Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with s
James Gates Jr he's a theoretical
physicist and professor Brown University
working on supersymmetry super gravity a
super string theory he served on former
President Obama's Council of Advisors on
science technology and he's now the
co-author of a new book titled proving
Einstein right about the scientists who
set out to prove in Stein's theory of
relativity you may have noticed that
I've been speaking with not just
computer scientists but philosophers
mathematicians physicists economists and
soon much more to me AI is much bigger
than deep learning bigger than computing
it is our civilizations journey into
understanding the human mind and
creating echoes in the machine that
journey includes of course the world of
theoretical physics and its practice of
first principles mathematical thinking
in exploring the fundamental nature of
our reality this is the artificial
intelligence podcast he enjoyed
subscribe I need to give it five stars
an Apple podcast follow on Spotify
support on patreon or simply connect
with me on Twitter Alex Friedman spelled
Fri D ma n if you leave a review an
apple podcast for YouTube or Twitter
consider measuring ideas people topics
you find interesting
it helps guide the future of this
podcast but in general I just love
commas that are full of kindness and
thoughtfulness in them this podcast is a
side project for me but I still put a
lot of effort into it so the positive
words of support from an amazing
community from you really helped I
recently started doing ads at the end of
the introduction I'll do one or two
minutes after introducing the episode
and never any ads in the middle they can
break the flow of the conversation I
hope that works for you and doesn't hurt
the listening experience I provide time
stamps for the start of the
conversations you may have noticed that
you can skip to but it helps if you
listen to the ad and support this
podcast by trying out the product or
service being advertised
this show is presented by cash app the
number one finance app in the App Store
I personally use cash app to send money
to friends but you can also use it to
buy sell and deposit Bitcoin in just
seconds cash app also has a new
investing feature you can buy fractions
of stocks a $1 worth no matter what the
stock price is brokerage services are
provided by cash shop investing a
subsidiary of square member at CIBC I'm
excited to be working with cash app to
support one of my favorite organizations
called first best known for their first
robotics and Lego competitions they
educate and inspire hundreds of
thousands of students in over 110
countries and have a perfect rating on
Charity Navigator which means the
donated monies used to maximum
effectiveness when you get cash app from
the App Store Google Play and use code
Lex podcast you'll get $10 and cash
Apple also done a $10 to the first which
again is an organization that I've
personally seen inspire girls and boys
to dream of engineering a better world
and now here's my conversation with s
James Gates Jr you tell a story when you
were 8 he had a profound realization at
the stars in the sky are actually places
that we could travel to one day do you
think human beings will ever venture
outside our solar system Wow the
question of whether humanity gets
outside of the solar system it's going
to be a challenge and as long as the
laws of physics that we have today are
accurate and valid it's gonna be
extraordinarily difficult I'm a
science-fiction fan as you probably know
so I love to dream of starships and
traveling to other solar systems but the
barriers are just formidable if we just
kind of venture a little bit into
science fiction do you think the
spaceships if we are successful that
take us outside the solar system
we'll look like the ones we have today
or do fundamental breakthrough our
fundamental breakthroughs necessary in
order to have genuine starships probably
some really radical views about the way
the universe works is our going to have
to take place in our science
we could with our current technology
think about constructing
multi-generational starships where the
people who get on them are not that
people who get off at the other end but
even if we do that there for mental
problems actually our bodies which
doesn't seem to be conscious for a lot
of people even getting to Mars is going
to present this challenge because we
live in this a wonderful home has a
protective magnetic magnetosphere around
it and so we're shielded from cosmic
radiation once you leave this shield
there are some estimates that for
example if you send someone to Mars with
that technology probably about two years
out there without the seal they're gonna
be mom bartered that means radiation
that probably means cancer so that's one
of the most formal challenge even if we
could get over the technology if you
think so Mars is a harsh place you have
musk SpaceX and other folks NASA are
really pushing to put a human being on
Mars do you think again
let's forgive me for lingering in
science fiction land for a little bit do
you think one day we may be able to
colonize Mars first do you think we'll
put a human on Mars and then do you
think we'll put many humans on Mars so
first of all we're not I am
extraordinarily convinced we will not
put a human on Mars by 2030 which is a
date that you often hear in the public
debate what's the challenge there well
you think so
there are a couple of ways that I could
slice this but the one that I think is
simplest for people and understand
involves money so you look at how we got
to the moon in the 1960s it was about
10-year duration between the challenge
that President Kennedy laid out and our
successfully landing a moon I was
actually here at MIT when that first
moon landing occurred so I remember
watching it on TV but how do we get
there well we had this extraordinary
technical agency of the United States
government NASA it consumed about 5% of
the countries
economic output and so you say 5% of the
economic output over about a 10-year
period gets us 250,000 miles in space
Mars is about a hundred times farther so
you have at least a hundred times a
challenge and we're spending about one
tenth of the funds that we spent then as
a government so my claim is is that it's
at least a thousand times harder for me
to imagine us getting to Mars by 2030
and yet that part that you mentioned in
the speech that I just have to throw in
there of JFK of we do these things not
because they're easy but because they're
hard it's such a beautiful line that I
would love to hear a modern president
say about a scientific endeavor well one
day we live in hope that such a
precedent will arise for our nation but
even if like I said even if you you fix
the profit technical problems the
biological engineering that I worry most
about however I'm gonna go out on a limb
here I think that by two thousand ninety
or so or two thousand one hundred and so
let's say 120 I suspect we're gonna have
a human on Mars
Wow so you think that many years out
first a few tangents he said
bioengineering as a as a challenge of
what's what's the challenge there so as
I said the the real problem with
interstellar travel aside from the
technology challenges the real problem
is radiation and how do you engineer
either an environment or a body because
we see rapid advances going on in
bioengineering how do you engineer
either a ship or body so that something
is some person that's recognizably Union
human will survive the rigors of
interplanetary space travel it's much
more difficult than most people seem to
take into account
so if we could linger on the 2092 2121
20 sort of thinking of that kind of you
know and we let's linger on money
okay so Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are
pushing the cost trying to quit push the
cost down I mean this is so do you have
hope is this actually a sort of a
brilliant big-picture scientist do you
think a business entrepreneur can take
science and make it cheaper and get it
out there faster so bending the cost
curve is you'll notice that has been an
anchor there's the simplest way for me
to discuss this with people about what
the challenge is so yes bending the cost
curve is certainly critical if we're
going to be successful now you asked
about the endeavors that are out there
now sponsored by two very prominent
American citizens Jeff Bezos and Elon
Musk
I'm disappointed actually in what I see
in terms of the routes that are being
pursued so let me give you one example
there and this one is going to be a
little bit more technical so if you look
at the kinds of rockets that both these
organizations are creating yes it's
wonderful reusable technology to see a
rocket go up and land on its fins just
like it did in science fiction movies
when I was a kid that's astounding but
the real problem is those Rockets the
technology that we're doing now is not
really that different than what was used
to go to the moon and there are
alternatives it turns out there's an
engine called a flare engine which so a
traditional rocket if you look at the
engine looks like a bell right and then
the flame comes out the bottom but there
is a kind of engine called a flare
engine which is essentially when you
look at it it looks like an exhaust pipe
on like a fancy car that's you know long
and elongate it and it's a type of
rocket engine that we know we know it's
there been preliminary testing we know
it works and it also is actually much
more economical because what it does is
allow you to vary the amount of thrust
as you go up in a way that you cannot do
with one of the
bell shaped engines so you would think
that an entrepreneur might try to have
the breakthrough to use flared nozzles
as they're called as a way to bend the
cost curve because we keep coming back
that's going to be a big factor but
that's not happening in fact what we see
is what I think of as incremental change
in terms of our technology so I'm not
really very encouraged by what I
personally see so incremental change
won't bend the cost curve and I don't
see it
just linger on the sci-fi for one more
question sure do you think we're alone
in the universe are we the only
intelligent form of life so there is a
quote by Carl Sagan which I really love
when I hear this question and I'm I
recall the quote and it goes something
like if we're the only conscious life in
the universe it's a terrible waste of
space because the universe is an
incredibly big place and when Carl made
that statement we didn't know about the
profusion of planets that are out there
