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Sal Pais Λ Stephon Alexander on Singularities, Negative Energy, and the Origins of the Universe
October 20, 2022
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The Economist covers math, physics, philosophy, and AI in a manner that shows how different countries perceive developments and how they impact markets. They recently published a piece on China's new neutrino detector. They cover extending life via mitochondrial transplants, creating an entirely new field of medicine. But it's also not just science they analyze.
Culture, they analyze finance, economics, business, international affairs across every region. I'm particularly liking their new insider feature. It was just launched this month. It gives you, it gives me, a front row access to The Economist's internal editorial debates.
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A KFC tale in the pursuit of flavor. The holidays were tricky for the Colonel. He loved people, but he also loved peace and quiet. So he cooked up KFC's 499 Chicken Pot Pie. Warm, flaky, with savory sauce and vegetables. It's a tender chicken-filled excuse to get some time to yourself and step away from decking the halls. Whatever that means. The Colonel lived so we could chicken. KFC's Chicken Pot Pie. The best 499 you'll spend this season.
Stefan Alexander is a theoretical physicist and a professor at Brown University. Salvatore Pius is an engineer, formerly at the US Space Force, and currently working for the US Navy. Seldomly do those in academia listen to those who are from the outside, and even more rarely do they do so with such compassion and mutual respect that both Stefan and Sal show to one another.
This is a first of its kind conversation on toe that's meant to exemplify what occurs behind closed doors but in front of a public audience like yourself. This is the second time the Salvatore Pius has ever conducted an interview, the first time also being on toe and the link to that will be in the description. Sal is an elusive fellow. Stefan Alexander has also appeared on toe and the link to that is in the description. There we talk about string theory and another proposal for a theory of everything called the autodidactic universe.
During this conversation with Sal and Stefan, I was struck, I still am struck with COVID. So it was extremely difficult for me to parse words together cognitively. However, just like usual toe episodes, we still retain a level of high technicality. This episode premiered ad free on theories of everything.org before you're seeing it here. And that's one of the benefits of being a toe member. So if you'd like to donate to toe to support toe, then visit theories of everything.org and you'll gain access to several benefits.
Now on to today's sponsor. If you're familiar with toll, you're familiar with brilliance. But for those who don't know, brilliance is a place where you go to learn math, science and engineering through these bite sized interactive learning experiences. For example, and I keep saying this, I would like to do a podcast on information theory.
particularly Chiara Marletto, which is David Deutsch's student, has a theory of everything that she puts forward called constructor theory, which is heavily contingent on information theory. So I took their course on random variable distributions and knowledge and uncertainty.
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It would be unnatural to define it in any other manner. Visit brilliant.org slash TOE, that is T-O-E, to get 20% off the annual subscription, and I recommend that you don't stop before four lessons. I think you'll be greatly surprised at the ease at which you can now comprehend subjects you previously had a difficult time grokking. At some point, I'll also go through the courses and give a recommendation in order. Thank you, and keep in mind that Salvatore Pius and Stefan Alexander will both come on separately for one-on-ones,
What do each of you see as the main issues with either quantizing gravity or gravitating the quantum? Well, it depends on the perspective you take. General relativity
Einstein field of general relativity is based on the principle of background dependence or diffeomorphism invariance that coordinate labels are fictitious. I mean, they are not physical, right? You can always define physics in a completely different coordinate system and physics should be the same. And quantum mechanics, you know, in its
Formulation, at least in quantum field theory, the structure of quantum field theory, for example, if you talk about, you know, unifying quantum mechanics with special relativity, you still are doing physics in some given frame. And, you know, making sort of combining, there's a tension now, right? Because how do you define quantum mechanics in a background independent way?
There have been attempts to do that. I'm happy to talk about those attempts. And, you know, they've seen some success, but there's also problems. The main problem, of course, for me as a just a physicist that pays a lot of attention to observations is that it's difficult to explain
So some of these theories are said to be unphysical, and I can get back to that about what that means, what unphysical means. They're fraught with certain conceptual and technical problems, these background independent formulations of quantum gravity. And then you have things like string theory, which is a successful, perturbative way of combining some aspects of general relativity with quantum mechanics.
But again, I have worked on string theory. I've worked on string theory mainly at the level of string phenomenology or string cosmology. And it provides a good toolbox, but also string theory itself has its own issues and unresolved problems. And that's why it's still an active field of research. So that's my little summary about why quantum gravity is so hard to
So we currently don't have a consensus in terms of, you know, physicists, we don't have a consensus about a theory of quantum gravity. So if we don't have a consensus, then we don't really have a theory of quantum gravity. Actually, Professor Alexander, I agree with every, every syllable you've added. It makes a lot of sense. Yes. Think of it
Possibly, possibly, just to add a little maybe from ignorance or lack of knowledge deep within physical theory. But what if it's not just about quantizing the gravitational field or geometrizing the quantum as Dr. Weinstein, Eric Weinstein says, what if it's about something else as well? What if there is
a super force, a force of unification that somehow combines all four forces, given that the force of gravity is acceptable as a force and not just a space-time curvature and so forth. And this super force could be, for example, Isaac Newton, let's go back to way before, all right, circa 1693 AD.
Thank goodness for that. 1693, he writes a letter to one of his buddies, Richard, I think Sir Richard Bentley. He says, what if gravity is the result of an agent, big A, capital A, that acts constantly throughout the universe in accordance to given laws of nature? And my question is, what if
Now, Professor Abhay Ashtekar, which by the way, I think quantum bounds should be called Ashtekar bounds in the LQG and loop quantum gravity. And I think he's got something and we have to discuss this, this whole idea of the Ashtekar bounds or quantum bounds.
Because there may be some sort of super force, super density resulting in a super bang. I know, I know. You see what happens when you agree to a conversation with... So let me interject if you don't mind. I want to frame this conversation. I know that I've said this to both of you. Stephane Alexander is a professor of theoretical physics at Brown University and holds many accolades.
And I'll list those in the actual intro itself. And Salvatore Pius is an engineer working at the Navy slash US Space Force slash I know that you can't say exactly what your position is. But the point is that rarely do those in the academic circles listen to those who are outside of it.
and especially when those who are on the outside feel like they have some grand idea because you generally get pitched them left right in the center when you're an academic and so it's difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff with Stefan what I like about you is that you take your cues from physics from jazz which is that if someone throws you an idea you
play with it and you throw it back to the person. You mentioned that this is how you work with your graduate students. So this is supposed to be or this is, this whole conversation is an example of what would ordinarily happen behind closed doors being brought to the public and so hopefully it's something that researchers can aspire to. So that's what frames this conversation, this respect that is seldom shown and compassion between let's say academia and those who are outside when they have large ideas, grand ideas, grand unification.
Right. So on that note, on that note, so let me ask, let me respond to Sal. Sure. That's great. So first of all, Sal, please call me Stefan. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Yeah. And so, so I'm going to push back a little bit. I'm going to say, well, you push, I'm going to push back and agree with you. The first thing I'm going to agree with is that your idea of
Let's say the super force, meaning that that quantization of gravity can only happen with a unification scheme, where basically there's some force, let's call it your super force, some force, or something that underlies all the force of gravity, right, and the forces that quantum mechanics actually
you know, unifies itself. So quantum field theory was an example of a way of unifying the three interactions, the three, you know, the weak interaction, the strong interaction, and the electromagnetic interaction. At least, I mean, quantum field theory is a language at least, okay, you know, quantum field theory and gauge invariance.
is a language or the technology, the conceptual mathematical technology that underlies those three forces and the super force, this unification of gravity with these other three forces. This was actually the program of string theory.
String theory and its parent, you know, when some people call, I think I find this, its parent theory actually very interesting, matrix theory, right? The idea that, you know, what even underlines the overarching framework that string theory comes from is a matrix quantum mechanics. So now I think what is interesting about what you're saying is that
There's one thing to say that forces, including gravity, are unified. But your perspective, what I'm hearing, your perspective is that you're calling that unification a super force. And therefore, I'm going to ask you, what is that force? Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much for this. Wow. Wow. Okay.
First of all, I hope it's not computational biology. No. Oh, wow. We'd have to involve Dr. Wolfram, some other some other notables in it. Maybe, by the way, down the road, if you could discuss your idea of the rhythm universe, I'd really like to hear more. And I have a question for my 10 year old daughter for you.
okay great great so just remind me okay but just to go back to the super force thank you very much for for engaging with me and it means a lot because you not only do do you have the right pedigree but do you you are extremely well known and extremely well liked in the community so god bless you for this sir thank you thank you thank you very much oh come on
anybody that professor leon cooper would think highly of everybody else should think very anyway i mean he was the he is the god of superconductivity i mean the the other two i think have passed away bardeen and schrieffer but anyway may they rest in peace by the way the bcs theory is remarkable anyway so the super force is c to the fourth so it's like the speed of light to the fourth power divided by big g
Now, Professor Ashtekar is correct in saying it cannot be fundamental because it doesn't have the h bar in it. But if you think of it, it's really the Planck force. And how does the Planck force come about? It's the Planck energy, which is the Planck mass times c squared divided by the Planck length, which is what? g h bar divided by c cubed, the whole thing square root of.
Yeah, but anyway, so if you do that, the H bar drops out. Now, what's really cool about this, the superforce being the Planck force talks directly to general relativity, because if you look at Einstein's field equations, which you very well know, I mean, I could do the whole thing with the Riemannian curvature times the spacetime metric, but let's call everything on the left hand side a
g sub mu nu asterisks because it's got the cosmological constant termination. Right exactly sir and equals what it's eight pi times big G divided by C to the fourth. You see when you do the dimensional analysis oh and that scalar that the eight pi
times big G divided by C to the fourth is multiplied by the stress energy momentum tensor, your T sub mu nu, right? But when you do the dimension, the scaling analysis on that, you realize that that one divided by L square goes as L divided by E times E divided by L cubed, which is the energy density
the T sub mu nu. So that scalar constant that acts in the Einstein field equations is representative of a force, and it's really representative of the Planck force. And you got to ask yourself, what's this Planck force, super force? Call it what you want. Call it the Alexander force. Who knows, maybe one day you'll be able to use it and prove with experimental data that this thing does exist.
I still do believe it exists at Planck scales. But anyway, let me not diverge. I'm just so enthusiastic that finally someone of your great aptitude is engaging that, you know, I'm a little bit. So I apologize if I seem too enthusiastic. But OK, so what I'm trying to say is that what is the Planck force doing?
in the Einstein field equations if it wasn't a bridge between the world of the very small quantum mechanics and the world of the very large general relativity. Okay, so I mean I think you know dimensional analysis is always a great
a great path to take when we're trying to understand new things that the theory may not be saying. So scaling analysis and dimensional analysis is, I think, a great way to proceed. One question I have, of course, is that no matter what you do with the Einstein field equation, you can always, I mean, at the end of the day, and a good example just to walk
everyone through this. On the left hand side of the Einstein equation, we have the notion of curvature or let's say geometry is related or equated with energy momentum, matter and energy. So typically, I mean, when we at least bread and butter relativists and cosmologists that I am,
We tend to use fields of fluids to discuss that framework. So we have on the left hand side, we have the equivalent of a field, in this case, the dynamics of the gravitational field seen through the lens of curvature. And on the right hand side, we have basically fluids or fields, matter fields. And then, of course, we have
matter or fields or fluids whatever right space time and basically there is a the system is non-linear and there's what we call back reaction um you know the matter can curve the geometry and the geometry the curve geometry makes a matter move and then that in turn that in turn like you know back reacts right so you have because system is non-linear how what all right now i can choose to put vacuum energy or the cosmological constant on the right hand side
right? And it appears to behave like a form of matter, or I could put it on the left hand side, right? And that actually ends up becoming something that looks like the radius of curve, the radius of the set of space, right? So basically, if I have a positive cosmological constant, I have an, you know, I have a curve space, and that's the set of space. Now, so
If I get rid of all of my, if I work in complete vacuum and I can choose that, I can choose to work in complete vacuum with a cosmological term, right? Is it not the case that this, what you call the super force is something that couples to this vacuum energy? With TD Early Pay, you get your paycheck up to two business days early, which means you can grab last second movie tickets. In 5D Premium Ultra,
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I see what you're saying. I mean, there's nothing, unless you're adding, unless you are adding something else to the Einstein field equation, that's what you have to work with. Now you can, you could do that. You could modify Einstein's theory. There are ways to do this. So are you asking to, are you, are you modifying, um, general relativity or are you repackage it in a way to say that the, you know, some Planckian scale vacuum energy is what you call on the superimposed. That's my question.
basically the right hand side drops to zero with your superforce and what you're left with is a vacuum solution but what I'm saying is don't do that because it's like choosing natural units if you choose natural units you know the whole idea of c equal h bar equal big g equal one you get rid of the superforce to begin with but you're still left with a beauty
of Einstein's field equations, namely space-time curvature geometry, is mass energy, which is exactly what it couples to. So the physics is still there, but you've given, you've taken away some of the physics that's inherent to the strength, to the, what's the word I'm looking for, to the power of the Einstein equations.
And the beauty of the Einstein equations is that they can be reformulated. If you leave the C to the fourth divided by big G in there, if you leave the superforce term in there, it takes a whole different nuance because it basically says on a quantum scale, it's possible that if you think of the left-hand side as a spatial temporal geometrical structure,
then what it says, it's the super force acting on the spatial temporal geometrical structure that gives rise to matter, to energy density. That's a whole different look, a whole different understanding of what GR has been telling us. It's a new perspective on old physics.
Not new physics. I cannot stand when people use the idea of new physics. What if it's just a new perspective on old physics? Nothing wrong with old physics. Old physics is like good wine, you know? You leave it, it matures. It tastes even better. Yeah, but if I'm, you know, if I work in natural units, I mean, I can always feel free to choose what units I want and I should, you know, I should see the same physics, right?
Agreed, which that's why, how should I say, the only problem that I see with that is that once you choose to work with natural units, not only do you discard the physics of the super force, it's no longer there, but you actually discard dimensional scaling analysis. It's no longer dimensionally correct.
Because then it says 1 divided by L squared goes as E divided by L cubed. Where is the equivalence in that? Do you see what I mean? When you use natural units and get rid of that scalar, all of a sudden it doesn't make dimensional sense anymore. And I understand from a dimensions point of view, maybe dimension shouldn't matter anyway. But when you translate
Those dimensions, one divided by L squared as being your space-time curvature, so that's your left-hand side, and goes as E divided by L cubed. Whoa! It's basically saying, yes, space-time geometry is like an energy density. Yeah, I understand. But from a dimensional perspective, it's no longer there.
It is no longer there. How can one divided by L squared be as E divided by L cubed when E is really your MC squared? There's something not right when you use natural units and drop out the superforce. I understand what you mean overall physically that- Well, in that case, E is just M, right? In those units, E is just M, right? Fine. That's not C squared. Fine.
But even then, one divided by L squared goes to M divided by L cubed, even from, you see what I'm saying? Even from, I mean, how, okay, say you keep the M, it's still divided by, are you saying that a mass divided by a volume goes as one divided by L squared? Are you saying that an, how should I say a mass density? What's right? Because that's what M divided by L cubed.
A mass density goes as really one divided by surface area. You see what I'm saying? It no longer makes physical sense at that point. Once you use the natural units and get rid of the super force term, the C4 divided by big G. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Well, I'll have to, you know, for me, I'll have to see, I mean, I have to like, I have to see, you know, would you look at some paper I come up with? Sure.
I think that that's fair. That means a lot. That means a lot. And I would really love to stay in touch with you, not only because we're New York City boys. We basically, you know, I went to Brooklyn Technical High School and you knew DeKalb Avenue, J Street, like the back of your hand. I remember you spoke of a Dr. Kaplan. I think I once met him.
because he was a good friend of Dr. Arthur Dorsen from Brooklyn Tech and also Mr. Lawrence Zimmerman. Those are my, you know, they're the ones that brought me up. Yeah, yeah. You're what we call a homeboy. Yeah. But I think you and I had to have a lot of in our origins, in our background, the way we grew up and, you know, New York City guys,
a lot of people thought yeah at least a lot of people thought out amount to not yeah you know what i mean and i mean look at you what what you achieved so hey you know i did i did something i did something wrong all right so let's let's take this further down so just you know what is um let's see so you talked about um ashtek or you know i'm actually abai is a a great mentor of mine
And he was very, very kind to me. So when I was when nobody else wanted to hire me, he was the one that was behind my first faculty job at Penn State. And my office was next to his for a number of years. And I learned quite a bit from the from Abhay Ashtekar. He is a genius. And so and I took I took some time to learn some not all because it's very tough.
technical stuff, loop quantum gravity. I even tried to, you know, develop some ideas around the Ashtekar variables. So it's something that I'm always, you know, an admirer of. You know, I do have some problems with the loop quantum gravity program and, you know, I consider Lee Smolin to be a good friend.
