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Interview With Brian Greene: Masters in Business (Audio) · Masters in Business

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  Speaker 1: The future may not be clear, but our commitment is
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  Speaker 1: so when you sit with an advisor at Merrill Lynch,
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  Speaker 1: we'll put your interests first. Visit mL dot com and
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  Speaker 1: Mery Lynch makes available pducts and services offered by Merrill Lynch.
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  Speaker 1: Pierce Veteran Smith Incorporated or Register Broker Dealer remember s
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  Speaker 1: I PC. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts
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  Speaker 1: on Boomberg Radio. This week on the podcast, I have
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  Speaker 1: an extra special guest. His name is Professor Brian Green.
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  Speaker 1: He is a director of theoretical physics at Columbia University
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  Speaker 1: and is also a super string theorist whose contributions to
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  Speaker 1: the worlds of physics and cosmology are right up there
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  Speaker 1: with with some of the greats. If you are at
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  Speaker 1: all interested in things like how the universe formed, what's
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  Speaker 1: going to happen to it eventually, what actually makes Earth
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  Speaker 1: unique and special? How long is a galaxy going to
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  Speaker 1: be in existence? When is the universe gonna die? Will
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  Speaker 1: the universe die? This is really a fascinating conversation. I
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  Speaker 1: love this sort of stuff and it was just an
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  Speaker 1: absolute pleasure speaking with someone who is such a tremendous
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  Speaker 1: expert in the field, who can talk with great understanding
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  Speaker 1: and has the ability to communicate very very complex ideas
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  Speaker 1: in a way that is readily understandable by just about anybody.
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  Speaker 1: I found this utterly entrancing. Uh. For those of you
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  Speaker 1: who are physics wanks or cosmology and space wonks like
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  Speaker 1: I am, this podcast is for you. I have to
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  Speaker 1: add that this week is New York City's Festival of Science,
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  Speaker 1: which Professor Green created and helps co produce each year.
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  Speaker 1: It's the tenth anniversary of this. So for those of
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  Speaker 1: you who have kids who are interested in science, or
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  Speaker 1: kids you wanna make interested in science and so were
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  Speaker 1: in the New York tri state area, I strongly suggest
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  Speaker 1: you bring them with no further ado. My conversation with
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  Speaker 1: Columbia University Professor Brian Green. My special guest today is
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  Speaker 1: Brian Green. He is professor of physics and mathematics at
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  Speaker 1: Columbia University, best known for his groundbreaking discoveries in superstring theory.
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  Speaker 1: The public knows him through his books, most notably The
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  Speaker 1: Elegant Universe, Fabric of the Cosmos, and Hidden Reality. Collectively,
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  Speaker 1: they have sold over two million copies. He also hosted
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  Speaker 1: a Nova mini series which won both Peabody and Emmy awards,
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  Speaker 1: and that mini series was based on his book. He
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  Speaker 1: is a director of Columbia University's Center for Theoretical Physics.
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  Speaker 1: Professor Brian Green. Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you very much.
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  Speaker 1: So I'm a little bit of a physics nerd, and
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  Speaker 1: I've been really looking forward to having this conversation. And
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  Speaker 1: I want to start with a quote of yours, which
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  Speaker 1: is the universe is rich and exciting, and there's stuff
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  Speaker 1: that can knock you over every day if you're privy
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  Speaker 1: to it. Tell us about that. Well, I think that's
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  Speaker 1: absolutely case. You know, we love going to say the movies, right,
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  Speaker 1: to see some Hollywood film that usually comes out of
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  Speaker 1: some screenwriter's imagination. But oftentimes I sit and watch those
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  Speaker 1: things and I do enjoy them. But when I step
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  Speaker 1: out of the theater, I recognize that the true way
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  Speaker 1: the world is put together, quantum mechanics, relativity, all of
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  Speaker 1: that stuff is so much more creative and so much
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  Speaker 1: more mind blowing than anything that usually we make up.
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  Speaker 1: So I always lament the fact that there's so many
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  Speaker 1: people that just don't realize that. So let's talk a
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  Speaker 1: little bit about quantum mechanics and general relativity. For a
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  Speaker 1: long time, the physics descriptors of the very large and
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  Speaker 1: the very small seem to be I don't know if
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  Speaker 1: incompatible is the right word, but but certainly inconsistent with
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  Speaker 1: one perspective of seeing the universe. What what was the
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  Speaker 1: cause of that underlying tension? Well, you're absolutely right. So
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  Speaker 1: there are these two major discoveries that happened in the
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  Speaker 1: twentieth century. One, as you mentioned, is general relativity. It's
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  Speaker 1: relevant really for the big stuff in the universe, stars, galaxies,
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  Speaker 1: the whole universe. It's a theory of gravity, and gravity
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  Speaker 1: matters when things are big. The other main development is
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  Speaker 1: quantum physics, and that does a fantastic job at describing
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  Speaker 1: the universe in the other end of the spectrum, the
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  Speaker 1: small stuff, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, and each of these
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  Speaker 1: two theories they are found in a completely different ideas.
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  Speaker 1: They approached the universe in completely different ways. And when
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  Speaker 1: you try to take the equations of these two descriptions
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  Speaker 1: and meld them together into one unified hole, which is
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  Speaker 1: what Albert Einstein wanted to do, really you find that
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  Speaker 1: the equations don't work together. They're these ferocious antagonists every
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  Speaker 1: time we do a calculation, get a nonsensical result. And
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  Speaker 1: for decades we've known that that's a real problem, a
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  Speaker 1: real puzzle. So let's talk a little bit about Albert
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  Speaker 1: Einstar and he really spent the latter part of his
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  Speaker 1: professional life trying to find that grand unified theory was
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  Speaker 1: heat early? Did the technological tools simply not exist to
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  Speaker 1: give him the building blocks to figure it out? Well.
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  Speaker 1: Some would even say that we're still too early today.
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  Speaker 1: You know, we're struggling to do exactly what Einstein was
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  Speaker 1: trying to do century later, a century later, and I
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  Speaker 1: I would say we have made great progress, but we
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  Speaker 1: still don't know if any of the ideas that we
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  Speaker 1: have come up with are actually correct on paper. They're
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  Speaker 1: interesting on paper, they seem to work, but we've been
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  Speaker 1: unable to test any of these theories as yet because
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  Speaker 1: our technology is so far behind where our theoretical developments
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  Speaker 1: have taken us. So was Einstein too early? He was
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  Speaker 1: deaf only earlier than we and we may be too
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  Speaker 1: early ourselves. So it could still be the case that
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  Speaker 1: the unified theory maybe a century off. I don't know, so,
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  Speaker 1: so let's talk a little bit about Newtonian physics. When
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  Speaker 1: Isaac Newton wrote out his Laws of the Movement of
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  Speaker 1: the heavenly Bodies, which are still very accurate to this day,
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  Speaker 1: he envisioned a universe where time and space was rigid.
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  Speaker 1: And then we look fast forward to Einstein and he
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  Speaker 1: has a much more flexible and dynamic description of time
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  Speaker 1: and space. What is the next evolution gonna look like?
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  Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you. If I knew the answer,
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  Speaker 1: I'd be in my office right now writing it up
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  Speaker 1: into some spectacular PAPERM can make some guesses. I think
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  Speaker 1: the next big discovery is going to change our understanding
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  Speaker 1: of what space is and what time is again the
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  Speaker 1: way Einstein changed our understanding from Newton. Well, yeah, that's right.
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  Speaker 1: So what Einstein really did exactly as you describe it.
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  Speaker 1: He added newfound flexibility to space and time. Newton space
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  Speaker 1: and times just an arena stage. They don't participate in
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  Speaker 1: the unfolding of the cosmos. They're just there. I says, no, no, no,
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  Speaker 1: they're not just there. They do something. They warp and
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  Speaker 1: they curve in the service of communicating the force of gravity, spectacular,
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  Speaker 1: new idea, radical, But none of those questions, none of
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  Speaker 1: those developments give us insight into what space is made
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  Speaker 1: of or what time is made of. Could it be
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  Speaker 1: the space and time are made of smaller, more fundamental entities,
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  Speaker 1: just like any piece of matter. We know it's made
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  Speaker 1: of molecules, made of atoms, made of sub atomic particles.
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  Speaker 1: That's been the progression over the course of many decades
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  Speaker 1: to figure that story out. Maybe space and time themselves
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  Speaker 1: have fundamental constituents, and if we could identify what they
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  Speaker 1: are and how they behave and find the mathematical equations
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  Speaker 1: to describe them, that to me would be the next revolution.