in the last decade we've discovered over
a thousand planets and a substantial
number of those planets are earth-like
in terms of being in the Goldilocks zone
as it's called so it's on in my mind is
practically inconceivable that were the
only conscious form of life in the
universe but that doesn't mean they've
come to visit us do you think they would
look do you think will recognize alien
life if we saw it do you think you'd
look anything like the carbon-based the
biological system we have on earth today
it would depend on that life's native
environment in which it arose if that
environment was sufficiently like our
environment there's a principle in
biology and nature called convergence
which is that even if you have two
biological systems that are totally
separated from each other if they face
similar conditions they tend to kin
nature tends to converge on solutions
and so there might be similarities if
this alien life-form almost born in a
place that's kind of
like this place physics appears to be
quite similar the laws of physics across
the entirety of the universe do you
think weirder things than we see on
earth can spring up out of the same
kinds of laws of physics from the laws
of physics I would say yes first of all
if you look at carbon-based life why we
carbon base well it turns out it's
because of the way that carbon interacts
with elements which in fact is also a
reflection on the electronic Select
structure of the carbon nucleus so you
can look down the table developments and
say but gee do we see similar elements
the answer is yes and one that when it
often hears about in science fiction is
silicon so maybe there's a silicon-based
life-form out there if the conditions
are right but I think it's presumptuous
of us to think that we are the template
by which all life has to appear before
we dive into beautiful details let me
ask a big question what to you is the
most beautiful idea maybe the most
surprising and mysterious idea in
physics the most surprising idea to me
is that we can actually do physics the
universe did not have to be constructed
in such a way that our with our limited
intellectual capacity that is actually
put together in such a way and that we
are put together in such a way that we
can with our minds I delve incredibly
deeply into the structure of the
universe that to me is pretty close to a
miracle so they're simple equations
relatively simple that can describe
things you know the fundamental
functions then describe everything about
our reality
that's not can you imagine universes
where everything is a lot more
complicated do you think there's
something inherent about universes that
well simple laws well first of all let
me this is a question that I encounter
in a number of guys is a lot of people
will raise the question about whether
mathematics is the language of the
universe and my response is
mathematics is the language that we
humans are capable of using in
describing the universe it may have
little to do with the universe but in
terms of our capacity it's the
microscope it's the telescope through
which we it's the lens through which we
are able to view the universe with the
precision that no other human language
allows so could there be other universes
well I don't even know if this one looks
like I think it does but the beautiful
surprising thing is that physics there
are laws of physics very few laws of
physics they can effectively compress
down the functioning of the universe yes
that's extraordinarily surprising you
know I like to use the analogy with
computers and information technology if
you worry about transmitting large
bundles of data one of the things that
computer scientists do for us is they
allow for processes that are called
compression where you take big packets
of data and you press them down into
much smaller packets and then you
transmit those and then unpack them at
the other end and so it looks a little
bit to me like the universe is kind of
done us a favor it's constructed our
minds in such a way that we have this
thing called mathematics which then as
we look at the universe teaches us how
to carry out the compression process a
quick question about compression do you
think the human mind can be compressed
the the biology could be compressed we
talked about space travel to be able to
compress the information that captures
some large percent of what it means to
be me or you and then be able to send
that at the speed of light wow that's a
big question and let me try to take it
apart unpack it into several pieces I
don't believe that wetware biology such
as we are has an exclusive patent on in
own intellectual consciousness I suspect
that other structures in the universe
are perfectly capable of producing the
data streams that we use the process
first of all our observations of the
universe and and an awareness of
ourselves I can imagine
structures can do that also so that's
part of what you were talking about
which I would have some disagreement
with consciousness yes what's the most
interesting part of consciousness of us
humans is consciousness is the thing I
think that's the most interesting thing
about you and then you're saying that
there's other entities throughout the
universe
I could imagine I can well imagine that
the architecture that supports our
consciousness again has no patent on
consciousness it's the in case you have
an interesting thought here there's
folks perhaps in philosophy called Pan
cyclists that believe consciousness
underlies everything it is one of the
fundamental laws of the universe do you
have a sense that that could possibly
fit into I don't know the answer that
question one part of that belief system
is Ghia which is that there's a kind of
conscious life force about our planet
and you know I encountered these things
before I don't quite know what to make
of them I my own experience and I'm I'll
be 69 in about two months and I have
spent all my adulthood thinking about
the way that mathematics interacts with
nature and with us to try to understand
nature and all I can tell you from all
of my integrated experience is that
there is something extraordinarily
mysterious to me about our universe this
is something an Einstein said of from
his life experience as a scientist and
this mysteriousness almost feels like
the universe is our parent it's a very
strange thing perhaps to hear science
say it scientists say but there are just
so many strange coincidences that you
just get a sense that something is going
on
while I interrupted you in terms of
compressing what we're down to we
consented at the speed of light yes so
so the first thing is I would argue that
it's probably very likely that
artificial intelligence ultimately will
develop something like consciousness
something that for us will probably be
indistinguishable from consciousness so
that's what I meant by our biological
processing equipment that we carry up
here probably had does not hold a patent
on consciousness because it's really
about the data streams I mean that's as
far as I can tell that's what we are we
are self actuating self learning data
streams that to me Lee is most accurate
way I can tell you what I have seen in
my lifetime about what humans are at the
level of consciousness so if that's the
case then you just need to have an
architecture that supports that
information processing so let's assume
that that's true
that that in fact what we call
consciousness is really about a very
peculiar kind of data stream if that's
the case then if you can export that to
a piece of hardware something metal
electronic what-have-you then you
certainly will ultimately that kind of
consciousness could get to Mars very
quickly it doesn't have our problems you
can engineer the body as I say there's a
ship or a body you engineer one or both
send it to the speed of light well that
one is a more difficult one because that
now goes beyond just a matter of having
a data stream and so now the
preservation of the information in the
data stream and so unless you can build
something that's like a super super
super version of the way the internet
works because most people aren't aware
that the Internet itself is actually a
miracle it's based on a technology
called message packaging so if you could
expand nc8 message packaging in some way
to preserve the information that's in
the data stream then maybe your dream
becomes true can we you mentioned with
artificial intelligence sort of us human
beings not having a monopoly on
consciousness does the idea of
artificial and
systems computational systems being able
to basically replacing us humans scare
you excite you what do you think about
so I'm gonna tell you about a
conversation I once had with Eric
Schmidt I was sitting at a meeting with
him and he was a few feet away and he
turned to me and he said something like
you know Jim and maybe a decade or so
we're gonna have computers that do what
you do and my response was not unless
they can dream because there's something
about the human the way that we humans
actually generate creativity it's
somehow I get this sense of my lived
experience and watching creative people
that somehow connected to the irrational
parts of what goes on in our head yes
and dreaming is part of that
irrationally so unless you can build a
piece of artificial intelligence that
dreams I have a strong suspicion that
you will not get something that it will
fully be conscious by a definition that
I would accept for example imagine
dreaming you've played around with some
out-there fascinating ideas how do you
think when and we'll start diving into
the world of the very small ideas of
supersymmetry and all that in terms of
visualization in terms of how do you
think about it how do you dream of it
how do you come up with ideas in that
fascinating mysterious space so in my
workspace which is basically where I am
charged with coming upon on coming up on
a mathematical palette with new ideas
that will help me understand the
structure of nature and hopefully help
all of us understand structure of nature
I've observed several different ways in
which my creativity expresses itself
there's one mode which looks pretty
normal which I sort of think of as the
Chinese water torture mythos drop drop
drop you get more and more information
and suddenly it all congeals and you get
a clearer picture and so that's the kind
of a standard way of working and I think
that's how most people think about the
way technical people solve problems that
it's kind of you accumulate this body of
information at a certain point you
