YouSaid · the spoken record

Lisa Randall

lines on the record: 101
first: 2015-10-24
most recent: 2015-10-24
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

“So that's another one. And I think there's also just this level at which, you know, it's almost people almost will sometimes prefer the romantic notion than understanding. You know, I mean, one of the things I do in my books is I sort of, I'm just trying not to make it seem exotic and not to make it seem overly mystical, just to say this is what we mean by this. And it's not necessarily as confusing as you think. So I don't use the word spooky. It's magical. I just say what it is and what it means functionally.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Another misconception is that dark matter doesn't make sense. But I think dark matter is probably one of the most simple modifications of the physics we know. It's just saying that there's some matter that doesn't interact with light. And why should all matter interact with light? After all, the matter we know of is made up of atoms and which do interact with light or at least made up of stuff that's charge, namely protons and electrons. But why should all matter be made up of protons and electrons? Why can't there be other types of matter that don't interact with light”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, It's a little bit unfair to say this drives me nuts, but there are some questions that come up again and again, like if the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? The answer is it's not expanding into anything. The universe is all there is. Stuff is just getting bigger. So you can use an analogy if you were willing to assume a balloon was all there is. I realize a balloon is blowing up in a room, but imagine the balloon is all there is and just draw points on the surface of the balloon. When you blow up that balloon, those points will get further apart. So even though the balloon is all there is, it's getting bigger, and that's the way the universe gets bigger. It's all there is, but it is getting bigger.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that wasn't a great definition, I will grant you. I mean, I can give, the problem is the definitions I would come up with are too technical. So I'm trying to think of one that I can give to your satisfact And I don't have one off the top of my head.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know that I have a great definition. It's a conserved quantity. So if you have a certain energy, it will stay the same.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can't stand the way people use energy. Anything they want. Energy is very specific in physics. I mean, there's many different forms of energy. But for example, energy is conserved. So it's not something you just talk about the energy of an object or the energy that's passing through the energy trope. Or I have good energy or bad energy. It's in physics. It really has a different meaning. It can be converted to mass. It can be converted to other forms of energy, but it really means something very specific. And in common usage, energy is used all over the place for whatever anyone wants it to be.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so that hub obviously is going to have to do with the heat of the sun. So if you're too close to the sun, things like hydrogen are just going to evaporate. So the inner planets are rocky. They're made of silicon and things like that. But there isn't as much of it of the stuff that the inner planets are made up of. So what there is gets trapped, but that's it. The outer planets are made up of much more abundant materials like hydrogen. And they're frozen. And then this outer region where the frozen, so we talked about the rocky inner planets and the frozen outer planets. And there's a lot more of that stuff. And so that stuff can grow to a much bigger size.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My proposal with my collaborators is that maybe most of the dark matter doesn't have any interesting interactions other than gravity, but maybe a small fraction, say five percent does interact, and maybe it even has its interactions with its own light, just like dark matter doesn't see our light. Maybe this dark matter has light that we don't see. And if that's true, it too might have formed a disk just like the Milky Way forms a disc. The ordinary matter forms the Milky Way disc. And maybe the effect of that dark matter gravitational force is when the solar system comes through it to actually trigger comic threat. And we can talk more about that if you like.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, if our theory of dark matter is right, it can also affect the trajectory of comics. And I'm very, very happy to talk about that too. So it's not that we haven't measured dark matter, we've measured it. We just don't know fundamentally what is. And by that I mean, is it a particle? Does it have a certain mass? Does it have any interactions at all? And coming back to affecting comets,”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yet the amounts are remarkably comparable and we actually think that might help us, that might ultimately be a clue as to what dark matter actually is. And by that, just to be clear, it's not quite as embarrassing as everyone is saying. I mean, there's actually observational evidence through gravity that this dark matter exists. It does influence things. It does have gravitational effects. It affects the motions of stars. It affects the motions of galaxies themselves. So we really...”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because after all, we see things that are dark. They absorb light. But we don't see dark matter because it just light just doesn't interact with it. I mean, there's a hope that there's a tiny interaction that will help us find it, but so far we've seen no observational evidence of that. So it really is just matter. And it's interesting. There's about five times the amount of energy carried in historic matter as ordinary matter. And, you know, most people find it interesting because they say, wow, are you telling me that most of the matter in the universe isn't the stuff we're made of? But I think I have exactly the opposite points of view. I'm amazed that, I mean, we're just random. Why should we be as substantial a fraction of the matter in the universe as we are? In fact, why should these two be comparable at all if they're only interacting via gravity? You might have imagined that there was a trillion times the amount of dark matter or a trillion times light amount of matter.