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  Speaker 1: So for a long time, the smallest um article we
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  Speaker 1: understood was the molecule, and then it became the atom,
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  Speaker 1: and then protons, neutrons, quarkscluons, etcetera. Is it a never
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  Speaker 1: ending progression to ever smaller components or can we eventually
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  Speaker 1: find hey, that's as small as it gets, that's the
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  Speaker 1: fundamental building block of the entire universe and everything in it.
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  Speaker 1: So nobody knows. It's a real good question. It's a
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  Speaker 1: real tough question because it's always difficult to rule out
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  Speaker 1: the existence of something beyond the reach of your equations
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  Speaker 1: or beyond the reach of your technology. But personally, my
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  Speaker 1: own feeling, based on the progression of physics is I
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  Speaker 1: think that there is gonna come an end. There's gonna
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  Speaker 1: come a point where we absolutely identify the fundamental ingredients,
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  Speaker 1: and we absolutely identify the fundamental forces, and we identify
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  Speaker 1: the equations that describe them. I believe that that chapter
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  Speaker 1: will come to an end. There was another department, or
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  Speaker 1: I don't know if this is the same department. The
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  Speaker 1: Institute for String Cosmology and astro Particle Physics is a
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  Speaker 1: separate research facility. Yeah, that's a subset of the Center
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  Speaker 1: of Theoretical Physics that focuses more on the developments of
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  Speaker 1: string theory and its applications to cosmology. So, so let's
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  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that. You're best known for
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  Speaker 1: your work on string theory. My understanding of string theory, uh,
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  Speaker 1: lay person as it may be is atoms are made
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  Speaker 1: up of protons, neutrons, electrons, which are broken down to quarks,
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  Speaker 1: which are broken down to gluons and muons and so
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  Speaker 1: on and so forth. If you take that down to
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  Speaker 1: its smallest constituent, you end up at a different level
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  Speaker 1: where the smallest component are vibrating loops of energy, and
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  Speaker 1: how they vibrate really determines what their characteristics is. That
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  Speaker 1: is that a fair description is a fair description. The
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  Speaker 1: one thing I would immediately underscore is everything that you
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  Speaker 1: said prior to mentioning strings is physics that we understand
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  Speaker 1: and has been tested and we're certain about. When you
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  Speaker 1: then take the next leap to string theory, you're going
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  Speaker 1: into domain that is not yet tested. So that really
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  Speaker 1: is speculation that comes out of decades of mathematics that
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  Speaker 1: has given us some confidence that these ideas may be correct,
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  Speaker 1: but they have not yet been tested. So so that's
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  Speaker 1: a fascinating statement. One of the things that I've read
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  Speaker 1: other physicists say is that, well, we haven't proven string theory,
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  Speaker 1: but the math is so nearly perfect that there has
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  Speaker 1: to be something to it. It's not merely a coincidence.
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  Speaker 1: Explain that, well, I would say, that's a nutty thing
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  Speaker 1: to say, yeah, because there's a lot of beautiful math
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  Speaker 1: in the world, and some of it's relevant to reality
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  Speaker 1: and some of it's not, And the only way you
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  Speaker 1: figure it out is by having observations and experiments. You
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  Speaker 1: need to connect to reality. The flip side, there are
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  Speaker 1: other folks who say this theory has been around for
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  Speaker 1: thirty years. I mean, I've been working on this since
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  Speaker 1: four Okay, so this theory has been around for more
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  Speaker 1: than thirty years. You still haven't tested it, and therefore
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  Speaker 1: it's time to move on. It's no longer doing science.
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  Speaker 1: That's also a nutty perspective because when you're talking about
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  Speaker 1: the universe at such a deep level of existence, way
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  Speaker 1: smaller than those little particles that you were describing the corks,
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  Speaker 1: they're huge compared to the strings, and yet they're tiny
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  Speaker 1: by everyday standards. We're talking about hundreds of millions of
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  Speaker 1: times smaller than those particles. When you're talking about the
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  Speaker 1: universe and such extreme realms, it's gonna take a while
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  Speaker 1: to test it. So you don't just give up because
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  Speaker 1: the technology hasn't caught up with you. You keep working
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  Speaker 1: and you try to extract some more clever way that
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  Speaker 1: you might test these ideas, perhaps using technology we have
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  Speaker 1: today or in the next few years. So one of
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  Speaker 1: the lines um one of the criticisms I've read about
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  Speaker 1: string theory is if we can't test this, is this
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  Speaker 1: really a science or is it a philosophy. That's right,
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  Speaker 1: So that that's the going line among the detractors of
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  Speaker 1: that sort. And it would be philosophy. If it were
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  Speaker 1: fundamentally impossible to ever these ideas, then you're not really
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  Speaker 1: doing science. But that's not the case at all, I
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  Speaker 1: and are my colleague. We can write down predictions that
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  Speaker 1: in principle you could test if you had a big
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  Speaker 1: enough accelerator, and and didn't. We see Einstein making certain
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  Speaker 1: predictions about things that would happen that only recently were
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  Speaker 1: proven by the gravitational wave detective and things life. A
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  Speaker 1: hundred years ago he made a prediction of these ripples
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  Speaker 1: in the fabric of space gravitation waves. And you're right,
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  Speaker 1: it took a hundred years, almost to the day to
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  Speaker 1: to test that prediction. Now what mitigates that somewhat is
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  Speaker 1: there's an earlier prediction that was confirmed in just four years.
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  Speaker 1: So in nineteen nine, observations of the distant stars during
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  Speaker 1: a solar eclipse confirmed Einstein's prediction that light should be
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  Speaker 1: bent as it goes by the surface of the Sun.
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  Speaker 1: So the detractors will say, come on, Einstein's ideas respectacular
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  Speaker 1: and deep, and it only took four years to confirm them.
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  Speaker 1: You guys have been going for thirty years and you
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  Speaker 1: haven't got anything yet. And what I'd say is we've
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  Speaker 1: jumped so far beyond technology, so far beyond what we
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  Speaker 1: can see, and that makes it much more difficult to
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  Speaker 1: test these ideas. Well. He also had the advantage of
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  Speaker 1: working with gravity, and there's all sorts of things that
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  Speaker 1: you can look at to perform mathematical tests and experiment.
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  Speaker 1: That's the point when we're talking about sub sub sub
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  Speaker 1: atomic particles really where there's only so much we can
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  Speaker 1: do these days. That's exactly right. So that my favorite
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  Speaker 1: thing about UM. One of the things that prove Einsteini
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  Speaker 1: in um relativity is that when we have various satellites
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  Speaker 1: and space that are used for things like GPS, we
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  Speaker 1: have to adjust because they're going so much faster than
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  Speaker 1: we are and they experienced time relatively compared to us,
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  Speaker 1: that there's a small mathematical adjustment that has to be
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  Speaker 1: made so your GPS is accurates, right, And if you
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  Speaker 1: didn't do that, both for the motion of the satellites
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  Speaker 1: but also for the fact they experienced from gravitational field
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  Speaker 1: that we do, they're higher up there, further from the
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  Speaker 1: Earth center, at the gravity there is weaker. Those two
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  Speaker 1: effects change the rate at which clocks tick off time
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  Speaker 1: in that satellite, and that's an objective clock, not not
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  Speaker 1: a subjective human thing. If you didn't take into account,
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  Speaker 1: GPS would be inaccurate within a day. In fact, this
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  Speaker 1: is a piece of physics that you may have seen
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  Speaker 1: in the film Interstellar. I haven't seen it yet, but
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  Speaker 1: it's This is not a spoiler, but in that film,
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  Speaker 1: the protagonist goes near a black hole and time elapses
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: more slowly near a black hole for exactly because of gravity.
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  Speaker 1: And then when they come back away from the black hole,
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  Speaker 1: they have an aged much at all, but their colleague
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  Speaker 1: on the mothership that was far away has aged decades.
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  Speaker 1: So there you see a dramatic version of what the
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  Speaker 1: GPS needs to account for. So when you watch a
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  Speaker 1: science fiction film like that, do you walk out shaking
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  Speaker 1: your head and saying, oh, they got the science wrong?
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  Speaker 1: Or is Hollywood doing a better job being a little
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: more accurate these days? I think they're They're pretty accurate
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  Speaker 1: in to some ext end that that film itself has
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  Speaker 1: moments where I didn't quite know what science they had
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  Speaker 1: in mind. But my view is if I go to
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  Speaker 1: a film and they don't break their own rules, if
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  Speaker 1: they're self consistent, even if they differ from the rules
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  Speaker 1: of reality as we understand, that's fine with me. I
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  Speaker 1: just want a good story and not something where they
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  Speaker 1: get lazy. They get lazy at the end and do something.
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  Speaker 1: Come on, you know that sort of thing. So let
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  Speaker 1: let me get a little technical with you. You are
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  Speaker 1: credited with code discovering mirror symmetry and spatial topology change.