You know the minute when you are talking about this this bounce That happens in say loop quantum cosmology. Yes, sir There is a sense in which like there is you know, I once heard Ashtakar given analogy somehow when we think about since it is a quantum theory and geometries quantize then
The idea was that perhaps the quantum reason behind the bounce is that as space-time, you know, if you think about the sort of the structure of space-time being cellular or discrete, it is that you get to some region and there is some repulsive
quantum forces. So is that the thing you're kind of pointing to? Yes, I'm saying exactly that the super force resides at the Ashtakar bounds. It is the super force that acts repulsively
at super density condition and what super density really density at Planck scale. So if you're, you know, speed of light to the fifth power, the whole thing divided by the denominator is like a big G square H bar. Your H bar is your reduced Planck constant. And that's how H bar comes in. Because Professor Ashtekar, when he heard of my formula for the super force, he was like, but it's not quantum in nature, it can be fundamental, but it talks to a super density.
And the beauty of it is because it doesn't have the H bar that it couples with the Einstein equations as you and I have been conversing. You and I can discuss this more because I see, you know, I see your point very well as well. So, but what I'm saying is, what if the super force is what makes the Ashtakar bounce happen? When you say that the super force resides at the Ashtakar bounce,
Do you mean to say that the super force comes into play at the level when the Ashtakar bounce becomes relevant or the super force is the Ashtakar bounce? No, no, no, no. The Ashtakar bounce is this quantum bounce that that Professor Alexander was speaking of that basically can be used instead of inflation theory and so forth. But anyway, look,
What I'm trying to say, let me focus on the thoughts because this is important. Let me give the analogy of a supernova explosion. The way it does, the way, for example, anything by the type 1A supernova, this would apply to. The mechanism is basically that of a core collapse that leads to something called core bounds.
And it happens at very high densities on the order of like 2.4 times 10 to the 14 grams per centimeter cube. At those extremely high densities, this core bounds occurs because of the what?
the strong nuclear force comes into being. And this thing, it's what leads to the extremely violent expulsion of the outer core of the star. So I'm saying I'm taking something that's extremely small and analogizing it with something that happens in a supernova mechanism. But it's almost the same idea. The core bounce really happens in this case because of the extremely high density, which brings in the strong nuclear force.
And I'm seeing at the quantum bounds. It's not the strong nuclear force. It's the super force that acts. And what's really interesting and
I hope to prove this to Professor Alexander one day. I really hope you, sir, I really hope you take the time to read the paper that I have in mind. I wish I had the pedigree of a physicist, so maybe you're able to, I mean, and I'll try in that paper to make much stronger mathematical arguments as to what I'm saying. But from a physical mechanism point of view, just think of the analogy
of a core bounce that happens upon the core collapse of a supernova explosion that's exactly what i'm talking about but on a quantum level you see what i'm saying so so basically some some repulsive force that um uh prohibits further contraction so that does also means that black that black holes um no space time singularities exist yes sir okay no yeah so i mean
Again, what I am sympathetic to here is that, for me, physics is also about ideas. Now, the way ideas are mathematically implemented and what theoretical framework is also obviously very important because the name of the game is to sort of push the structure. So identify where the theory breaks down, replace it with a good idea, and then hopefully that idea leads to a new structure
that under the right approximation gives you back actually the old theory. So in this case, we have in the Einstein equations, we have situations including the quantum cosmology. We do have a framework to talk about such repulsive forces that do prohibit bounces in general. However, they are fraught
with you always run into some issue with these types of forces. And I'm happy if Kurt allows me to share the screen to kind of maybe show a diagram of what that could look like, where those problems will lie. So maybe something that Sal could think about. Okay, you should have sharing capabilities. Right. So on the
y-axis so what we have here is um what do we have under y-axis yeah so what we have on the um what we have on the x-axis is time and what we have in a y-axis is you know right now this i'm going to put this i'm going to put the einstein field equations in the context of an expanding universe
Okay. Yep. So, so what we have is the expansion parameter, which is a the scale factor. So if you know, we have a little cartoon picture of our universe is that this scale factor a right, which determines scales in my theories, like spatial scales, right, as a function of time.
This thing, the scale factor expand, it basically grows in time. And this is to say that the universe of scales are expanding and the universe is expanding. So we have A as a function of time. And the prediction of our standard cosmology is that if you fill our universe, the universe is filled with radiation and matter,
That's going to make the universe expand and then the radiation matter will dilute. Because of the expansion, the density
Right. Like the energy density and the matter density will basically its amplitude will decrease as the universe expands and that makes some good into intuitive thing. The volume is expanding. Therefore, the density will actually decrease. So
um the density being the amount of energy or matter divided by the volume so the volume is expanding is growing then that that quantity is decreasing um provided that you have um conservation of matter and energy is the rate of expansion a like a dot divided by a are we talking about very good expansion that's that's right so okay thank you very so the a dot over a is exactly as you said
is the Hubble parameter. And what the beautiful thing about the Freeman equation is that the Einstein field equation, as you said, g mu nu is equal and I'm now going to use my natural units. I'm calling this kappa
Right, that's that that includes my plan, you know, G nu in a pi a pi Q, times T mu. Right. And that's my energy momentum. Now, this, these 10 differential equations collapse into two, one, I'll just write the one that matters here, because I want to talk about the bounce now. This becomes on the left hand side,
The only degree of freedom in the gravitational field is a scale factor because of the homogeneity and isotropy and so we get an equation as you've seen before which said that the Hubble parameter square which is like a dot over a square so a is like a velocity right so the velocity of the of the expansion rate which is related to h square right I'm just going to put this proportional because I'm using my mouse to draw this equation
to the energy density contained in the universe so this is the total energy density of matter and radiation everything is contained here now if i plot now the solution of the of a all right what we see is basically the following um as a function of time as we go let's say we start at t is equal to zero right we get that this thinks the scale factor grows
um as you know some power um a power of time so to the one-third t to the two-thirds but it basically it's not me right yeah it grows exactly right all right and what you find is that actually at t is equal to zero or when you go to t is equal to a goes to zero right oh it goes to zero now look at that
and a goes to zero notice that when it goes to zero h goes to infinity yeah and h is basically what we call you know is related to the curvature it's a dynamics you know it's related to the to g right so effectively you know the curvature right um this einstein tensor you know since this is the only degree of freedom so what happens is that this is what we call a singularity right right right right right so that's a singularity and um
it's basically when a when the scale factor goes to zero the curvature blows up the curvature invariance actually um what we sometimes call a crutchman scalar um that actually that's an invariant quantity that goes infinity all right so now that's just a little kind of quick you know except so we're both on the same page yes sir but one way you can get around this though and people have played with this idea including myself is that you have your
total matter and all the stuff all right and then you again this is imagine you have a theory that that that says close to the singularity right there's some extra some extra um in fact i'm just going to put s subscript s for something right okay and
and the idea is that you know as t goes to some critical time close to the big bang but not quite a t is equal to zero t critical this kind of this um the total matter and this conspires to cancel out cancel each other out because this minus sign right can cancel
This total, you know, you're the, um, the ordinary matter and energy in our universe. And what happens is that H goes to zero and not infinity. And so what does that picture look like? That picture looks like this on the, this is the expansion side. This is a positive branch and my negative time. And what you find is, um, what something like that would look like is the universe contracts avoids. This is H, you know,
um goes through zero and expands back out and we call this a bounce right yeah so it doesn't it avoids it bounces um it bounces in a sense that it doesn't it doesn't it goes to some a it doesn't a never gets it's never allowed because of that to go to zero it goes to some critical a that's really tiny as you very very tiny scale not zero yeah in fact
In loop quantum cosmology, that is the Planck scale. And in loop quantum cosmology, this thing does emerge from loop quantum cosmology. And that's, I think, one of the nice features of that program. Now, there are other problems with loop quantum cosmology that at this point,
They keep on bringing this lack of fermionic matter that it doesn't lead to. What's the story with the lack of fermionic matter? The whole idea is that, and this is something that was brought up several times, but also Michio Kaku keeps on saying, for example, that
LQG leads to lack of fermions. It basically doesn't show fermions. I don't see it either. I mean, for God's sake, this comes from the guy with the God equation. Anyway, I'm not going to go there. But anyway, I don't see his point. I mean, I think Dr. Weinstein has some ideas
with this geometric unity with, you know, with making LQG yield, you know, because he talks about these family, like family of three fermionic families, something of that nature. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I guess maybe what Michio Kaku is probably talking about is how to formulate fermions, because in loop quantum gravity, you're using these gravitational Wilson loops.
Typically, that idea actually in loop quantum gravity came directly from Ken Wilson, the Nobel laureate who invented lattice gauge theory. And so the idea is that since loop quantum gravity, by using the Ashteko variables,
By using the astric variables, you can write reformulate general relativity to resemble a gauge theory. Then you can use Wilson loops, which is a gauge theoretic. It's quite a beautiful idea. You can carry over the Wilson loop idea. But the problem here is that when you do Wilson loop ideas, there are the so-called fermion doubling problems. There are these issues that are not too well versed. I'm aware of them and I am aware that there are ways
around that. And I do know that this is an open ended question or research question in the quantum gravity to be able to, to be able to, um, and that's why research exists, right? So that people could, and that's why categorical statements, right? They shouldn't make categorical statements like LQG makes no sense because it doesn't, you know, for Miami man.
That's you see what I'm saying. It's there's no we should try to see how to enhance one another's theories rather than put each other down. I agree with that. Yeah, when we can try we can try to learn from each other. Yes, sir. Absolutely. You know, as you know, in fact, Leon Cooper once told me when I was a graduate student of his, we would
You'd always have somebody in the room who was always trying to overstate or put somebody else down or speak over somebody in the group. And usually that would happen when we might be stuck on something, let's say. And then Leon would say,
Albert Einstein told me that if we knew what we were talking about, we wouldn't call it research. Right. And I'm just like, well, okay, there it goes. From the Grandmaster himself. Right. Right. Right. Oh, Kurt, would you like to say something, sir?
Yeah, Stefan, when you showed the row sub s, you said at the time you didn't know what it was, you just gave it a label s. What is it? Do you recall what that specific variable is called? And also, is that just positive or is that somehow derived from loop? Okay, well, if you that's right. So that's good. Yeah, thanks. So what I just gave you was a was a general framework for how you might want to avoid
know, approaching a curvature singularity, which is exactly what a black hole will have and what the Friedman walker, the Friedman equations of general relativity will have for an expanding universe. And the way that that can get implemented is now theory dependent. So for example, I've worked on some of these ideas and what I, me and my collaborators, so first of all, let's back up.
If you look on the right hand side, you have Rho S and there's a minus sign. And whenever you have a negative energy state, that's basically like having a negative energy state, right? And if you allow a negative energy state to propagate, then there's a big worry because those degrees of things are usually called ghosts.
When you have negative energy states that are propagating so it goes usually something that will have you have a negative kinetic energy so and you know Whenever so Paul the rock actually, you know You know and and it stuckelberg and Feynman actually, right? they saw these negative energy states in the Klein-Gordon equation of quantum field theory and The way around that was to reinterpret that negative energy state as an antiparticle moving backwards in time
Right. So you said, okay, I accept that those things are, but it's real. What that negative energy state really is a positive energy state, right? That's an antiparticle moving backwards in time, right? So that's one way out of it. You reinterpret. Another way out of it is, you know, you identify, you can identify if it's a fermion, right? It does, you do occupy these negative energy states like the de Roxy, right? And then the exclusion principle
you know, will prevent, you know, the sea from collapsing. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, um, but you do have to confront with your theory why you would have this negative energy state that's bounded from below. And my, the ideas that I worked on with my, you know, my students and colleagues, um, was that what contributes our negative energy state is a bound state of fermions, right? And so bound states, and if it's fermionic, right,
Could be innate, you know, but so in quantum mechanics, you know, bound states are negative energy states. So, you know, right, right. The, the, the, the, the energy, the ground, the ground state energy of
of hydrogen is minus 13.6 electron volts. There's a minus sign there, right? So negative energy states do exist in quantum mechanics, and those states are bound states. So bound states are negative energy states, right? So that's kind of the game we played. And so we're able to get a bounce by having fermionic bound states, actually like a Cooper pair,
and but then you run into other problems if you do that because then you have to look you know if you do that you have you can study fluctuations and in cosmology we're not only interested in just the homogenous you know average expansion rate but we need to consider fluctuations to talk about structure and so you can ask if you turn on fluctuations do these negative energy states cause runaway solutions and that's an open-ended problem now in the ash to core formulation as kurt asked
This negative thing emerges naturally, right? And so for me, that's quite interesting because, you know, your Hamiltonian in Luke quantum cosmology is bounded. It's, I mean, the Ashtakar-Lerandowski measure, right? It's a rigorously defined inner product. And so, you know, you do have a well-defined Hamiltonian.
and so the fact that you know when you work in the in the FRW type of background from the quantum cosmology you get this minus sign it does seem to suggest that there is some kind of like quantum pressure or some kind of exclusion principle happening at the level of the space time right to kind of prevent like a super density okay like a super density so i think it's i think what you're saying is quite interesting
But it'll be interesting to awaken that in a framework like loop quantum gravity.
If you think of it as a super density term, it's got the H bar in there. It's in the denominator. And then Professor Ashtekar's question, you know,
This may not be fundamental. Maybe talk to super density. Maybe what I call the super force really we use terminology here. You know what I'm saying? No, no, no. And I get super force sounds cooler. Yeah. I mean, truly, you know, like space for super force. Right. Right. Right. Right. Oh, I have a question for you. Before I forget my my my 10 year old, by the way, thinks, oh my God, thinks thinks is the coolest
name of a book ever, The Jazz of Physics. I mean, oh yeah, she promised me that she was going to start, you know, reading it. You know, I mean, this is not for 10 year old, but this is a kid. I tell you, this kid, I think she gets all her neurons from her mother. I can't take credit. Actually, Steven Pinker gave me the title for my book. Really? The Jazz of Physics? Yeah, but you're also a musician, so it
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure you're still as far as I'm concerned. It's your book. It's your title. There you go. That is true. I do. I do play the saxophone. Yeah. I gotta hear that. Oh, man. We gotta hear this. We gotta hear this. I have it right here. Hey, hey, Kurt. Beautiful horn, huh? We should close this up with him playing. Oh my god. With Professor Alexander playing. That'd be super cool. Okay. Okay. Here comes the question. This is really before I forget it because she was like, daddy, you gotta ask her
She called you, by the way, these kids, man, they, you know, the idea of respect, she called you Stefan. So please forgive her because she does, you know, who knows, maybe one day she'll be a student. So you better call your professor Alexander then. Okay. By the way, if Brown University would be unbelievable as an alma mater, but anyway. Okay.
Yeah, mine's Case Western Reserve University. The same as Professor Keating, so yeah. That's my buddy, yeah. That's right. Okay, now, okay, she's basically saying, ask him, in his opinion, what is the cause of gravity? And you'll see why she's asking this. What is the what? The force? The cause of gravity. What is the cause of gravity? I know.
This kid asked that, I tell you. That's a deep question. That's a deep question. I mean, because, you know, obviously, you have to give and, you know, what is the cause of gravity, right? You know, we'll say, well,
matter and energy is a cause of gravity but then it becomes a chicken and egg so what's the cause of matter and energy then becomes a wheeler thing you know it from bit you know but anyway yeah yes we know with something else what answer do you give her let me let me she has this this this unusual way of thinking she
I talked before, you know, of the Casimir force, you know, the whole thing, you know, it goes as one divided by the D4, you know, so the Casimir force becomes incredibly important, you know, to vacuum energy densities terms, you know, because of the, when those non-conductive metal plates, whatever, are brought together very, very small distances from one another, because of the one divided by D,
to the fourth term.