synthesize it and then boom there's
something new but I've also observed in
my
self and other scientists that there are
other ways that we are creative creative
and these other ways to me are actually
far more powerful I first personally
experienced this when I was a freshman
at MIT live over in Baker house right
across the campus and I was in a
calculus course 1801 is called at MIT
and calculus comes in two different
flavors one of them is called
differential calculus the other is
called integral calculus differential
calculus is the calculus that Newton
invented to describe motion since our
integral calculus was probably invented
about seventeen hundred years earlier by
Archimedes but we didn't know that when
I was a freshman but so that's what you
study as a student and the differential
calculus part of the course was to me I
wouldn't how do I say this it was
something that that by the driptip
method you could sort of figure it out
now the integral part of calculus I
could memorize the formula that was not
the formula that was not the problem the
problem was why in my own mind why do
these formulae work and because of that
when I was in the part of the calculus
course where we had to do multiple
substitutions to solve integrals I had a
lot of difficulty I was emotionally
involved in my education because this is
where I think the passion emotion comes
to and it caused an emotional crisis
that I was having these difficulties
understanding the integral part of
calculus so why other why that's right
the why of it not the remember rote
memorization of fact but the why of it
why does this work and so one night I
was over in my dormitory room in Baker
house I was trying to do a calculus
problem set I was getting nowhere I got
a terrific headache I went to sleep and
had this very strange dream and when I
woke walk awakened I could do 3 & 4
substitutions and integrals with
relative ease now this to me wasn't an
astounding experience because I had
never before my life understood that one
subconscious is actually capable of
being harnessed to do mathematics
I experienced it this and I've
experienced this more than once so this
was just the first time why I remember
it so so that's why when it comes to
like really wickedly tough problems I
think that the kind of creativity that
you need to solve them is probably this
second variety which comes somehow from
dreaming if you think again I told you
I'm Russian
so we romanticize suffering but do you
think part of that equation is the
suffering leading up to that dreaming so
the suffering is I am convinced that
this kind of creative sick the second
mode of creativity as I like to call it
I'm convinced that this second mode of
creativity is in fact that suffering is
a kind of crucible that triggers it
because the mine I think is struggling
to get out of this and the only the only
way the heaters actually solved the
problem and even though you're not
consciously solving problems something
is going on and I've talked about to a
few other people in there are there
similar stories and so I the way I guess
so I think about it is it's a little bit
by like the way that thermonuclear
weapons work and if you know how they
work but a thermonuclear weapon is
actually two bombs there's an atomic
bomb which sort of Delta compression and
then you have a fusion bomb that goes
off and somehow that emotional pressure
I think acts like the first stage of a
thermonuclear weapon that's when we get
really big thoughts the analogy between
thermonuclear weapons and the
subconscious the the connection there is
uh at least visually that's kind of
interesting well I there may be fried it
would have a few things to say well part
of it is probably based on my own
trajectory through life my father was in
the Army for us for the US Army for 27
years and so I started my life out on
military bases and so a lot of probably
the things that wander around in my
subconscious are connected to the
experience I apologize for all the
tangents but while you're doing it
but you're encouraging by me answering
the stupid questions no they're not
stupid
you know your father was in the army
what do you think about any other grass
Tyson recently wrote a book on
interlinking the the progress of science
to sort of the aspirations of our
military endeavors and DARPA funding and
so on what do you think about war in
general do you think we'll always have
war do you think we'll always I am
conflict in the world I'm not sure that
we're going to be able to afford to have
war always because if strictly
financially speaking no not in terms of
Finance but in terms of consequences so
if you look at technology today you can
have non state actors acquired
technology for example bioterrorism
which whose impact is roughly speaking
equivalent to what it used to take
nations to an impart on a population I
think the cost of war is ultimately it's
gonna be a little I think it's gonna
work a little bit like the Cold War you
know we survived 50 60 years as a
species with these weapons that are so
terrible that they could have actually
ended our form of life on this planet
but it didn't why didn't it well it's a
very bizarre and interesting thing but
it was called mutually assured
destruction and so the cost was so great
that people eventually figured out that
you can't really use these things which
is kind of interesting because if you
read the history about the development
of nuclear weapons businesses actually
realized this pretty quickly I think it
was maybe Schrodinger who said that
these things are not really weapons
their political and implements and not
weapons because the cost is so high and
if you take that example and spread it
out to the kind of technological
development we're seeing now outside of
nuclear physics but I picked the example
of biology I could well imagine that
there would be material science sorts of
equivalents that across a broad front of
Technology you
take that experience from nuclear
weapons and the picture that I see is
that it would be so there would be
possible to develop technologies that
are so terrible that you couldn't use
them because the costs are too high and
that might cure us and many people have
argued that actually it prevented
nuclear weapons have prevented more
military conflict then it certainly
froze the conflict domain it's an
interesting that nowadays it was with
the removal of the threat of mutually
assured destruction that other forces
took over in our geopolitics do you have
worries that of existential threats of
nuclear weapons or other technologies
like artificial intelligence do you
think we humans will tend to figure out
how to not blow ourselves up I don't
know quite frankly this is something I
thought about and I'm not I mean so I'm
a spectator in the sense that as a
scientist I collect and collate data so
I've been doing that all my life and
looking at my species and it's not clear
to me that we are going to avoid I could
a catastrophic self-induced ending are
you optimistic as a not as a scientist
but as a I well I would say I would say
I wouldn't bet against us beautifully
put let's dive into the the world are
very small if we could first heard it
what are the basic particles either
experimentally observed or hypothesized
by physicists so as we physicists look
at the universe you can first of all
there are two big buckets of particles
that is the smallest objects that we are
able to currently mathematically
conceive and then experimentally verify
that these ideas have an accent of
accuracies them so one of those buckets
we call matter these are things like
electrons things that are like quarks
which are particles that exist inside of
protons
and there's a whole family of these
things there are in fact 18 corks and
apparently six electron like objects
that we call leptons so that's one
bucket the other bucket that we see both
in our mathematics as well as in our
experiment to equipment are what our set
of particles that you can call force
carriers the most familiar force carrier
is the photon the particle of light that
allows you to see me in fact it's the
same object that carries electric
repulsion between like charges from
science fiction we have the object
called the graviton which is talked
about a lot in science fiction and Star
Trek but the graviton is also a
mathematical object that we physicists
have known about essentially since
Einstein wrote his theory of general
relativity there are four forces in
nature the fundamental forces there is
the gravitational force its carrier is
the graviton there are three other
forces in nature the electromagnetic
force the strong nuclear force and the
weak nuclear force and each one of these
forces has at one or more carriers the
photon is the carrier of the
electromagnetic force the strong nuclear
force actually has eight carriers
they're called gluons and then the weak
nuclear force has three carriers they're
called the W plus W minus and Z bosons
so those are the things that both in
mathematics and in experiments the most
by the way the most precise experiments
were a ever as a species able to conduct
is about measuring the accuracy of these
ideas and we know that at least to one
part in a billion these ideas are right
so first of all you've made it sound
both elegant and simple but is it crazy
to you that there is force carriers like
is that supposed to be a trivial idea to
think about if we think about photons
gluons that there's four fundamental
forces of physics and then those forces
are expressed
there's carriers of those forces like is
that a kind of trivial thing it's not a
trivial thing at all in fact it was a
puzzle for Sir Isaac Newton because he's
the first person to give us basically
physics before Isaac Newton physics
didn't exist
what did exist was called Nath
philosophy so discussions about using
the methods of classical philosophy to
the understand nature natural philosophy
so the Greeks we call them scientists
but they were natural philosophers
physics doesn't get born until Newton
writes the Principia one of the things
that puzzled him was how gravity works
because if you read very carefully what
he writes he basically says and I'm
paraphrasing badly but he basically says
that someone who thinks deeply about
this subject would find it inconceivable
that what an object in one place place
our location can magically reach out and
affect another object with nothing
intervening and so it puzzled him
there's a puzzle you what doesn't in a
distance I mean not as it would it would
it would accept that I am a physicist