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  Speaker 1: What is that, well, spatial topology change is the easier
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  Speaker 1: one to describe. One of the lessons from Einstein that
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  Speaker 1: you indicated already is that space is flexible. Newton didn't
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  Speaker 1: think that, which means not only can space bend and
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: warmp it can stretch. And that's what we mean by
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the expanding universe. But in Einstein's meaning that it's not
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  Speaker 1: just that the galaxies are separating, it's that the fabric
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  Speaker 1: of space and they're on is moving as exactly as
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: if they're kind of stitched into the fabric of space
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  Speaker 1: and like expanding, like it's all stretching. Now, in Einstein's
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  Speaker 1: theory generalativity, space can stretch, but it cannot rip, the
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  Speaker 1: spandex or the likera can't tear. But we found in
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  Speaker 1: string theory, when you go beyond Einstein to include quantum effects,
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  Speaker 1: the fabrica space can rip, it can tear, and that
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  Speaker 1: way can then repair itself and fundamentally change its shape,
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  Speaker 1: which we call a change of topology. That's the technical name,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: but it's just a change of shape that Einstein would
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  Speaker 1: not have thought possible. That string theory, if it's correct,
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  Speaker 1: allows the universe to undergo. He is also the founder
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: of the World Science Festival, which is about to launch
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: its tenth edition in New York City later this year
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  Speaker 1: May thirty, June four. Tell us about the festival. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so this is an event that I co founded with
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Tracy Day, journalist broadcast journalists and about you know, eleven
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  Speaker 1: twelve years ago, we looked at the state of the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: world and said, look, we celebrate fashion, books, theater, literature, right,
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  Speaker 1: why don't we celebrate big public celebrations of science, which
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: is a vital part of how the world is put
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: together and how we're gonna live going forward into the future.
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  Speaker 1: So back in two thousand and eight, we founded this
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  Speaker 1: first edition of the World Science Festival. Here in New
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: York City. Over a hundred and twenty two thousand people
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  Speaker 1: came out to the five days of public programming, so
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  Speaker 1: it was clear that there was this pent up desire
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: to go someplace and experience cutting out science in a
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  Speaker 1: way that you could get it, that you wouldn't find it,
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  Speaker 1: uh intimidating, you wouldn't have to study, you would just
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  Speaker 1: be drawn along by these wonderful ideas. And we've been
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: doing it ever since, creating novel experience of a science
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: for the general public. You can be a novice, you
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: can be an expert, you can be young, you can
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: be old. There's something for everybody in the festival. What
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: do you hope the impact is going to be long term? Well,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the goal really, as articulated in our mission statement, is
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: we want people to feel that science has to be
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  Speaker 1: part of their lives. That it's not something that can
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: be left to the scientists. It's not something that you
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: can leave to the science classroom. Science is not a subject.
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  Speaker 1: It really is a perspective. It's a way of life.
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  Speaker 1: It's a way of engaging in the world and being
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  Speaker 1: able to figure out what's truth, what's not truth, what's fact,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: what's not fact and be able to figure out how
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: we should take that information, make policy, and in that
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: way sculpt the future. What do you make of the
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: rise of anti science, be it the vaxers who believe
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: that basic vaccines cause autism, or the people who, despite
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: overwhelming evidence, either don't believe global warming is real or
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: don't believe mankind has a hand in its creation. What
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: what's the underlying basis? Well, I think there's a general
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: distrust of so called experts, a general distrust of of
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the intelligencia, the folks that actually spend their lives thinking
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: about deep problems, how they affect the world and how
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: we're going to solve them. Is a deep distrust there,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: and it's up to us, and I hope part of
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: the festival will do that, as well as other events
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: around the world, to break down the barrier where everybody
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: recognizes that they can get the ideas. It's not this
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: opaque collection of weird facts and theories that you'll never
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: be able to understand. You can get it, and when
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: you get it, it's thrilling and allows you to be
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: part of the process. And when you're part of the process,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: you're less distrustful because you understand what's going on. What
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: we need to do to get kids more interested in
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: math and science. Well, that's a big, big question. And
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: of course the classroom is where most kids encounter these
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: ideas and looked, are many good teachers. So when I
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: say that somehow we need to improve the classroom out
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: talking about every teacher. But goodness, gracious, I can't tell
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: you the number of kids I've spoken to who think
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: science is simply about memorizing some facts and spitting them
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: back on an exam. And that's tragic. Science is a
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: journey of discovery that we have been on for thousands
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: of years and the things that we've figured out, from
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: insight into the origin of the universe, to the existence
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: of black holes, to the weirdness of time and relativity,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the strange features of quantum mechanics. When you teach this
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: stuff to a kid and they can get the basic ideas,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I've seen their eyes wide open, light up and say wow,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: that science and say, yeah, that's what science is about.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: You know, you and I are only a year or
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: two a part in age, and we're of the generation
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: where we use technology. But we've had to learn how
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: to use computers, internet software, programming, etcetera. The generation of
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: kids coming up, it's second nature's utensil. You give a
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: six month old an iPad and they've mastered it in
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: a couple of hours. What is that gonna do for
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: technology and science going forward? Does that give you hope that, oh,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: these kids really appreciate technology and therefore sciences is right there.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: I wish I could say yes, not necessarily at all,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: because so many folks, so many kids are uses technology.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: They don't care one whit about where it came from
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: or how it works. They just want to get on
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: to whatever, to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, whatever. I see
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: my kids using these devices, and it makes my heart
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: hurt because because they could be using that time to
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: think about deep questions, and yet they're frittering away so
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: much time in these devices. However, we can use these
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: devices as an impetus to show kids, if we do
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: it right, how there is quantum physics inside of yourself
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: on yourself and wouldn't work without being able to direct
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the motion of electrons through tiny microscopic integrated circuits. That's
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: interesting and exciting if presented in the right way. GPS,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: like we were talking about, your phone has a GPS
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: capacity to it. It's got general relativity and something right
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: into it. I see the new Apple tagline now with
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: general built into it, will charge extra for that. Let's
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the creation of the universe.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: I'm somewhat tickled by of the theory that nothingness is
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: inherently unstable and the universe just vomits into existence because
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: eventually nothingness just can't persist. Is that still the best
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: explanation we have for where the universe came from? It's
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: it's certainly one of the explanations, and it has not
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: really been fully worked out into a form that there's
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: a consensus in the community that we've got it by
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: any means. But it is fascinating to think, as you're saying,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: because the deep question is why is there something rather
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: than nothing? That's what liveness asks right centuries ago, and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: it's this deep question right when we say nothing, we
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: mean the absence of everything, even space and time. And
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: as you're saying, one of the ideas is, well, there
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: may have been an era when there truly was a
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: nothing with a capital end. But it may be that
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: that nothingness can't persist forever. It may be that Nothingness
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: tends to disintegrate, and when it disintegrates, nothing turns into
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: something and an anti something, and we inhabit to something,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: and that's where the something of the universe comes from.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: So when I was younger, the theory was that there
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: was a big bang and that would eventually slow down
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: and reverse and we'd have a big crunch and that
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: would go on forever. And that seems to have based
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: on a century ago observations of not only galaxies moving
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: away from each other, but doing so at an accelerated pace.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: They're they're moving away faster and faster um. So that
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: kind of gets rid of the big crunch, and it
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: leads to the question of entropy and heat death. Are
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: we're looking at a universe that's going to expand forever
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: until it's so far away that there are no stars
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: left in the sky and we're essentially looking at nothingness,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: which again maybe begets that unstable uh cycle all over again.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: It certainly looks that way based on the data today.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: In fact, I'm writing a book on this very subject,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: analyzing in great detail what the far future of the
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: universe will be like. And the data, if you take
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: it seriously, does seem to suggest that you're right. The
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: expansion of the units will continue on. In fact, it
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: will expand ever more quickly over time, and the structures
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: in the universe like stars and galaxies will ultimately fall apart, disintegrate,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: gets sucked up into black holes, which themselves can disintegrate
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: into particles that ultimately a just wafting through and ever
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: colder and ever quieter cosmos. It kind of feels a
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: little bleak when you describe it that way. But that
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: how many trillions of years in the future we talk
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: well about a trillion years from now. Distant galaxies will
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: rush away so far that we can't see them. Our
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: local galaxies will be able to see, but deep space
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: will go dark. And in terms of the evaporation of
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: black holes, we're talking on the order of ten to
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: the one hundred years, right, So that's that's long. That's
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: ten followed that that yes, that's a google, that's a
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: google of of years, and um, it's the time Skille.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: That's so far beyond anything that we've experienced. You know,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: we're a ten billion, thirteen billions, so you know, ten
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: to the ten years. So we're talking in the exponent
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: going from tent to the tent tent to the hundred.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So these are fantastically large time scales, but amazingly we
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: can use our observations and our equations to make some
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: predictions about what things will be like even on those
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: time skills. So let's talk about something a little less bleak.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about a multiverse where if our universe might
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: be expanding to cold, dark nothingness, there are an infinite
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: number of other universes ready to either pop into existence
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: or existing in different dimensions. How realistic is that and
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: what a strength theory tell us about that? Well, again,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I would underscore that we're now in the realm of
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: interesting mathematical speculation. But there are many people who take
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: that very idea seriously, because as we've tried to understand
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: the Big Bang with ever greater precision, we found that
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the fuel, if you will, that drove the Big Bang
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: is so efficient that it's virtually impossible to use all
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of that fuel up. Some of it drove our Big Bang,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: but someone's left over. What does that leftover fuel do?