Daddy, what if, because everything's connected, what if it's some sort of Casimir force on a macroscopic scale? This is a penial. She knows what the Casimir force is? What? Yeah. What, what if, what if gravity is due to Casimir forces on a macroscopic scale? I'm like, I, I can ask professor Alex that, that if that even makes sense. But anyway, yeah, that's what the, but anyway, yeah, I just bring it up. Yes, it's, yeah.
She's quite a kid, I tell you, she gets all her neurons from her mother. But anyway. Oh, Stefan, do you want to respond to that? And then I have a question. Well, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the statement. You'd think that you'd think that that that that thing will that force
You know, we'd have to ask that question in the context of a cosmological space-time. Correct. Because, you know, because then you have a scale factor. So wouldn't it get redshifted by the scale factor? I mean, you have to like... Definitely. I mean, you know, 10 years old. But still, the whole idea to help came because I showed a video one time of two ships in the port.
was close to the port, so close to the coastline. And if you bring the ships together, these things have a tendency to attract one another. They're brought together. So now, like with naval ships, you got to be very careful not to bring them too much in proximity of one another or you'll have tremendous issues. So you see what I'm saying? We were talking about chasm forces and how these things are attractive. And somehow it became in her idea, like in her idea,
just like the two plates, the two non-conductive metal plates that bring about the Casimir force are brought together because of pressures acting that are basically pushing the plates together. She thought what if this was a macroscopic quantum phenomena, you know, that somehow it translated because everything is connected
And if you think from the point of view, what if everything was connected because of the existence of the super force, because it does exist at every point in space and time. But, you know, I'm saying super force because I like to think in terms of forces rather, maybe it's a super density, maybe the whole idea is analogous to the whole idea of a core balance in a supernova. You know, it comes about because of the strong nuclear force,
The whole idea in the Ashtakar bounds, it comes about because of the existence of this super density, which would be on the, you know, on the order of a Planck density. Actually, Professor Ashtakar says on the order of 10 to the minus three times the Planck density. Yeah, it's hard to see how these microscopic things, quantum things, you know, I mean, unless you have some kind of phase coherence, right?
like a macroscopic quantum state. Superconductivity is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon. It certainly is, it definitely is. That's how they were able to derive it from the London forces. The London equations brought on the whole idea of the London penetration depth.
It's the whole idea of the Meister effect. See, I'm constantly trying to get Ed Whitten to come on to theories of everything and he always responds to me but he says no. However, here's one way that he can come on. Why? Why? Why? Why does he say no? He's just so busy. One way to have him on is by just giving one of his statements and then I want to see what you, Stefan, have to say about it and then same with you, Sal.
String Theory is actually the only idea about quantum gravity with any substance.
One sign is that where critics have had interesting ideas, so non-commutative geometry, black hole entropy, twister theory, they have tended to be absorbed as a part of string theory. Another sign is the way that string theory has been successful in generating new insights about standard quantum field theory and even about geometry. Okay, so I'm curious to know, Stefan, what do you make of that? What would you say to Ed if he was here? What thoughts occurred to you? And then same with you, Sal. Yeah, I think that
As a person that still publishes, I publish papers that use the framework of string theory to speak to cosmology, to speak to some issues of how particle physics overlaps with cosmology. In fact, I'm working on something right now that deals with electroweak unification.
from structures that come from string theory and how they may play out in theories like Cosmic Inflation. So I can't speak too much because I haven't put the paper out yet and I'm still fiddling with equations.
I'm putting that out there to say that I am a big fan of string theory. And I do think that it is, from my opinion, from where I sit, the most promising and pragmatic because it does give us a framework. It gives us technology so that a person like myself can actually formulate
research problems in cosmology in my case, right, and how particle physics and cosmology speak to each other. However, I don't think that, you know, research at the forefront of other approaches to quantum gravity takes away actually from, you know, from string theory. I think that it's important that we
research on all these fronts. So I know that there are some statements that, for example, string theory is the only game in town or string theory is the only formulation. I mean, we have things like causal dynamical triangulation, covariant formulations, non-perturbative formulations of quantum gravity,
I was just visiting a colleague, Simon Catterall, at Syracuse who does Euclidean lattice quantum gravity and they're starting to get very interesting results that can get us back to the set of space in some semi-classical approximation that's, you know, non-perturbative. They're, again, open-ended issues there. So again, I think that, what's the word,
The fact that string theory is, in my opinion, right now the most developed framework, with the most workers in that field, doesn't take away from that fact that there are other, I think, viable approaches in terms of research and quantum gravity, and they're certainly out there. And they have their problems. But that's why, as Leon Cooper said, if we knew what we were talking about, we wouldn't call it research. Euclidean lattice what?
Quantum graphing. So this is very similar to what, you know, Ken Wilson, when you do lattice gauge theory, you formulate, you use Wilson loops, and you work on a lattice, so you discretize spacetime.
and then you euclideanize and you work on a computer and you basically solve the partition function non-perturbatively and then of course you take a continuum limit and you show that you get back and you wick rotate back and you get back QCD so the hope here is that you can do the same thing for gravity and so that's what those guys work on are there non-perturbative approaches to string theory? yes
So the two I know about is matrix theory, the so-called BFSS matrix model by Banks, Fischler, Schenker and Susskind and then of course it's the IKKT model of that and I think also Lee Smolin
Okay, so you're just giving, you're reminding me of our conversation from almost a year ago. But yeah, going back to this whole thing that, you know, that's, that's my statement about, you know,
That right, there's one thing for one theory to be more advanced and more developed, but that doesn't mean that you still don't pursue research on other promising approaches. And of course, it could be at the end of the day that those, what's the word that there are some kind of convergence. Thank you. Convergence. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my thought.
I'd like to pick up on that because Professor Alexander actually brought up a very interesting idea. Why don't you say to the detractors of AdS equals CFT, you know, the whole idea of anti-dissitter space equaling the conformal field theory, the whole idea that we live in a dissitter vacuum, hence the cosmological constant must be positive.
Because it's been shown by data that the universe is accelerating in its expansion. Hence, lambda must be greater than one. What would you say to the detractors of AdS equals CFT? That's my question to you, Professor. Sorry. Yeah. So I think AdS CFT is really beautiful. It's really beautiful stuff. I mean, in a sense, and it's deep. I mean, the idea that, wait a minute, like, you know, any theory of gravity and of quantum gravity
basically is equivalent to or encoded by with a theory with no gravity and that theory looks very similar to Yang-Mills theory.
already contains in it quantum gravity. That's a message there and then of course there's this idea that that map is holographic, that is stored, that information or that the quantum gravity is in one dimension less like a holographic screen. I think that's a really beautiful idea. It's deep, ingenious, I think.
It's what made Juan Malacena great. Amongst other things, he has done some other amazing things as well in cosmology, the bispectrum. I'm just saying great things. However, I do think that it's a framework that we hope we can carry over one day
to the sitter space, or Minkowski space, and people are working on that. Actually, my colleague here at Brown, David Lowe, is one of the leaders in that field. So people on all this, an idea of course, celestial holography.
And I think that's a holographic theory. It's just like you're looking out in the sky and you're covered by a two-dimensional surface that encompasses you. And so it's a two-dimensional holography. So again, these are ideas that people are actively working on. But ADS-CFT currently is just... I think it's offensive to say that it's a toy model.
but you know the idea is that we would want to take some of that everything that we've learned from ADS-CFT and put it in a more realistic gravitational southern dual. Let me announce here why I asked this question because in that book, there's a great book in my opinion, and I'll give the professor's correct name, his name is Jacom, Jacom Armas, he goes by Jay because you know
For some reason, as Americans, we fail to pronounce correctly the names of people. I don't know why. But anyway, so, Jacom, Professor Jacom Amas, he says in his book, Conversations on Quantum Gravity, there's a, oh, which by the way, I think in a second edition, Professor Amas should go to people like you, sir, and to people like Professor Keating and Professor
and Dr. Weinstein and yes, why not, Sabina Osenfelder, you know, even though she, you know, she gets lost in math, you know, she still has some bright ideas. But again, as long as you don't put down other people's theories and you don't say stupid things like string theory is wrong and so forth, I think you can be dealt with, you know,
in a reasonable manner but what I'm saying is there should be a second edition to this book where people such as yourself and and other luminaries in the field should be interviewed and you know not just and I will ask by the way I down the road if you have time I I want to know your thoughts on on asymptotic safety as far as oh yeah yeah Weinberg speaking of the great I love that idea Weinberg yeah I mean
a great loss for physics. Anyway, so, so, okay, in, in his comp, in the conversation, the NEMA, Akani Hamad, he's kind of pushed against the wall because Professor Amos is basically saying, don't we live in a decider universe and so such. And then NEMA just breaks down and says, you know, maybe ADS equals CFT is a gateway drug.
to the emergence of space-time. He actually says this ad verbatim, and I'm like, come on. Okay, what would you mean by that? Exactly, a gateway drug to the emergence of space-time. The way that I understand that is that Nima has been saying for, I don't know, maybe two decades now that space-time is doomed and there needs to be something that gives rise to space-time as an emergent property.
And so he views that as the most important program in physics right now. He has some approaches called Amplitohedron, maybe others. He doesn't care too much about whether ADS is unrealistic because it's anti rather than not anti.
because he sees it as that is one way that people can get into this idea of an emergent space time. And that's where the real physics lies or the real research lies. Yeah, well, I, you know, I'm sympathetic to Neema and I think if there's somebody that will solve that problem, it would probably be him. You know, he went to school with Sebastian. No way. Yeah, they were classmates. No way. No way. Wow. Wow. That's amazing.
Wow, so two geniuses in the same class, huh? I tried to use that in my email to Nima to come on to tell and he doesn't respond. However, I think we're making some progress. Nima will be on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nima is awesome. Nima is just totally awesome. I think, Professor Alexander, one day you will solve one of the great problems of the Earth. I think you will solve the vacuum catastrophe.
Can you speak more about your idea? You know, the whole idea of the... why the cosmological constant between quantum field theory and general relativity is off by 120 orders of magnitude? You know? It's like, what the... I think...
I still think your rhythm universe is absolutely brilliant. Would you talk more about this idea of how you envision? It's the way that you interpret cosmology. You have a very unique understanding. And I think people should hear this. So can you please announce it? You know what I'm talking about. It's an analogy, but you know, it's an analogy.
It's based on this, we tried to put some equations behind it and then it ran into some problems later on, but I mean the first paper did get
It did get published in a good journal because, but then, you know, but I figured, yeah, maybe you're asking me to get me thinking. I stopped thinking about it for some time, but the basic idea is- Please don't, because I think you have the right idea. Sir, you have the right idea. Keep on hammering. Don't let these detractors, you know, just slow you down. Please don't. That's all I got to say. I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.
Well, the idea is that, I mean, you know, so why are the fundamental, why are the constants of nature what they are? So it's not just only the vacuum energy, it's the coupling, you know, it's a gauge coupling constants. It is the Yukawa, I mean, you know, the, when we look at the Yukawa, you know, the, the, the mass matrices, like they, you have different couplings that the Higgs couples, right? So you have all these parameters in a standard model. So why are they what they are?
So the theory that we have currently do not explain that. Now one, one advantage of string theory, one feature of string theory that is cool is that, you know, coupling constants in theories and four dimensions, right, are really fields.
values of fields that get expectation values. So then you can turn the question on string theory and say why do we have a vacuum in string theory where the fields that did get associated with the coupling constants did get a vacuum expectation value. So you can sharpen that question in string theory and in fact that's kind of one of the things that we said okay if we assume that in a cosmology
We allow actually for these fields, and sometimes we call these fields moduli, because they're associated with the geometry of the internal space. So we have space-time, four-dimensional, we have these other six dimensions that can be warped in ways that actually determine the coupling constants in the four-dimensional world to vary. So then we can take this picture and package it in the following way. You can say, well,
Imagine we, what we have is a cyclic universe, so we, and now I'm now going to use, so what actually happens and that's what you say, the rhythm, the rhythmic universe, so you have
a rhythmic a cycle where the universe contracts bounces expands contracts and it's been doing this you know for eternity i love that idea absolutely yeah yeah so the idea can you hook that up to the quantum bounds can you hook that up to the ashtakar bounds because i think you'd be right on you and professor ashtakar would win the nobel i guarantee well we have to make some predictions yeah how's this different than other cyclical models of the of cosmology
It's different in the sense of the following. What we were able to show is that if you now couple the coupling constants to the geometry, what ends up happening is that when you get close to the bounce, the coupling constant, like a slot machine, they get randomized. And then when you emerge out of the bounce, they freeze.
so they get fixed. So at the bounce is where all the randomization happens and the slavishing gets shuffled or I call like an improvisational universe that basically you know in jazz music the rhythmic structure cycles like a blues, 12 bar blues, it cycles and every time you go around a cycle somebody gets an opportunity to solo and the solo on the improvisation is basically the shuffling of the coupling concept. That was just the analogy, so it's an analogy.
One quick question for Stefan, then I want to get to some questions for Sal. So Stefan, the randomized coupling constants, do they have some different probability distribution every time the universe occurs?
an evolution like Lee Smolin has an evolution model. Is it actually the same randomization every time? Yeah, it's the same randomization every time. This talks to a paper on Archive, I think, May 27, 2008, Coricci and Singh, quantum bounds with total recall, with cosmic recall. They give the idea that the universe may actually have total cosmic recall.
Oh, interesting. And it talks directly to your rhythm idea. Yeah. I'll read those papers because I know both of those guys and I have a high opinion. So I will definitely read those papers. It's a great paper. Yeah. Sal, what I want to know is what is your pious effect? And then I want to hear what Stefan's thoughts are to it.
It's control motion of electrically charged matter that there is, it could be electrically charged solids to plasma. So we're talking about four state of matter here, and you know, the idea of ions and electrons nice floating around, whatever. Now, when you accelerate these in either spin or vibration, you get, and especially if you use rapid acceleration transients. So again, this whole idea of the DDT of acceleration, but anyway,
You can get very high values of electromagnetic energy flux. And the whole idea can be, for example, you can, I believe under certain conditions, at least the classical theory doesn't give a limit, but I believe under certain conditions, you can have an exponential run on energies. So you can get Schwinger limits. We're talking about, you know, things on the order, electric fields on the order of what? 10 to the 18 volts per meter.
that commensurate with B fields on the order of 10 to the 9 Tesla. Now, I know that sounds crazy, absolute crazy. But when you look at the theory, which comes right out of the Oliver Heaviside version of Maxwell's equations, you will know, sir, that Maxwell's equations, the original ones, first of all, they were based on
Ether Vortical Theory. And there were 20 equations with 20 unknowns, almost impractical from an engineering point of view. So Oliver Heaviside in the 1890s made possible these, you know, four equations, four unknowns that we all use and love in physics courses in undergrad. He made it possible because otherwise, if you were to use the correct quaternion formalism that Maxwell brought about, oh my goodness, you know,
I'm not sure if you'd get anywhere soon. So we all use the four equation, four unknown Maxwell equation that's really the Oliver Heaviside version of it. So using that, I was able to bring in the simple harmonic oscillator mathematical formalism. I was able to show that indeed it's possible to get very high electromagnetic energy fluxes.
By accelerating an electrical charge, basically either in spin or in vibration, because if you look at the mathematics, it's similar for both. It's just that one is the, you know, the, the, the, the spin radius times the angular frequency of spin itself. And the other for vibration would be the amplitude of the vibration times the angular frequency of vibration, you know, so from
Yeah, but anyway, that's what the so-called pious effect is. And a lot of people have given me a lot of consternation of over choosing the name, but I said, look, it's original number one.
