YouSaid · the spoken record

Andrew Strominger

lines on the record: 128
first: 2023-02-15
most recent: 2023-02-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It was a really great conversation. I really enjoyed it. You really covered a lot. I can't believe you're able to Discuss at this level on so many different topics. So it's a pleasure.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Working on AI I think that there is a possibility there and that it is as a responsible scientist that it's really not good thing to say I'm just the scientist here and I'm figuring out what's possible because In a role where you You have more of a A podium to influence things than other people. It's your responsibility as a citizen. The planet, or let me phrase it a little less shouldy, it's, you know, you have an opportunity. A citizen of the planet to make the world a better place, which it would be sad to. Bypass”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That moment, it was certainly a question for Oppenheimer and everybody who participated in that. What is the responsible way to serve society when you're Sort of accidentally in this position of being at the forefront of Development that has a huge impact on society. I don't see my work. The likelihood of having a huge impact on the development of society itself But if I were you, I would”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, of course, of course. Of course, the timing matter there. But I yeah. Okay, I mean, you could try to make a case for. Stopping.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, the possibility of making nuclear weapons was discovered. It was there before we didn't invite. It's not like somebody made it, right? Without Picasso, there would never have been a. But without Oppenheimer, there would surely have still been an atom bomb.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know what the brilliant had to do with it because, of course. Oppenheimer and all that, okay, they did it really fast. But if you didn't have Oppenheimer, I mean, would all have happened to anyway? It had a reality of its own. The possibility of making a nuclear, it didn't depend on the fact that the physicists who built it were brilliant. Maybe that. Sped it up by a year or two years, but by now we'd have nuclear weapons. It's something that”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Well, so you can know something is true First of all, you never know something is true with 100% uncertainty. I mean You might have had a blackout just to be, it's never 100%, right? You might have had a momentary lapse of consciousness as a key step in the proof and nobody read it and whatever. Okay, so you never know for sure. But you can. Have a preponderance of evidence, which makes it. And preponderance of evidence is not accepted very much. Mathematics. And that was sort of how the famous Ramanujan worked. He had formulas which he guessed at, and then he gathered a preponderance of evidence that he was sure they were true. So there might be, or something completely different. They might function in a different, in a very different way.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They might have discovered different Might have discovered it differently. And they might have had a different idea of what a proof is.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, something we know for sure. I mean, the brain we don't. Really understand, and that's got to base some. Fabulously beautiful story that.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is hard to understand why they were, given that there's so many planets and of course there's Drake's formula and we don't exactly know what the, but I mean, I think Fermi's paradox that is a real paradox. Think There probably are, and I think it's very exciting that You know, we might find some, it's a logical possibility that we could learn about it.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That could happen. It could happen. It could happen. It's in the, and of course, if that couldn't happen. Wouldn't be real exploration, right? So, but I do take a lot of satisfaction that some of the things I discovered are at the minimum mathematical truths and they're still Have that sort of nostalgic feeling of it being something that was Gone and I'm still making discoveries now that I'm as excited about. We'll see if they. Hold the test of time, stand the test of time that these other ones did, but that I'm as excited about as I. Was about those when I made them. I am easily excitable, as my friends will tell you.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. So I have not. I hope someday, but I have not, you know, there are some experiments now to verify some of my predictions about, you know, properties of gravity and so on, but I have not like. You know, most of what I've done is in the, you know, it could happen still. It's still a logical possibility that everything having to do with string theory and the, I mean, as I mentioned, I'm betting the farm that it's not, but it is indeed a logical possibility that people always say, can you believe Lex Friedman interviewed Elon Musk and Kenya West? Then he interviewed Strominger who was on this working on this theory that just completely went into the... Completely went into the toilet.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I wouldn't add nostalgia to it because. It's not like a. You know. Summer in Italy, or something. It's like there's There's results that are there that people are, and that's what's so gratifying I mean, of course, one's name disappears from these things, unless you're Einstein or Newton or something. People are not going to remember my name in 50 years.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, most of this I'm talking about adolescents, you know, but it was the biggest problem that I thought that there was a prospect of, but not 100%, you know? And I was definitely ready to. My life in the wilderness knocking my head against the wall. But I haven't had to. I haven't solved them, but. I've said enough interesting things that you're interviewing me. So I'm not in the wilderness, but. Yeah, so”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wanted to reach Nirvana and I sort of realized that wasn't going to happen. And then after that, I wanted to know the meaning of life. And I realized I wasn't, probably wasn't going to figure that out. And then I wanted to like. Understand, you know. Justice and socialism and world things. Figure those out either. The”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The hard part in physics Most problems are Either doable, most problems to the theoretical calculation that a theoretical physicist would do. There's no end of problems. Whose answer is uninteresting? Be solved? But the answer is uninteresting. There's also no end of problems that are very interesting. Some of which you've asked me. We don't have a clue how to solve them. And when first presented with a problem, almost every problem is one or the other. It's the jackpot when you find one that isn't one or the other.