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Drives another Big Bang? And even that big bang doesn't
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: exhaust all the fuel some's left over, so you get
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: bang after bang after bang, universe after universe after universe,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: at least that's what the equation seemed to suggest. So
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: you're right, our universe could be heading toward this bleak
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: future where everything is cold and spread out. But in
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: those other universes there may be life forms and their
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: future may be different from ours. So let's talk a
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: little bit about what string theory and your work on
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: it says about this in I don't remember which book
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: it was, maybe it was probably Hidden Reality Is, my guests.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I wanted to reference strings as they move through space
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: create a membrane in their trail, and there are times
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: where those membranes cross, and there's a significant reaction to that. Yes,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: so there's a way of thinking about parallel universes which
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: string theory gives a particular twist to. It's possible within
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: string theory that there are extended objects, not just one
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: dimensional filaments like strings. There could be two dimensional membranes
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: or three dimensional membranes. We could be living on one
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: of those membranes. So I like to think of it
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: as imagine the totality of reality is like a big
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: cosmic loaf of bread, where every slice of bread is
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: like one universe everything we know is happening on one
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: piece of bread, But there are other pieces of bread,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: and strength there other membranes which would be other universes.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: That's another way in which reality could be much bigger
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: than our frail senses would lead us to think. So
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about dark matter and dark energy.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: On the one hand, we look at a basic black
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: hole in the center of a galaxy, and the visible
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: mass that we can detect is much much less than
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: what gravity suggests would be sufficient to hold uh, that
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: galaxy together? Am I getting the numbers right? About of
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the mass is not visible as dark matter? Yeah. So
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: when you even look at the universe as a whole
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: and you say how much of the stuff that makes
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: up the universe is the stuff that gives off light,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: the stuff that we know about, the protons and neutrons,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the electrons, those things, and it's about four or five
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: that little Yeah, So you've got about twenty five or
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: so percent of the universe in something called dark matter
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: h And then you've got the rest of it SI
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: sevent whatever in something called dark energy. Again, it's an
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: energy that suffuses space. We believe it's everywhere and every
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: nook and cranny of space. But because it does not
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: give off light, we don't see it doesn't give does
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: it give off some energy? It well, it it contains energy,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and because of that, it exerts a gravitational force. In fact,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: it exerts an anti gravitational force. Pushes every think apart,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and we believe that's why the universe is speeding up
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: in its expansion, that outward push from the dark energy
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: filling space. So let's talk about another question that I'm
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: fascinated by. I'm aware that gravity is the weakest of
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: the major forces, and that the strong nuclear force what
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: holds protons and neutrons together, is the strongest force. I
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: like the way you demonstrate that by leaping off a building.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: The center of the Earth pulls you towards it, but
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: just plain old concrete stops you. And therefore concrete is
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: stronger than gravity. But when we look at a black hole,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: we have a mass the size of a giant sun
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: that's collapsed to a relatively tiny space, and it seems
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: like if you have enough gravity, you can overcome that
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: strong force and crunch all those atoms down to a
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: tiny fraction of their size. Yes, when we say, gravity
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: is much weaker than the other forces, like the nuclear forces.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: We want to do an apples to Apple's comparison. So
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: if you say, take just two particles and calculate how
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: this strong force may pull them together versus a gravitational force,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: big difference. Strong nuclear force wins. But you're right, you
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: put enough stuff together, then cumulatively, the gravity that many, many,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: many particles exert can be stronger than the other forces
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: acting between particles. So so gravity is able to crush
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: particles together, causing them to fuse together. For instance, that's
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: what happens in the Sun. You've got nuclear fusion because
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: gravity is squeezing everything together and hydrogen melds into helium,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: and helium keeps on going. So yeah, up until we
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: get iron, and then that's pretty much right. When you
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: get to iron, it's sort of the end of the
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: line the most tightly abound atomic species, and from then
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: on end the next this next stop is neutron stars
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: and black holes. Do you pay much attention to things
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: like the rare Earth thesis, which I find, again it's
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: a little off your fields of expertise, but the basic
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: concept is to get a planet that's stable enough in
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: a solar system for not just life, which may be
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: surprisingly common, but advanced technological life not to have been
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: disrupted continually by what a hostile place the galaxy can be. Uh,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: that's kind of a fascinating idea. Oh totally. You know,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: people have asked the question are we alone? Ever since
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: every time we could ask questions, and um, you know,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: there's some who say, look, life appeared on planet Earth
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: as quickly as it possibly could, which suggests to them
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: that life is just raring to go everywhere in the
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: universe where conditions are ripe. On the other hand, to
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: get intelligent life that can actually build spacecraft and radio telescopes,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: you need a lot of coincidences, right. You gotta make
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: sure that your planet is protected from masteroids that are
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: slamming in. You gotta let me take our Planet's a
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: great example. If if this asteroid hadn't slammed in and
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: wiped out the dinosaurs sixty five million years, we wouldn't
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: be the dominant folks walking around. It would still be
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: the dinosaurs. Now, who knows, maybe by now they would
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: have built spacecraft and telescopes and may not have been hard.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: That's right. So so there you go, and we're we're
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: even in a part of our own galaxy that doesn't
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: have too much radiation. We're not too close to the middle,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: we're not too far out. It's really a series of
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Goldilocks events and then the other, which means it might
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: be very rare. Right, And although rare still can mean
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: there are hundreds of thousands in any game, it depends.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: It depends how rare. That's the key question, because if
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: the rare, if the probability is sufficiently small, then we
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: could be the unique one. We have been speaking with
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Professor Brian Green of Columbia University. If you enjoy this conversation,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: be sure and check out our podcast extras, where we
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: keep the tape rolling and continue to talk about all
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: things cosmological. Be sure and check out my daily column
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: on Bloomberg View dot com or follow me on Twitter
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: at rid Halts. I'm Barry rid Holts. You've been listening
• 33:00
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• 33:12
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• 33:25
  Speaker 1: a registered broker dealer. Remember s I PC. Welcome to
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the podcast, Professor Green. Thank you. I don't know what
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: to call you, Professor greene Brian Professor, Professor Green seems
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: more appropriate. Thank you so much for doing this and
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: being so generous with your time. I was saying earlier,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: I have the hardcover of uh, The Elegant Universe somewhere,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: but we moved. It's in boxes and I picked up
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: some of the paperbacks to to remind me of what
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I read a while ago. And really, The Elegant Universe
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: is so readable. I mean I have I'm a little
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: bit of a physics geek, but I don't have any
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: significant background, and I found it completely accessible and very
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: interesting read for something that is talking about really sophisticated,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: complex ideas that's not easy to communicate. Yeah, no, thank you.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: You know. The the challenge, of course, is in building
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: bridges between things that the typical person who was interested
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: in science but not an expert, is familiar with from
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: everyday life, and building a bridge from the familiar to
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the unfamiliar, and uh, it's a fascinating journey for me
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: as a writer and a physicist to try to figure
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: out ways of explaining these ideas, and when it works,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: you know, it's gratifying. I can imagine them. There are
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: some questions I skipped over that I have to get
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: to before we get to our our standard questions, and
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: one of them has to do with um gravitrons, gravitons, gravitrons.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Gravitron I think is the exercise equipment, chin ups, grab
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: patons is the party. So we haven't have we discovered
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the particle or is it just theoretical? Just theoretical. It's
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: not surprising that we haven't discovered it because, as we
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: were discussing in the main interview, gravity is the weakest
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: of nature's forces. The graviton is the smallest bundle, the
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: smallest particle of the weakest force, which makes it enormously
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: challenging to try to detect these particles. But most of
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: us are pretty convinced, based on our understanding of the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: other particles that communicate the other forces of nature, that
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: gravitons are out there, even if we can't actually capture
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: them like photons, photons is a great example. That's a
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: particle that transmits the electromagnetic force. It's the little pack
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: at the little bundle of that force. And by analogy,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: the graviton would be the little quanta, the little particle