And number two, I mean, you know, I could have called it the Feynman effect, but the man was far more theoretical than he was experimental. And we actually tried to include this experimentally, but we could never achieve an electrical charge higher than 10 to the minus eight coulombs. And we really need a charge on the order of one coulomb. And Kurt
Which, by the way, has great theoretical physics background. I mean, this man, that's why I agreed to be on the TOE podcast and go with no one else but Kurt, because number one, he has great theoretical physics roots and great mathematical knowledge. He really understands this theory of my God, quantum gravity string theory. He understands it inside and out. I mean, who else understands ADS CFD? Do quantum gravity effects only come into play with high energy? Oh, that's oh my God. You know, that
That's the subject of a paper. Absolutely. No, I would say absolutely not. As a matter of fact, condensed matter physics can show you a direct, especially when it comes to this new, the topological quantum matter. But anyway, I want to bring this up because your your top physics seminar or
I'm not sure exactly what to call when you speak of natural units and you actually give it's like almost two and a half hours. You you give examples of physical phenomena using natural units. You know the whole idea of some physics. Right. The crash course on physics. The sequel H bar equal big G whatever equal one.
It is absolutely phenomenal. I think I watched that at least six or seven times. So if you get like a lot of viewership from one source IP, that's your boy right here. Oh yeah. What do you like about it? First of all, your
I mean, it shows that you have the correct pedigree in theoretical physics. Your knowledge of different phenomena, physical phenomena is amazing. And not only that, you're able to make it incredibly simple to understand, you know, for the layman, but also for the theoretical physicist. You bring on your new, again, new perspectives on all physics. I just love that phrase.
But you really have that capability. And not only that, but, uh, I mean, you make me want to come on top podcasts over and over whenever you want to have me. I'm, I'm, I'm there as long as that forbid, you know, somebody at the Navy doesn't realize that I'm doing this and slaps me down. Oh my God, you don't want to know. But anyway, so I'll just leave a day.
And yeah, your knowledge, that's why because in my opinion, you are a theoretical physicist doing podcasts, choosing to do that. You know, I mean, you have the ability, first of all, you have the ability to go in different sciences. For example, is it Carl Friston? I always get his name wrong, but I'm absolutely
I was amazed with your knowledge of neurophysiology, the whole idea of the free energy. Oh my God, I was incredibly impressed. From that moment on, I knew that you could take out almost any idea. And I said, if anybody would understand the so-called bicep effect or this idea of the super force, you would.
and you'd be able to say something at least that's now you're a crackpot, you're a charlatan, the crap that I usually get. So yeah, that's why I keep on coming on this podcast. I'll come on as long as you have me and my so-called leaders don't tell me to cut it out.
A lot of people say, how dare an engineer enter the realm of theoretical physics, where only the gods reside, you know, but sometimes, sometimes, sometimes a human being may aspire, you know, to reach Mount Olympus, only to be, you know, struck down by the gods, but still, not trying would be worse. Agree? I agree with that.
That's all. That's what the pice effect is all about. It's just it has promise. The only problem is nobody's willing to try it experimentally, sir, because they all think I'm a crackpot, crank, charlatan, whatever. They would rather bring about at home in them. Sorry about this. They would rather, you know, instead of challenging my equation, say, look, equation five and six in these in his paper on plasma, blah, blah, is wrong.
You see what I'm saying? They're now willing to engage me in a discourse like you are now, which God bless you, sir. Thank you for doing this. But immediately at home and I'm attacked and boom, this effect is nonsense.
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So, either in accelerated spin or accelerated vibration,
undergoing rapid acceleration transients. So again, your acceleration is really a function of time can bring about high energy electromagnetic fluxes. So basically energy transfer over surface area. So this thing can be used either close to the electrical charge or could be something that somehow
The whole thing is that the electromagnetic effects usually, they decline as one divided by D squared. So away from the source, like 10 meters away, this thing is already one divided by 100 weaker. But close to the subject, it could be very high, which could talk to the Schwinger limit. Because what's the Schwinger limit trying to do? Vacuum.
Well, I mean, so basically there's something, I mean, definitely, I mean, according to Maxwell's equations, you can have, I mean, accelerate charges, right? Is there something like that going on? There's some collective
Either in spin or in vibration, when you accelerate them. So for example, when you pulse a current through a wire, you're really accelerating the electrons through that wire. So high electromagnetic energy fluxes could come into play. Or when you spin a charge in an accelerated manner,
Right. And you start actually changing the rate of acceleration by, for example, decelerating a little bit and then accelerating at a higher pace, you can have very high energy fluxes. It actually, it makes sense, really, if you know Maxwell's equation. No, I mean, what you're saying, you can set up a, at the very least, I mean, at the level of a theory, a situation where Maxwell's equation
gives you high electric flux from acceleration. Is that the idea? You need nothing beyond Maxwell equations to do this? Again, it's coupled with the idea of the harmonic oscillator.
because that's how these, okay, because if you, if you don't couple it with the idea of, um, of Maxwell's, um, of the harmonic oscillator, why would you just create radiation? I mean, normally when you accelerate things, I mean, this one solution is that you'll the electric and magnetic field coupled to each other and then you get radiation. All right. So how do you contain this flux and, and, and, and sort of having it radiated exactly.
The Schwinger effect is a quantum effect though, right? Or is it something else?
You could say it's a macroscopic quantum phenomena. If you really think of the Schwinger limit, it's really macro because he's speaking, even though he's thinking of the QED vacuum breakdown, think what that means. I mean, really, when these electron positron pairs, when this Dirac sea is being formed, and you well know the Dirac, what that does, what that tells me that space time itself is being torn apart.
I have this feeling that this is what this effect is equivalent to. It's like the space-time fabric being torn apart leads and the Schwinger effect is actually would do that because it will bring to a breakdown. I think the reason Stefan's asking, correct me if I'm incorrect, is because you said that the Maxwell equations are all that's required for the Pius effect and he was asking, well, what about
What I'm trying to say is that the harmonic oscillator coupled with the simple Oliver Heaviside version of Maxwell's equation yields the so-called Pais effect. But the Pais effect is really a macroscopic quantum phenomenon. Just like, for example, remember how the London boys, the London brothers
created the London equations and came up with the macros, that superconductivity was a macroscopic quantum phenomena. What I'm saying, this also happens on a quantum level. It's, it's, it's not just classical. Yeah. Okay. Well, we got to get going soon. So Stefan, why don't you just give your brief thoughts on that and then I'll give an outro.
No, I am, listen, this is news to me and I'm very interested in looking at those, looking at those equations, you know, because, you know, so go ahead and send it along. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely, sir. You'll get everything I got on the so-called pie. Is this a, is this a pattern of yours? Oh my God. It's got a lot of patterns. I've been, I've been in the, yeah, it, it got picked up by certain papers and then it,
the
you know and no no mainstream physicists will touch you with a ten foot ten foot pole because it's associated with freaking UFOs in my book you know in my in a book I recently I talked about you know how we as human beings we always you know we want to run away or don't run away from stigma right and like you give something a label like crack pot or you what have you or you know
or in my case, you know, whatever, you know, um, people try to keep away from that. And that's, you know, it's an unfortunate feature of being a human being and living and, you know, being social creatures that we are, including those of us that like to pretend that we're above that. But, you know, it's, um, it's, um, you know, unfortunate that people want to, you know, attach things like that.
You know, look, Faraday, when Faraday came up with this idea of invisible lines of force, I mean, you know, maybe the word crackpot didn't exist, but I think word like idiot and things like that happened, he turned out, well, in that case, he turned out to be correct that every, you know, the field paradigm is the paradigm underlying nature. So, you know, that's just my response about the whole
Speaking about mass, there's so much mental inertia I have.
To construct a sentence is extremely difficult until remember where the sentence began and where I'm going. It takes a terrible amount of effort. I appreciate you all dealing with me through that. Okay, and also for everyone who is interested in Stefan's ideas and Sal's ideas, Sal, you have a podcast on theories of everything, which I'll link to and Stefan, you also have a podcast on theories of everything as well as two books. So Fear of a Black Universe and The Jazz of Physics.
Those will be linked in the description. And Stefan, at some point, I would like to do a one-on-one with you. We'll talk about your generalization of the Hawking-Hartle wave function. And you mentioned that you're working on some electroweak unification right now. Yes. I assume those are different. Yeah, the different might be related.
So we can talk about that. And for the people who liked when Stefan pulled out his computer and wrote some equations, we can have more of that. Something that people surprisingly appreciate is the fact that theories of everything can get technical rather than just speaking in generalities and popular science adages. So I look forward to speaking with you again, Stefan, one on one as well. And same with you, Sal, when we have a one on one, maybe even in person. Oh, that'd be awesome. Oh, my goodness. You know,
You know what would be great if the three of us would get together in person and just talk about all. I bet you I know certain things about Ducat Avenue that you'd love to remember, sir. I'm just saying, you know.
You forgot to play the saxophone. Oh, yes. Stefan, do you want to play the saxophone? Oh, come on. Is there something quick you can play that's like a minute long? Come on. Please. Let's see. Let's see what I can pull. Pull. Yeah. I love this. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know because I don't know how it works.
I love that.
Nice. I have no idea what I was doing there.
The podcast is now finished. If you'd like to support conversations like this, then do consider going to theories of everything.org. It's support from the patrons and from the sponsors that allow me to do this full time. Every dollar helps tremendously. Thank you.
▶ View Full JSON Data (Word-Level Timestamps)
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"text": " The Economist covers math, physics, philosophy, and AI in a manner that shows how different countries perceive developments and how they impact markets. They recently published a piece on China's new neutrino detector. They cover extending life via mitochondrial transplants, creating an entirely new field of medicine. But it's also not just science they analyze."
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"text": " A KFC tale in the pursuit of flavor. The holidays were tricky for the Colonel. He loved people, but he also loved peace and quiet. So he cooked up KFC's 499 Chicken Pot Pie. Warm, flaky, with savory sauce and vegetables. It's a tender chicken-filled excuse to get some time to yourself and step away from decking the halls. Whatever that means. The Colonel lived so we could chicken. KFC's Chicken Pot Pie. The best 499 you'll spend this season."
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"text": " Stefan Alexander is a theoretical physicist and a professor at Brown University. Salvatore Pius is an engineer, formerly at the US Space Force, and currently working for the US Navy. Seldomly do those in academia listen to those who are from the outside, and even more rarely do they do so with such compassion and mutual respect that both Stefan and Sal show to one another."
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"text": " This is a first of its kind conversation on toe that's meant to exemplify what occurs behind closed doors but in front of a public audience like yourself. This is the second time the Salvatore Pius has ever conducted an interview, the first time also being on toe and the link to that will be in the description. Sal is an elusive fellow. Stefan Alexander has also appeared on toe and the link to that is in the description. There we talk about string theory and another proposal for a theory of everything called the autodidactic universe."
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"text": " During this conversation with Sal and Stefan, I was struck, I still am struck with COVID. So it was extremely difficult for me to parse words together cognitively. However, just like usual toe episodes, we still retain a level of high technicality. This episode premiered ad free on theories of everything.org before you're seeing it here. And that's one of the benefits of being a toe member. So if you'd like to donate to toe to support toe, then visit theories of everything.org and you'll gain access to several benefits."
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"text": " Now on to today's sponsor. If you're familiar with toll, you're familiar with brilliance. But for those who don't know, brilliance is a place where you go to learn math, science and engineering through these bite sized interactive learning experiences. For example, and I keep saying this, I would like to do a podcast on information theory."
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"text": " particularly Chiara Marletto, which is David Deutsch's student, has a theory of everything that she puts forward called constructor theory, which is heavily contingent on information theory. So I took their course on random variable distributions and knowledge and uncertainty."
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"text": " In order"
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"text": " It would be unnatural to define it in any other manner. Visit brilliant.org slash TOE, that is T-O-E, to get 20% off the annual subscription, and I recommend that you don't stop before four lessons. I think you'll be greatly surprised at the ease at which you can now comprehend subjects you previously had a difficult time grokking. At some point, I'll also go through the courses and give a recommendation in order. Thank you, and keep in mind that Salvatore Pius and Stefan Alexander will both come on separately for one-on-ones,"
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"text": " What do each of you see as the main issues with either quantizing gravity or gravitating the quantum? Well, it depends on the perspective you take. General relativity"
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"text": " Einstein field of general relativity is based on the principle of background dependence or diffeomorphism invariance that coordinate labels are fictitious. I mean, they are not physical, right? You can always define physics in a completely different coordinate system and physics should be the same. And quantum mechanics, you know, in its"
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"text": " Formulation, at least in quantum field theory, the structure of quantum field theory, for example, if you talk about, you know, unifying quantum mechanics with special relativity, you still are doing physics in some given frame. And, you know, making sort of combining, there's a tension now, right? Because how do you define quantum mechanics in a background independent way?"
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"text": " There have been attempts to do that. I'm happy to talk about those attempts. And, you know, they've seen some success, but there's also problems. The main problem, of course, for me as a just a physicist that pays a lot of attention to observations is that it's difficult to explain"
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"text": " So some of these theories are said to be unphysical, and I can get back to that about what that means, what unphysical means. They're fraught with certain conceptual and technical problems, these background independent formulations of quantum gravity. And then you have things like string theory, which is a successful, perturbative way of combining some aspects of general relativity with quantum mechanics."
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"text": " But again, I have worked on string theory. I've worked on string theory mainly at the level of string phenomenology or string cosmology. And it provides a good toolbox, but also string theory itself has its own issues and unresolved problems. And that's why it's still an active field of research. So that's my little summary about why quantum gravity is so hard to"
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"text": " So we currently don't have a consensus in terms of, you know, physicists, we don't have a consensus about a theory of quantum gravity. So if we don't have a consensus, then we don't really have a theory of quantum gravity. Actually, Professor Alexander, I agree with every, every syllable you've added. It makes a lot of sense. Yes. Think of it"
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"text": " Possibly, possibly, just to add a little maybe from ignorance or lack of knowledge deep within physical theory. But what if it's not just about quantizing the gravitational field or geometrizing the quantum as Dr. Weinstein, Eric Weinstein says, what if it's about something else as well? What if there is"
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"text": " a super force, a force of unification that somehow combines all four forces, given that the force of gravity is acceptable as a force and not just a space-time curvature and so forth. And this super force could be, for example, Isaac Newton, let's go back to way before, all right, circa 1693 AD."
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"text": " Thank goodness for that. 1693, he writes a letter to one of his buddies, Richard, I think Sir Richard Bentley. He says, what if gravity is the result of an agent, big A, capital A, that acts constantly throughout the universe in accordance to given laws of nature? And my question is, what if"
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"text": " Now, Professor Abhay Ashtekar, which by the way, I think quantum bounds should be called Ashtekar bounds in the LQG and loop quantum gravity. And I think he's got something and we have to discuss this, this whole idea of the Ashtekar bounds or quantum bounds."
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"text": " Because there may be some sort of super force, super density resulting in a super bang. I know, I know. You see what happens when you agree to a conversation with... So let me interject if you don't mind. I want to frame this conversation. I know that I've said this to both of you. Stephane Alexander is a professor of theoretical physics at Brown University and holds many accolades."
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"text": " And I'll list those in the actual intro itself. And Salvatore Pius is an engineer working at the Navy slash US Space Force slash I know that you can't say exactly what your position is. But the point is that rarely do those in the academic circles listen to those who are outside of it."
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"text": " and especially when those who are on the outside feel like they have some grand idea because you generally get pitched them left right in the center when you're an academic and so it's difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff with Stefan what I like about you is that you take your cues from physics from jazz which is that if someone throws you an idea you"
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"text": " play with it and you throw it back to the person. You mentioned that this is how you work with your graduate students. So this is supposed to be or this is, this whole conversation is an example of what would ordinarily happen behind closed doors being brought to the public and so hopefully it's something that researchers can aspire to. So that's what frames this conversation, this respect that is seldom shown and compassion between let's say academia and those who are outside when they have large ideas, grand ideas, grand unification."
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"text": " Right. So on that note, on that note, so let me ask, let me respond to Sal. Sure. That's great. So first of all, Sal, please call me Stefan. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Yeah. And so, so I'm going to push back a little bit. I'm going to say, well, you push, I'm going to push back and agree with you. The first thing I'm going to agree with is that your idea of"
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"text": " Let's say the super force, meaning that that quantization of gravity can only happen with a unification scheme, where basically there's some force, let's call it your super force, some force, or something that underlies all the force of gravity, right, and the forces that quantum mechanics actually"
},
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"text": " you know, unifies itself. So quantum field theory was an example of a way of unifying the three interactions, the three, you know, the weak interaction, the strong interaction, and the electromagnetic interaction. At least, I mean, quantum field theory is a language at least, okay, you know, quantum field theory and gauge invariance."