and we have long ago resolved this issue
and the resolution came about through a
second great physicist most people heard
of a Newton most people have heard of
Einstein but between the two of them
there was another extraordinarily great
physicist a man named James Clark
Maxwell and Maxwell between these two
other giants taught us about electric
and magnetic forces and it's from his
equations that one can figure out that
there's a carrier called the photon so
this was resolved for physicists around
1860 or so so what are bosons and
fermions and hey John's
elementary and composites sure so
earlier I said you've UNK it's you have
got two buckets if you want to try to
build a universe you have to start off
without things on these two buckets so
you got to have things that's the matter
and then you have to either have other
objects that act on them to cause those
things to cohere to fixed finite
patterns because you need those fixed
finite patterns as building blocks so
that's the way our universe looks to
people like me now the building blocks
do different things so let's go back to
these two buckets again let me start
with a bucket containing the particle of
light let me imagine I'm in a dusty room
with two flashlights and I have one
flashlight which I direct directly in
front of me and then I have you stand
over to say my left and then we both
take our flashlights and turn them on
make sure the beams go right through
each other and the beams do just that
they go right through each other they
don't bounce off of each other
the reason the room has to be dusty is
because we want to see the light because
I'll let the rule dust wasn't there we
wouldn't actually see the light until it
got to the other wall right so you see
the beam because it's dust in the air
but the do things actually pass right
through each other they literally pass
right through they don't affect each
other at all when acts like that one's
not there things there are the particle
flight is the simplest example that
shows that behavior that's a boson now
let's imagine that I have to wear in the
same dusty room and this time you have a
bucket of balls and I have a bucket of
balls and we try to throw them so that
they pass so that we get something like
a beam throwing them fast right if they
collide they don't just pass through
each other they bounce off of each other
now that's mostly because they have
electric charge an electric charge is
like charges repel but mathematically I
know how to turn off the electric charge
if you do that you'll finally still
repel and it's because they are these
things we call fermions so this is how
you distinguish the things that are in
the two buckets they are either bosons
or fermions which of them and maybe you
can mention the most popular of the
boson the most recently discovered she's
it's like yeah it's like when I was in
high school and there was a really
popular major rift her name is her name
is the Higgs particle these days
can you describe which which which of
the bosons and fermions have been
discovered hypothesized which have been
experimentally value she was still out
there right so the two buckets that I've
actually described to you have all been
first hypothesized and then verified by
observation with the Higgs boson being
the most recent one of these things we
haven't actually verified the graviton
interestingly enough we mathematically
we have an expectation that gravitas
like this but we've not performed an
experiment to show that this is an
accurate idea that nature uses so
something has to be a carrier for the
force of gravity exactly because maybe
something way more mysterious than we so
when you say
is that would it be like the other
particles force carriers in some ways
yes but in other ways no it turned out
that the graviton is also if you look at
I in Stein's theory he taught us about
this thing he calls space-time which is
you know if you try to imagine it you
can sort of think of it as kind of a
rubber surface that's one popular
depiction of space-time it's not an
accurate depiction because the only
accuracy is actually in the calculus
that he uses but that's close enough
so if you have a sheet of rubber you can
wave it you can actually form a wave on
it space-time is enough like that so
that when space-time oscillates you
create these waves these ways carry
energy we expect them to carry energy in
quanta that's what a graviton is it's a
wave in space-time and so the fact that
we have seen the waves with LIGO over
the course of the last three years and
we've recently use gravitational wave
Observatory to watch colliding black
holes and neutron stars and all sorts of
really cool stuff out there so we know
the waves exist but in order to know
that graviton exists you have to prove
that these waves carry energy in energy
packets and that's what we don't have
the technology to do yet and uh perhaps
briefly jumping to a philosophical
question does it make sense to you that
gravity is so much weaker than the other
forces no it's now you see now you've
touched on a very deep mystery about
physics there are a lot of such
questions of physics about why things
are as they are and as someone who
believes that there are some things that
certainly are coincidences like you
could ask the same question about well
why are the planets at the orbits that
they are around the Sun the answer turns
out there is no good reason it's just an
accident so there are things in nature
that have that character and perhaps the
strength of the weak of the various
forces it's like that well the other
thing we don't know that that's the case
and there may be some deep reasons about
why the forces are ordered as they are
where the weakest forces gravity the
next week is forces the weak interaction
the weak nuclear force then there's
electromagnetism this
we don't really have a good
understanding of why this is the
ordering of the forces some of the
fascinating work you've done is in the
space of supersymmetry symmetry in
general can you describe first of all
what is supersymmetry ah yes so you
remove the two buckets I told you about
perhaps earlier I said there are two
buckets in our universe so now I want
you to think about drawing a a pie that
has four quadrants so I want you to cut
the piece of pie in fourths so one
quadrant I'm going to put all the
buckets that we talked about like that
are like the electronic quarks in a
different quadrant I am going to put all
the force carriers the other two
quadrants are empty now if you I showed
you a picture of that you'd see a circle
there would be a bunch of stuff in one
upper quadrant and stuff in others and
then I would ask you a question does
that look symmetrical to you no no and
that's exactly right because we humans
actually have a very deeply programmed
sense of symmetry it's something that is
part of that mystery of the universe so
how would you make it symmetrical one
way you could is by saying those two
empty quadrants had things in them not
so and if you do that that's
supersymmetry so that's what I
understood when I was a graduate student
here in at MIT in 1975 weeding the idea
when the mathematics of this was first
being born supersymmetry was actually
born in the Ukraine in the late 60s but
we have this thing called the iron
curtain so we Westerners didn't know
about it but by the early 70s
independently there were scientists in
the West who had rediscovered
supersymmetry symmetry bruno Cimino and
julius vests were their names so this
was around 71 or 72 when this happened I
started graduate school in 73
so around 74 75 I was trying to figure
out how to write a thesis so that I
could have become a physicist the rest
of my life
I did a lot of great advisor professor
James Young who had taught me a number
of things about electrons and weak
forces and those sorts of things
but I decided that if I was going to
have a really opportunity to maximize my
chances of being successful
I should strike it out in a direction
that other people were not studying and
so as a consequence I surveyed ideas
that were going that were being
developed and I came across the idea of
supersymmetry and it was so the
mathematics was so remarkable that I
just it bowled me over I actually have
two undergraduate degrees my first
undergraduate degree is actually
mathematics and my second is physics
even though I always wanted to be a
physicist plan a which involved getting
good grades was mathematics I was a
mathematics major thinking about
graduate school but my heart was in
physics if we could take a small
digression what's to you the most
beautiful idea in mathematics that
you've encountered in this interplay
between math and physics it's the idea
of symmetry the fact that our innate
sense of symmetry want wines of aligning
with just incredible mathematics to me
is the most beautiful thing it's very
strange but true that if symmetries were
perfect we would not exist and so even
though we have these very powerful ideas
about balance in the universe in some
sense it's only when you break those
balances that you get creatures like
humans and objects like planets and
stars so although they are a scaffold
for reality they cannot be the entirety
of reality so I I'm kind of naturally
attracted to parts of Science and
Technology where symmetry plays note a
dominant role and not just I guess
symmetry as you said but the the magic
happens when you break the symmetry the
magic happens when you break the
symmetry okay so diving right back in
you mentioned four quadrants yes - - or
filled with stuff what can we do buckets
yeah and then there's crazy mathematical
thing ideas for filling the other two
what are those things so earlier the way
I described these two buckets
as I gave you a story that started out
by putting us in a dusty room with two
flashlights and I said turn on your
flashlight I'll turn on mine the beans
will go through each other and the beams
are composed of force carriers called
photons
they carry the electromagnetic force and
they pass right through each other so
imagine looking at the mathematics of
such an object which you don't imagine
people like me do that so you take that
mathematics and then you ask yourself a
question
you see mathematics is a palette it's
just like a a musical composer is able
to construct to construct variations on
a theme well a piece of mathematics in
the hand of a physicist something that
we can construct variations on so even
though the mathematics that Maxwell gave
us about light we know how to construct
very issues on that and one of the very
issues you can construct is to say