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: transmitting the gravitational force. So I love the thought experiment
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: showing the difference between Newtonian physics and nine steining in physics,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: which is all the planets are are revolving around, rotating,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: revolving around the Sun. If the Sun were to magically disappear,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: would it be instantaneous for the planets to be flung
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: out in the straight line that they were previously moving
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: without the Sun holding them in, or would there be
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: a delay in the planet physically recognizing that there's no
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: more gravity and and moving on. The Einsteinian conclusion is
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: it would take about as long as a beam of
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: light to reach the planet. So you would for what
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: is it eight and a half or nine minutes with
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: eight would continue rotating around, uh, the Sun despite its
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: being there. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a beautiful idea. Um.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: You know, Newton's equations that we all learned in high
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: school simply tell us that one object pulls on another,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: depending on how far apart they are on their masses.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: There's no notion of time in that equation, which means
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: if you change the mass of one or other of
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: these bodies, you change the force instantaneously. And that's right.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: So so the formula, if you don't mind me getting
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: technical here is you know, ethical g M one M
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: two over our square. That's what we all learned. But
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: if M one, the massive one of those bodies, goes
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: to zero, then F goes to zero immediately, which in
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: the picture you describe, would suggest that if some alien
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: were to come in and somehow grab hold of the
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Sun and rip it out so it's simply gone, then
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Earth and all the planet should instantaneously fly out of
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: their orbits. Einstein looked at that and said, I'll come on,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: that can't possibly be because in nineteen o five he
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: discovered that nothing can go faster than the speed of light,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: and that would be an instantaneous conveyance of information. Perfect. Yeah,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: an influence that goes from across the whole Solar system
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: and no time at all. So so what about entangled
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: particles and and spooky action at a distance. Is that
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: still stuck with the speed of light as its limitation.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: That's a subtle question, and we believe the answer to
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: that question is yes. It's still stuck with it because
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: when you have two distant particles that are linked through
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: quantum entanglement, it is in fact the case that what
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: you do to one particle seems to instantaneously have some
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: kind of quantum effect on the other. However, no information
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: can ever be transmitted through this effect from the first
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: particle to the second particle. So it kind of gets
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: by on the small print if you will, that that
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: that there's no information going from one particle together fast
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: in the speed of light, even though there's a quantum correlation.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Their behaviors are acting in tandem even though they're far apart.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: So this goes back to having a better lawyer than God.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: That's right, And I've always hated the small prints explanation.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: But let me just say that changes instantly. Yeah, isn't
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: something happening faster than the speed of line. I completely
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: empathize with the with the perspective, and in fact, in
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: one of my books, I think it's the fabric of
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: the cosmos. I described the party line, which is the
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: one I just told you with the small print no
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: information travels, and then the next page and say, hey,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: but look something something here that happens, and it's best
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: than the speech, right. And I think part of the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: reason why we can't give the full answer today that
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: will make you satisfied is that we don't fully understand
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: quantum mechanics. There is a real puzzle in quantum physics.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: It's called the quantum measurement problem, which is when we
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: experimenters measure a quantum particle, our measurement seems to affect it,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: but we can't really articulate or describe how that effect
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: is communicated or what actually happens. Now you might say,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: well that's pretty important. I mean, how do you know
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: anything about quantum mechanics if you don't understand how to
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: measure something? Well, amazingly, this whole in our understanding, this
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: gap does not prevent us from making predictions, from being
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: able to harness quantum mechanics to build cell phones and
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: personal computers, But theoretically there is a gap in our understanding.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: And I think that when we fill that gap. You
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: have me on the show and you ask me that
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: question again about entanglement, and I'm going to be able
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: to give you a full answer. So growing up to me,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: that was always we can measure the location or the
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: spin or the location of the speed, but not both
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: at once. Is that essentially that's still part of our
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: understanding for sure, that there are complementary qualities of a
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: particle that cannot simultaneously be ascertained. So you can't know
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: where the particle is and what its speed is simultaneously.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: You can know one the other, not both. Now, how
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: does the idea of the process of measuring it changes it?
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: And therefore even if you could, you've affected it? Or
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: am I misream? You're right on target. You know, there's
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: this picture that came to us from Newton, which is,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: you know, there are physical systems and you glance at
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: them and you measure them, but your measurement doesn't change them,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't affect them. You're simply extracting a feature of that system.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: The distance between the Sun and the Earth, just measure it.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: The speed of that baseball I guess that you have
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: baseball of Newton's times, or the speed of that rock.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: You just measure it. It doesn't affect it. But when
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: you're talking about particles, you're active measurement on a tiny
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: electron can wreck havoc, and that makes it a much
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: more subtle procedure to understand what a measurement is. And
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that's the thing that we've not yet fully resolved. Let
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: me issue this question, how confident are you that in
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: our lifetimes, uh, there will be a grand unification theory solved. Well,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: if no one cracks the issue of immortality, then I
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: suspect that I'm not particularly optimistic that will have a
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: complete unified theory that's been tested to the degree that
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: we're ready to lift. I wish I could even say
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: for that really, Yeah, you know, we're we're talking a
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: century or so off. You see. I think there's something
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: interesting that's about to happen, which is if the large
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: had drown collider in Geneva, Switzer just turned back on
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: actually this week they now it was taken off when
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Certain came online because it was so much bigger and
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: theoretically eat their lunch. But what what changes they due
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: to the hadron? So the lawn hutter is part of
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Certain and and so what they've done is periodically they
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: upgrade it. Yeah, Fermi Lab is the other one here
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: in the United States, but you know you're right. They
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: take it offline, they upgrade it, they make it stronger,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: and it's going to be the most powerful incarnation of
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: that machine, the highest so called luminosity, the greatest number
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: of particles slamming together. That's what it's all about. And
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: the thing is, if they don't find something new, startlingly new,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: we may find ourselves in a situation where funding agencies
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: are not so excited in these difficult financials. But they've
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: made a series of I mean, if I agree with
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: if you look at physics the past twenty years, it's
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: it's almost, I don't want to say a daily newspaper headline,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: but there has just been a series of spectacular from
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: the gravitational waves go light on and go down the
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: list of here's the problem, here's the problem. None of
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: those were unexpected. That doesn't take away from the achieved
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: of the discovery. But everybody knew that gravitational waves are.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: There is a question of will we have the technological
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: wherewithal to detect them. The Higgs particle, everybody believed it
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: was there, The question was will we actually find it.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: We did spectacular, So there have been great breakthroughs, but
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: what we need is something that rocks our world, where
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: we can go back to funding agencies and say, we've
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: got to understand this. This is an anomaly, this doesn't
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: make sense. This is the gateway to a deep new
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: understanding of the world. If we can't do that, it
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: maybe decades or maybe even centuries before we have the
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: next big machine. China may step in the rumors that
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: China may build the next big machine, but that's twenty
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: thirty years off maybe, so when you talk about time scales,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: and even that big machine may not be powerful enough
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: to test grand unified theory or string theory. So so
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: that's why I'm not particularly optimistic that we're going to
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: have the unified theory in hand in the next generation
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: or time. I would love China to build a huge
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: machine because if you look at how much of modern
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: technology traces its lineage back to spot Nick, which caused
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: a giant arms race. Unfortunately we managed not to blow
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: ourselves up, but it's still lead to hey, these guys
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: are ahead of us in space. We have to get there. Also,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: maybe China would stimulate some competitive juices and and get
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: governments behind these big physics. Certainly more exciting than building
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: a border wall. So I would, uh, well, we could
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: test if galileis theories. See if things drop, you're gonna
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: see science in the border, right, Can you could do that? Now?