},
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"end_time": 733.985,
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"text": " is a language or the technology, the conceptual mathematical technology that underlies those three forces and the super force, this unification of gravity with these other three forces. This was actually the program of string theory."
},
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"end_time": 761.613,
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"text": " String theory and its parent, you know, when some people call, I think I find this, its parent theory actually very interesting, matrix theory, right? The idea that, you know, what even underlines the overarching framework that string theory comes from is a matrix quantum mechanics. So now I think what is interesting about what you're saying is that"
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"text": " There's one thing to say that forces, including gravity, are unified. But your perspective, what I'm hearing, your perspective is that you're calling that unification a super force. And therefore, I'm going to ask you, what is that force? Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much for this. Wow. Wow. Okay."
},
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"text": " First of all, I hope it's not computational biology. No. Oh, wow. We'd have to involve Dr. Wolfram, some other some other notables in it. Maybe, by the way, down the road, if you could discuss your idea of the rhythm universe, I'd really like to hear more. And I have a question for my 10 year old daughter for you."
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"text": " okay great great so just remind me okay but just to go back to the super force thank you very much for for engaging with me and it means a lot because you not only do do you have the right pedigree but do you you are extremely well known and extremely well liked in the community so god bless you for this sir thank you thank you thank you very much oh come on"
},
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"end_time": 863.046,
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"start_time": 836.032,
"text": " anybody that professor leon cooper would think highly of everybody else should think very anyway i mean he was the he is the god of superconductivity i mean the the other two i think have passed away bardeen and schrieffer but anyway may they rest in peace by the way the bcs theory is remarkable anyway so the super force is c to the fourth so it's like the speed of light to the fourth power divided by big g"
},
{
"end_time": 893.029,
"index": 35,
"start_time": 863.49,
"text": " Now, Professor Ashtekar is correct in saying it cannot be fundamental because it doesn't have the h bar in it. But if you think of it, it's really the Planck force. And how does the Planck force come about? It's the Planck energy, which is the Planck mass times c squared divided by the Planck length, which is what? g h bar divided by c cubed, the whole thing square root of."
},
{
"end_time": 920.333,
"index": 36,
"start_time": 893.746,
"text": " Yeah, but anyway, so if you do that, the H bar drops out. Now, what's really cool about this, the superforce being the Planck force talks directly to general relativity, because if you look at Einstein's field equations, which you very well know, I mean, I could do the whole thing with the Riemannian curvature times the spacetime metric, but let's call everything on the left hand side a"
},
{
"end_time": 945.64,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 920.691,
"text": " g sub mu nu asterisks because it's got the cosmological constant termination. Right exactly sir and equals what it's eight pi times big G divided by C to the fourth. You see when you do the dimensional analysis oh and that scalar that the eight pi"
},
{
"end_time": 971.442,
"index": 38,
"start_time": 946.049,
"text": " times big G divided by C to the fourth is multiplied by the stress energy momentum tensor, your T sub mu nu, right? But when you do the dimension, the scaling analysis on that, you realize that that one divided by L square goes as L divided by E times E divided by L cubed, which is the energy density"
},
{
"end_time": 997.688,
"index": 39,
"start_time": 971.886,
"text": " the T sub mu nu. So that scalar constant that acts in the Einstein field equations is representative of a force, and it's really representative of the Planck force. And you got to ask yourself, what's this Planck force, super force? Call it what you want. Call it the Alexander force. Who knows, maybe one day you'll be able to use it and prove with experimental data that this thing does exist."
},
{
"end_time": 1021.869,
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"start_time": 998.37,
"text": " I still do believe it exists at Planck scales. But anyway, let me not diverge. I'm just so enthusiastic that finally someone of your great aptitude is engaging that, you know, I'm a little bit. So I apologize if I seem too enthusiastic. But OK, so what I'm trying to say is that what is the Planck force doing?"
},
{
"end_time": 1041.51,
"index": 41,
"start_time": 1022.568,
"text": " in the Einstein field equations if it wasn't a bridge between the world of the very small quantum mechanics and the world of the very large general relativity. Okay, so I mean I think you know dimensional analysis is always a great"
},
{
"end_time": 1071.305,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1042.381,
"text": " a great path to take when we're trying to understand new things that the theory may not be saying. So scaling analysis and dimensional analysis is, I think, a great way to proceed. One question I have, of course, is that no matter what you do with the Einstein field equation, you can always, I mean, at the end of the day, and a good example just to walk"
},
{
"end_time": 1097.858,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 1072.022,
"text": " everyone through this. On the left hand side of the Einstein equation, we have the notion of curvature or let's say geometry is related or equated with energy momentum, matter and energy. So typically, I mean, when we at least bread and butter relativists and cosmologists that I am,"
},
{
"end_time": 1124.343,
"index": 44,
"start_time": 1099.172,
"text": " We tend to use fields of fluids to discuss that framework. So we have on the left hand side, we have the equivalent of a field, in this case, the dynamics of the gravitational field seen through the lens of curvature. And on the right hand side, we have basically fluids or fields, matter fields. And then, of course, we have"
},
{
"end_time": 1154.326,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1124.667,
"text": " matter or fields or fluids whatever right space time and basically there is a the system is non-linear and there's what we call back reaction um you know the matter can curve the geometry and the geometry the curve geometry makes a matter move and then that in turn that in turn like you know back reacts right so you have because system is non-linear how what all right now i can choose to put vacuum energy or the cosmological constant on the right hand side"
},
{
"end_time": 1180.145,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1154.77,
"text": " right? And it appears to behave like a form of matter, or I could put it on the left hand side, right? And that actually ends up becoming something that looks like the radius of curve, the radius of the set of space, right? So basically, if I have a positive cosmological constant, I have an, you know, I have a curve space, and that's the set of space. Now, so"
},
{
"end_time": 1208.831,
"index": 47,
"start_time": 1180.93,
"text": " If I get rid of all of my, if I work in complete vacuum and I can choose that, I can choose to work in complete vacuum with a cosmological term, right? Is it not the case that this, what you call the super force is something that couples to this vacuum energy? With TD Early Pay, you get your paycheck up to two business days early, which means you can grab last second movie tickets. In 5D Premium Ultra,"
},
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"text": " With popcorn. Extra large popcorn. TD Early Pay. Get your paycheck automatically deposited up to two business days early for free. That's how TD makes Payday unexpectedly human."
},
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"text": " I see what you're saying. I mean, there's nothing, unless you're adding, unless you are adding something else to the Einstein field equation, that's what you have to work with. Now you can, you could do that. You could modify Einstein's theory. There are ways to do this. So are you asking to, are you, are you modifying, um, general relativity or are you repackage it in a way to say that the, you know, some Planckian scale vacuum energy is what you call on the superimposed. That's my question."
},
{
"end_time": 1285.401,
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"text": " basically the right hand side drops to zero with your superforce and what you're left with is a vacuum solution but what I'm saying is don't do that because it's like choosing natural units if you choose natural units you know the whole idea of c equal h bar equal big g equal one you get rid of the superforce to begin with but you're still left with a beauty"
},
{
"end_time": 1307.398,
"index": 51,
"start_time": 1285.657,
"text": " of Einstein's field equations, namely space-time curvature geometry, is mass energy, which is exactly what it couples to. So the physics is still there, but you've given, you've taken away some of the physics that's inherent to the strength, to the, what's the word I'm looking for, to the power of the Einstein equations."
},
{
"end_time": 1332.807,
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"start_time": 1307.944,
"text": " And the beauty of the Einstein equations is that they can be reformulated. If you leave the C to the fourth divided by big G in there, if you leave the superforce term in there, it takes a whole different nuance because it basically says on a quantum scale, it's possible that if you think of the left-hand side as a spatial temporal geometrical structure,"
},
{
"end_time": 1356.988,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1334.804,
"text": " then what it says, it's the super force acting on the spatial temporal geometrical structure that gives rise to matter, to energy density. That's a whole different look, a whole different understanding of what GR has been telling us. It's a new perspective on old physics."
},
{
"end_time": 1386.288,
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"start_time": 1357.705,
"text": " Not new physics. I cannot stand when people use the idea of new physics. What if it's just a new perspective on old physics? Nothing wrong with old physics. Old physics is like good wine, you know? You leave it, it matures. It tastes even better. Yeah, but if I'm, you know, if I work in natural units, I mean, I can always feel free to choose what units I want and I should, you know, I should see the same physics, right?"
},
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"end_time": 1411.135,
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"start_time": 1386.766,
"text": " Agreed, which that's why, how should I say, the only problem that I see with that is that once you choose to work with natural units, not only do you discard the physics of the super force, it's no longer there, but you actually discard dimensional scaling analysis. It's no longer dimensionally correct."
},
{
"end_time": 1440.06,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1411.92,
"text": " Because then it says 1 divided by L squared goes as E divided by L cubed. Where is the equivalence in that? Do you see what I mean? When you use natural units and get rid of that scalar, all of a sudden it doesn't make dimensional sense anymore. And I understand from a dimensions point of view, maybe dimension shouldn't matter anyway. But when you translate"
},
{
"end_time": 1463.319,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1440.811,
"text": " Those dimensions, one divided by L squared as being your space-time curvature, so that's your left-hand side, and goes as E divided by L cubed. Whoa! It's basically saying, yes, space-time geometry is like an energy density. Yeah, I understand. But from a dimensional perspective, it's no longer there."
},
{
"end_time": 1489.906,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1463.968,
"text": " It is no longer there. How can one divided by L squared be as E divided by L cubed when E is really your MC squared? There's something not right when you use natural units and drop out the superforce. I understand what you mean overall physically that- Well, in that case, E is just M, right? In those units, E is just M, right? Fine. That's not C squared. Fine."
},
{
"end_time": 1518.677,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1490.145,
"text": " But even then, one divided by L squared goes to M divided by L cubed, even from, you see what I'm saying? Even from, I mean, how, okay, say you keep the M, it's still divided by, are you saying that a mass divided by a volume goes as one divided by L squared? Are you saying that an, how should I say a mass density? What's right? Because that's what M divided by L cubed."
},
{
"end_time": 1547.329,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1518.968,
"text": " A mass density goes as really one divided by surface area. You see what I'm saying? It no longer makes physical sense at that point. Once you use the natural units and get rid of the super force term, the C4 divided by big G. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Well, I'll have to, you know, for me, I'll have to see, I mean, I have to like, I have to see, you know, would you look at some paper I come up with? Sure."
},
{
"end_time": 1571.357,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1547.961,
"text": " I think that that's fair. That means a lot. That means a lot. And I would really love to stay in touch with you, not only because we're New York City boys. We basically, you know, I went to Brooklyn Technical High School and you knew DeKalb Avenue, J Street, like the back of your hand. I remember you spoke of a Dr. Kaplan. I think I once met him."
},
{
"end_time": 1597.585,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1571.732,
"text": " because he was a good friend of Dr. Arthur Dorsen from Brooklyn Tech and also Mr. Lawrence Zimmerman. Those are my, you know, they're the ones that brought me up. Yeah, yeah. You're what we call a homeboy. Yeah. But I think you and I had to have a lot of in our origins, in our background, the way we grew up and, you know, New York City guys,"
},
{
"end_time": 1626.391,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1597.875,
"text": " a lot of people thought yeah at least a lot of people thought out amount to not yeah you know what i mean and i mean look at you what what you achieved so hey you know i did i did something i did something wrong all right so let's let's take this further down so just you know what is um let's see so you talked about um ashtek or you know i'm actually abai is a a great mentor of mine"
},
{
"end_time": 1654.787,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1626.766,
"text": " And he was very, very kind to me. So when I was when nobody else wanted to hire me, he was the one that was behind my first faculty job at Penn State. And my office was next to his for a number of years. And I learned quite a bit from the from Abhay Ashtekar. He is a genius. And so and I took I took some time to learn some not all because it's very tough."
},
{
"end_time": 1684.206,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1655.162,
"text": " technical stuff, loop quantum gravity. I even tried to, you know, develop some ideas around the Ashtekar variables. So it's something that I'm always, you know, an admirer of. You know, I do have some problems with the loop quantum gravity program and, you know, I consider Lee Smolin to be a good friend."
},
{
"end_time": 1711.049,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1684.684,
"text": " You know the minute when you are talking about this this bounce That happens in say loop quantum cosmology. Yes, sir There is a sense in which like there is you know, I once heard Ashtakar given analogy somehow when we think about since it is a quantum theory and geometries quantize then"
},
{
"end_time": 1733.677,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1711.51,
"text": " The idea was that perhaps the quantum reason behind the bounce is that as space-time, you know, if you think about the sort of the structure of space-time being cellular or discrete, it is that you get to some region and there is some repulsive"
},
{
"end_time": 1748.592,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1734.684,
"text": " quantum forces. So is that the thing you're kind of pointing to? Yes, I'm saying exactly that the super force resides at the Ashtakar bounds. It is the super force that acts repulsively"
},
{
"end_time": 1778.643,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1748.831,
"text": " at super density condition and what super density really density at Planck scale. So if you're, you know, speed of light to the fifth power, the whole thing divided by the denominator is like a big G square H bar. Your H bar is your reduced Planck constant. And that's how H bar comes in. Because Professor Ashtekar, when he heard of my formula for the super force, he was like, but it's not quantum in nature, it can be fundamental, but it talks to a super density."
},
{
"end_time": 1802.449,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1779.36,
"text": " And the beauty of it is because it doesn't have the H bar that it couples with the Einstein equations as you and I have been conversing. You and I can discuss this more because I see, you know, I see your point very well as well. So, but what I'm saying is, what if the super force is what makes the Ashtakar bounce happen? When you say that the super force resides at the Ashtakar bounce,"
},
{
"end_time": 1824.906,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1802.756,
"text": " Do you mean to say that the super force comes into play at the level when the Ashtakar bounce becomes relevant or the super force is the Ashtakar bounce? No, no, no, no. The Ashtakar bounce is this quantum bounce that that Professor Alexander was speaking of that basically can be used instead of inflation theory and so forth. But anyway, look,"
},
{
"end_time": 1854.787,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1825.367,
"text": " What I'm trying to say, let me focus on the thoughts because this is important. Let me give the analogy of a supernova explosion. The way it does, the way, for example, anything by the type 1A supernova, this would apply to. The mechanism is basically that of a core collapse that leads to something called core bounds."
},
{
"end_time": 1870.606,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1855.213,
"text": " And it happens at very high densities on the order of like 2.4 times 10 to the 14 grams per centimeter cube. At those extremely high densities, this core bounds occurs because of the what?"
},
{
"end_time": 1900.555,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 1871.015,
"text": " the strong nuclear force comes into being. And this thing, it's what leads to the extremely violent expulsion of the outer core of the star. So I'm saying I'm taking something that's extremely small and analogizing it with something that happens in a supernova mechanism. But it's almost the same idea. The core bounce really happens in this case because of the extremely high density, which brings in the strong nuclear force."