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, it's funny because we've given them these names that make them sound mysterious and exotic and even ominous. So dark matter is matter, which is to say it interacts with gravity like matter. It clumps together like into galaxies, for example. But what makes it dark, and actually I'm going to come back to that name dark, which I think is very misleading, is that it does not interact with light. That is to say, if light hits dark matter, it just passes through. In fact, billions of dark matter particles are passing through us every second, but we just don't know about them because they interact so feebly. They interact gravitationally with us, but so far as we know, they do not interact with light. And this comes back to the word dark, which I think might have been better called transparent matter.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so I think most of us now know about plate tectonics, which was actually developed relatively recently. The idea that the plates are moving over the mantle, which is liquid And what drives that, what gives you the heat, is the fact that there's nuclear decays. And nuclear decays are providing the heat that drives this motion. And of course, as you know, plate tectonics has given rise to mountain ranges when things crash together or when they disappear. So and volcanoes. And so all of this dynamic stuff that's happening is being fueled by, at least partially by nuclear. So that's kind of an amazing connection. And also the carbon cycle is coming in part in this emergence and disappearance of mountains.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“eventually us. So I think that these connections and understanding the role always played, how dark matter helped form galaxies, all of these things that we think of as so abstract. What are their concrete manifestations? What are they was important? And the other sort of even bigger lesson in some sense is just kind of our history, the planet's history, life's history at some level, and just how long it took to get here and what are the different things that have happened and just the amazing connections that were necessary, the amazing features that were necessary for all of that to happen. And I think it's especially relevant in light of the rapidity with which we're changing the planet today since the Industrial Revolution, we've had enormous changes to the planet. And before we do it, I wanted just to understand what that means, so to understand the context and what are the things that got us here.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of how this all evolved, but also how these basic elements like how nuclear forces can be relevant were driving plate tectonics, which is relevant to the carbon cycle, which, as you know, is relevant to life, just these amazing connections that exist in the universe, how heavy elements were formed in supernova. Just all of these different connections between, I was very excited because I studied fundamental particles, as I talked about early on, but it's very hard. It's abstract hard to grasp. But then I can make these concrete connections with things that we do experience in our daily lives. And of course, dark matter and the dinosaurs is sort of the ultimate of that sort. That dark matter might ultimately connect. I just fundamental the wrong word, but as important to us, which allowed for large mammals to dominate.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, let's sort of say that the title is dark matter and the dinosaurs. And the subtitle is the astounding interconnectedness of the universe. And it refers to both those things. It refers to the research I'm doing where we'll get back to, which is dark matter connecting possibly to the extinction of the dynamics. But the astounding interconnected universe was a little bit about there's sort of two things I really wanted to get across in this book. You know, obviously my research, but also how the different fields of science relate, how cosmology, the evolution of the universe, the big bang theory, inflation, and dark matter, those ideas can connect onto our solar system, our galaxy, and then our solar system, and our solar system and how we have an active solar system with comets and meteoroids, and how those could be related to life and life's extinction. So all these amazing continuity.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the sense of being an effective theory that it's right in the regime that we do it. If I want to predict how to throw a ball or even how to send a rocket to the moon, Newton's law is fine. It's just that if I get into the scale of an atom, then I'm going to need to use quantum mechanics. So unlike this idea that science builds on itself, it doesn't mean the other theories are wrong, but it means they're effective theory if they work over a certain regime. And the reason it's important relates to the other disconfession is sometimes people will think, well, this can't be right. We'll never answer certain questions. But that's not true. We still need the fundamental elements of matter. Even if I don't yet understand how the brain will work, I know fundamentally if there are atoms involved and there are photons communicating electrical forces involved, it doesn't mean I know all the answers yet, and it might be that I'll have to look at it at some higher level to get those answers. But it doesn't mean science.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was in some sense, I think we have this idea that when we understand the fundamental nature of things, we'll understand everything. And one of the notions that I really focused on in this book, which I think is a really useful notion for people to take away, and I'm not sure I'll be able to do it justice in this brief time, but the idea of an effective theory, the idea that you know what you can see, but you don't necessarily know what underlies that. So let me give you an example. So Newton's laws work very well. They work very well over a definite regime, and unless you get extraordinarily precise, you won't realize that quantum mechanics or relativity are actually more fundamental than Newton's laws. So I'd like to think, you know, I remember when I learned in high school about Newton's laws, I thought, and then they was told that they're not really right. I thought, why are they teaching it to us? Well, they're teaching it because it is right, but it's right.