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Granted it's not a vacuum. Which side of the wall
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: you're gonna drop things on that? It depends on the
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: nationality of the scientists, I guess. Um, all right, so
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: I wanted I didn't get to uh Icarus before. And
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I have to ask you a couple of questions which
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: come from it's me moving my papers around. These come
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: from Maddock, age ten, and Ellis, age seven, who are
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: big fans of Icarus at the Edge of Time, which
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: is the kid's book you wrote about black holes. I'm
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: not going to give you all the questions they asked,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: but I'm just gonna give you the top fifty or so. Um,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: when did you first become interested in astrophysics? When I
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: was quite young, five or six years old. I grew
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: up across from the planetarium, which I think is certainly
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: part of it. But I always had this urge to
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: look out and think about stars and the galaxies. And
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: my dad was a big mentor of mine and those things.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: He wasn't trained in any of the stuff. But he
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: was just fascinated by who's a composer, a singer performer,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: But he would tell me all about this stuff, so
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: quite young. So what can we learn from black holes
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: and how relevant are they to our daily lives? Well,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: black holes are the primary theoretical laboratory that people like
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: me play with because they're so extreme, so much mass
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: crushed to such a fantastically small size. And when you
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: have such extreme domains, that's when you can break existing ideas,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: where existing ideas can fail, and where they fail as
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: an opportunity to step in with new understanding. But that
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: again is in the theoretical realm. Black holes are becoming
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: more and more part of the observational realm. There's this
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: new telescope have you heard about. It's called the event
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: horizon telescope, where they're actually looking right at the edge
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: of so called event horizons of black holes to perhaps
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: really see what's happening there, take a photograph of a
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: black hole itself, so they're becoming launched into that's right. Well,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: actually it's a it's a series of radio telescopes around
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: the Earth that are working together to combine their imagery
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: to create a very high resolution picture of a black hole.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: So more and more black holes are becoming part of
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: the the everyday side of observational science. So they're not
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: as esoteric as they once were. And the current theory
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: is that black holes exist in the center of each galaxy.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Is that that seems to be the case? Yeah, So
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: this went from a crazy idea to an abstract thesis
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: to every galaxy has one. Yeah. When this idea first
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: came online, this is back in about nineteen seventeen or
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, Karl Schwarzschild was playing with Einstein's mathematics and
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: came upon this idea. Einstein resisted the idea of black
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: holes throughout his life, even even he was writing paper
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: showing here's why black holes can't be real. So he
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: was a revolutionary thinker, but also conservative in some ways too.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: But yes, now there's virtually no denying that black holes
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: are actually out there. Mean, we're gonna take a photograph
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: of the edge of a black hole. There may be
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: uncertainties about what happens inside a black hole in the
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: detailed mathematics that really describes them, but these entities do
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: appear to be part of the universe. What about wormholes.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: That's the theory that we haven't really seen a whole
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: lot of evidence for, but there's a lot of theoretic
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: excitement around it, certainly much more speculative than than black holes.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, wormholes are allowed by Einstein's mathematics, but there's
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: zero evidence that they're actually real, and therefore there's sort
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: of zero reason to think that they're out there today.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: But look, you could have said that about a lot
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: of stuff in the world before we encountered it. So
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I'm I would be remiss or would be a little
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: bit naive for me to suggest that they're absolutely not real,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: but there's just no evidence yet. And one more question
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: from Maddi and ellis what do you want the young
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: reader to learn from your book? The point of Vicorus
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: at the Edge of Time was to give the reader
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: a sense of what happens at a black hole without
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: it being an instruction manual, without it being pedagogical, without
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: it being a teacher or a professor telling you what's
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: going on, merely by virtue of going for the ride.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: In this story, so boy build a spaceship, goes to
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: the edge of a black Hole's dad says not to
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: do it. It's like the original myth of Icarus, but
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: instead of the sun with wax wings, you know, it's
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: a boy building his spaceship. And then when he comes
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: back from this journey, he doesn't die, but because time
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: slows down near the edge of a black hole, when
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: he comes back and wants to show his dad what
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: he's done, he quickly realizes that he comes back to
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: world ten thousand years into the future. And this is
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: what really could happen. This is not science fiction, even
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: though the story, of course is fictional, and I want
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: people to get a feel for what it is that
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: happens at a black hole, and also to recognize if
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: if I'm just going to finish up my answer maybe
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: a little too long winded, but I hated I hated
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: the original myth of Acres. It kind of said if
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: you don't do what your dad says, you die, right.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, dad says Kris don't fly near the sun.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Acres does because he's courageous, maybe a little reckless, and
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: he dies side. But you know, if you're going to
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: have a breakthrough in science, you've got to be somewhat reckless.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: You have to go against what people tell you cannot
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: do what your forefathers or four mothers tell you to do.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: You may return to a strange reality if you discover
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: something spectacular, but that's the nature of the beast. I
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: recall when when one of the colliders was coming online,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: we got warnings of they're going to create a black
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: hole here on Earth. I thought that was kind of yeah,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: that was a vigorous like fear. Well, yeah, this is
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. They're turning on the machine. And
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: I got a call from so many news outlets to
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: be on television to talk about the starting of the
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: large hatch on collider, and I was like, wow, science
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: is mainstream. We've really got there. They didn't want to
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: talk about the collider. They want to talk about this
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: little black hole that might be created that might suck
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: up Geneva. Nobody really worried about that here, but then
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: it might suck up the rest of the planet Earth.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: People start to worry a lot about that, and that's
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: what it was about. The good news is you wouldn't
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: even feel it, that's right. So there are two other
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: string theory related questions I have to ask before I
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: moved to my standard questions one is all right, our
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: everyday common experience, we have the three spatial dimensions X, y,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: and z plus time is for how do we get
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: from that to eleven? Because eleven seems like a lot
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: of dimensions. It is a lot of dimensions. And it's
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: a strange idea because you look around the world and there's,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: as you say, left, right, back forth, up down, the
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: three spatial dimensions of common experience. Where in the world
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: could there be more than that? There's just no room
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: for it. And yet the mathematics of string theory suggests
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: that there are additional dimensions of space. So it's been
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: up to us to figure out where they are, and
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: that's really been the focus of my work for many decades.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: Others as well have worked on this enormously, and the
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: ideas that maybe these other dimensions are all around us,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: they're just crumpled to such a fantastically small size that
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: we can't see them with the naked eye or even
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: with our most powerful equipment. But that's the idea if
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: these if these theories are correct, we're looking at a
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: world that has more dimensions than the three that we
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: know about. The explanation that I've found interesting is it's
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: a function of perspective. If if you're um an ant
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: on a line, well you only see folding back. And
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: if that line turns out to be a garden hose, well,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: oh guess what. Now there's another dimension you can travel.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: We're stuck in three dimensions, and therefore we we lack
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: the ability to see your experience the other seven. But
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: it seems like a lot now. At one point in
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: time there were a variety of different numbers of dimensions.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: How did we settle on eleven? Well, and there were
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: originally five different theories and Witten, Professor Whitten took a
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: took a paddle to them and basically came up on
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: them altogether. Yeah. Edward Whitten, who's sort of the grand
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: master of string theory at the Institute for a Vance Study,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: had a great breakthrough in the mides. There were five
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: competing versions of string theory. All of them had nine
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: dimensions of space, had six additional ones, not the seven
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: that we're referring to. And um, he realized that if
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: you looked at it the right way, all these five
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: theories are actually different windows onto the same theory number one. Moreover,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: when you did the more precise analysis that this combined
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: perspective gave you. You found one additional dimension of space
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: that we had long missed, and that's what took us
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: from nine dimensions of space to ten, which, as you say,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: with time takes us to eleven space time dimensions. So
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: that number is pretty stable now right now. But yeah,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: that's the historical progression. And Witten was, Um, there's the
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: old I think it's Kipling the parable of the six
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: blind men describing the elephant, and they're all on a
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: different body part the trunk, the ear of the tail,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: and you have they're describing the same thing, just from
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: a different person exactly. And then the last question I
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: have before I get to my favorites. When we look
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: at the remnants of the big Big Bang, there are
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: lots of clues. So we have the cosmic background radiation,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: we have the cold spots and parts of the universe.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: There are all sorts of evidence that, hey, this seems
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: to have really happened. We may not understand precisely how,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: but we have a pretty substantial body of of um
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: observations that that support it. In any of these observations,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: do we find support for superstring theory. No, Now that
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: is not a black mark against the theory, because the
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: theory really comes into its own in domains that have
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: much higher energy, much smaller distances than the things that
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: we can see, even with the most powerful telescopes or
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: even with hit the Large Hadron collider. So the theory
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: can agree with everything that we found, but where it
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: differs from the things that we know about those are
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: domains that we can't yet access. So we're in this
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: kind of curious slimbo land that we have this beautiful
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: mathematical theory that seems to unify things gravity and quantum
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: mechanics does it with some strange and wonderful ideas, extra
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: dimensions of space being one of them, fundamental filaments at
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: the heart of matter being another. But we've yet to
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: be able to deter aman if these ideas are actually
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: describing our universe. That that's quite fascinating. So so now
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: let me jump to my favorite UH pod question podcast
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: questions UH that I asked all of my guests, so
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: I know a decent amount about your background. Did you
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: ever think about doing anything other than going into physics?