},
{
"end_time": 1910.23,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 1900.828,
"text": " And I'm seeing at the quantum bounds. It's not the strong nuclear force. It's the super force that acts. And what's really interesting and"
},
{
"end_time": 1935.657,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 1910.759,
"text": " I hope to prove this to Professor Alexander one day. I really hope you, sir, I really hope you take the time to read the paper that I have in mind. I wish I had the pedigree of a physicist, so maybe you're able to, I mean, and I'll try in that paper to make much stronger mathematical arguments as to what I'm saying. But from a physical mechanism point of view, just think of the analogy"
},
{
"end_time": 1962.398,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 1935.657,
"text": " of a core bounce that happens upon the core collapse of a supernova explosion that's exactly what i'm talking about but on a quantum level you see what i'm saying so so basically some some repulsive force that um uh prohibits further contraction so that does also means that black that black holes um no space time singularities exist yes sir okay no yeah so i mean"
},
{
"end_time": 1991.049,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 1963.097,
"text": " Again, what I am sympathetic to here is that, for me, physics is also about ideas. Now, the way ideas are mathematically implemented and what theoretical framework is also obviously very important because the name of the game is to sort of push the structure. So identify where the theory breaks down, replace it with a good idea, and then hopefully that idea leads to a new structure"
},
{
"end_time": 2020.486,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 1991.476,
"text": " that under the right approximation gives you back actually the old theory. So in this case, we have in the Einstein equations, we have situations including the quantum cosmology. We do have a framework to talk about such repulsive forces that do prohibit bounces in general. However, they are fraught"
},
{
"end_time": 2047.022,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2021.067,
"text": " with you always run into some issue with these types of forces. And I'm happy if Kurt allows me to share the screen to kind of maybe show a diagram of what that could look like, where those problems will lie. So maybe something that Sal could think about. Okay, you should have sharing capabilities. Right. So on the"
},
{
"end_time": 2078.592,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2048.763,
"text": " y-axis so what we have here is um what do we have under y-axis yeah so what we have on the um what we have on the x-axis is time and what we have in a y-axis is you know right now this i'm going to put this i'm going to put the einstein field equations in the context of an expanding universe"
},
{
"end_time": 2104.07,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2078.899,
"text": " Okay. Yep. So, so what we have is the expansion parameter, which is a the scale factor. So if you know, we have a little cartoon picture of our universe is that this scale factor a right, which determines scales in my theories, like spatial scales, right, as a function of time."
},
{
"end_time": 2128.404,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2104.957,
"text": " This thing, the scale factor expand, it basically grows in time. And this is to say that the universe of scales are expanding and the universe is expanding. So we have A as a function of time. And the prediction of our standard cosmology is that if you fill our universe, the universe is filled with radiation and matter,"
},
{
"end_time": 2145.555,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2128.797,
"text": " That's going to make the universe expand and then the radiation matter will dilute. Because of the expansion, the density"
},
{
"end_time": 2165.555,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2146.015,
"text": " Right. Like the energy density and the matter density will basically its amplitude will decrease as the universe expands and that makes some good into intuitive thing. The volume is expanding. Therefore, the density will actually decrease. So"
},
{
"end_time": 2195.299,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2166.271,
"text": " um the density being the amount of energy or matter divided by the volume so the volume is expanding is growing then that that quantity is decreasing um provided that you have um conservation of matter and energy is the rate of expansion a like a dot divided by a are we talking about very good expansion that's that's right so okay thank you very so the a dot over a is exactly as you said"
},
{
"end_time": 2217.739,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2195.657,
"text": " is the Hubble parameter. And what the beautiful thing about the Freeman equation is that the Einstein field equation, as you said, g mu nu is equal and I'm now going to use my natural units. I'm calling this kappa"
},
{
"end_time": 2244.019,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2218.353,
"text": " Right, that's that that includes my plan, you know, G nu in a pi a pi Q, times T mu. Right. And that's my energy momentum. Now, this, these 10 differential equations collapse into two, one, I'll just write the one that matters here, because I want to talk about the bounce now. This becomes on the left hand side,"
},
{
"end_time": 2273.899,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2244.65,
"text": " The only degree of freedom in the gravitational field is a scale factor because of the homogeneity and isotropy and so we get an equation as you've seen before which said that the Hubble parameter square which is like a dot over a square so a is like a velocity right so the velocity of the of the expansion rate which is related to h square right I'm just going to put this proportional because I'm using my mouse to draw this equation"
},
{
"end_time": 2304.377,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2274.548,
"text": " to the energy density contained in the universe so this is the total energy density of matter and radiation everything is contained here now if i plot now the solution of the of a all right what we see is basically the following um as a function of time as we go let's say we start at t is equal to zero right we get that this thinks the scale factor grows"
},
{
"end_time": 2331.067,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2304.77,
"text": " um as you know some power um a power of time so to the one-third t to the two-thirds but it basically it's not me right yeah it grows exactly right all right and what you find is that actually at t is equal to zero or when you go to t is equal to a goes to zero right oh it goes to zero now look at that"
},
{
"end_time": 2361.408,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2331.527,
"text": " and a goes to zero notice that when it goes to zero h goes to infinity yeah and h is basically what we call you know is related to the curvature it's a dynamics you know it's related to the to g right so effectively you know the curvature right um this einstein tensor you know since this is the only degree of freedom so what happens is that this is what we call a singularity right right right right right so that's a singularity and um"
},
{
"end_time": 2389.735,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2361.681,
"text": " it's basically when a when the scale factor goes to zero the curvature blows up the curvature invariance actually um what we sometimes call a crutchman scalar um that actually that's an invariant quantity that goes infinity all right so now that's just a little kind of quick you know except so we're both on the same page yes sir but one way you can get around this though and people have played with this idea including myself is that you have your"
},
{
"end_time": 2419.633,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2389.838,
"text": " total matter and all the stuff all right and then you again this is imagine you have a theory that that that says close to the singularity right there's some extra some extra um in fact i'm just going to put s subscript s for something right okay and"
},
{
"end_time": 2441.067,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2419.821,
"text": " and the idea is that you know as t goes to some critical time close to the big bang but not quite a t is equal to zero t critical this kind of this um the total matter and this conspires to cancel out cancel each other out because this minus sign right can cancel"
},
{
"end_time": 2471.305,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2441.493,
"text": " This total, you know, you're the, um, the ordinary matter and energy in our universe. And what happens is that H goes to zero and not infinity. And so what does that picture look like? That picture looks like this on the, this is the expansion side. This is a positive branch and my negative time. And what you find is, um, what something like that would look like is the universe contracts avoids. This is H, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 2499.667,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2471.852,
"text": " um goes through zero and expands back out and we call this a bounce right yeah so it doesn't it avoids it bounces um it bounces in a sense that it doesn't it doesn't it goes to some a it doesn't a never gets it's never allowed because of that to go to zero it goes to some critical a that's really tiny as you very very tiny scale not zero yeah in fact"
},
{
"end_time": 2525.23,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2500.043,
"text": " In loop quantum cosmology, that is the Planck scale. And in loop quantum cosmology, this thing does emerge from loop quantum cosmology. And that's, I think, one of the nice features of that program. Now, there are other problems with loop quantum cosmology that at this point,"
},
{
"end_time": 2545.299,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2525.503,
"text": " They keep on bringing this lack of fermionic matter that it doesn't lead to. What's the story with the lack of fermionic matter? The whole idea is that, and this is something that was brought up several times, but also Michio Kaku keeps on saying, for example, that"
},
{
"end_time": 2571.852,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2545.623,
"text": " LQG leads to lack of fermions. It basically doesn't show fermions. I don't see it either. I mean, for God's sake, this comes from the guy with the God equation. Anyway, I'm not going to go there. But anyway, I don't see his point. I mean, I think Dr. Weinstein has some ideas"
},
{
"end_time": 2600.333,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2572.073,
"text": " with this geometric unity with, you know, with making LQG yield, you know, because he talks about these family, like family of three fermionic families, something of that nature. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I guess maybe what Michio Kaku is probably talking about is how to formulate fermions, because in loop quantum gravity, you're using these gravitational Wilson loops."
},
{
"end_time": 2617.91,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2601.032,
"text": " Typically, that idea actually in loop quantum gravity came directly from Ken Wilson, the Nobel laureate who invented lattice gauge theory. And so the idea is that since loop quantum gravity, by using the Ashteko variables,"
},
{
"end_time": 2647.705,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2618.763,
"text": " By using the astric variables, you can write reformulate general relativity to resemble a gauge theory. Then you can use Wilson loops, which is a gauge theoretic. It's quite a beautiful idea. You can carry over the Wilson loop idea. But the problem here is that when you do Wilson loop ideas, there are the so-called fermion doubling problems. There are these issues that are not too well versed. I'm aware of them and I am aware that there are ways"
},
{
"end_time": 2670.623,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2648.114,
"text": " around that. And I do know that this is an open ended question or research question in the quantum gravity to be able to, to be able to, um, and that's why research exists, right? So that people could, and that's why categorical statements, right? They shouldn't make categorical statements like LQG makes no sense because it doesn't, you know, for Miami man."
},
{
"end_time": 2696.852,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2670.981,
"text": " That's you see what I'm saying. It's there's no we should try to see how to enhance one another's theories rather than put each other down. I agree with that. Yeah, when we can try we can try to learn from each other. Yes, sir. Absolutely. You know, as you know, in fact, Leon Cooper once told me when I was a graduate student of his, we would"
},
{
"end_time": 2726.254,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2697.79,
"text": " You'd always have somebody in the room who was always trying to overstate or put somebody else down or speak over somebody in the group. And usually that would happen when we might be stuck on something, let's say. And then Leon would say,"
},
{
"end_time": 2748.729,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2726.92,
"text": " Albert Einstein told me that if we knew what we were talking about, we wouldn't call it research. Right. And I'm just like, well, okay, there it goes. From the Grandmaster himself. Right. Right. Right. Oh, Kurt, would you like to say something, sir?"
},
{
"end_time": 2774.445,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2749.701,
"text": " Yeah, Stefan, when you showed the row sub s, you said at the time you didn't know what it was, you just gave it a label s. What is it? Do you recall what that specific variable is called? And also, is that just positive or is that somehow derived from loop? Okay, well, if you that's right. So that's good. Yeah, thanks. So what I just gave you was a was a general framework for how you might want to avoid"
},
{
"end_time": 2802.551,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2774.804,
"text": " know, approaching a curvature singularity, which is exactly what a black hole will have and what the Friedman walker, the Friedman equations of general relativity will have for an expanding universe. And the way that that can get implemented is now theory dependent. So for example, I've worked on some of these ideas and what I, me and my collaborators, so first of all, let's back up."
},
{
"end_time": 2825.623,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2803.148,
"text": " If you look on the right hand side, you have Rho S and there's a minus sign. And whenever you have a negative energy state, that's basically like having a negative energy state, right? And if you allow a negative energy state to propagate, then there's a big worry because those degrees of things are usually called ghosts."
},
{
"end_time": 2855.128,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2826.374,
"text": " When you have negative energy states that are propagating so it goes usually something that will have you have a negative kinetic energy so and you know Whenever so Paul the rock actually, you know You know and and it stuckelberg and Feynman actually, right? they saw these negative energy states in the Klein-Gordon equation of quantum field theory and The way around that was to reinterpret that negative energy state as an antiparticle moving backwards in time"
},
{
"end_time": 2884.377,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 2855.674,
"text": " Right. So you said, okay, I accept that those things are, but it's real. What that negative energy state really is a positive energy state, right? That's an antiparticle moving backwards in time, right? So that's one way out of it. You reinterpret. Another way out of it is, you know, you identify, you can identify if it's a fermion, right? It does, you do occupy these negative energy states like the de Roxy, right? And then the exclusion principle"
},
{
"end_time": 2913.831,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 2884.821,
"text": " you know, will prevent, you know, the sea from collapsing. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, um, but you do have to confront with your theory why you would have this negative energy state that's bounded from below. And my, the ideas that I worked on with my, you know, my students and colleagues, um, was that what contributes our negative energy state is a bound state of fermions, right? And so bound states, and if it's fermionic, right,"
},
{
"end_time": 2930.247,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 2914.906,
"text": " Could be innate, you know, but so in quantum mechanics, you know, bound states are negative energy states. So, you know, right, right. The, the, the, the, the energy, the ground, the ground state energy of"
},
{
"end_time": 2953.2,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 2930.776,
"text": " of hydrogen is minus 13.6 electron volts. There's a minus sign there, right? So negative energy states do exist in quantum mechanics, and those states are bound states. So bound states are negative energy states, right? So that's kind of the game we played. And so we're able to get a bounce by having fermionic bound states, actually like a Cooper pair,"
},
{
"end_time": 2983.558,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 2953.814,
"text": " and but then you run into other problems if you do that because then you have to look you know if you do that you have you can study fluctuations and in cosmology we're not only interested in just the homogenous you know average expansion rate but we need to consider fluctuations to talk about structure and so you can ask if you turn on fluctuations do these negative energy states cause runaway solutions and that's an open-ended problem now in the ash to core formulation as kurt asked"
},
{
"end_time": 3008.353,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 2984.189,
"text": " This negative thing emerges naturally, right? And so for me, that's quite interesting because, you know, your Hamiltonian in Luke quantum cosmology is bounded. It's, I mean, the Ashtakar-Lerandowski measure, right? It's a rigorously defined inner product. And so, you know, you do have a well-defined Hamiltonian."
},
{
"end_time": 3035.418,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3009.019,
"text": " and so the fact that you know when you work in the in the FRW type of background from the quantum cosmology you get this minus sign it does seem to suggest that there is some kind of like quantum pressure or some kind of exclusion principle happening at the level of the space time right to kind of prevent like a super density okay like a super density so i think it's i think what you're saying is quite interesting"
},
{
"end_time": 3047.5,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3036.101,
"text": " But it'll be interesting to awaken that in a framework like loop quantum gravity."
},
{
"end_time": 3081.459,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3051.459,
"text": " If you think of it as a super density term, it's got the H bar in there. It's in the denominator. And then Professor Ashtekar's question, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 3110.043,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3081.459,
"text": " This may not be fundamental. Maybe talk to super density. Maybe what I call the super force really we use terminology here. You know what I'm saying? No, no, no. And I get super force sounds cooler. Yeah. I mean, truly, you know, like space for super force. Right. Right. Right. Right. Oh, I have a question for you. Before I forget my my my 10 year old, by the way, thinks, oh my God, thinks thinks is the coolest"
},
{
"end_time": 3139.991,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3110.845,
"text": " name of a book ever, The Jazz of Physics. I mean, oh yeah, she promised me that she was going to start, you know, reading it. You know, I mean, this is not for 10 year old, but this is a kid. I tell you, this kid, I think she gets all her neurons from her mother. I can't take credit. Actually, Steven Pinker gave me the title for my book. Really? The Jazz of Physics? Yeah, but you're also a musician, so it"
},
{
"end_time": 3169.94,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3140.179,
"text": " Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure you're still as far as I'm concerned. It's your book. It's your title. There you go. That is true. I do. I do play the saxophone. Yeah. I gotta hear that. Oh, man. We gotta hear this. We gotta hear this. I have it right here. Hey, hey, Kurt. Beautiful horn, huh? We should close this up with him playing. Oh my god. With Professor Alexander playing. That'd be super cool. Okay. Okay. Here comes the question. This is really before I forget it because she was like, daddy, you gotta ask her"
},
{
"end_time": 3197.568,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3170.333,
"text": " She called you, by the way, these kids, man, they, you know, the idea of respect, she called you Stefan. So please forgive her because she does, you know, who knows, maybe one day she'll be a student. So you better call your professor Alexander then. Okay. By the way, if Brown University would be unbelievable as an alma mater, but anyway. Okay."
},
{
"end_time": 3223.234,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3197.944,
"text": " Yeah, mine's Case Western Reserve University. The same as Professor Keating, so yeah. That's my buddy, yeah. That's right. Okay, now, okay, she's basically saying, ask him, in his opinion, what is the cause of gravity? And you'll see why she's asking this. What is the what? The force? The cause of gravity. What is the cause of gravity? I know."
},
{
"end_time": 3241.783,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3223.848,
"text": " This kid asked that, I tell you. That's a deep question. That's a deep question. I mean, because, you know, obviously, you have to give and, you know, what is the cause of gravity, right? You know, we'll say, well,"
},
{
"end_time": 3266.237,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3243.865,
"text": " matter and energy is a cause of gravity but then it becomes a chicken and egg so what's the cause of matter and energy then becomes a wheeler thing you know it from bit you know but anyway yeah yes we know with something else what answer do you give her let me let me she has this this this unusual way of thinking she"
},
{
"end_time": 3295.043,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3266.766,
"text": " I talked before, you know, of the Casimir force, you know, the whole thing, you know, it goes as one divided by the D4, you know, so the Casimir force becomes incredibly important, you know, to vacuum energy densities terms, you know, because of the, when those non-conductive metal plates, whatever, are brought together very, very small distances from one another, because of the one divided by D,"
},
{
"end_time": 3309.07,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3295.452,
"text": " to the fourth term."