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about the holographic principle in the context of M87 a little bit differently. And so it's a useful and in the same vein, it's useful to talk to the philosophers and it's useful to talk to the mathematicians and a lot of Gotta, we just gotta, you know, we don't know where we're going, we just gotta like. Do everything”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wish so, but I don't think so. But what I think already has happened and will continue happen is that there are many different ways that Theorists and observers can interact. The gold standard is the theorist makes a prediction, the observer. Measures it and confirms it, or the observer makes a discovery and the theorist explains it. But there's a lot less than that, which is really kind of the bread and butter of those are dramatic moments when that happens, right? Those are once in a lifetime moments when that happens. But the bread and butter is more when it has already happened. They came to us and said, What is the interesting theoretical things we can understand in this swirl around the black hole? And we give an answer. And then that In turn, jogged us to”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We didn't prove this. We put it out there. It hadn't really been considered previously. We put it out there and it does seem more plausible than the idea that it sits literally at the horizon. And it is a big outstanding problem of how you have a holographic reconstruction of black holes like M87.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this paper is exploring a new idea. It's not making a new. Discovery, so to speak. It's exploring an idea and the ins and outs of it and what might work and what might not. And this photon ring, somehow everybody always thought that the holographic plate sat at the horizon of the black hole. That the quantum system that describes the black hole is inside the horizon. And in fact, we think it's plausible and we give some evidence in some soluble examples, in this case in an example in one lower dimension where we can handle the equations better, that the quantum system that describes the black hole. Should correspond to a region of spacetime which includes the photon ring. So it's bigger”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm able to imagine that kind of thing. Yeah. So, for example, and actually there's a wonderful movie interstellar. And in that movie, Kip Thorne, of course, is a great theoretical physicist, experimental who later won the Nobel Prize for LIGO. And that movie is very accurate scientifically. And there's some funny statements in there. of the There can't be more than 10 or 20 understood. About why Matthew McConachy is ejecting the trash in a certain direction in order to, but for example, if I were a spinning black hole right here, if I was spinning fast enough, you wouldn't be able to stay still there. You'd have to be orbiting around like that, you know?”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The spin, and you can verify. Things behaving, you know, we have never seen. Region of space time with such high curvature. I mean, The region around a black hole is crazy. It's not like in this room. The curvature is everything, you know.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you can go there a thousand times wearing different clothes, but each time there will be the same relation between the subsequent images. And that is how. Going to learn about the black holes. We're going to take the stuff that is swirling around and we're going to tease out the subsequent images and look at their relation. And there's some very beautiful Really beautiful mathematics, which we were surprised to realize with the volumes and volumes of Papers on black holes and their properties, this particular It was a physical question that had never been asked in exactly this way.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in fact, one of my students has made a really awesome computer animation of this, which I'm going to show at a public lecture in a couple weeks where the audience will see infinitely many copies of themselves. So it's a black hole is like a hall of mirrors, you know, like an apartment store where you go The three mirrors, and you see infinitely many copies of yourself. Think of the black hole as the mirror. And you go in there with your clothes. If you want to know about your clothes, you just look at the direct image. You're not learning anything about the configuration of mirrors. But the relation Image you see in front of you to the one you see at the side and the next one and then so on depends only on the mirrors. It doesn't matter what clothes you're wearing.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so then we found a very wonderful way to learn about the black hole. And here's how it works Black Hole is a mirror. And the way it's a mirror is if light, a photon bounces off your face. Towards the black hole, and it goes straight to the black hole, just falls in, you never see it again. But if it just misses the black hole, Swing around the back and come back to you. And you see yourself from the photon that went around the back of the black hole. But not only can that happen, the black hole, the photon can swing around twice. Come back. So you actually see an infinite number of copies of yourself.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Here's the puzzle what they really saw So the black holes tend to gather stuff that swirls around it. And they don't know what that stuff is made of. They don't know what its temperature is. They don't know what kind of magnetic fields there are around there. The form of the image has a lot of unknowns in it that it's dependent on many other things other than the geometry of the black hole. So, most of what you're learning. Is about the stuff. Now, the stuff, the swirling stuff, the hot swirling stuff is interesting as hell, but it's not as interesting as the black hole, which are the most, in my view, the most interesting things in the universe. So you don't want to just learn about the stuff. You want to learn about the black hole that is swirling around.