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, Well, when I was really a little up
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: to sort of ten or eleven, years old, I was
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: intent on being a professional bowlers bowler, not even a
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: baseball player. Definitely bowler. I used to spend my summer's
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: bowling over on the east side of the eight Street
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: in New York Avenue. Used to be a bowling I
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: don't that's the thing of my past. I gave that up.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: Okay eight years UM, I have to send you a
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: YouTube video of a bowler who in I think forty
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: three seconds bowls of perfect game. I'll send this to you.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: He goes, you know, bowling alleys here in lanes and
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: bull How do you even reset the pens because it
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: because by the content one. Then he goes back to
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: the first one and does the last three things. That's amazing.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: If you're a bowler at all, I will appreciate you
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: will find that quite like, Oh my goodness. UM. So
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: aside from being a professional bowler, what else was well?
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: You know? Um, if I was to go back in retrospect,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: I would say neuroscience is one of the most amazing
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: fast fields that that are being developed today. So I
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: could certainly imagine loving being a researcher in that field. Uh. Certainly,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: writing is something that I take very seriously, and and
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: that is I do consider myself that's part of what
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: I do. Well, you've got four going on five books.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: I think it's the fifth book. You're allowing that you
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: can call yourself that. Yeah, exactly. Um, so those are
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: sort of the main things. I never really imagine doing
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: anything radically different from It was always going to be
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: science and communicating. So tell us about some of your
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: early mentors. You you have some fast in schooling, and
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: you've worked with some amazing people. Yeah, well, you know,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: I I went to New York City public schools, you know,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: through through eighth grade. Then I went to Stuyveson High School,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: which is still a public school, and I was fortunate
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: in the seventh grade. It must have been that my
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: math teacher at i S forty four, the intermediate school
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: in seventy Street, gave me a note that I took
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: up to Columbia University. In the note basically said, hey,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: this kid's smart in math, we can't teach him anything
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: else and can you help us out? And I just
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: handed this to person after person on the Columbia campus.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: Sort of a weird thing to knocking on doors, and
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: amazingly I knocked on a door in the math department
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: and a fellow named Neil Bellensen, one of the most
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: generous smart spect you're something like that, Yeah, I must
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: be and um and and he said he looked at
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: the note and he said, sure, I'll teach you. And
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: it was, you know, for free. We didn't have money,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: couldn't pay him, and just out of the goodness of
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: his heart, he met with me three four times a
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: week over the summers, taught me math that I'd never
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: learned any other way. During the year, I'd meet with
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: him on Saturdays. He picked me up at the bus
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: stop near his house in the cold of winter and
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: taking we'd learn that. I mean, who does this? What
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: an amazing thing. And it allowed me just to sail
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: off into mathematical domains that kept my interest going and
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: really just kept the juices flowing in my brain, which
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: is very important. Wow, that's fascinating. And his name was
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: Neil Bellensen. And if he's listening, I don't know where
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: he is, you know, I haven't a contact with him
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: in like decades. Maybe he'll hear this. That's that's that's amazing.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Any other mentors you wanna want to mention? Well, I
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: had some great teachers in the New York City public schools,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: a guy named Danny Kotalk. I don't know if he's
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: still alive any longer. He he, he was the guy
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: that wrote that note. And he again was just a
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: spectacular teacher that just made mathematics so fascinating and just
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: kept kept the interest going there. Um. And then you
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: know when we when we go to high school and college.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Know there's a professor at Harvard, Howard George I one
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: of the great particle physicists of our era. And uh
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: he again just I would go talk to him when
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: as a freshman, I just knock on his door, is bold,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: and he would open the door and I'd walk in.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: For hours, we talk about stuff, and he teach me
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: stuff on the blackboard. So again, you know, the one
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: lesson is if you're willing to go forward people are.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: They're willing to help you. They're not necessarily going to
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: come to you, but if you go to them, the
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: opportunities are there. I'm intrigued by the story that you're
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: on campus and you see a flyer uh lecture this
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: evening the theory of everything. Yeah, that sounds interesting. Let's
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: go look at that is that what led you into
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: deeper into the world of physically totally. I was a
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: graduate tude at Oxford, you know, in England, and uh
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: I was, as you're saying, walking across the campus one
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: day and saw that sign and I went and checked
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: it out and it was a talk about gang named
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Michael Green, not related to me, and he was one
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: of the founders of strength here and he was talking
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: about the breakthrough that he and a guy named On
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Schwartz who's at Caltech, that they had found. And that's
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: what turned me onto string theory as a graduate student,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: and I shifted my work, and just about everybody else
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: in the world shifted their work to focus on this
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: new idea that they had come up with. Intriguing Who
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: else influenced your approach to thinking about science, physics, math
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: or communication. Well, I'd like to think that that Einstein
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: is always with me and my colleagues too. Of course,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: every step of the way, Almost everything that I do
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: has in some sense intellectual roots that go back to
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: Einstein's ideas. He's pervasive in the field. But the other
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: person is the Einstein of our age, which is Edward
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: Whitten at the Institute for Advanced Study again. You know,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: so many of the papers that I've done ultimately go
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: back to ideas that he had that we were able
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: to develop in one way or another. I spent a
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: wonderful year at the Institute for Advanced Study, you know,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: decades ago, where talking to Ed Witten every day. We
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: actually got into a little friendly competition where this idea
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: that space could rip the topology change. He had a
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: way of doing it, we had a way of doing it.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: And during those three months we were all racing to
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: the finish line, and we we finished at the same time,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: different approaches, published our papers on the same day. Really, yeah,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: so it was a wonderfully exciting time. He has yeah
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: to to come up with these strange ideas. He has
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: some um lectures and interviews online, and he is just
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: such a soft spoken, gentle individual. It's hard to imagine
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: him in like bloodthirsty academic debate because he just seems to, well,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: here's the thing, but he doesn't he doesn't need to
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: ever get angry because he's so much smarter than everybody else.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: He can crush just you know a few words. Everybody
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: I've seen or reads have said, Hey, we're all really smart.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: And then there's Ed Witten. It's just a different now
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: and working with him is quite a trip. You know.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: There'd be five of us in his office and we're
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: talking about stuff, and all of a sudden, he stops talking.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: He looks up. Everybody gets quiet because Ed is thinking,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: and you don't disturb Ed's thinking. And you know, sometimes
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: he really is coming up with something new. Sometimes maybe
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: he's just thinking about lunch, you know. So there are
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: times when I was a little bit bold and I'd
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: say so, at any anything else that we should have
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: to like fifteen minutes of silence, you know, at anything else,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: you should talk about it. No, No, we're good. Well
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: we'll meet again later and we'd all leap the office.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: And that's amazing. Let's talk about books. This is the
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: most popular question I get from from readers and listeners.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: What are some of your favorite books? Well, God, fiction, nonfiction, physics,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: what hell? Yeah, and the fiction domain. I'm a great
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: fan of Camu, you know. Uh, The Stranger is one
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: of my favorite books. Wait, I always thought that was
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: fit nonfiction existentialism and yeah, no, but he he wrote stories, uh,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: and um, the stories are tell the storytell the story
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: and and they're just amazing works of literature. Um, so
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: that's Kafka. You know. The Trial I think is one
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: of the one of the great stories quite relevant in
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: our aids. Uh certainly Orwell is one of my favorite authors.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: Four Animal Farm. You know, in the nonfiction domain, there's
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: a book I don't know if you know of it.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: It's called The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, one
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: the seventy four Pulterer Project. I think that was a
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: year one of the most influential books I've ever read. Really, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: It really describes human motivation and why we do what
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: we do from sort of a post Freudian perspective where
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: we really are the only species that knows that we're
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: going to die, and that drives us to try to
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: do things that will give us a sense of permanence.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: And if you take that perspective, I can't do it
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: justice in thirty seconds, but you recognize so much of
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: what we do is driven by this fear of the
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: impending doom that faces us all. And I have to
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: tell you this is a book that's really even influencing
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: the book I'm writing right now. The book I'm writing
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: now is about the whole history of the universe from
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: the beginning to the end, and as you describe it,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: the future does look like a death to the universe,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: the heat death. We even use that language. And the
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: book kind of shows an interplay between our recognition as
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: a species that we will die with this recognition that
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: the universe as a whole is going to die, and
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: how do those notions play off of each other, has
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: that effect how we live? That's sort of what this
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: book is about. Fascinating, and any of the books you
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: want to mention, give us a give us a physics
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: book that's not your own, that that you think is
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: worth pursuing. Wow, or cosmology or astrophysics or uh, well,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: you know Richard Dawkins, if we're gonna outside of itself,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: you know what a beautiful writer, you know, and what
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: a capacity he has for taking ideas in the biological
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: realm and just writing in a way that can make
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: you weep. I mean, it's such such a beautiful writing.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: So I'd say he certainly is. Anything that he's written