},
{
"end_time": 3338.951,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3309.497,
"text": " Daddy, what if, because everything's connected, what if it's some sort of Casimir force on a macroscopic scale? This is a penial. She knows what the Casimir force is? What? Yeah. What, what if, what if gravity is due to Casimir forces on a macroscopic scale? I'm like, I, I can ask professor Alex that, that if that even makes sense. But anyway, yeah, that's what the, but anyway, yeah, I just bring it up. Yes, it's, yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 3362.108,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3339.343,
"text": " She's quite a kid, I tell you, she gets all her neurons from her mother. But anyway. Oh, Stefan, do you want to respond to that? And then I have a question. Well, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the statement. You'd think that you'd think that that that that thing will that force"
},
{
"end_time": 3388.695,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3362.927,
"text": " You know, we'd have to ask that question in the context of a cosmological space-time. Correct. Because, you know, because then you have a scale factor. So wouldn't it get redshifted by the scale factor? I mean, you have to like... Definitely. I mean, you know, 10 years old. But still, the whole idea to help came because I showed a video one time of two ships in the port."
},
{
"end_time": 3418.217,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3389.326,
"text": " was close to the port, so close to the coastline. And if you bring the ships together, these things have a tendency to attract one another. They're brought together. So now, like with naval ships, you got to be very careful not to bring them too much in proximity of one another or you'll have tremendous issues. So you see what I'm saying? We were talking about chasm forces and how these things are attractive. And somehow it became in her idea, like in her idea,"
},
{
"end_time": 3446.527,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3418.456,
"text": " just like the two plates, the two non-conductive metal plates that bring about the Casimir force are brought together because of pressures acting that are basically pushing the plates together. She thought what if this was a macroscopic quantum phenomena, you know, that somehow it translated because everything is connected"
},
{
"end_time": 3473.524,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3446.8,
"text": " And if you think from the point of view, what if everything was connected because of the existence of the super force, because it does exist at every point in space and time. But, you know, I'm saying super force because I like to think in terms of forces rather, maybe it's a super density, maybe the whole idea is analogous to the whole idea of a core balance in a supernova. You know, it comes about because of the strong nuclear force,"
},
{
"end_time": 3503.404,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3474.019,
"text": " The whole idea in the Ashtakar bounds, it comes about because of the existence of this super density, which would be on the, you know, on the order of a Planck density. Actually, Professor Ashtakar says on the order of 10 to the minus three times the Planck density. Yeah, it's hard to see how these microscopic things, quantum things, you know, I mean, unless you have some kind of phase coherence, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 3527.995,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3503.78,
"text": " like a macroscopic quantum state. Superconductivity is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon. It certainly is, it definitely is. That's how they were able to derive it from the London forces. The London equations brought on the whole idea of the London penetration depth."
},
{
"end_time": 3552.705,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3528.524,
"text": " It's the whole idea of the Meister effect. See, I'm constantly trying to get Ed Whitten to come on to theories of everything and he always responds to me but he says no. However, here's one way that he can come on. Why? Why? Why? Why does he say no? He's just so busy. One way to have him on is by just giving one of his statements and then I want to see what you, Stefan, have to say about it and then same with you, Sal."
},
{
"end_time": 3565.913,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3552.841,
"text": " String Theory is actually the only idea about quantum gravity with any substance."
},
{
"end_time": 3592.91,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3566.374,
"text": " One sign is that where critics have had interesting ideas, so non-commutative geometry, black hole entropy, twister theory, they have tended to be absorbed as a part of string theory. Another sign is the way that string theory has been successful in generating new insights about standard quantum field theory and even about geometry. Okay, so I'm curious to know, Stefan, what do you make of that? What would you say to Ed if he was here? What thoughts occurred to you? And then same with you, Sal. Yeah, I think that"
},
{
"end_time": 3621.237,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3593.695,
"text": " As a person that still publishes, I publish papers that use the framework of string theory to speak to cosmology, to speak to some issues of how particle physics overlaps with cosmology. In fact, I'm working on something right now that deals with electroweak unification."
},
{
"end_time": 3637.346,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3621.92,
"text": " from structures that come from string theory and how they may play out in theories like Cosmic Inflation. So I can't speak too much because I haven't put the paper out yet and I'm still fiddling with equations."
},
{
"end_time": 3660.06,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3638.541,
"text": " I'm putting that out there to say that I am a big fan of string theory. And I do think that it is, from my opinion, from where I sit, the most promising and pragmatic because it does give us a framework. It gives us technology so that a person like myself can actually formulate"
},
{
"end_time": 3688.916,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3660.538,
"text": " research problems in cosmology in my case, right, and how particle physics and cosmology speak to each other. However, I don't think that, you know, research at the forefront of other approaches to quantum gravity takes away actually from, you know, from string theory. I think that it's important that we"
},
{
"end_time": 3715.384,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3689.326,
"text": " research on all these fronts. So I know that there are some statements that, for example, string theory is the only game in town or string theory is the only formulation. I mean, we have things like causal dynamical triangulation, covariant formulations, non-perturbative formulations of quantum gravity,"
},
{
"end_time": 3740.794,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3715.981,
"text": " I was just visiting a colleague, Simon Catterall, at Syracuse who does Euclidean lattice quantum gravity and they're starting to get very interesting results that can get us back to the set of space in some semi-classical approximation that's, you know, non-perturbative. They're, again, open-ended issues there. So again, I think that, what's the word,"
},
{
"end_time": 3770.742,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3741.749,
"text": " The fact that string theory is, in my opinion, right now the most developed framework, with the most workers in that field, doesn't take away from that fact that there are other, I think, viable approaches in terms of research and quantum gravity, and they're certainly out there. And they have their problems. But that's why, as Leon Cooper said, if we knew what we were talking about, we wouldn't call it research. Euclidean lattice what?"
},
{
"end_time": 3790.043,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 3771.664,
"text": " Quantum graphing. So this is very similar to what, you know, Ken Wilson, when you do lattice gauge theory, you formulate, you use Wilson loops, and you work on a lattice, so you discretize spacetime."
},
{
"end_time": 3820.452,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 3790.708,
"text": " and then you euclideanize and you work on a computer and you basically solve the partition function non-perturbatively and then of course you take a continuum limit and you show that you get back and you wick rotate back and you get back QCD so the hope here is that you can do the same thing for gravity and so that's what those guys work on are there non-perturbative approaches to string theory? yes"
},
{
"end_time": 3843.046,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 3821.374,
"text": " So the two I know about is matrix theory, the so-called BFSS matrix model by Banks, Fischler, Schenker and Susskind and then of course it's the IKKT model of that and I think also Lee Smolin"
},
{
"end_time": 3872.995,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 3843.882,
"text": " Okay, so you're just giving, you're reminding me of our conversation from almost a year ago. But yeah, going back to this whole thing that, you know, that's, that's my statement about, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 3902.756,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 3873.985,
"text": " That right, there's one thing for one theory to be more advanced and more developed, but that doesn't mean that you still don't pursue research on other promising approaches. And of course, it could be at the end of the day that those, what's the word that there are some kind of convergence. Thank you. Convergence. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my thought."
},
{
"end_time": 3930.776,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 3903.882,
"text": " I'd like to pick up on that because Professor Alexander actually brought up a very interesting idea. Why don't you say to the detractors of AdS equals CFT, you know, the whole idea of anti-dissitter space equaling the conformal field theory, the whole idea that we live in a dissitter vacuum, hence the cosmological constant must be positive."
},
{
"end_time": 3960.179,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 3931.032,
"text": " Because it's been shown by data that the universe is accelerating in its expansion. Hence, lambda must be greater than one. What would you say to the detractors of AdS equals CFT? That's my question to you, Professor. Sorry. Yeah. So I think AdS CFT is really beautiful. It's really beautiful stuff. I mean, in a sense, and it's deep. I mean, the idea that, wait a minute, like, you know, any theory of gravity and of quantum gravity"
},
{
"end_time": 3972.449,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 3960.623,
"text": " basically is equivalent to or encoded by with a theory with no gravity and that theory looks very similar to Yang-Mills theory."
},
{
"end_time": 4000.606,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 3972.944,
"text": " already contains in it quantum gravity. That's a message there and then of course there's this idea that that map is holographic, that is stored, that information or that the quantum gravity is in one dimension less like a holographic screen. I think that's a really beautiful idea. It's deep, ingenious, I think."
},
{
"end_time": 4028.985,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 4000.913,
"text": " It's what made Juan Malacena great. Amongst other things, he has done some other amazing things as well in cosmology, the bispectrum. I'm just saying great things. However, I do think that it's a framework that we hope we can carry over one day"
},
{
"end_time": 4051.63,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 4029.48,
"text": " to the sitter space, or Minkowski space, and people are working on that. Actually, my colleague here at Brown, David Lowe, is one of the leaders in that field. So people on all this, an idea of course, celestial holography."
},
{
"end_time": 4081.8,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4052.21,
"text": " And I think that's a holographic theory. It's just like you're looking out in the sky and you're covered by a two-dimensional surface that encompasses you. And so it's a two-dimensional holography. So again, these are ideas that people are actively working on. But ADS-CFT currently is just... I think it's offensive to say that it's a toy model."
},
{
"end_time": 4110.93,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4082.432,
"text": " but you know the idea is that we would want to take some of that everything that we've learned from ADS-CFT and put it in a more realistic gravitational southern dual. Let me announce here why I asked this question because in that book, there's a great book in my opinion, and I'll give the professor's correct name, his name is Jacom, Jacom Armas, he goes by Jay because you know"
},
{
"end_time": 4140.759,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4111.374,
"text": " For some reason, as Americans, we fail to pronounce correctly the names of people. I don't know why. But anyway, so, Jacom, Professor Jacom Amas, he says in his book, Conversations on Quantum Gravity, there's a, oh, which by the way, I think in a second edition, Professor Amas should go to people like you, sir, and to people like Professor Keating and Professor"
},
{
"end_time": 4167.875,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4141.135,
"text": " and Dr. Weinstein and yes, why not, Sabina Osenfelder, you know, even though she, you know, she gets lost in math, you know, she still has some bright ideas. But again, as long as you don't put down other people's theories and you don't say stupid things like string theory is wrong and so forth, I think you can be dealt with, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 4197.705,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4168.097,
"text": " in a reasonable manner but what I'm saying is there should be a second edition to this book where people such as yourself and and other luminaries in the field should be interviewed and you know not just and I will ask by the way I down the road if you have time I I want to know your thoughts on on asymptotic safety as far as oh yeah yeah Weinberg speaking of the great I love that idea Weinberg yeah I mean"
},
{
"end_time": 4226.032,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4198.08,
"text": " a great loss for physics. Anyway, so, so, okay, in, in his comp, in the conversation, the NEMA, Akani Hamad, he's kind of pushed against the wall because Professor Amos is basically saying, don't we live in a decider universe and so such. And then NEMA just breaks down and says, you know, maybe ADS equals CFT is a gateway drug."
},
{
"end_time": 4254.155,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4227.073,
"text": " to the emergence of space-time. He actually says this ad verbatim, and I'm like, come on. Okay, what would you mean by that? Exactly, a gateway drug to the emergence of space-time. The way that I understand that is that Nima has been saying for, I don't know, maybe two decades now that space-time is doomed and there needs to be something that gives rise to space-time as an emergent property."
},
{
"end_time": 4268.865,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4254.531,
"text": " And so he views that as the most important program in physics right now. He has some approaches called Amplitohedron, maybe others. He doesn't care too much about whether ADS is unrealistic because it's anti rather than not anti."
},
{
"end_time": 4298.183,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4269.462,
"text": " because he sees it as that is one way that people can get into this idea of an emergent space time. And that's where the real physics lies or the real research lies. Yeah, well, I, you know, I'm sympathetic to Neema and I think if there's somebody that will solve that problem, it would probably be him. You know, he went to school with Sebastian. No way. Yeah, they were classmates. No way. No way. Wow. Wow. That's amazing."
},
{
"end_time": 4323.541,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4298.746,
"text": " Wow, so two geniuses in the same class, huh? I tried to use that in my email to Nima to come on to tell and he doesn't respond. However, I think we're making some progress. Nima will be on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nima is awesome. Nima is just totally awesome. I think, Professor Alexander, one day you will solve one of the great problems of the Earth. I think you will solve the vacuum catastrophe."
},
{
"end_time": 4347.79,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4324.053,
"text": " Can you speak more about your idea? You know, the whole idea of the... why the cosmological constant between quantum field theory and general relativity is off by 120 orders of magnitude? You know? It's like, what the... I think..."
},
{
"end_time": 4377.585,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4348.507,
"text": " I still think your rhythm universe is absolutely brilliant. Would you talk more about this idea of how you envision? It's the way that you interpret cosmology. You have a very unique understanding. And I think people should hear this. So can you please announce it? You know what I'm talking about. It's an analogy, but you know, it's an analogy."
},
{
"end_time": 4388.507,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4378.114,
"text": " It's based on this, we tried to put some equations behind it and then it ran into some problems later on, but I mean the first paper did get"
},
{
"end_time": 4411.544,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4389.138,
"text": " It did get published in a good journal because, but then, you know, but I figured, yeah, maybe you're asking me to get me thinking. I stopped thinking about it for some time, but the basic idea is- Please don't, because I think you have the right idea. Sir, you have the right idea. Keep on hammering. Don't let these detractors, you know, just slow you down. Please don't. That's all I got to say. I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead."
},
{
"end_time": 4440.896,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4412.858,
"text": " Well, the idea is that, I mean, you know, so why are the fundamental, why are the constants of nature what they are? So it's not just only the vacuum energy, it's the coupling, you know, it's a gauge coupling constants. It is the Yukawa, I mean, you know, the, when we look at the Yukawa, you know, the, the, the mass matrices, like they, you have different couplings that the Higgs couples, right? So you have all these parameters in a standard model. So why are they what they are?"
},
{
"end_time": 4455.503,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4441.374,
"text": " So the theory that we have currently do not explain that. Now one, one advantage of string theory, one feature of string theory that is cool is that, you know, coupling constants in theories and four dimensions, right, are really fields."
},
{
"end_time": 4483.78,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4455.862,
"text": " values of fields that get expectation values. So then you can turn the question on string theory and say why do we have a vacuum in string theory where the fields that did get associated with the coupling constants did get a vacuum expectation value. So you can sharpen that question in string theory and in fact that's kind of one of the things that we said okay if we assume that in a cosmology"
},
{
"end_time": 4512.602,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4484.121,
"text": " We allow actually for these fields, and sometimes we call these fields moduli, because they're associated with the geometry of the internal space. So we have space-time, four-dimensional, we have these other six dimensions that can be warped in ways that actually determine the coupling constants in the four-dimensional world to vary. So then we can take this picture and package it in the following way. You can say, well,"
},
{
"end_time": 4524.906,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4512.978,
"text": " Imagine we, what we have is a cyclic universe, so we, and now I'm now going to use, so what actually happens and that's what you say, the rhythm, the rhythmic universe, so you have"
},
{
"end_time": 4553.234,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4525.401,
"text": " a rhythmic a cycle where the universe contracts bounces expands contracts and it's been doing this you know for eternity i love that idea absolutely yeah yeah so the idea can you hook that up to the quantum bounds can you hook that up to the ashtakar bounds because i think you'd be right on you and professor ashtakar would win the nobel i guarantee well we have to make some predictions yeah how's this different than other cyclical models of the of cosmology"
},
{
"end_time": 4576.049,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4553.575,
"text": " It's different in the sense of the following. What we were able to show is that if you now couple the coupling constants to the geometry, what ends up happening is that when you get close to the bounce, the coupling constant, like a slot machine, they get randomized. And then when you emerge out of the bounce, they freeze."
},
{
"end_time": 4605.538,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4576.852,
"text": " so they get fixed. So at the bounce is where all the randomization happens and the slavishing gets shuffled or I call like an improvisational universe that basically you know in jazz music the rhythmic structure cycles like a blues, 12 bar blues, it cycles and every time you go around a cycle somebody gets an opportunity to solo and the solo on the improvisation is basically the shuffling of the coupling concept. That was just the analogy, so it's an analogy."
},
{
"end_time": 4632.927,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4605.964,
"text": " One quick question for Stefan, then I want to get to some questions for Sal. So Stefan, the randomized coupling constants, do they have some different probability distribution every time the universe occurs?"
