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Don Lincoln

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2026-05-29
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2026-05-29
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  1. “And that is a staggering concept, the fact that these two things, a lightning bolt and the magnet that holds your kid's art to the refrigerator. Are one. The same. And this was another case where electricity and magnetism became unified into electromagnetism. So now we have two examples. One, gravity being unified, terrestrial and celestial gravity. And then electricity and magnetism. So I'll tell you about some more in a moment”

    2026-05-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #497 – Biggest Mysteries in Physics: Antimatter, Dark Energy & ToE – Don Lincoln · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “On the other side, a magnetism thing. So forgetting all of the mathematical symbols, you have electricity side equals a magnetism side. Electricity equals magnetism.”

    2026-05-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #497 – Biggest Mysteries in Physics: Antimatter, Dark Energy & ToE – Don Lincoln · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “And so when you think about this, that lightning bolt and that little magnet seem to be really unrelated. But over the 1800s, a number of scientists We're exploring little aspects of it, what happens when you run. Electricity through a wire, it seems to make a magnetic field. There was a whole bunch of experiments and there were a lot of names. But in about the 1860s or so, James Clark Maxwell took all of those ideas that had been percolating around for the previous 50 years and wrote his laws of electromagnetism. And they're really fascinating. If you look at the laws of electromagnetism, they are differential equations or integral equations. But basically, what they say is on one side you have a bunch of terms that have electricity in them, and then you have equals”

    2026-05-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #497 – Biggest Mysteries in Physics: Antimatter, Dark Energy & ToE – Don Lincoln · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “And so he was wrong about a lot, but he was right about the idea that there was a small particle. And we now know we have a very different concept that he did. So you can go back farther than that. But getting the unification, there are more examples. For instance, if you go back to, say, 1830 or so, scientists were trying to understand electricity, for instance. And there was a lot going on. People really understood things. But at the time, You would have two phenomena that are familiar to us now. One is a magnet, which at the time mostly magnets were simply little pieces of iron that had been magnetized and they could stick to steel. And then you had electricity, which was at the time they were generating little sparks that they could play and have fun with. Or more broadly, a lightning bolt emblazoned across the sky.”

    2026-05-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #497 – Biggest Mysteries in Physics: Antimatter, Dark Energy & ToE – Don Lincoln · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Unification of physics that you can state in a way that sort of makes sense to modern humans. I mean, you can go back farther than that where people are talking about chemistry, the nature of atoms. You go back to Democritus, who was wrong about very many things, but the idea that there was a smallest particulate form of matter is right. So it's kind of funny. You read the chemistry books and they say that the idea of atoms goes back to Democritus. And his idea was that there was a smallest atom of oil, which was smooth, and it was smooth, of course, because, well, oil is smooth. There was a smallest atom of vinegar because vinegar is tart and it pricks your tongue. So therefore, atoms were little sharp, pointy things.”

    2026-05-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #497 – Biggest Mysteries in Physics: Antimatter, Dark Energy & ToE – Don Lincoln · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “The brilliant thing was when Newton looked at that and he thought about maybe the moon is falling, but it's missing the Earth. So what we had is that in maybe 60 and 50, you had what we might call the laws of celestial gravity, the gravity that governs the heavens, and terrestrial gravity, the gravity that is here on Earth. Now, we don't think of it that way anymore. We think of it as just gravity. But at that time, that wasn't at all obvious. And in fact, if you look in the books, Newton's theory is Newton's law of universal gravity. The universal is there. And the reason is because he realized these two things that seem to have nothing to do with one another were indeed one and the same. I mean, this is absolutely brilliant. I mean, Newton is arguably one of the most brilliant humans of which I'm ever aware. But at any rate, it is the first sort of easily to describe.”

    2026-05-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #497 – Biggest Mysteries in Physics: Antimatter, Dark Energy & ToE – Don Lincoln · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “There are, of course, lots of different ways to do physics, but the way that I would say that particle physicists, cosmologists do is they are trying to really find basically the underlying principles that govern the laws of nature. If we go back, say, to the, I don't know, 1650s or so, you're the most brilliant person around, and you've noticed two things. One, you've noticed is that when you trip, you fall. That is the nature of gravity that we all experience day to day. But then there's sort of astronomy where you look out at the heavens and you see the stars march across the sky. You see the planets move through the stars. And there, that seems to have absolutely nothing to do with what happens when you drop your sandwich and the dog grabs it from you.”

    2026-05-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #497 – Biggest Mysteries in Physics: Antimatter, Dark Energy & ToE – Don Lincoln · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source