suppose you have a force carrier for
electromagnetism that behaves like an
electron that in that it would bounce
off of another one it's so that's
changing a mathematical term in an
equation so if you did that you would
have a force carrier so you would say
first it belongs in this force carrying
bucket but it's got this property of
bouncing off like electrons and so you
say well gee wait no that's not the
right bucket so you're forced to
actually put it in one of these empty
quadrants so those sorts of things we
basically we give them so the photon
mathematically can be accompanied by a
photino it's the thing that carries a
force but has the rule of bouncing off
in a similar manner you could start with
an electron and you say okay so write
down the mathematical is electron I know
I want to do that physicists name Dirac
first told us how to do that back in the
nineteen late 20s early 30s so take that
mathematics and then you say let's let
me look at that mathematics and find out
what in the mathematics caused us two
electrons to bounce off of each other
even if I turn off the electrical charge
so I could do that and now let me change
that mathematical term so now I have
something that carries electrical charge
but if you take two of them I'm sorry if
you turn their charges off they'll pass
through each other so that puts things
in the other quadrant and those things
we till we tend to call
we put the Essen in front of their name
so in the lower quadrant here we have
electrons and this now newly filled
quadrant we have select rods and the
quadrant over here we had corks over
here we have squirts so now we've got
this balance pie and that's basically
what I understood as a graduate student
in 1975 about this idea of supersymmetry
that it was going to fill up these two
quadrants of the pie in a way that no
one had ever thought about before so I
was amazed that no one else at MIT found
this an interesting idea
so that's it led to my becoming the
first person in MIT to really study
supersymmetry
this is 1975 76 77 and in 77 I wrote the
first PhD thesis in the physics
department on this idea because I just I
must draw to the balance drawn to the
symmetry so what boundary what does that
first of all is this fundamentally a
mathematical idea so how much
experimental and we'll have this theme
it's an really interesting one when you
explore the worlds of the small and in
your new book talking about approving is
that right right that will also talk
about there's this theme of kind of
starting and exploring crazy ideas first
in the mathematics and then seeking for
ways to experiment to validate them
where do you put some supersymmetry and
that's it's closer than string theory it
is not yet been validated in some sense
you mentioned Einstein so let's go there
for a moment in our book proofing
Einstein right we actually do talk about
the fact that Albert Einstein in 1915
wrote a set of equations which were very
different from Newton's equations and
describing gravity these equations made
some predictions that were different
from Newton's predictions and it
actually made three different
predictions one of them was not actually
a prediction but a post diction because
it was known that mercury was not
orbiting the Sun in the way that Newton
would have told you
and so I science Theory actually makes
describes mercury orbiting in the way
that it was observed as opposed to what
Newton would have told you that was one
prediction
the second prediction that came out of
the theory of general relativity which
Einstein wrote in 1915 was that if you
if so let me describe an experiment and
come back to it suppose like a glass of
water and I filled it up fill the glass
up and then I moved the glass slowly
back and forth between our two faces it
would appear to me like your face was
moving even though you weren't moving I
mean it's actually and what's causing it
is because the light gets bent through
the glass has it passes from your face
to my eye so Einstein in his 1915 theory
of general relativity found out that
gravity has the same effect on light as
that glass of water it would cause beams
of light tube in now Newton also knew
this but Einstein's prediction was that
light would Bend twice as much and so
here's a mathematical idea now how do
you actually prove it well you've got to
watch yes just a quick pause on that
just the language you're using he found
out I can say he did a calculation it's
a really interesting notion that the one
of the most and one of the beautiful
things about this universe is you can do
a calculation and and combined with some
of that magical intuition that
physicists have actually predict what
would be was possible to experiment to
validate that's correct so he found out
in the sense that there seems to be
something here and mathematically should
bend gravity should bend like this
amount and so therefore that's something
that could be potentially and then come
up with an experiment that can be
validated right and that's the way that
actually modern physics deeply
fundamental modern physics is how it
works you earlier we spoke about the
Higgs boson so why did we go looking for
the answer is they had back in the late
60s and early 70s some people wrote some
equations and the equations predicted
this so then we went looking for it so
uh none supersymmetry for a second
there's these things called
Adinkra symbols strange little grass yes
you referred to them as revealing
something like binary code yes
underlying reality yes or so can you
describe these grout what are they what
what what are these beautiful little
strange graphs well first of all the
Dinkas are an invention of mine and
together with a colleague named Michael
Fox in 2005 we were looking at equations
well so the story's a little bit more
complicated and it'll take too long it's
explained all the details but the
Reader's Digest version is that we were
looking at these equations and we
figured out that all the data in a
certain class of equations could be put
in pictures and the pictures what do
they look like whether just they're just
little balls you have black balls and
white balls those stands for those two
buckets by the way that we talked about
in reality the white balls or things
that are like particles of light the
black balls are like electrons and then
they you can draw lines connecting these
balls and these lines are deeply
mathematical objects and there's no way
for me to I have no physical model for
telling you what the lines are but as a
math if you were a mathematician and
with your technical phrase saying this
is the orbit of the representation and
the action of the symmetry generators
mathematicians would understand that
nobody in there else in their right mind
was so let's not go there so we but we
figured out that the data that was in
the equation suddenly it was in these
funny pictures that we could draw and so
that was stunning but it also was
encouraging because there aren't
problems with the equations which I had
first learned about in 1979 when I was
down at Harvard and I went out to
Caltech for the first time and working
with a great scientist by the name of
John Schwarz there are problems in the
equations we don't notice all and so one
of the things about solving problems
that you don't know how to solve is that
beating your head against the brick wall
is probably not a good philosophy about
how to solve it so what do you need to
do you need to change your sense of of
reference your frame of reference your
perspective so when I saw these funny
pictures I thought gee that might be a
way to solve these problems with
equations that we don't know how to do
so that was for me when the first
attractions is that I now had an
alternative language to try to attack a
set of mathematical problems but I
quickly realized that a this
mathematical language was not known by
mathematicians which makes it pretty
interesting because now you have to
actually teach mathematicians about a
piece of mathematics because that's how
they make their living and the great
thing about working mathematicians of
course is the rigor with which they
examine ideas so they make your ideas
better then they start out so I start
working with a group of mathematicians
and there's in that collaboration that
we figured out that these funny pictures
had error correcting codes buried in
them so can you can talk about what our
error correcting codes are sure so the
simplest way to talk about error
correcting codes is first of all to talk
about digital information digital
information is basically strings of ones
and zeros they're called bits so now
let's imagine that I want to send you
some bits well maybe I can show you
pictures but maybe it's a rainy day or
maybe the windows in your house are
foggy so sometimes when I show you a
zero you might interpret it as a one or
other times when I show you one you
might interpret it as a zero so if
that's the case that means when I try to
send you this data it comes to you in
corrupted form and so the challenge is
how do you get it to be uncorrupted in
the 1940s a computer scientist named
hemming address the problem how do you
reliably transmit digital information
and what he came up with with was a
brilliant idea
the way to solve it is that you take the
data that you want to send and then once
in your strings of 1 0 is your favorite
string and then you've dumped more ones
and zeros then but you dump them in in a
particular pattern and this particular
pattern is what a Hamming code is all
about so it's an error correcting code
because if you the person at the other
end knows what the pattern is supposed
to be they can figure out when once got
changed the zeros
so it turned out that our strange little
objects that came from looking at the
equations that we couldn't solve it
turns out that when you look at them
deeply enough you find out they're
strictly that they have ones and zeros
back buried in them but even more
astoundingly that ones and zeroes are
not there randomly they are in the
pattern of error correcting codes so
this was an astounding thing that when
we first got this result and tried to
publish it it took us three years to
convince other physicists that we
weren't crazy mm-hmm eventually we were
able to publish it I in this
collaboration of mathematicians and
other physicists and so every since then
I have actually been looking at the
mathematics of these objects trying to
still understand properties of the
equations and I want to understand the
properties equations because I want to
