Riddle Me the Universe (or Multiverse)

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maghshoosh
by maghshoosh
01-Apr-2012
 

Self-styled gurus in "efficiency" often suggest that an effective strategy in dealing with various tasks at hand may be to deal with the more difficult ones first.  In that vain, as you set to fulfill your (Persian) new year resolutions, you may wanna resolve the deeper issues first.  One such issue, no doubt, would be understanding the most fundamental explanations for everything that's happening in the universe in which we're embedded, i.e. uncovering the core laws encompassing every phenomenon in the universe (or multiverse, as some speculate).

In that regard, we employ the expertise of Dr. Nima Arkani-Hamed (A.-H.), one of the world's foremost particle physicists, who has a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, the world's premiere institution for research in fundamnetal physics (ever since Einstein and other top scientists of the day were housed there early last century).  A 2005 News Feature in the journal Nature states, "The son of two Iranian physicists, Arkani-Hamed was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up in Boston. After the Iranian revolution of 1979, his family returned to their homeland, but as religious fundamentalists took over the government, his father was forced to go underground and the family eventually had to flee across the border to Turkey. By 1982, Nima was living in Toronto, Canada.  Recalling his early life, Arkani-Hamed says that his time in Iran was largely a positive experience. "The strange thing is that I have mostly wonderful memories," he says. If anything, he adds, it taught him to worry less about what others thought of him. "Given that so many aspects of my life have been unusual, I've never had a problem with feeling different or being different or doing different things.""

In Oct. 2010 Dr. A.-H. delivered a series of Messenger Lectures at Cornell University on our current understanding of and research on particle physics and cosmology.  The Messenger Lectures are delivered to a university-wide audience by invited renowned scholars in various fields of knowledge.  The talks are intended for a general audience, so no expertise in physics or math is required for the following lectures, just an open and critical mind.  Dr. A.-H. delivered these lectures on five consecutive days, with each one starting with an introduction by a Cornell faculty member.  Unless you are already familiar with the topic, it's best to view the talks in the order presented for conceptual continuity.  Following are links to the 5 videos at Cornell's website:

1) "Setting the stage: Space-time and Quantum Mechanics"

2) "Our "Standard Models" of particle physics and cosmology"

3) "Space-time is doomed. What replaces it?"

4) "Why is there a macroscopic universe?"

5) "A new golden age of experiments: What might we know by 2020?"

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maghshoosh

Grand design as interesting as other discoveries for Feynman

by maghshoosh on

Richard Feynman's 7 Messenger lectures in 1964, which can be viewed here, are considered classics.  But Feynman's and A-H's approaches in their respective lectures are different.  A-H lectures about the main concepts behind the fundamental theories and what their possible grand extensions could tell us about the universe/multiverse at large.  Much of these grand extensions, going beyond Quant. Mech. & Gen. Rel., are highly speculative and in need of experimental verification, as A-H readily acknowledges.

But Feynman was more into the adventure and "playfulness" of uncovering whatever mysteries we encounter in nature, not just the grand design, and examining various phenomena from different points of view.  He didn't necessarily find discovering the ultimate "theory of everything" anymore tantalizing than understanding a small aspect of nature.

And speaking of famous physicist lectures, Steven Weinberg delivered the 2007 Messenger lectures, but I haven't been able to find them.


Ari Siletz

Overall...

by Ari Siletz on

A-H did a fantastic job leading up to his clarification of the significance of the LHC. Though his delivery is not as fluid as Feynman's he is every bit as successful in converying the gist of the most abstract concepts to the non-expert. Yet I found him most insightful when he pointed out a dramatic distinction between verbal and mathematical analysis: with mathematics you are able to see everything suddenly come together perfectly in a way ordinary language can't do for you. Without expertise one can't appreciate this perfection, greatly reducing the  level of belief in the analysis.

 

Regarding Intelligent Designers, I believe Hawkins made a similarly humorous observation about them. Something to the effect that creationists don't want Darwin to be taught partly because they sort of understand the implications. If they understood the implications of modern physics they would be infinitely more motivated to try to ban physics texts. But A-H explains that it's not about understanding implications; it's just that they don't want to be apes. And as you explain further, it's because apes don't have souls and supposedly we do.


maghshoosh

They just don't wanna be apes, b/c of their souls

by maghshoosh on

Ari Siletz,

Yes, Arkani-Hamed's jab at the ignorance of the intelligent design crowd is quite apt.  Historically also, as the scientific revolution was taking place in Europe, the Church, although at first quite hostile, w/in a century accepted the Galilean description of the solar system, w/ earth not being at the center of it.  But the hostility to the Darwinian view, where man originated from and is part of the animal world, hasn't withered away.  As Arkani-Hamed put it, they don't really care about the universe's pedigree, they just don't wanna be apes.  And it's b/c they're worried about their souls.


Ari Siletz

Terrific lectures

by Ari Siletz on

Around 18:00 in the fourth lecture Arkani-Hamed makes a brilliantly humorous confession.