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: is well worth one's time to read, really quite quite fascinating. Also,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: I would say Stephen Pinker, he was a previous guest,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: I love the concept. So I a little self interested digression.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: So I do a lot of work with behavioral economics
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: and why investors are so bad at what they do
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: because of the cognitive wet wear was not designed you know,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: if it was a pharmaceutical, we would call it off
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: label usage. We weren't designed for there, and and Pinker's
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: book The Better UM Better Angels of Our Nature UM
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: basically shows how things can be getting better and better
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: and better, and yet you're unaware of it. The phrase
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: I use as denominator blindness. But if you see, you know,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: something on the news, there was this crime, this murder,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: this robbery, Well, what does that tell you about the
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: overall trend? Is this more than average? Is this less
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: than average? We've been hearing about all these terrible crimes,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: and yet by every data point we look at, most
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: serious crimes are at thirty, forty, even forty five year lows.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: You look around the world's poverty, uh slavery, nutritional short
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: for they're all there has never been a better time
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: to be a human being on this planet. And yet
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: you read the headlines and it doesn't quite give you
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: that same perspective. Yeah, absolutely, And and that's Uh, that's
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: Pinker's book. I'm gonna have you started asking me questions
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: if I can keep going off on this, let me
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: get back to my uh my list. So let's talk
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: about what's changed since you've joined the realm of physics.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: What do you think are the most interesting changes that
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: have taken place? Yeah, well, they're better or worse. Yeah, well,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: I'd say the big developments in physics, the thrilling ones
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: are the discoveries of ideas that were put forward a
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: hundred years ago or fifty years ago. The issues of
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: the microwave, background, radiation heat left up from the Big
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Bang that now we can measure with such spectacular person decision,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: and what we see matches what the math says. That
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: gives us confidence that we truly understand what was happening
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: thirteen point eight billion years ago. That's utterly thrilling, you know.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Discovery of the Higgs boson, that we now understand that
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: there can be this feel permeating space and that's why
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: other things have mass. We found the particle, these ideas,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: the god particle. I'm sort of not a great fan
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: of that word, but yeah, that's what it's called. When
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: I learned about this in graduate school in the nineteen eighties.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: It was taught to me in a way where I
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: didn't even know that it hadn't yet been confirmed. It
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: was spoken of as if this is how the world works.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: It was decades before I knew. Wait, we don't have
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: that particle in our hands. Well, decades is an exaggeration.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: A few years and then twelve we find the particle,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: and then gravitational waves is the other big one. Right,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: None of us who are in the theoretical end of
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: things really thought that they were going to detect these
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: gravitational way ever, or just in a life I mean, look,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: you're looking at a wave that can strutch device by
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: a fraction of an atomic diameter. How can you measure
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: stretching by the fraction of an atomic diameter? And yet
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: these guys pulled it all set up at tube and
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: you have a mirror that refracts it in the other
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: and you just measure the two waves theoretically, theoretically, that's
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: come on, they could have figured that out years ago.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, But no, it is. It is stunning achievement.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: But but that we mentioned this earlier, we are living
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: in a golden age of physics where things that theoretically
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: have been described when you see hard proof like that.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: And and by the way, oh, we could trace this
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: to two black holes that collided one three billion years. Okay, hey,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: we there's proof of that. And here it is in
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: the shift in this in this measurement. That's an astonishing accomplishment.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know if people, people who aren't physics nerds appreciate,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: and there seems to be so. I subscribe to a
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: bunch of different email lists because I I do a
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: morning set of reads for everybody. Here are the ten
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: most interesting things from markets, to psychology to whatever. And
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: I'm on all these different lists, and the sort of
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: stuff that comes from the physics side, it's it's not
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: like every six months I get, uh, hey, here's this
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: big announcement. It's every day there's two or three different things.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: And every week there's some hey, this is a pretty
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: big deal. And it seems at least once or twice
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: a month it's hey, this is groundbreaking stuff. It's a
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: are you do You stop and say, I'm really glad
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: that my lifespan incorporates this era of spectacular discovery. Absolutely absolutely,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: But you can't help us say to yourself, Wow, if
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: only I've been born, like a few hundred years from now,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: I could read about all this exciting stuff and now
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: it's gonna happen. Then no, then it's boring. It's done,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: I think, so stop and think about this is a
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: fun little experiment. Think about the people who lived in
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: the thirties, forties, fifties didn't make it to the eighties
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: and nineties, and computers were these things that were the
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: size of a room, and there was no concept of
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: an internet other than, hey, we have a system set
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: up that in case we are attacked with nukes, we
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: could launch a response and and wipe out most of
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: the planet. That was the concept of an internet. And
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: we had phones with phone operators and the plugs and everything.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: Think about, and maybe this is me showing my age,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: but I've gotten to see some astonishing things just in
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: the past fifty years. I think it might be boring
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: to be born after everything is figured out. Yeah, I
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: don't think so. I think it's only you to get
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: more exciting and and the possibilities of of artificial intelligence,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: the possibilities of maybe simulated world, simulated realities, the possibilities
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: to be go a little nutt a year of down
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: learning your consciousness and too you know. Yeah, so who
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: knows if any of that stuff holds any water. But
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: I would love to be around to see. Huh sounds
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: sounds intriguing. Um so those are the next major shifts.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: We don't know what's gonna gonna come out of them.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: This is another question that came from listeners. Tell us
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: about a time you failed and what you learned from
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: the experience. Oh gosh, the old failure question. That's a
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: tough one always. But um I'll give you one example,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of a personal side of things. You know,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: my dad was a musician, composer, and because that life
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: is so hard, he kind of pushed us kids away
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: from music. He didn't want us to go in that direction.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: So when I was in college, finally I said, I
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: want to play an instrument, you know, I want to
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: play piano. So I started to do that. But what
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: I've learned is that unless you are fully least me personally,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: fully focused on something, you don't get it done. So
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: here I am thirty years later, and I'm still thinking
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: to myself, I really want to play piano, and by
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: hell or high water. I want before I leave this
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: planet to have some level of proficiency. I've not gotten
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: it yet. But the lesson I would say is for
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: me personally, if I'm gonna do something, it has to
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: be one commitment or it just doesn't happen. I have
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: a friend who started taking Italian lessons and he said
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: he thought it would take five years to really be proficient.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: And I said, gee, that's a long time, and he
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: said the five years ago, and by whether I'm studying
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: Italian or not, so maybe exactly right. Something to it?
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: All right, my I know we only have the room
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: for two couple more minutes. Let me get to my
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: last two and most favorite questions. You work with a
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: lot of millennials, young students. Someone comes to you and says,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in a career in theoretical physics. What sort
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: of advice would you give them? Well, I tell them,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: number one, can you imagine doing anything else? Because I
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: think to really succeed in this field, you've got to
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: be one of the people saying no, no, My heart
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: and soul is in physics, and that's what I've got
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: to do. Because it's a hard field. Very few jobs
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: you work like crazy you don't make a lot of money.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: You have to be doing it because it's got you
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: by the d n A. And if that's the case,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: then I tell them, look, the next thing is, you've
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: got to learn the basics inside out. Don't try to
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: jump ahead and do string theory or general relativity because
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: it's cool ideas that you maybe saw some television show
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: mine or somebody else's. You've got to learn Newton Maxwell
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: everybody inside out. And if at the end of that
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: you still love the field, keep on going. And my
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: final question that I ask all my guests, what is
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: it that you know today about physics, string theory? What
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: have you that you wish you knew when you were
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: starting out five or so years ago. You can I
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: give a real nuts and bolts to that question, not
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: sort of from high end saying, well, you know, twenty
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: five years ago numerical methods using computers was not really
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: the centerpiece of doing physics, but so many issues today.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: If you're doing general relativity, if you're doing these really
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: hard problems, you've got to be a cracker jack computer
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: person to be able to push certain of these calculations forward.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: And I always left that to others I would do
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: the equations and I'd leave it, say the students to
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: program it to take it forward. I wish I was
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: a cracker Jack programmer, because there's a certain kind of
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: insight that I found myself, even on the rudimentary stuff
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: that I've done. In the numerical world, you learn things
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: better if you can take an idea, turn into a
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: program and actually calculate something with it. In that way,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: you understand it better. So I'd tell all students get
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: proficiency in numerical methods, even if you're going to be
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: doing high end theory. It will serve you well. Quite fascinating.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Professor Brian Green, director of
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: the Center for Theoretical Physics at Columbia University. Be sure
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: and check out any of the other hundred and fifty
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: or so such conversations we've had. You can find them
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: on Bloomberg dot com, Apple iTunes, SoundCloud, or any of
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: the other places where fine podcasts or hosted. I would
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not thank my producer, Taylor
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: Riggs or my director of research, Michael Batnick. We love
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I'm Barry Ridholtz. You've
• 1:15:16
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• 1:15:21
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