be able to try things like electrons so
it's just like a two step remove process
of trying to get back to reality so what
would you say is the most beautiful
property of these dinkar graphs objects
what do you think what by the way the
word symbols what do you think of them
these simple graphs are they objects or
their haha work with mathematics like me
our mathematical concepts are we often
refer to them as objects because they
feel like real things even though you
can't see them or touch them there's so
much part of your interior life that it
is as if you could so we often refer to
these things as objects even though
there's nothing objective about them and
what is this a single graph represent
and so ok so the simplest of these
graphs has to have one white ball in one
black ball that's that balance that we
talked about earlier we want to balance
out the quadrants well you can't do this
you have a black ball and white ball so
the simplest of these objects looks like
two little balls one black one white
connected by a single line and whether
it's talking about is as I said a deep
mathematical property related to
symmetry you've mentioned the air
correcting codes but is there a
particular beautiful property that
stands out to you about these objects
they just find yeah they're very yes
very early on in the development yes
there is
the craziest thing about these to me is
that when you look at physics and try to
write equations where information gets
transmitted reliably if you're in one of
these super symmetrical systems with
this extra symmetry that doesn't happen
unless there's an error correcting code
present so as as if the universe says
you don't really transmit information
unless there's something about an error
correcting code this to me is the
craziest thing that I've ever personally
encountered in my research and it
actually got me to wondering how this
could come about because the only place
in nature that we know about error
correcting codes is genetics and in
genetics we think it was evolution that
causes air correcting codes to be in
genomes and so does that mean that there
was some kind of form of evolution
acting on the mathematical laws of the
physics of our universe this is a very
bizarre and strange idea and something
I've wondered about from time to time
since making these discoveries do you
think such an idea could be fundamental
or is it emergent throughout all the
different kinds of systems I don't know
whether it's fundamental and I probably
will not live to find out this is gonna
be the work of probably some future
either mathematicians physicists to
figure out what these things actually
mean we have to talk a bit about the
magical the mysterious string theory the
purse string theory sure there's still
maybe this aspect of it which is there
still for me from an outsider's
perspective of this fascinating heated
debate on the status of string theory
can you clarify this debate perhaps
articulating the various views and say
where you land on it so first of all I
mean I doubt that I will be able to say
anything to clarify clarify the debate
around string theory for for general
audience part of the reason is because
string theory is a has been something
I've never seen the erecto physics do it
is broken out into consciousness of the
general public before we're finished
you see string theory doesn't actually
exist because when we use the word
theory we mean a
their set of attributes in particular it
means that you have an overarching
paradigm that explains what it is that
you're doing no such overarching
paradigm exists or string theory what
string theory is currently is an
enormous lean large mutually reinforcing
collection of mathematical facts in
which we can find no contradictions we
don't know why it's there but we can
certainly say that without challenge now
just because you find a piece of
mathematics doesn't mean that it's
applies to nature and in fact there has
been a very heated debate about whether
string theory is some sort of hysteria
among the community of theoretical
physicists or whether it has something
fundamental to say about our universe we
don't yet know the answer to that
question but those of us who study
string theory will tell you are things
like string theory has been
extraordinarily productive in getting us
to think more deeply even about
mathematics that's not string theory but
the kind of mathematics that we've used
to describe elementary particles they
have been spin-offs from string theory
and this has been going on now for two
decades almost that I have allowed us
for example to more accurately calculate
the force between electrons with the
presence of quantum mechanics this is
not something you hear about in the
public there are other similar things
the kind of that kind of property I just
told you about is what to call weak
strong duality and it comes directly
from string theory there are other
things such as a property called
holography which allows one to to take
equations and look at them on the
boundary of a space and then to know
information about inside space without
actually doing calculations there this
has come directly from string theory so
there are there are a number of direct
mathematical effects that we learn this
string theory but we take these ideas
and look at math that we already know
and we find sudden we're more powerful
this is pretty good indication there's
something interesting going on with
string theory itself so it's the early
days of a powerful mathematical
framework that's what we have right now
what are the big first of all those
most people will probably that which as
you said most general public would know
actually what string theory is which is
a at the highest level which is a
fascinating fact well string theory is
what they do on the Big Bang Theory
right one can you maybe describe what is
string theory and two what are the open
challenges so what is string theory well
let the simplest explanation I can
provide is to go back and ask water
particles which is the question you
first ask me what's the smallest thing
yeah what's the smallest thing so
particles one way I try to describe
particles to people a star I want you to
imagine a little ball and I want you to
let this size of that ball shrink into
it has no extent whatsoever but it still
has the mass of the ball that's actually
what Newton was working with when he
first invented physics he's the real
inventor of the massive particle which
is this idea that underlies all of
physics so that's where we start it's a
mathematical construct that you get by
taking a limit of things that you know
so what's a string well in the same
analogy I would say now I want you to
start with a piece of spaghetti so we
all know what that looks like and now I
want you to let the thickness of the
spaghetti shrink until it has no
thickness mathematically I mean words
this makes no sense mathematically this
actually works and you get this
mathematical object out it has
properties that are like spaghetti it
can wiggle and jiggle but it can also
move collectively like a piece of
spaghetti
then it's the mathematics of those sorts
of objects that constitutes string
theory and does the multi-dimensional 11
dimensional however many dimensional
more than four dimension is that a crazy
idea to you is that is that the stranger
aspect of strength
not really and also partly because of my
own research so earlier we talked about
a dink
these strange symbols that we've
discovered inside the equations it turns
out that to a very large extent a
tinker's don't really care about the
number of dimensions they kind of have
an internal mathematical consistency
that allows them to be manifest in many
different dimensions since supersymmetry
is a part of string theory then this
same property you would expect to be
inherited by string theory however
another little-known fact which is not
in the public debate is that there are
actually strings that are only four
dimensional this is something that was
discovered at the end of the 80s by
three different groups of physicists
working independently I and my friend
Warren Siegel who were at the University
of Maryland at the time were able to
prove that there's mathematics it looks
totally four-dimensional and yet it's a
string there was a group in Germany that
used slightly different mathematics but
they found the same rizzo and then there
was a group at Cornell who using yet a
third piece of mathematics found the
same yourself so the the fact that extra
dimensions is so why they talked about
in the public is partly a function of
how the public has come to understand
string theory and how it's the story has
been told to them but there are
alternatives you don't know about if we
could talk about maybe experiments of
validation and you you're the co-author
of a recently published book proving
Einstein right the the human story of it
- the daring expeditions that changed
how we look at the universe do you see
echoes of the early days of general
relativity in the 1910s - the more
stretched out - string theory
I just nodded I do and that's one reason
why I was happy to focus on on the story
of how Einstein became a global
superstar earlier in our discussion we
went over the the his history where in
1915 he he came up this piece of
mathematics
used it to do some calculations and then
made a prediction yes
but making a prediction is not enough
someone's got to go out and measure and
so string theory is in that in-between
zone now for Einstein it was from 1915
to 1919 1950 he makes the makes the
correct prediction by the way he made an
incorrect prediction about the same
thing in 1911 but he corrected himself
in 1915 and by 1919 the first pieces of
experimental observational data became
available to say yes he's not wrong and
by 1922 the the argument that based on
observation was overwhelming that he was
not wrong he described what special and
general relativity are just briefly sure
since and what prediction Einstein made
and maybe maybe some or memorable moment
from the human journey of trying to
prove this thing right she was
incredible right so I'm very fortunate
to have worked with a talented novelist
who wanted to write a book that
coincided with a book I wanted to write
about how science kind of feels if
you're a person guess it's actually
people who do science even though that
may not be obvious to everyone so for me
I wanted to write this book for a couple
of reasons I wanted young people to
understand that the seeming alien Giants
that lived before them were just as
human as they are you get married you