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And in fact, I gave it to someone who runs the MIT parish. And he said he read one of my chapters and he said, I hate to admit it, but you're making a lot of sense here. And that was the word I was looking for. That was the target I was looking for.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I like the idea of knocking on heaven's door as sort of a way of opening beyond the stuff that we know into the realm of the unknown, but in a way that's so close to what we know that beyond it improves upon it. And also it was a time when science and religion got discussed a lot. So I do actually talk about in this book not just the particular science I do particle physics and the large hadron collider, but it was also interesting in just explaining what science really is. I felt like neither side sort of was giving a completely a good enough explanation that they could talk to each other. And I think I feel like I did a good job because when I gave it to scientific people, when I gave it to religious people, neither one were completely happy. So I feel like I had...”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, it's interesting. You could tell someone's age by whether they say Bob Dillon, Guns& Roses, or they think about dying when they see or hear that title. And so what I wanted to express was the way science.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's a good question. As anyone who read my first book knows, I have this mind that I record, I sort of remember song lyrics and titles. Obviously play in the words.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But my collaborator Raman Sundrum and I discovered still another way that an extra dimension could be hidden, and that's because space is so warped, space time can be warped. And that's actually what gave rise to the title of the book four passages. And the idea is that gravity varies so much across an extra dimension of space that its strength is so small or away from some location that it looks as if there's only three dimensions, even though there can be a fourth, even infinite dimension. It's just that in some sense gravity doesn't leak out into it. It stays concentrated in three dimensions.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when we talk about dimensions, we have to be careful to distinguish dimensions of space and of time. Einstein talked about space and time as their brushes, and in some sense there is a concept of spacetime geometry, for example, but space and time are actually different. So when we talk about a fourth dimension, we might mean time, but we can also mean a fourth dimension of space. And when I talk about a fourth dimension of space, you might say, where is it? What is it? And obviously it's hidden. We see three dimensions of space up, down, forward, backward, left, right, but we don't observe that fourth dimension, and that could be either because it's really tiny and hidden from us. You might think of a wire that looks one-dimensional even though we know in reality there's more dimensions, but we're not resolving those necessarily. And in the same way space can have tiny hidden dimensions.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know, but I know that I was told that the marketing department got hold of it and said, can't you just call the book extra dimensions? And I was like, no. I didn't find that a very interesting title. but I spent a month trying to think of a better title and then I realized, you know, actually war passages and people really liked it. So I was very happy I kept it. But I did think because it was this sort of nondescript title, or at least could be interpreted differently. I had to explain at least in a subtitle, and it really is about unraveling mysteries of the hidden dimensions both in terms of dimensions of space, but dimensions sort of metaphorically understanding what's really out there underlying the universe. So there's a lot of thought did go into a subtitle as well.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the spatial sense, it could have many interpretations. I mean, my friend looked at the touch. She's like, oh, is that your autobiography? So it was like a joke.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With additional dimension of space that I looked at. So the book is framed around ideas about an extra dimension of space beyond the three that we see. And Warp refers to the fact that things get scaled differently in a different dimension. So they kind of get resized. So warped passages was a little bit of a joke because it was the first book I was writing. So I was sort of making fun of, I was just joking about writing. So it was like warbed passages. I get it. I get it.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can try. It was actually very funny because I originally was going to thought for a title was extra dimensions are you in or out, which sounds fun. That was mixed. So I had to think of another title. And I thought of war passages. And it actually is a joke that really no one gets. So warped comes from the, so the science term warp comes from the idea of what happens in a particular geometry.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But there were ridiculous deals. I had to make, you know, I was actually the first woman captain of the math team, but math team met at 8 o'clock in the morning. So that meant leaving really early. But my mother didn't want me to go out in the dark. And, you know, 70s, there were lots of bad things happening in New York. But, you know, the fact is I had to get to school. So there were compromises to be made, but I got there. And by the time I also didn't go until 10th grade, but by the time my sister went, I'd already paved the way. And so she actually started, I believe, in ninth grade.