Particle Fever / The Quest

00:00:00 now I'd like to introduce today's participants and as I say your name if you could just raise your hand so the audience can identify you Sarah deers the haris deaft associate professor of physics at Yale University is a particle physicist who studies the fundamental particles and forces of nature her recent work has focused on the characterization of the higs bosan and a measurement of to polarization with the atlas collaboration as many of you saw in in the film at cern's Large Hadron Collider she received her bachelor's

00:00:30 degree from Harvard University and her PhD from the University of Rochester she was a post-doctoral researcher with Stanford's SLC National accelerator laboratory before joining Yale's faculty in 2009 while at Yale she has received an early career award Grant from the Department of energy and the Yale provos teaching award she also collaborates with professional dancer writer and director of the Y of the Yale dance studies curriculum Emily coats she and coats co- te a physics of dance class together at Yale and our writing a course book under contract with Yale

00:01:01 University press they've created an art science film called the three views of the higs and dance Mark levenson before embarking on his film career earned a doctoral degree in theoretical particle physics from the University of California at Burkley in the film world he became a specialist in ADR working with actors and directors in post-production to write and record additional dialogue he has worked closely with such directors as Anthony mangela English Patient Talented Mr Ripley Cold Mountain Francis Ford cppa the rain maker Milos Foreman goya's

00:01:34 ghosts Shan Penn The Pledge and David Fincher on seven and The Social Network he is the writer producer director of The Narrative feature film prisoner of time which examined the lives of former Russian dissident artists after the collapse of the Soviet Union and had an acclaimed Premiere at the Moscow International Film Festival and as many of you saw he directed The award-winning documentary feature Particle Fever Alberto mango well is a Canadian writer translator editor and critic born in buenz Aries in 1948 he published

00:02:06 several novels including news from a foreign country came and all men are liars and non-fiction including a history of reading the library at night and together with Gian uh johanni uh guadalupi the dictionary of imaginary places he has received numerous International Awards among others the commander of the order of arts and letters from France and is Dr honoris Kaza of the universities of Le Belgium and angl rusken Cambridge in the United Kingdom his new book curiosity as I mentioned earlier will be published in

00:02:38 March Jean Strauss is the author of Morgan American Finance year which published in 1999 and again republished in 2014 and Alice James a biography first published in 1980 and again in 2011 which won the bankof prize in American history and diplomacy her essays and reviews have appeared in Publications including the New Yorker the New York review of book books The New York Times Vogue and slate a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American philosophical Society she has received fellowships

00:03:08 from the MacArthur and gugenheim Foundations served as president of the Society of American historians and worked as a consultant as oral historian to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation she is currently director of the darthy and Lewis B Coleman Center for Scholars and writers at the New York Public Library now we'll begin sit back well maybe that film was absolutely fantastic and there's a moment

00:03:39 when they've done it at least we think they've done it they found the big higs bosen and Savas that may if anybody hasn't seen it maybe you can explain more exactly about who he is but he has this little speech that made me cry probably you as well from watching it about how astonishing it is that Humanity that people with our little brains can figure out things like this that we want to understand the world and the universe we live in and we can at

00:04:12 least so you probably remember that scene better than I've just described it you know saas was such a a gift to us I mean it's just like everything he said was like a Greece Greek philosopher I mean and uh yeah that that line I mean you know really in some sense it also reflects what really attracted me to physics initially I mean this fact that it there seems to be first of all that there's any laws of nature at all I mean as said that there's any laws of nature at all that

00:04:42 they're describable by mathematics the mathematics is a language that we've invented and we understand this is the biggest mystery of all I mean that uh uh there didn't have to be order that we could comprehend and the fact that we come up with this you know humans have come up with this invention this mathematical thing that actually describes physical nature and in the LHC an extreme example of you know very abstract theories and then this huge

00:05:14 machine that Sarah works on um comes up with a bump that corresponds to it I I think it really is the thing that is the most magnificent thing and representative of of an absolute peak in in human Achi I I found it fascinating um the scientists trying to find a vocabulary to speak about this and the vocabulary coming from Philosophy from from

00:05:44 literature I found it very moving that scientists speak of a beautiful formula a beautiful Discovery what what does that mean to a scientist I I think that uh from my perspective that scientists are human beings and so we think in these terms right it's um it's interesting that there's been a divide between what people think of as the scientific brain that's operating and the artistic brain that's operating I mean I I think it's natural to use that

00:06:14 kind of language to describe something that you're excited about it's wonderful to see it to see it spoken to hear it spoken I I think that the the um excitement or the the miraculous discovery of the higs it's the amazing fact that we can make that kind of progress is just firmly planted in the context of the lack of understanding in general that we have right that keeps that Discovery in perspective so as a practicing scientist thinking about the

00:06:45 higs um and that achievement um as thrilling as it is and as much of a peak as it is it's in this incredible Valley with the the 97% 94% of the universe that we don't understand these huge Mysteries right so it's it it is very exciting and fascinating for me to think about that progress but it's in that that context of just a tremendous amount that we don't understand it's not clear if we have a framework that will