},
{
"end_time": 4662.483,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4633.37,
"text": " an evolution like Lee Smolin has an evolution model. Is it actually the same randomization every time? Yeah, it's the same randomization every time. This talks to a paper on Archive, I think, May 27, 2008, Coricci and Singh, quantum bounds with total recall, with cosmic recall. They give the idea that the universe may actually have total cosmic recall."
},
{
"end_time": 4688.626,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4662.841,
"text": " Oh, interesting. And it talks directly to your rhythm idea. Yeah. I'll read those papers because I know both of those guys and I have a high opinion. So I will definitely read those papers. It's a great paper. Yeah. Sal, what I want to know is what is your pious effect? And then I want to hear what Stefan's thoughts are to it."
},
{
"end_time": 4717.517,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 4689.138,
"text": " It's control motion of electrically charged matter that there is, it could be electrically charged solids to plasma. So we're talking about four state of matter here, and you know, the idea of ions and electrons nice floating around, whatever. Now, when you accelerate these in either spin or vibration, you get, and especially if you use rapid acceleration transients. So again, this whole idea of the DDT of acceleration, but anyway,"
},
{
"end_time": 4748.012,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 4718.08,
"text": " You can get very high values of electromagnetic energy flux. And the whole idea can be, for example, you can, I believe under certain conditions, at least the classical theory doesn't give a limit, but I believe under certain conditions, you can have an exponential run on energies. So you can get Schwinger limits. We're talking about, you know, things on the order, electric fields on the order of what? 10 to the 18 volts per meter."
},
{
"end_time": 4771.869,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 4748.439,
"text": " that commensurate with B fields on the order of 10 to the 9 Tesla. Now, I know that sounds crazy, absolute crazy. But when you look at the theory, which comes right out of the Oliver Heaviside version of Maxwell's equations, you will know, sir, that Maxwell's equations, the original ones, first of all, they were based on"
},
{
"end_time": 4801.186,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 4772.159,
"text": " Ether Vortical Theory. And there were 20 equations with 20 unknowns, almost impractical from an engineering point of view. So Oliver Heaviside in the 1890s made possible these, you know, four equations, four unknowns that we all use and love in physics courses in undergrad. He made it possible because otherwise, if you were to use the correct quaternion formalism that Maxwell brought about, oh my goodness, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 4826.51,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 4801.459,
"text": " I'm not sure if you'd get anywhere soon. So we all use the four equation, four unknown Maxwell equation that's really the Oliver Heaviside version of it. So using that, I was able to bring in the simple harmonic oscillator mathematical formalism. I was able to show that indeed it's possible to get very high electromagnetic energy fluxes."
},
{
"end_time": 4852.466,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 4826.869,
"text": " By accelerating an electrical charge, basically either in spin or in vibration, because if you look at the mathematics, it's similar for both. It's just that one is the, you know, the, the, the, the spin radius times the angular frequency of spin itself. And the other for vibration would be the amplitude of the vibration times the angular frequency of vibration, you know, so from"
},
{
"end_time": 4863.643,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 4852.705,
"text": " Yeah, but anyway, that's what the so-called pious effect is. And a lot of people have given me a lot of consternation of over choosing the name, but I said, look, it's original number one."
},
{
"end_time": 4887.5,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 4864.48,
"text": " And number two, I mean, you know, I could have called it the Feynman effect, but the man was far more theoretical than he was experimental. And we actually tried to include this experimentally, but we could never achieve an electrical charge higher than 10 to the minus eight coulombs. And we really need a charge on the order of one coulomb. And Kurt"
},
{
"end_time": 4917.534,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 4887.841,
"text": " Which, by the way, has great theoretical physics background. I mean, this man, that's why I agreed to be on the TOE podcast and go with no one else but Kurt, because number one, he has great theoretical physics roots and great mathematical knowledge. He really understands this theory of my God, quantum gravity string theory. He understands it inside and out. I mean, who else understands ADS CFD? Do quantum gravity effects only come into play with high energy? Oh, that's oh my God. You know, that"
},
{
"end_time": 4941.493,
"index": 193,
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"text": " That's the subject of a paper. Absolutely. No, I would say absolutely not. As a matter of fact, condensed matter physics can show you a direct, especially when it comes to this new, the topological quantum matter. But anyway, I want to bring this up because your your top physics seminar or"
},
{
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"start_time": 4943.217,
"text": " I'm not sure exactly what to call when you speak of natural units and you actually give it's like almost two and a half hours. You you give examples of physical phenomena using natural units. You know the whole idea of some physics. Right. The crash course on physics. The sequel H bar equal big G whatever equal one."
},
{
"end_time": 4992.056,
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"start_time": 4967.517,
"text": " It is absolutely phenomenal. I think I watched that at least six or seven times. So if you get like a lot of viewership from one source IP, that's your boy right here. Oh yeah. What do you like about it? First of all, your"
},
{
"end_time": 5021.766,
"index": 196,
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"text": " I mean, it shows that you have the correct pedigree in theoretical physics. Your knowledge of different phenomena, physical phenomena is amazing. And not only that, you're able to make it incredibly simple to understand, you know, for the layman, but also for the theoretical physicist. You bring on your new, again, new perspectives on all physics. I just love that phrase."
},
{
"end_time": 5043.575,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 5022.005,
"text": " But you really have that capability. And not only that, but, uh, I mean, you make me want to come on top podcasts over and over whenever you want to have me. I'm, I'm, I'm there as long as that forbid, you know, somebody at the Navy doesn't realize that I'm doing this and slaps me down. Oh my God, you don't want to know. But anyway, so I'll just leave a day."
},
{
"end_time": 5070.282,
"index": 198,
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"text": " And yeah, your knowledge, that's why because in my opinion, you are a theoretical physicist doing podcasts, choosing to do that. You know, I mean, you have the ability, first of all, you have the ability to go in different sciences. For example, is it Carl Friston? I always get his name wrong, but I'm absolutely"
},
{
"end_time": 5093.217,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 5070.794,
"text": " I was amazed with your knowledge of neurophysiology, the whole idea of the free energy. Oh my God, I was incredibly impressed. From that moment on, I knew that you could take out almost any idea. And I said, if anybody would understand the so-called bicep effect or this idea of the super force, you would."
},
{
"end_time": 5114.462,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 5093.899,
"text": " and you'd be able to say something at least that's now you're a crackpot, you're a charlatan, the crap that I usually get. So yeah, that's why I keep on coming on this podcast. I'll come on as long as you have me and my so-called leaders don't tell me to cut it out."
},
{
"end_time": 5143.063,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 5116.032,
"text": " A lot of people say, how dare an engineer enter the realm of theoretical physics, where only the gods reside, you know, but sometimes, sometimes, sometimes a human being may aspire, you know, to reach Mount Olympus, only to be, you know, struck down by the gods, but still, not trying would be worse. Agree? I agree with that."
},
{
"end_time": 5173.097,
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"text": " That's all. That's what the pice effect is all about. It's just it has promise. The only problem is nobody's willing to try it experimentally, sir, because they all think I'm a crackpot, crank, charlatan, whatever. They would rather bring about at home in them. Sorry about this. They would rather, you know, instead of challenging my equation, say, look, equation five and six in these in his paper on plasma, blah, blah, is wrong."
},
{
"end_time": 5194.292,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 5173.404,
"text": " You see what I'm saying? They're now willing to engage me in a discourse like you are now, which God bless you, sir. Thank you for doing this. But immediately at home and I'm attacked and boom, this effect is nonsense."
},
{
"end_time": 5214.531,
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"start_time": 5194.48,
"text": " This Marshawn beast mode Lynch prize pick is making sports season even more fun on prize picks where they"
},
{
"end_time": 5231.63,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 5214.906,
"text": " football fan, a basketball fan, it always feels good to be ranked. Right now, new users get $50 instantly in lineups when you play your first $5. The app is simple to use. Pick two or more players. Pick more or less on their stat projections."
},
{
"end_time": 5246.988,
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"text": " Anything from touchdown to threes, and if you're right, you can win big. Mix and match players from any sport on PrizePix, America's number one daily fantasy sports app. PrizePix is available in 40 plus states including California, Texas,"
},
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"end_time": 5276.578,
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"text": " So, either in accelerated spin or accelerated vibration,"
},
{
"end_time": 5302.551,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 5276.852,
"text": " undergoing rapid acceleration transients. So again, your acceleration is really a function of time can bring about high energy electromagnetic fluxes. So basically energy transfer over surface area. So this thing can be used either close to the electrical charge or could be something that somehow"
},
{
"end_time": 5329.002,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 5303.404,
"text": " The whole thing is that the electromagnetic effects usually, they decline as one divided by D squared. So away from the source, like 10 meters away, this thing is already one divided by 100 weaker. But close to the subject, it could be very high, which could talk to the Schwinger limit. Because what's the Schwinger limit trying to do? Vacuum."
},
{
"end_time": 5359.138,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5329.667,
"text": " Well, I mean, so basically there's something, I mean, definitely, I mean, according to Maxwell's equations, you can have, I mean, accelerate charges, right? Is there something like that going on? There's some collective"
},
{
"end_time": 5381.578,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5359.804,
"text": " Either in spin or in vibration, when you accelerate them. So for example, when you pulse a current through a wire, you're really accelerating the electrons through that wire. So high electromagnetic energy fluxes could come into play. Or when you spin a charge in an accelerated manner,"
},
{
"end_time": 5406.596,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5382.073,
"text": " Right. And you start actually changing the rate of acceleration by, for example, decelerating a little bit and then accelerating at a higher pace, you can have very high energy fluxes. It actually, it makes sense, really, if you know Maxwell's equation. No, I mean, what you're saying, you can set up a, at the very least, I mean, at the level of a theory, a situation where Maxwell's equation"
},
{
"end_time": 5427.995,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5407.21,
"text": " gives you high electric flux from acceleration. Is that the idea? You need nothing beyond Maxwell equations to do this? Again, it's coupled with the idea of the harmonic oscillator."
},
{
"end_time": 5456.357,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5428.268,
"text": " because that's how these, okay, because if you, if you don't couple it with the idea of, um, of Maxwell's, um, of the harmonic oscillator, why would you just create radiation? I mean, normally when you accelerate things, I mean, this one solution is that you'll the electric and magnetic field coupled to each other and then you get radiation. All right. So how do you contain this flux and, and, and, and sort of having it radiated exactly."
},
{
"end_time": 5475.862,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5457.568,
"text": " The Schwinger effect is a quantum effect though, right? Or is it something else?"
},
{
"end_time": 5505.094,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5476.305,
"text": " You could say it's a macroscopic quantum phenomena. If you really think of the Schwinger limit, it's really macro because he's speaking, even though he's thinking of the QED vacuum breakdown, think what that means. I mean, really, when these electron positron pairs, when this Dirac sea is being formed, and you well know the Dirac, what that does, what that tells me that space time itself is being torn apart."
},
{
"end_time": 5534.428,
"index": 217,
"start_time": 5505.742,
"text": " I have this feeling that this is what this effect is equivalent to. It's like the space-time fabric being torn apart leads and the Schwinger effect is actually would do that because it will bring to a breakdown. I think the reason Stefan's asking, correct me if I'm incorrect, is because you said that the Maxwell equations are all that's required for the Pius effect and he was asking, well, what about"
},
{
"end_time": 5563.916,
"index": 218,
"start_time": 5535.094,
"text": " What I'm trying to say is that the harmonic oscillator coupled with the simple Oliver Heaviside version of Maxwell's equation yields the so-called Pais effect. But the Pais effect is really a macroscopic quantum phenomenon. Just like, for example, remember how the London boys, the London brothers"
},
{
"end_time": 5586.578,
"index": 219,
"start_time": 5564.565,
"text": " created the London equations and came up with the macros, that superconductivity was a macroscopic quantum phenomena. What I'm saying, this also happens on a quantum level. It's, it's, it's not just classical. Yeah. Okay. Well, we got to get going soon. So Stefan, why don't you just give your brief thoughts on that and then I'll give an outro."
},
{
"end_time": 5615.299,
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"start_time": 5587.056,
"text": " No, I am, listen, this is news to me and I'm very interested in looking at those, looking at those equations, you know, because, you know, so go ahead and send it along. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely, sir. You'll get everything I got on the so-called pie. Is this a, is this a pattern of yours? Oh my God. It's got a lot of patterns. I've been, I've been in the, yeah, it, it got picked up by certain papers and then it,"
},
{
"end_time": 5626.442,
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"start_time": 5615.947,
"text": " the"
},
{
"end_time": 5654.633,
"index": 222,
"start_time": 5627.534,
"text": " you know and no no mainstream physicists will touch you with a ten foot ten foot pole because it's associated with freaking UFOs in my book you know in my in a book I recently I talked about you know how we as human beings we always you know we want to run away or don't run away from stigma right and like you give something a label like crack pot or you what have you or you know"
},
{
"end_time": 5682.688,
"index": 223,
"start_time": 5654.957,
"text": " or in my case, you know, whatever, you know, um, people try to keep away from that. And that's, you know, it's an unfortunate feature of being a human being and living and, you know, being social creatures that we are, including those of us that like to pretend that we're above that. But, you know, it's, um, it's, um, you know, unfortunate that people want to, you know, attach things like that."
},
{
"end_time": 5706.852,
"index": 224,
"start_time": 5683.08,
"text": " You know, look, Faraday, when Faraday came up with this idea of invisible lines of force, I mean, you know, maybe the word crackpot didn't exist, but I think word like idiot and things like that happened, he turned out, well, in that case, he turned out to be correct that every, you know, the field paradigm is the paradigm underlying nature. So, you know, that's just my response about the whole"
},
{
"end_time": 5729.189,
"index": 225,
"start_time": 5707.5,
"text": " Speaking about mass, there's so much mental inertia I have."
},
{
"end_time": 5755.401,
"index": 226,
"start_time": 5729.497,
"text": " To construct a sentence is extremely difficult until remember where the sentence began and where I'm going. It takes a terrible amount of effort. I appreciate you all dealing with me through that. Okay, and also for everyone who is interested in Stefan's ideas and Sal's ideas, Sal, you have a podcast on theories of everything, which I'll link to and Stefan, you also have a podcast on theories of everything as well as two books. So Fear of a Black Universe and The Jazz of Physics."
},
{
"end_time": 5777.5,
"index": 227,
"start_time": 5755.794,
"text": " Those will be linked in the description. And Stefan, at some point, I would like to do a one-on-one with you. We'll talk about your generalization of the Hawking-Hartle wave function. And you mentioned that you're working on some electroweak unification right now. Yes. I assume those are different. Yeah, the different might be related."
},
{
"end_time": 5807.602,
"index": 228,
"start_time": 5777.756,
"text": " So we can talk about that. And for the people who liked when Stefan pulled out his computer and wrote some equations, we can have more of that. Something that people surprisingly appreciate is the fact that theories of everything can get technical rather than just speaking in generalities and popular science adages. So I look forward to speaking with you again, Stefan, one on one as well. And same with you, Sal, when we have a one on one, maybe even in person. Oh, that'd be awesome. Oh, my goodness. You know,"
},
{
"end_time": 5819.77,
"index": 229,
"start_time": 5808.063,
"text": " You know what would be great if the three of us would get together in person and just talk about all. I bet you I know certain things about Ducat Avenue that you'd love to remember, sir. I'm just saying, you know."
},
{
"end_time": 5848.797,
"index": 230,
"start_time": 5820.589,
"text": " You forgot to play the saxophone. Oh, yes. Stefan, do you want to play the saxophone? Oh, come on. Is there something quick you can play that's like a minute long? Come on. Please. Let's see. Let's see what I can pull. Pull. Yeah. I love this. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know because I don't know how it works."
},
{
"end_time": 5875.623,
"index": 231,
"start_time": 5849.582,
"text": " I love that."
},
{
"end_time": 5902.619,
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"start_time": 5876.8,
"text": " Nice. I have no idea what I was doing there."
},
{
"end_time": 5926.408,
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"start_time": 5903.131,
"text": " The podcast is now finished. If you'd like to support conversations like this, then do consider going to theories of everything.org. It's support from the patrons and from the sponsors that allow me to do this full time. Every dollar helps tremendously. Thank you."
}
]
}No transcript available.