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outside of an ordinary astrophysical black hole. We nailed it for the stringy black holes, but they have a somewhat different character.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, with some help from Michael Johnson, Alex Lopsaska, and a bunch of other people, Venturized and Collaboration, We came up with a fantastic, beautiful answer using Einstein's theory that is both shaping the future of now, it is shaping the future of improved black hole photographs, what do you want to concentrate on in the photograph? Just point at the sky and click. No, you don't do that. You optimize for various features. And it's both shaping that and The process of talking to them and thinking about how light behaves around a black hole. Black holes just have so many magic tricks and they do so many weird things. And the photon ring is among the weirdest of them. We understood this photon ring and in the process of... Said, hey, this photon ring. Has got to be telling us something about the puzzle of where the holographic plate is.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that was a paper with Dan Coppetz and Alex Lipska that just came out. And this is paper is kind of a wonderful example. Of what happens when you start to talk to people who are Way out of your comfort zone of no different stuff and look at the world a different way. And some two or three years ago, I'm part of the Black Hole Initiative. I'm also part of this event horizon telescope collaboration that took the famous, though I had nothing to do with the experiment, but that took the famous picture of the donut of M87. Through conversations with them, which started out in an effort to understand the image that they'd seen. So it's a great thing for somebody like me, a theoretical physicist, lost, seemingly lost in stringland to be presented with an actual picture of a black hole. To be To be asked, what can we learn from this?”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In some number of space time dimensions and rewrite them as a plate in fewer space dimensions. What we'd like to do is to take systems with one time and some number of space dimensions and to rewrite them as a system that had only space dimensions in it, had no time evolution. And there's some fairly concrete ideas about how to do that, but they're not. Universally accepted even within the Stringy community.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's review what it means for space to be emergent. What it means for space to be emergent is that you have a holographic plate. And you shine some light that's moving in space. And it produces an image which contains an extraspatial dimension. And time just goes along for the ride. So what we'd like to Do. And indeed, there is some rather concrete. Work in this direction, though, again, I would say even within our stringing community, we're not getting A pluses on these efforts. But what we'd like to do is to see Examples in which the extra space-time dimension Time. In other words, Usually, what we understand very well mathematically is how to take systems.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, but, and many people do. It could be that some of the advances in quantum information theory are important in that they kind of go beyond taking quantum systems and just replicating themselves, but combining them with others.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you're going to reverse engineer, that means you. Forward engineering means that you take the president and determine the future, reverse engineering means that you take the present and determine the past.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not successfully. There aren't compelling papers that lots of people have read that people have taken it up and tried to go at it. But there aren't compelling. String theory doesn't seem to have a trick that... That helps us with that puzzle.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I like this because it's so hard to understand. I like it because it's hard to understand. But it's really challenging us. I don't think we're close to solving that problem. String theory has basically had nothing. There's been almost nothing interesting said about that in the last many decades.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, okay, but just to sort of. Throw one thing in order to answer every question, we would need a theory of the origin of the universe. And that is a huge task, right? And the fact that the universe seems to have a beginning. Defies everything we know and love, right? Because the basic principles of physics is determinism, that the past follows from the present follows from the past, the future follows from the present, so on. But if you have the origin of the universe, if you have a big bang, that means before that there was nothing. And you can't have a theory in which something falls from nothing. So somehow”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A relatively simple algorithm to predict everything. So for me, it would be a sad day. If we arrived at that. without answering some deeper questions.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't. Honestly, I don't know, but I'm pretty confident that if there is, we won't get to it in my lifetime. I don't think we're near it”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even within AI, AI people are trying to understand what it is that the AI bots have learned in order to Produce whatever they produce.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But right, we're more interested in understanding than actually. That actually doing the predictions, but the predictions are more focusing on how to make predictions is a good way to improve your understanding because you know you've understood it if you could do the predictions.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's true. So that would be a really interesting state of affairs. If we could predict everything But not necessarily understand everything. So, for example, let's just forget about gravity. I mean, we're not too far from that situation. If we forget about gravity, the standard model, in principle, given a big enough computer. Predicts almost everything. If you look at the standard model, it's kind of a laundry list with neutrino masses and all that stuff. There are hundreds of free parameters. Where do they come from? Is there an organizing principle? Is there some further unification? So being able to predict Everything is not the only goal that physicists have.