get divorced again married they get
worse they do terrible things they do
great things they're people they're just
people like you and so that part of
telling the story allowed me to get that
out there for both young people interest
in the sciences as well as the public
but the other part of the story is I
wanted to open up sort of what what it
was like now I'm a scientist and so I
will not pretend to be a great writer I
understand a lot about mathematics and
I've even created my own mathematic
that you know it's kind of a weird thing
to be able to do but in order to tell
the story you really have to have an
incredible master of the narrative and
my that was my co-author Kathy Pelletier
who is a novelist
we so we formed this conjoined brain I
used to call us she's the call us
professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle my
expression for us was that we were a
conjoined brain to tell this story and
it allowed so what are some magical
moments to me the first magical moment
in telling the story was looking at
Albert Einstein in his struggle because
although we regard him as a genius
as I said in 1911 he actually made an
incorrect prediction about spending
starlight and that's actually what set
the astronomers off in 1914 there was an
eclipse and by various accidents of war
and weather and all sorts of things that
we talked about in the book no one was
able to make the measurement if they had
made the measurement it would have
disagreed with his 1911 prediction
because nature only has one answer and
so you then you see how fortunate he was
that Wars and bad weather and accidents
and transporting equipment stopped any
measurements from being made so he
corrects himself in 1915 and but the
astronomers are already out there trying
to make the measurement so now he gives
them a different number and it turns out
that's the number that nature agrees
with so it gives you a sense of this is
a person struggling with something
deeply and it although his deep insight
led him to this it is the circumstance
of time place an accident but through
which we view him and it could the story
could have turned out very differently
where first he makes the prediction the
measurements are made in 1914 they
disagree with his prediction and so what
would the world view him as well he's
this professor who made this prediction
that didn't get it right
yes so the fragility of human history is
illustrated by that story and this is
one of my favorite things you also learn
things like in our book how eclipses and
watching eclipses was a driver of the
development of science in our nation
when it was very young in fact even
before we were a nation turns out they
were citizens or citizens of this would
be country they were going out trying to
measure eclipses so some fortunes some
misfortune affects the progress of
science especially with ideas as to me
at least if I put myself back in those
days as radicals general relativity is
first can you describe if it's okay
briefly what general relativity is and
yeah if you could you just take a moment
if ya put yourself in those shoes in the
eka and academic researchers scientists
of that time and what is this theory
what is it trying to describe about our
world it's trying to answer the thing
that left Isaac Newton puzzled Isaac
Newton says gravity magically goes from
one place to another he doesn't believe
it by the way he knows that's not right
but the mathematics is so good that you
have to say well I'll throw my qualms
away because I'll use it that's all we
use to get for a man from the earth to
the moon was that mathematics so I'm one
of those scientists and I've seen this
and if I thought deeply about it maybe I
know that Newton himself wasn't
comfortable and so the first thing I
would hope that I would feel is gee this
is young kid out there who has an idea
to fill in this hole that was lay left
with us by Sir Isaac Newton that would I
hope would be my reaction I have a
suspicion I'm I'm kind of a mathematical
creature I was four years old when I
first decided that size was what I
wanted to do my
and so if my personality back then was
like it is now I think it's probably
likely I would want to want to have
studied his mathematics what was a piece
of mathematics that he was using to make
this prediction because he didn't
actually create that mathematics that
math.max was created of roughly fifty
years before he lived he's the person
who harnessed it in order to make a
prediction in fact he had to be taught
this mathematics by a friend so this is
in our book so putting myself in that
time I would want to like I said I think
I would feel excitement I would want to
know what the mathematics is and then I
wouldn't want to do the calculations
myself because one thing that physics is
all about is that you don't take
anybody's word for anything it's you can
do it yourself it does seem that
mathematics is a little bit more
tolerant of radical ideas or
mathematicians some people who find
beauty in mathematics why all the white
questions have no good answer let me ask
why do you think Einstein never got the
Nobel Prize for general relativity he
got it for the photoelectric effect that
is correct well there first of all
that's something that is misunderstood
about the Nobel Prize in Physics the
Nobel Prize in Physics is never given
for purely giving for purely proposing
an idea it is always given for proposing
an idea that has observational support
so he could not get the Nobel Prize for
either special relativity nor gen
relativity because the provisions that
Alfred Nobel left for the award prevent
that but after it's been validated
cannot get it then or no yes but
remember the validation doesn't really
come until the 1920s but that's why they
invented the second Nobel Prize I mean
very Curie you can get in second Nobel
Prize for one of the greatest so so
linear ease in physics so let me let's
be clear on this the theory of general
relativity had its critics even up until
the 50s so if you had if
had if the committee had wanted to give
the prize for general relativity there
were vociferous critics of general
relativity up until the 50s Einstein
died in 1955 what lessons do you draw
from from the storytelling the book from
general activity from the radical nature
of the theory to looking at the future
string theory well I think that the
string theorists are probably going to
retrace this path but it's gonna be far
longer and more torturous in my opinion
string theory is such a broad and deep
development that in my opinion when it
becomes acceptable it's going to be
because of a confluence of observation
it's not gonna be a single observation
and I have to tell you that so I give a
seminar here yesterday to my team and
it's it's on an idea I have about how
string theory can leave signatures in
the Cosmic Microwave Background which is
a Astro physical structure and so if
those kinds of observations are borne
out if perhaps other things related to
the idea of supersymmetry borne out
those are going to be the first powerful
observational II based pieces of
evidence that will begin to do what the
Eddington expedition did in 1919 but who
that may take several decades do you
think there will be Nobel Prizes given
for string theory no because because I
think the arrays it'll be you'll be I
think it will exceed normal human
lifetimes but there are other prizes
that are given I mean there is something
called the breakthrough prize there's a
Russian emigre a Russian American
immigrant named Yuri Milner I believe is
they started this wonderful prize called
the breakthrough prize
it's three times as much money since
Novell fries and he gets awarded every
year and so something like one of those
prizes is likely to be garnered at some
point far earlier than a Nobel award
jumping around a few topics while you
were at Cal Tech you've gotten to
interact
I believe with Richard Fineman I have to
ask yes do you have any stories to stand
on your memory of that I have a fair
number of stories but I'm not prepared
to tell them they're not all politically
correct copy but well let me just say
I'll say the following Richard Fineman
if you've ever read some of the books
about him in particular there's a book
called surely you're joking mr. Feinman
there's a series of books that starts
with surely you're joking mr. fireman
and I think the segment may be something
like what do you care what they say or
something I mean their titles are all in
there three of them when I read those
books I was amazed at how accurately
those books betray the man that I
interacted with he was irreverent he was
fun he was deeply intelligent he was
deeply human and those books tell that
story very effectively even just those
moments
how did they affect you as a physicist
well one of the well it's funny because
one of the things that I didn't hear
firemen say this but one of the things
that is reputed we've reported that he
said is if you're on a barstool as a
physicist and you can't explain to the
guy on the barstool next to you what
you're doing you don't understand what
you're doing
and there's a lot of that that I think
is correct that that when you truly
understand something as complicated as
string theory when it's in its fully
formed final development it should be
something you could tell to the person
on the barstool next to you and I that's
something that affects the way I do
science quite frankly it also affects
the way I talked to the public about
science I it's one of them sort of my
mantras that I keep deeply in tried to
keep deeply before me when I appear in
public fora speaking about physics in
particular in science in general it's
also something that Einstein said in a
different way he he said he had these
two different formulations one of them
is when the answer simple is God
speaking and the other thing that he
said was that what he did what he did in
his work was simply the distillation of
common sense that you distill down to
something and he also said you make
things as simple as possible but no
simpler so all of those things and
certainly this attitude for me first
sort of seeing this was exemplified by
being around Richard Fineman so in all
your work you're always kind of
searching for the simplicity for all the
early ultimately I am you served on
President Barack Obama's Council of
Advisors in science and technology for
seven years yes for seven years with
Eric Schmidt and several other billion
people met Eric for the first time in
nineteen in 2009 when the council was
called together