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, I actually did, like, I took the test, and I mean, it sounds like I'm bragging, but I'm answering your question. I really did one of the best of the tests in the city. And I felt like I kind of had a right to go. And I just really wanted, you know, the schools in my neighborhood were okay, but there were actually issues coming up and there were actually racial issues in the neighborhood. And, you know, high school was kind of a mess nearby at the time. It wasn't terrible if people did find that I really wanted to go to a good school. And frankly, what I really wanted was to get out of Queens too. I found I wasn't that happy there. I found it was like everyone was supposed to be the same. And I was right about that. When I went to Manhattan, like people had, you know, could be individuals. I was valued and I really loved that. So just, you know, it was sort of the social experience as much as anything that I really liked being able to get into Manhattan every day.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, I think it was before the days of junior high school students knowing about corporate law. And then I went to high school. I went to Stuyvesant in Oregon. I just also want to say how important I think really good public schools are. I mean, it was a public school that I got to by public transportation, which honestly was a pain, but I got there. I had to take a bus to the subway. But there was a way of getting there. I took my first physics course and liked it. And I couldn't really see myself necessarily doing math my entire life, but I thought it would be interesting to try to understand the world through math. And, you know, there was never an option for me to be an experimenter. I always was going to be a theoretical through the system if I did physics.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's not like I knew anyone. You know, I think I just, I mean, I had a very idealistic sense of, you know, finding the truth and arguing for the truth. And I wanted, you know, I don't know. I like getting the right outcome. So it seemed like something that would be worthwhile.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Course, you know, when you do research, you realize it's all about not having answers. But no matter how bad the teachers were, there still was going to be like a right and wrong answer of everything. And you could still learn it on your own if you needed to. And I think that was probably one of the things. I mean, it's not, you know, I like reading. I liked all sorts of things. But I think I did like that sort of sense of security that you have with numbers or with math. And it was fun. It was fun to play with. I like puzzle solving. I think my inner sister does too. And so I think, you know, like I said, I mean, she was a lot younger. So I really felt like I was sort of deciding these things. And it's not like I knew right away. I mean, I remember in junior high school very decidedly thinking I would be a lawyer.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But, you know, and it was this time of great uncertainty, you know, I mean, my joke is my first day of school didn't exist, you know, we had school strikes and all of that. And I think I liked the sort of certainty of sort of math and science and having answers.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My mother was a teacher and she stopped when she had kids and my father he studied engineering but he was a sales he did sales represented really so they weren't scientists by any means and a lot of people ask why my parents were scientists and they weren't I mean that really was something that I decided I really decided for myself it was something I was interested in and want to do I mean I think both my sister and I like we really liked math I mean you know I also grew up you know I was went to school you know start school in the 60s. I shouldn't give away my age, but it's easier to look up on Wikipedia anyway.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think it's one of the reasons I was very aware of just how you learn and education a lot. I did feel level, but I was lucky that I was able to learn things. And so I felt sort of a responsibility to really learn because of that. I thought, you know, I was given this ability and I didn't want, I just thought it wasn't really fair and I thought I should be able to use it. I think part of it, you know, most frankly, you know, just taking seriously at least our studies, you know, it's not that it was all easy and I actually had to argue quite a bit to go to Stuverson High School because it meant I had to take public transportation in the 70s to get to high school from Queens to Manhattan. But I think there was a sense in which they did just value learning. And so, you know, Yeah, I think so. And I think.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I mean, just for the record, I actually have two sisters. An older sister who actually was learning disabled at some level, and she was my older sister. So just to be clear.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even so, it's really nice. I mean, I was talking to someone, I mean, one of the problems or good things or bad things, I don't know how you want to view it, but it's to find a feature of the educational system is that if you don't do the subject at the same rate, you're going to be in trouble. And it's something that in the sciences and in math is a much more serious issue, I think. If you fall behind in a physics class or in a math class, you're basically never going to catch up in the rest of the time is wasted. So to have these opportunities to sort of catch up, I mean, I think is very important.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To get outside whatever is your environment. I mean, I'd love to believe that we can just instantly improve all high schools all over the country, but we're not going to do that right away. And so the idea that the best students or the best students in a particular area or students with a lot of interest in an area have the opportunity to meet other excellent students and have fun with it and see and not be defined by their environment. I mean, it was Hampshire College. I mean, people came from all over. And I actually think that's a...”