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it seems to me that even if we kind of solved it and we've did experiments, there still would be more questions like why are there four dimensions instead of six? It doesn't seem to have anything in it that would explain that. You can always hope that there's something that we don't know about string theory that will explain it. But it still doesn't look like it's going to answer every question. Why is there one time not two? Why is there, but it doesn't seem like it's... I don't even know what it would mean to answer every question.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I had this conversation with Weinberg. So Weinberg has this book called Dreams of a Final Theory. And I had this conversation with them. I said, why do you think there's ever going to be a final theory? Why should there ever be a final theory? I mean, what does that mean? Does physics departments shut down? We've solved everything. And doesn't it seem that every time we answer some old questions, we'll just find new ones and that it will just keep going on forever and ever? He said, well, that's what they used to say about the Nile. They were never going to find the end. Then one day they found it. So, I don't know. String theory doesn't. String theory doesn't look like a candidate to me for a final theory.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Isn't a reason not to do it. What did they do when they were trying to find the Pacific, right? They just took every route. They just tried everything. And that's what we're doing. And I'm taking the one that my nose tells me is the best, you know. And other people are taking other ones. And that's good because we need every person taking every route. And if somebody on another route finds something that looks really promising, you know, I'm going to make a portage over the mountain and get on their stream, you know. So the fact that you don't See the experiment now isn't to me a reason to give up on what I view as the most fundamental paradox in 20th century in present physics, 2021st century physics.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, and then you couldn't have guessed how that had happened, how they could have gotten that. And it could happen that we, I don't think we're going to see the heterotic string spectrum at an accelerator, but it could be that... Things come around and in an interesting way and somehow it comes together. And the fact that we can't see to the end.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was no map So, I don't know how we're gonna. Connect in a concrete way. All these ideas of string theory to the real world. And, you know, when I started out in graduate school, I said, what is the most interesting problem that there might be, the deepest, most interesting problem that there might be progress on in 60 years? And I think it could be that in another 30 years that maybe we'll learn that we have understood how black holes store information. That doesn't seem wild that we're able to abstract what we learned from string theory and show that it's operative. And I mean, the Bose-Einstein condens that they did, you know, when Bose and Einstein Predicted it. When was that the 30s, maybe, early 30s? There were 20 orders of magnitude that were needed in order to improvement, in order to measure it. And they did 50 years later.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It could have happened that we got lucky and this experiment was able to make direct measurements. It certainly would have been measurements of quantum gravity if not string theory. So it's a very logical possibility that we could get experimental evidence from strength. That is a very different thing than saying do this experiment, here's a billion dollars, and after you do it, we'll know whether or not strings are real. But I think it's a crucial difference. It's measurable in principle And we don't see how to From here to there. If we see how to get from here to there, in my eyes, it's boring. So when I was a graduate student, they knew how to measure the Higgs boson. 40 years, but They did Not to say that stuff is boring. I don't want to say that stuff But when Magellan set out, he didn't know we could get around the world.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that with string theory I don't think it's likely that we could measure it. But we could get lucky In other words, just to take an example about 10 or 20 years ago, it was thought that they had seen a string in the sky and that it was seen by Know doubled stars that were gravitationally lensed around the gravitational field produced by some long string. There was a line of double lensed. Now the signal went away People were hoping that they'd seen a string and could be a fundamental string that had somehow gotten stretched and that would be some evidence for string theory. Was also Bicep 2, which It was a, the experiment was wrong, but it could have happened.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My expertise as a physicist doesn't add anything to that. It's not really, you know, physics is, you know, I was once very interested Philosophy Know physics, I like questions that can be answered. It's not obvious what the answer is and that you can find a Answer to the question, and everybody will agree. What the answer is, and that there's an algorithm for getting there. Not that these other questions aren't interesting and they don't somehow have a way of preventing presenting themselves. But to me, the interesting thing is to Is motion in what we know, is learning more and understanding things that we didn't understand before, things that seemed totally confusing, having them seem obvious. That's wonderful. So I think those questions are there. I mean, I would. Even go further, you know, the whole multiverse. I don't.”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ultimately, I would like to think, I wouldn't say I believe, but I would like to think that there's no difference between physics and mathematics that All mathematics is realized in the physical world and all physics has a firm mathematical basis that they're really the same thing. I mean, why would there be math that had no physical Manifestation. It seemed a little odd, right? You have two kinds of math, some that Relevant to the real world”
2023-02-15 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #359 – Andrew Strominger: Black Holes, Quantum Gravity, and Theoretical Physics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source