yeah seen pictures of you in that room I
mean there's a bunch of brilliant people
it kind of looks amazing what was that
experience like being called upon that
kind of service so let me go back to my
father first of all i earlier mentioned
that my father served 27 years in the US
Army
starting in World War two he went off in
1942-43 to fight against the fascist he
was part of the supply corps that
supplied General Patton as the tanks
rolled across Western Europe pushing
back the forces of Nazism to meet up
with our Russian comrades who were
pushing the Russian you know pushing the
Nazis starting in Stalingrad and you
know this you know think of a war is
actually a very interesting upset a
piece of history too and know from both
sides and here in America we typically
don't but I've actually study history as
an adult so I she know sort of the whole
story and on the Russian side we don't
know the Americans we weren't taught the
I know I know
I have many many Russian friends and
we've had this conversation in the
occasional but you know like general
Zhukov for example was something that
you would know but you might not know
about a patent but you're right so do
you or gives you cough or raucous offski
I mean there's a whole list of names
that I've learned in the last 15 or 20
years looking at the Second World War
so if father was in the midst of that
probably one of the greatest warrior
wars in the history of our species and
so the idea of service comes to me
essentially from that example so in 2009
when I first got a call from from a
Nobel laureate actually in my biology
Harold Varmus the only way to India and
I got this email message and he said it
needed to talk to me and I said okay
fine we can talk got my castes I didn't
hear from him we went through several
cycles of this something invested I want
to talk to you and then never contacted
and finally I was on my way to give a
physics presentation the University of
Florida in Gainesville and just just
that stepped off a plane and my mobile
phone off and it was Harold and so I
said Harold why do you keep sending me
messages that you want to talk but you
never call and he said well I'm sorry
things have been hectic and that a data
and then he said if you were offered the
opportunity to serve on the US
President's Council of Advisors on
science and technology what would be
your answer I was amused that the
formulation of the question yeah yeah
because it's clear that there's a
purpose of why the question is asked
that way but then he made it clear to me
he wasn't joking and literally my one of
the few times in my life my knees went
weak and I had to hold myself up against
the wall so that I didn't fall over I
doubt if most of us who have been the
beneficiaries of the benefits of this
country
when given that kind of opportunity
could say no and I know I certainly
couldn't say no I was frightened out of
my wits
because I had never although I have my
my career in terms of policy
recommendations is actually quite long
goes back to the 80s but I have never
been called upon to serve as an advisor
to a President of the United States and
it was very scary but I did not feel
that I could say no because I wouldn't
be able to sleep with myself at nights
saying you know that I chickened out or
whatever and so I took the plunge and we
had a pretty good run there are things
that I did in those seven years that of
which I'm extraordinarily proud one of
the ways I tell people is if you've ever
seen that television cartoon called
Schoolhouse Rock is this one story about
how a bill becomes a law and I've kind
of lived that there are things that I
did that have now been codified in US
law not everybody gets a chance to do
things like that in life what do you
think is the you know Science and
Technology especially in American
politics you know we haven't had a
president who's an engineer or a
scientist what do you think is the role
of a president like President Obama in
understanding the latest ideas in
science and time what was that
experience like well first of all I've
met other presidents beside President
Obama he is the most extraordinary
president I've ever encountered despite
the fact that he went to Harvard when I
think about President Obama I I he is a
deep mystery to me in the same way
perhaps that these new verses of mystery
I don't really understand how that
constellation of personalities could
personality traits could come to fit
within a per single individual but I saw
them for seven years so I'm convinced
that I wasn't seeing fake news
seeing real data he was just an
extraordinary man and one of the things
that was completely clear was that he
was not afraid and not intimidated to be
in a room of really smart people I mean
really smart people that he was
completely comfortable in asking some of
the world's greatest experts what do I
do about this problem and it wasn't that
he was going to just take their answer
but he would listen to the advice and
that to me was extraordinary as I said
I've been around other executives and
I've never seen qua one quite like him
he's an extraordinary learner that's
what I observed and not just about
science but he has a way of
internalizing information in real time
that I've never seen in a politician
before even in extraordinarily
complicated situations even scientific
ideas scientific or non-scientific
complicated ideas don't have to be
scientific ideas but I have like I said
I've seen him in real time process
complicated ideas with a speed that was
stunning
in fact he's shocked the entire council
I mean we were all stunned at his
capacity to be presented with
complicated ideas and then to wrestle
with him and internalize them and then
come back more interestingly enough come
back with really good questions to ask
I've noticed this is in an area that I
understand more of artificial
intelligence
I've seen him integrate information
about artificial intelligence and then
come out with these kind of richard
fineman like insights that's exactly
right and that's that as I said those of
us who have been in that position
it is stunning to see it happen because
you don't expect it yeah it takes what
for a lot of sort of graduate students
takes like four years in a particular
topic he just does it in a few minutes I
have like learn naturally you've
mentioned that you would love to see
experimental validation of superstring
theory before you before I'll double off
this mortal coil
which the poacher that reference made me
smile oh well si you know people who
actually misunderstand that because it's
not what it doesn't mean what we
generally take it to mean colloquially
but it's such a beautiful expression
yeah it is it's from the hamlet to be or
not to be a speech which I still don't
understand what that's above
interpretation anyway the what are the
most exciting problems in physics
they're just within our reach of
understanding and maybe solve the next
two decades they you may be able to see
so in physics you limited it to physics
physics mathematics this kind of space
of problems that fascinate you well the
one that looks on the immediate horizon
like we're gonna get to is quantum
computing and that's gonna if we
actually get there that's gonna be
extraordinarily interesting do you think
that's a fundamentally problem of theory
or is it now in the space of engineering
it's in the space of engineering I was
not a cue station as you may know
Microsoft has this research facility in
Santa Barbara I was out there a couple
of months in my capacity as a vice
president of American Physical Society
and I got a you know I had some things
that were like lectures and they were
telling me what they were doing and it
sure sounded like they knew what they
were doing and the thing were close to
major breakthroughs yeah that's a really
exciting possibility there but the back
to Hamlet do you ponder mortality your
own mortality nope my mother died when I
was 11 years old and so I immediately
knew what the end of the story was for
all of us as a consequence I've never
never spent a lot of time thinking about
death it'll come in its own good time
and sort of to me the job of every human
is to make the best and the most of the
time that's given to us in order not for
our own selfish gain but to try to make
this place a better place for someone
else
and on the Y of life why do you think we
are I have no idea and I never even
worried about it for me
I haven't answered a local answer the
apparent why for me was because I'm
supposed to do physics but it's funny
because there's so many other quantum
mechanically speaking possibilities in
your life
such as being an astronaut for example
so you know what that I see well like
like Einstein and the vicissitudes that
prevented the 1914 measurement in the
starlight finding the universe is
constructed in such a way that I didn't
become an astronaut which would have for
me I would have faced the worst choice
in my life whether whether I would try
to become an astronaut or whether I
would try to do theoretical physics
both of these dreams were born when I
was four years old simultaneously and so
I can't imagine how difficult that
decision would have been the universe
helped you out on that one not only in
that one but in mini ones and it helped
me out by allowing me to pick the right
bad is there a day in your life you
could relive because it made you truly
happy what day would that be if you
could just look that being a theoretical
physicist is like having Christmas every
day I have lots of joy in my life the
the moments of invention the moments of
ideas revelation yes the only thing I
exceed them are some family experiences
like when my kids were born and that
kind of stuff but they're pretty high up
there well I don't see a better way to
end it Jim thank you so much as a huge
honor talking today this worked out
better than I thought
glad to hear
thanks for listening to this
conversation with s James Gates Jr and
thank you to our presenting sponsor cash
app download it and use code let's
podcast you'll get ten dollars and ten
dollars will go to first a stem
education nonprofit that inspires
hundreds of thousands of young minds to
learn and to dream of engineering our
future if you enjoy this podcast
subscribe on YouTube give it five stars
an apple podcast supported on patreon or
connect with me on Twitter and now let
me leave you with some words of wisdom
from the great Albert Einstein for the
rebels among us unthinking respect for
authority is the greatest enemy of truth
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time
you