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, it's really interesting that you ask about that. I actually mean, I'm really happy you brought that up. I actually did that when I was in high school. And it was at Hampshire College. And so it was actually a fun place to be. It was Western Math. But it was essentially math camp and it sounds totally embarrassing. But for us, maladjusted people, it was actually a really fun thing to do to get out of New York City and to go there. But joking aside, I actually feel very strongly that these summer programs are really important. You know, I was at one NSF meeting National Science Foundation meeting where they were asking about things we can do. And I actually raised the fact that I thought having these summer science or math programs can be really important. It was really interesting to me because I think the other woman in the room felt the same way. I also think it's something that actually helps with minorities, helps with disadvantaged students, because it's a way”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought if this is something I might want to do, I should try to do it and see how it works out. But, you know, it's funny because people are much more open about talking about this as an issue. You know, I mean, it's not like I didn't notice that I was the only woman in my class, or actually sometimes it was even worse than that. There would be a few women in the class, and by the end of it, I'd be the only one. And, you know, it's not like you don't notice that. But, you know, it's not a defining feature. I mean, I was taking the same classes. I was studying the same things. So, you know, it's something actually, you know, sort of as you get more senior, you're more aware of it in the context of how it affects your relationship with colleagues. But at the time, I was just trying to do my work, really.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, just sort of a joke. I mean, my sister, who's four and a half years younger, gets mad at me. People will ask me, were there scientists in my family? And I'll say, no, because when you're a kid and your younger sister is four and a half years younger, you don't really feel like there's another scientist in the film. And we weren't scientists back then. But when they ask her, she will say, yes, my older sister did science. But having said that, she's absolutely brilliant. And of course, she's outstanding scientists today. But, you know, it's hard to say exactly what it is. I mean, when people ask me, you know, I always joke, only half jokingly, I wasn't properly socialized. I just didn't know that I wasn't supposed to do it. And, you know, we were both good at it. I like challenges.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just to clarify, I'm just going to go back a step on that just since it didn't seem that was completely satisfactory. So we're talking on a computer, it's made up of stuff, everyone knows it's made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms. Those atoms are made up of nuclei with electrons around them. The nuclei are made up of protons and neutrons, which are made up in turn of quarks, particles called quarks, which are held together by gluons. So there's a particle physicist, I'll study things at the level of quartz and gluons and electrons and the photon that produces electromagnetism. And I'll say, is there an understanding of why those are the particles, why they have the masses they do? Are they fundamental? Are there even smaller in some sense particles of which these guys are made? What are the basic elements of matter and how they're related?”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what cosmology is, is the study of the evolution of the universe, how the universe has become what it is today, how it's changing. The universe as a whole, how does the universe evolve? What particle physics is a study of what is the fundamental nature of matter if you keep digging deeper and deeper? What is the basic stuff of which things are made and what are the forces that act at that level?”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Theoretical physics means that I can do my work with essentially a pencil and paper. I'm not running the experiments with which we'll test the ideas. I'm not running the experiments that provide data. I might interact with experimenters and do quite often and say this would be an interesting thing to look at. I look at the data, so it's not that I don't care about what happens with experiments or observations in the case of astronomy, but I am not doing those things myself. I'm thinking about how we can tie it all together in a theoretical sense, how do we make sense of what it is that we see? What are the fundamental underlying connections? What are the forces? What is there? Producing all of this.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, that's a question that Jane is at some level of time, but really we're trying to understand the fundamental nature of matter, what stuff is made of, and how it works, sort of the physical processes by which things happen. I mean, there is We can look at psychological, but ultimately we're looking at the substrate. We're looking at the matter from which all these other things emerge. What is stuff made of and how do we put it together to get the kinds of things that we observe? And what are the forces that act on that matter to produce what we see?”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, they were actual authors. It's just I never actually made the list. What a good sizable fraction of my friends were writers.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Turned out though that I had many more friends who were writers than I had appreciated. Once I started writing, I realized oh wow, I have a lot of friends who write.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then eventually the last me would I write about, and then it will come back to the fact that I'm doing research too. But it's really interesting because one of the things for me when I started writing about physics and addition obviously to doing research, which is really the primary thing, was I found that it's so much easier to talk to people about it because people understand writing more than they understand research.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, obviously I'm going to tell him in most circumstances that I'm a professor of physics and what I study, that I study the fundamental nature of matter. I study the universe, how the universe has evolved, the nature of space. But I don't necessarily go into all of that. Sometimes if I want to make my life a little bit easier, I'll just tell them that I write about physics.”
2015-10-24 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #115: Thinking About Extra Dimensions with Physicist Lisa Randall · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT