through one explanation.
“This is the main thing that we are looking for,” he says, whereas “the reality is that most of the proposals [are taking] a tiny step”.
Comay says that while “we want them to be critical” of the standard model, applicants can also try to prove that it is right.
Help is at hand
Comay says that Opra tends to receive a lot of applications from researchers who are just looking for a funder to support their existing research idea.
“What we found is that people do not want to change the subject of their research,” he says. “They base their research proposal on the standard model without any modification.”
The association is willing to help researchers hone their applications, as long as they have broadly the correct focus. “In the last proposal we received, we guided them on how they could improve it in order to make it to the point,” he says.
Paradigm shifts don’t come around too often in physics. The Opra Association is hoping to be the catalyst for the next one.
This is an extract from an article in Research Professional’s Funding Insight service. To subscribe contact sales@researchresearch.com