00:07:16 let us make further progress in the same way but also yeah it's true and I think that was one of the things that drove us or gave us some confidence that hopefully there would be people interested because we could touch at these big issues and these are issues that anybody can understand and anybody can appreciate you know the details and look we made a decision very early on this is not going to be the film that explains all the detailed physics but in some sense we're going to go for the big things and the big issues which are things that anybody has uh you know that

00:07:46 we hoped anybody of any intellectual curiosity would be interested in curiosity I mean I it's I think it's amazing you've written this book I mean because I think that's another one of sav's great lines when he's saying you why do we do this well you know and he thinks about these things for no reasons for no reason I mean and you know he ties it in with this issue of you know there's no evolutionary value and but what is the basis of it is a curiosity and once you have it you can't forget it uh I mean I you must explore a lot more

00:08:17 in your book well I I I I try to I I I try to look at the questions that we ask I think that the questions are so much more interesting than any answers that we we can give and what interested me in the film was that even uh with the discovery of the higs particle um you don't have an answer you you simply have more questions you have another set of

00:08:47 questions and I'm always interested in the fact that we come from whatever vocabularies we have and we apply the vocabulary to the world that we're seeing because we have to remember that the universe is totally uncaring the universe is not conscious of its laws or or what we do with them or where we are or so these are uh questions that we

00:09:19 bring to our state of being and to the universe around us even these words are invented by us so we we invent the story and then we ask how does this happen and what what is the initial impulse to understand something or to work it out I mean it's they that's the Deep question in a sense and and you know similarly you know related to the the art issue what is it that prompted the first

00:09:50 person to draw a representation of the world on a cave I mean animals don't do that I mean you know that they would think that you know we could abstract is an abstract symbolic representation of the world around them was it motivated for informational purposes was it just you know is it something intrinsic in us that we just want to represent something and I do think that there's a very direct line to what you know Nema is doing on the board and which he very

00:10:21 much you know there's a beautiful count yeah I was going to say the same thing this juxtaposition of the Glorious cave drawings and Nema writing his formulas on the board and it made me think this is what I see that the caveman was saying this is what I see and Nema is saying this is what I see in such different Realms and eons but but why did they why do you think that you know somebody first did it darwinian biologists say that um we came up with

00:10:54 imagination as a mechanism for survival so that we have the only species that can uh have an experience without actually having the experience we can invent the story of what would happen if you put your hand in the the the mouth of a lion before doing that and uh imagination leads immediately to questioning when you look at something and you think that there's a story there

00:11:25 you want to know who did it you want to know where it's going you know you want to know what happened once upon a time and how will it end I think we also each as individuals have experience with this without having to be at the Forefront of it meaning when I was learning physics I got to discover Newton's Laws every step when I understood something and saw wait this is this is applying to Something Real around me I didn't have to be the

00:11:55 first one to come up with that to understand that experience and I think that all of the learning that we do um when we're young in science or not in science that that teaches us What discovery is every individual gets to discover so many things about the world right the nice thing about um well in in the the scientific discovery what you get to keep doing is asking questions along that line along a path but you have a tremendous amount of experience discovering all of physics that's been discovered before you everything you have time to or that you can manage to

00:12:27 grasp right I love the metaphor of running by the way U the fact that you H you can't concentrate on getting somewhere you need to keep asking the questions along along the road and and and that's what makes the activity interesting actually it's also interesting I mean we don't Jo in the film but um Monica um Fabiola and Martin all run and uh Fabiola Martin Monica and Nemo all play the piano um and I'm not

00:12:59 going to extrapolate to everybody but but it is sort of interesting that they they have the the running is you know this persistence endurance uh process sort of thing and then and then the interest in music this other side as well for its own sake these s all activities for no reason yeah yes it makes me think a little bit about young children and watching them explore the world the Curiosity every single moment is a discovery for a young child and certain adults keep that quality and

00:13:32 want to learn it I remember learning it wait a second I get to ask why I get to keep asking why and and having my kids are four and six right now I remember the stage when they went through and and realizing wow we I I relearned being able to do that because I forgot it I forgot that I had permission to ask how does that work and and uh to keep asking that next question and not for what Financial purpose that was a great moment in this great moment someone asks David that everybody here has seen the fil yeah

00:14:02 actually the Curiosity thing though I think one of my favorite moments actually though was when Mart's doing the uh little experiment with the kids and he says see this and he says yeah but the card got wet you know that's he's you know not exactly focusing on exactly the same thing it's a it's a good question that leads to something else right yeah um but it's interesting I you were saying too I mean in some sense is it is you know is it an evolutionary adaptations maybe initially it was

00:14:34 predictive you know that there was an adaptation that you could predict that you we first got this capability of saying H if I go there and there's a lion there I'm going to be eaten um and maybe it was a very practical thing initially to have this predictive imagination and maybe the next step was an imagination that didn't necessarily have survival Val or maybe there wasn't a a difference because these are categories that we keep establishing in terms of practicality you were saying this absurd

00:15:07 difference between the the mind of a scientist and the mind of an artist uh well for a very long time there was no difference in the Renaissance or in the Middle Ages an alchemist was what an artist or a science Leonardo Dante who was was quoted and who uh in in fact fits so perfectly with this idea he in at the end of his vision when finally he sees the great vision he Compares it to

00:15:40 the universe of scattered pages that somehow come Bound in a volume at last for him to see um this is what what I felt with the film that the the volume was being bound at last we haven't read it we don't know what it means but somehow it's coming together it's it's such a beautiful model well I I I do think that you know this this notion of the artist's brain and the scientist

00:16:11 brain being separate is something that's just not true uh I mean there are examples of extremities on both cases but um I think one of the rewarding things of taking a film around has been having people come up to me afterwards who are uh not physicists ver other scientists but but also um in the Arts and and feeling akin to it and and actually having scientists tell me that they feel they feel like they're artists they feel like they're very creative artists it is it's you know it's it's um

00:16:44 it's I mean practically it's difficult and you fail and come up with lots of bad ideas but artists do that all the time a lovely uh idea that came up the idea of failure as as essential uh Stephenson had this wonderful line about our purpose in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in the best of spirits that's he would he would be very uh very friendly with service I think one of the differences that I've seen working with artists and

00:17:15 learning more about about um the products and the definition of research within art is the process right that's that's what's different for us we have a different process and it's something that um you learn how to do you have to learn how to do and when I talk to other physicists we have a language that's shared we tend to approach problems in similar ways um and what's interesting I think if if you're working in these different Realms pushing toward toward research discovering something is to have access to other kinds of processes

00:17:47 it's interesting that the scientists also have a piece of that artistic process right we're allowed to to try to learn different kinds of processes I think it's helpful when when you have that in your toolbox not just just one way of approaching a problem do you see parallels no go ahead when you're working on Dance do you see parallels to I mean it's a different language but do you think about the connections right so my work uh my I'm not actually the one working on Dance I'm working with a dancer and

00:18:18 so I think we try to have our two disciplines interacting with each other so we're we're going after that I think we're we're actively trying to see how is your process what's mine and and um yeah that's our goal in some ways of that collaboration absolutely I think this was sort of fascinating when I saw that you were doing this because um there's a uh a troop Liz lurman is a Dancer she has a troop down in Baltimore and um she went to CERN and uh she wanted to try to do something there and

00:18:48 she just you know is just this feeling as an artist that I think and I think we're seeing a lot of this there's a cross fertilization there but there's seems to be many more artists that are really getting fascinated with science and so she went there and they went down to the cavern and they did this thing and you know she had these dancers these men wearing like dresses and and uh you see the they filmed it and you see these Engineers there with hard hats just sort of looking and I don't know which is more bizarre you know the construction like

00:19:18 the atlas Cavern and or these men in dresses dancing around down there and she wanted to just do a piece about it and we actually filmed uh a performance that she did uh it didn't make it in the film but it's so it was fascinating when I read that you were now also involved working with a dancer and what what was how did that happen what was the motivation well one thing I should say is that we've had Liz come to our class so that those of us who work in these kinds of just just depositions tend to uh to to find each other um the so the

00:19:50 the collaboration between physics and dance that we have at Yale was really started in a top down way it's it wasn't organic story it was it was a curriculum development piece and I was imagining um physics um like taking dance so a work of art and breaking it down from the physics perspective right making that mathematical model of everything that's happening in physics and the dancer who I happened to work with uh very sophisticated with a mission of her own who was doing movement research and was

00:20:21 not interested in that kind of art at the service of science collaboration which became obvious very very early and so that the two of us decided let's take our two disciplines on equal footing and see where this takes us let's let's let dance help us understand and communicate science and let's let science help us uh understand and communicate dance let's go in both directions take turns leading and then sometimes we're not going to be um speaking the same language and those times we'll just put the two next to each other and and see what happens I

00:20:53 think the the place that we've pushed it um is this idea of embodied cognition or not really pushed it in that direction but thinking about it from my perspective as a practicing scientist what is it that how does this feed back into my research and it's been a recognition of the reality that the ways we operate in the world including our very bodies have an impact on the way we're approaching the world these um the the creativity that you have the kinds of questions that you can ask the questions you're capable of asking the the analogies that you have access to

00:21:24 are all limited or informed by your experience in the world which wow you're right that has something to do with your body it didn't never occur to me before interacting with the danc lied by our senses as well because I'm always wondering uh when you talk um about that model of the universe where we are in this tiny lost corner and the possibility of these other um worlds uh around us expanding um what don't we see what and

00:21:55 and already there I'm limiting the question by the fact that I know that humans see but what are the senses that would allow us to understand grasp uh uh perceive discover I don't know what verb to use um the rest of the universe yeah well I is I I think you are up the boundaries of things that we can comprehend and that that is an interesting concept I mean that the the

00:22:26 idea of the Multiverse um I mean in one sense it's easy to say the words oh it's other universes but actually rigorously mathematically I mean it's hard to actually imagine how we would actually uh detect it I mean I think that's really the issue uh you know people often ask they ask do I prefer the Multiverse or super symmetry or what do physicists prefer and I always say I think it's legitimate is they actually don't care as long as they know which one it is I mean because I me super

00:22:59 symmetry has all these beautiful things about it I mean it's really it's such an absolute accomplishment and it would solve certain issues possibly you know possi explaining dark matter and various other issues um and so that would be great uh but I mean if we could prove that there's other universes I mean that would be even more profound but the problem is we just don't know how to do it and so you're you're you you we've invented an idea that we might not be able to prove which is a very difficult

00:23:33 position to be in because not only perhaps prove but also we wouldn't have the vocabulary to name it I love an anecdote uh about Christopher Columbus Coming to America and he writes this in his journal that uh he approaches the coast of Venezuela and he sees three manatees swimming and he says yesterday I saw or three mermaids but they're not as beautiful as they say they

00:24:03 are we we bring the vocabulary of what we think we're going to see but if we see something that we have no way of recognizing how do we name it I wanted to uh see what you think about this because uh I understand what you said about Art and Science and so on but are there a individual differences in the level of passion and energy that

00:24:37 goes behind the kind of endeavor that we saw in the movie and which I feel coming from you cuz when you talked about what you were doing there is so much energy already behind it that I assume you have a lot of passion for what you do so not everybody has it so that's number one then number two is it possible that certain uh researchers or

00:25:07 Endeavors are more uh fueled by curiosity and this desire for the quest than others and is it possible that physics is one of them wow so I think in any back to the idea of process I think in any work that you're doing um there's going to be incredible drudgery there's going to be times when you're measuring the

00:25:37 lengths of Springs I recently have been cutting and pasting a lot of names of Atlas data set IDs that we used for one of the higs characterization papers into a spreadsheet so I think that there certainly are different levels of tenacity that people have something that I try to do that is much easier as an educator and a researcher to do for me is maintain the sense of the big picture so that when I'm cutting and pasting or

00:26:08 um or whatever the the drudgery is in my process or the things I have to get through I know um I appreciate the little steps the completed spreadsheet that tells the complete picture of how we simulated that sample and made that plot it's the little victories that I celebrate along the way um but also try to maintain the big picture of of what the science is trying to achieve and and what we're doing together so I think that some people the people who I've seen who have left the fields of physics

00:26:41 um I I don't know that it's a different level of of passion it's not even a different level of capability but it's important to have the ability to to make it through the drudgery of your practice and when I think of the parallel with the artist um so Emily the practice of dance the the rigor of that or or basketball player dribbling the basketball you've got to dribble the basketball you've got to do the layups over and over and over again and keep in mind the big picture of the game that you're going to play right

00:27:12 you've got to and then keep fighting past when you lose the game or when we make the plot and things don't look the way we think that they do things we don't understand them so yeah I think to be successful who is looking for something it seems to me there is an element of searching for something finding answers to something that is particular to certain Fields yeah I think you're right I think you're right um for me the idea of being associated with a a quest that I see as um such a

00:27:45 fundamental part of who human beings are um something that's been going on how many years thousands and thousands and thousands of years trying to understand the universe even being a little part of that for me is is a real privilege and I think keeps me very excited I think that I mean it is true especially in big science I mean there there are different levels of Engagement and there are people that are um very happy to be just doing their little job and they're not

00:28:16 really thinking about the big questions it may have been their initial motivation but the practicality is different and you know they it's hard to be at the frontier with things and and and I think that um uh we you tend to think that somebody who's an artist might be demonstrating the passion more but you know you have to compare it to the people in The Sciences that are doing the same thing I think one of the big differences in The Sciences there's there's sort of a measurable sense of progress that you

00:28:47 know when you're doing your spreadsheet you know when you've completed it you you've got it and it's done whereas I think in the Arts it's actually you're never really sure if you're done you're never really no I think you're never really done no the whole idea of Discovery with the H bosan is it's it's a limit we set five Sigma right I mean there there's there's not that kind of certainty in The Sciences I don't think I don't know when I'm done with my plot I believe that I understand the data I've convinced enough of my colleagues so they'll let they'll let me move

00:29:17 forward with it and and we'll put our names on it in a paper but no we never know when we're done no no no I I didn't mean in a big sense I certainly agree with that but but along the way way there are tasks that can be completed that you can say you know whereas with you know writing what about it you know do you ever really think that you're right that you you you know oh I've got this chapter I'm done with it I don't have to go back to it never this also reminds me um and your your comment about um Columbus um rang a bell with um

00:29:50 Daniel Borstein in his 1975 wreath lectures made a distinction between discoverers and explorers Columbus was a Discoverer because he was looking for what he thought he knew you know something about Asia that he was looking for a path but bornstein's distinction was about ex exploration not having a defined goal per se and I mean so I'm I'm also wondering how you think about that in your individual work is that a useful distinction or or how how do you how do

00:30:21 you process your curiosity in terms of Discovery versus exploration yeah I mean writing is similar and different in some ways to all of this but to have an enormous research project which you probably think you know about at the beginning and then when you're tunneled into years and years of reading and observing and um learning you find it's taking you in directions you weren't

00:30:52 expecting at all um well you you have your wonderful biography of Alice James um you mentioned somewhere that Alex James talks about the everyday tasks and in in what bigger picture does that fit um I don't know that I'm quoting this correctly but to speak of what he does every day and then asking the question of that you were asking

00:31:22 um in in in what big book do these individual chapters fit that connects to something that Mark said earlier too about making this film finding people through whom to tell the story I think biography is finding narrative ways into history that are very appealing both as a writer to be able to understand history that way and one hopes as a reader um so yes there's a particular life with its particular

00:31:54 circumstances and you absolutely stay with those but you also have to give it a context so here is the younger sister of William and Henry James who um was very articulate very bright but couldn't she wasn't a genius on the order of her brothers what could she carve out for herself as a life as a way to be to speak she did actually keep a diary toward the end of her life and found her own voice in a way and um was a very

00:32:26 difficult life and it was only the last few years of her life but she did have she did make a place for herself in that Pantheon but it never was published she you know nobody knew about it so in an odd way this is a funny thing to say but I think you'll see what I mean in writing a book about her I gave her a bigger voice yes absolutely absolutely and you followed that path of of exploration rather than Discovery because you didn't know where you were going and and I think it's always the

00:32:56 most interesting interesting I go back to the metaphor of the runner um I find that very very useful because uh running to get somewhere is far less interesting than running well that's actually it's another quote of solises which we didn't include I thought it was in it but it's out which he he he very explicitly says you know that you have to enjoy the journey it's like the Odyssey you have to enjoy the journey um and as he said

00:33:27 you know when when when he got home it actually wasn't all that great you know tell us a little more about curiosity your book curios um well I I I started with the idea um of what you asked which is why why are we curious why why do we want to ask questions and and what are the questions that pushed our thought uh uh forward um when we

00:33:57 started thinking about who we are and what this place is that we call the the the world or the universe and then from then onwards and um to see how many times those questions um are against our impulse of labeling so that we we seem to exist between these two contradictory impulses of of of building labels that Comfort us

00:34:29 and and having languages that um that are catechisms and dogmatic and then on the other side asking questions that destroy those labels and those catechisms um and I go into the the discussion of what is a permissible curiosity and what is not uh and I use Dante I I I thought it was wonderful when she quotes that there yes uh we need this film with you

00:35:02 and thank you um because you can hang most everything these questions are in the Comedia and they are very useful to to illustrate them so um yes but uh going back to the the question the the the the film um I felt such joy and a a when when this higs particle and again not not discovered

00:35:35 but that we have the courage of saying we now you have the courage of of saying this is there and so there is something now let's start to revise everything throw everything out of the window and start again um it's extraordinary and I think that there are so many moments where we have done that when we discovered that the Earth is round we we discover gravity we uh and and those are moments that

00:36:07 exist also in painting in dance in in in literature uh we certainly say this begins something else although I think actually that brings up a really what is a sort of a critical difference with Arts and Sciences and in some sense there's consensus in science when you have proved something um there's very little consensus I mean there can be in art you know there's there's it's uh easier to refute somebody saying oh this

00:36:38 is great this is not great I mean you're you're much more subject to subjective interpretation I would argue against that yeah yeah I mean there there are a few fools who will say that uh King leer is not a good play um but by and large there are some things that we uh as humans agree upon we don't agree why they are great or or why they

00:37:09 move us um but I think that by and large um but what about like modern art uh give it time give it time give it time also was Modern Art yeah but I think one of the differences is that at its best or at his or her best a scientist is just waiting it it has has a theory but the work is to understand if the theory is correct the work is not to convince the world of the theory or to build up everything around the theory

00:37:40 to make sure that this idea is the one that everybody agrees with the work is to try to say is this the right Theory or is this the Not Right theory right and so what that means is when somebody refutes it's it's um it's progress yes as opposed to um as opposed to condom condemnation of you right having a theory that's then refuted well that's really helpful that you propos this Theory and the fact that it's not true we've made progress through that there's no shame right there might be frustration or some disappointment but

00:38:11 but it's progress and so it's it's um I think it's a different yeah but uh I agree just so following up on yours do you think that uh eventually Neema is going to like that sculpture cou of generations I got PR that but I I liked it certainly so maybe that's a a reputation of his not liking it um but style as

00:38:45 uh Theory and science T takes time to ground itself uh uh and and and when you build something if everybody agrees upon that at the moment uh you know that it's conventional and probably not of much use yes um when you have something that uh needs to be learned um with a different

00:39:16 vocabulary then maybe you have something that is interesting but uh the Artist as a scientist uh has constantly to teach us how to look and how to think when you said there is curiosity and you kind of laugh prohibited curiosity you use what do you have in mind well the um from the very beginning of our consciousness of

00:39:48 curiosity uh we have discussed what we should be allowed to be curious about so in in the judeo-christian tradition for instance we were not allowed to eat the fruit of One Tree all the rest was fine but why why that particular fruit and why that particular tree and um this starts a line of of thought that

00:40:20 is also found in in in Greek philosophy and also found uh in Indian philosophy that um there are certain Enterprises that should not be attempted because they might destroy our comfortable view of the Universe um ulyses in Dante is not allowed to go beyond the limits of the known world when he goes there he um falls into a

00:40:53 kind of uh uh wave that swallows him and that is his last journey because if he gets to that point which is Mount Purgatory our view of the world is destroyed the Dogma no longer holds and so that is considered uh bad curiosity um and but we we have that we have that in science now I mean the whole discussion about in biology how

00:41:26 you should beow to tamper with jeans for instance U up to where you can uh investigate science well I mean Oppenheimer strus quote after the you know detonation of B was you know that you know I mean the sense that uh we had to do this it was such a beautiful idea even though in some sense he regretted it afterwards but that you know it was where our

00:41:56 curiosity L and then we had to deal with the consequences right so it seems to be an individual Factor because Sarah said she rediscovered the ability to ask why so there was a period where she had lost that ability she had it she lost it then she rediscovered it and when you talk about your book it is clear that you had a lot of questions to ask if you didn't have questions to ask you wouldn't have been able to write your book so there is

00:42:29 something that motivates that or there is a pressure for that some people seem to have more than others that keeps wanting you to keep asking questions as far as the the uh quest for the higs ban there is an argument that was made in the movie and so on that why are we doing this in other words there is no benefit there's supposing we find it then well you can't ask that question when

00:43:01 that is your curiosity that's what you want to do yes and so I was wondering if you people all four of you who seem to be determined and have that pressure in you keep going what is it that is moving you like this that's a tough one well partly the conf confidence that if you keep asking questions you will come to a

00:43:32 more interesting place because I I I think that many people are prevented from asking questions by the idea that if you start asking questions you disturb the status quo and uh you won't have that comfortable a life and that applies in in politics and in literature and Science in uh if you don't ask questions then everything is seems fine yeah there's a couple of necessary

00:44:03 conditions I think and one of them is the the acceptance that failure is a potential absolutely um so I think that that in throughout my life has been um it's showed itself in different ways in school I knew boy I'm going to go for it with physics there were times when I was very underprepared because of of um not having the same kinds of classes going in that other people did um but I knew hey if this doesn't work that's okay I'll do something else that's my family will love me I I can fail here and

00:44:34 that's what gave me the ability to keep going and I think I still feel that I still feel that that um if a line of research that I'm really excited about that people say is risky I work with a a topic the to lepon that's difficult to work with and and um a lot of people say boy that's just why are you doing that slog because you might not get to that final result I feel like that's okay it's okay if that doesn't work there will be something else there'll I'll I'll do something else so I think that's one of the necessary conditions in in

00:45:05 terms of the the pressure there was a moment when Nema says 15 years I've been doing this for 15 years and it might not work and there goes 15 years that's not okay from his perspective that's right and just another a quick anecdote I I an anecdote I wrote another book about JP Morgan and I didn't know anything about Finance I just stepped off a cliff and I thought BL the oh I'll learn it year nine I was waking up at 4:00 in the morning thinking I can't do this and I

00:45:37 can't pay back my book advance and so you know something kept me going and I found a way but it's you're on a tight rope all by yourself in some some ways myself not in not on the atlas experiment I'm there with 3,000 of my best friends and I've made I've made commitments I need to wake up at the 4:00 meeting time which I often have to do because I'm giving a presentation or I'm going to be listening to somebody else's presentation so I I don't feel alone in it very of I mean there are

00:46:10 times when you're doing your own calibrating of the Springs like I said that the piece of it that is um the the drudgery piece of it maybe where you can feel very alone but um but no I there are thousands of us who have to work together it would be nice to be more alone sometimes times in it and have more control over the decisions what Drew you to your two topics though that's the that is interesting to me yeah I'm curious about that and then I'm going to ask you why you left physics okay um they're long stories and I'll

00:46:43 try to do them very quickly that Alice James I was sort of a fluke I um I was I when I was in college as an English major you weren't allowed to think about the life of a writer it was just the text and then I got out of college and started reading biographies and I thought that was pretty fascinating and great ways to learn about history and literature and I was looking for a subject and Nancy milford's Book on Zelda Fitzgerald had come out and it just seemed like the wives and the daughters and the sisters of famous men were kind of a good Avenue and I was

00:47:14 quite young so I wasn't going to tackle anything I thought very big and I came across a reference to Alice Jam James I had loved Henry James and William as well but mainly Henry in college and the reference was from a book about Gerald and Sarah Murphy who were friends of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald who' come back from Paris to Cambridge Massachusetts and stopped in on Alice James and her Circle and I thought oh she had a circle maybe she was interesting so I quit my job I got a tiny advance I applied for fellowships

00:47:45 and then eventually I went back and read that first reference again and it took place in 1923 by which time my Alice had been dead for 30 years it was William's wife who was also named Alice who had a circle in Cambridge so it was like that she found me but not quite on purpose and then I productive failure yes exactly yes and then um it took me five years to write that book and then I was a book critic at news for about four

00:48:17 years and I was looking for another subject and I really didn't want to do the same kind of story people kept coming to me with the daughters and the wives and the sisters of famous men and I didn't want to do a Literary story I wanted to do a bad guy actually thought sort of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid really seriously um and a friend at dinner one night said robber barons and I thought oh that sounds good it was really my period of the late 19th century I started to read about them Morgan seemed the most interesting but that he'd been written about so much I'd

00:48:47 had have to find someone else and my editor pushed me back towards Morgan and I eventually did step off that Cliff I found that the Morgan library in New York had a vault of uncataloged letters Diaries papers art history art dealers records business records and I thought you know this amazing big part of the 19th century in America and it hasn't he hadn't been done in any depth he was such a political figure the left crucified him as a terrible Robert Baron

00:49:17 the right Sanctified him as a hero of industrial Capital so I thought I'll find these in this real documentation and tell the story but I went in with every every left liberal female intellectual preconception you could have and it took me a long time to let go of all of that and to sort of see him whole and did you find a formula to become rich I did not all my friends want that want me to want another but I ended up not thinking he was a rubber Baron oh even though that's what I went looking for okay that was a long answer but so why

00:49:49 did you leave physics why did I leave physics um I I think it's interesting I mean to sort of reconstruct that time uh which has I really hadn't been thinking about it for a long time I mean I really you know it was like 30 years ago and I was really in the film world and this whole project did resuscitate a lot of these feelings um one of the facts was it was a bad time for particle theory I mean I was a particle theorist it was not a good time there was not it was not clear

00:50:21 they were sort of Lost in in in a lot of details there was not a clear accelerator that was going to provide answers um very specifically I was working on a in a Direction with somebody that was a little utree and uh it was not the accepted sort of field Theory approach that people were using so there weren't a lot of places to go I knew I'd have to do a post and several other places so the the prospects were not great there but I would say more

00:50:53 than that it was that I discovered something else that was a passion that was I was interested in and I discovered um film as something that suddenly you know I had liked as a as a kid but you know it was just entertainment and and I never conceived that people made films you know they just somehow appeared um and I discovered in particular uh Eastern European films and uh I suddenly saw something that to me was a a a

00:51:24 challenging worthwhile thing to do I think you know I I did feel like I I wanted to be doing something that was challenging that was interesting that you know was would give me a sense of accomplishment I mean I was you know I I you know at some level just attracted to things that were a challenge and that I could see films that were done that you know really made me think I thought that I that would be interesting too and I lik the idea of being a broader pallet um I met my wife who is not a scientist

00:51:55 and you know I I felt my life was be very compartmentalized and um I I think it was just that I sort of discovered the Arts and uh decided oh I should explore that a little bit and um ended up just going and going and going and uh always and really didn't do documentaries I didn't do anything related to science it was I I guess I really wanted to explore the Human Condition You moved from the sort of

00:52:28 physical world to that world and uh always thought that I wanted to do something that still would explore the Science World because as I say it's not that I became disenchanted with it and I still had that that that feeling of Wonder of You know what that was I mean what these scientists did but I I thought I would go back and you know somehow deal with that in a fictional World um and then you know particle favor came up is that what Drew you to dance as well

00:53:01 just this rediscovery of Wonder um that's an interesting question so I think that um I kept working in my collaboration with Emily so we teach this class together which was part of my job right which which I loved I think it's a fantastic must have chosen that to be your job no um well no I had to teach something and yeah I guess uh right it's part of the Yale curriculum now so somebody was going to teach the

00:53:31 class been teaching physics class I could have just been teaching physics classes how can you say that um right this is a physics class I think that it um I am not a dancer myself and a couple I took ballet for a couple of years when I was 12 and 13 I really loved it um we do the dance class and physics class in a dance studio and I have to say that about 80%

00:54:56 maintains its uncomfortableness um do you mean you didn't take the cultural studies sort of everything's determined by your Society so that that perspective so I I started out as very much a a a Humanities person through high school I was going to go to law school and I wanted to be a constitutional lawyer a public defender something that was at the framework of our society in this country I thought that that's going to be what I do and then I started taking physics and I

00:55:27 realized that my whole picture that I've built up of the world was completely wrong totally wrong how could I be so absolutely wrong about the laws of nature nothing worked the way I thought that it did and it took a long time to swing my brain around and try to think in even in terms that would let me access the world in that way and it was just addictive that challenge I think it was so difficult so then I became a scientist and a real scientist and looking for objectivity and and it's the

00:55:57 steps and this process and then I I think um of course I wasn't in a total vacuum but then to have somebody very seriously in my professional life say well maybe take a different angle on this readjust this maybe you're missing a part of the process maybe you're not taking these things into account with your process I think that was uh another another revolutionary moment for me that probably all of you in this room have had that maybe the process of science is influenced by by Society and who's been allowed to participate in science that

00:56:28 that was a revolutionary moment for me to realize and um so there are many reasons why I continue that collaboration maybe there there is a difference between the work the work that the creative imagination of of of a writer functions the way that it functions and and the way of the imagination of a scientist functions because I got the impression from from the film and from some scientist that I know um that it is

00:56:59 very much a collaborative effort but not uh as much as that teamwork but simply that a theory is constructed by many Minds at the same time that you don't just come up with a model of the universe and put it out there that you imagine maybe this maybe that and you can you will it um a novel instead uh unless it's written by several people is

00:57:30 is constructed from the first to the last chapter and then you come and you want to publish it and some medly editor pulls it apart but that's another story um so I think that it's different I I mean I I wouldn't I think be able to construct a book as a collaboration I think that the parallel might be um in terms of what I've learned about science that the idea of the his the history of

00:58:01 an idea is very difficult to trace right how did you construct that chapter what from your experience or from your conversation with someone was actually pulling into that and I think the same is true about scientific ideas we do have people and I'm not one of them the the theorists I'm I'm an experimentalist but we do have the theorists like Nema like David but people who are um pushing in those Direction c s um and we tend to think of those people as making big leaps right but the reality is and they

00:58:33 are making big leaps but they're also informed by the conversations that they're having and the collaborations that they're having so I think that uh I was interested when for instance when Hicks was mentioned immediately um a number of other names appeared that said um these other people were looking at the same problem um not in communication with each other very much at that point there were three groups really and you know so there were a couple that were working together um

00:59:06 and uh uh higs was sort of on his own but then there were others that were working together but it was an idea that was burbling up and it was you know I mean this idea of the single genius theory is something that um uh you know I think a lot of people dispute I mean how many really nobody operates in the vacuum uh you know there have been a couple of big leaps and and people always bring up Einstein you know for a couple of things but even he you know for some of his things in special

00:59:36 relativity you know he was working with other other ideas as well I mean he did make big leaps but I think in particular um yeah the develop the whole idea of the higs that we say now as I as I said in in the Q&A afterwards um you know higs uh was working on a purely mathematical problem really um and in fact the you know the story is that in his initial presentation of the paper he didn't even uh write that there was a particle Associated it supposedly the reviewer um said you might want to

01:00:08 mention that there's an Associated particle um and it's still wasn't incorporated into the standard model that was still done by others by glasow and Weinberg who then realized that this actually had a place that it could be the explanation for how the uh you know the the vorbit bons got mass and so it was definitely an incremental thing uh I think but I think and I think there is a difference with a theorist and

01:00:38 experimentalist I but I I think the interesting thing is that theorists are the ones that you really do have more this idea that it's like the single genius coming up with something and what you see is it's still it's very collaborative there's a lot of talking eventually they have to go and sit down I mean and I've talked to Savas and Nema about this both quite a bit and you know Savas and they both say you know the collaboration it's very important but eventually they have to go and they have to sit down and just think and and uh and and and and try to make that step all the physicists that you were in

01:01:10 contact with and you saw and I guess you said a good B bunch of them are not even in the movie did some of them impress you as being more genius passionate have this oh push or did they all seem of the same intensity and no there's different I mean you know I would I mean Neema is obviously incredibly intense and uh Salas is more relaxed but I don't think that there's a difference in their passion and their intensity I mean Nima

01:01:41 very Nema very much was also influenced by Savas um he he considers in fact the interesting thing is he he says that he Savas is the person who gave him the courage to start to go off in different directions and interestingly the Multiverse initially you know physicists hated the Multiverse initially all physicists pretty much and um Savas actually was one of the first to stay to say maybe we should think about it and I think he I think he he was doing a he

01:02:12 was uh doing a visiting term at Harvard where where Nemo was and uh he said you know maybe we should look at this Multiverse and Nema says I I said are you nuts this is a total waste of time why would I ever think about the Multiverse and sa said yeah but you know you might want to look at this and eventually Nema came around um so I don't think outwardly you know it's maybe a reflection inwardly I I think both of them are you know extremely passionate there are different points in

01:02:43 their lives though you know and and this is something that you know it also gets to your you know when you said well Nea is lamenting 15 years Savas is 30 years um is the issue of mortal and you know for scientists I mean it's for both scientists for all creative people I think science it's even harder somewhat in terms of especially for theorists and and Neema said that he had the young genius Theory initially he said you know and his his idea was he would you know they would discover the

01:03:13 higs he'd do all these things and by 30 he would have that done and he'd move on you know and of course you know yeah now now he's not and he you know I asked him near the end you so what do you think about this now and he sort of laughed and he said yeah it's interesting I'm sort of revising my ideas now he says I think and and he said you know and and he laughed you know he realized that this was a little bit self- serving but he said no he says what he thinks is that he said the problem is that when

01:03:44 people get older they're they become uh Bourgeois was his term in a sense and what he meant was that you know they get married they have kids they have other things in their life and that what he thought was the critical thing was not youth but the lack of distraction and the ability to absolutely you know be a a jerk if you need it be to focus on what you were doing that's why Sherlock Holmes doesn't get married that's why

01:04:14 Sherlock Holmes so so so that was what he was uh was was thinking with the solution and I think that issue of mortality is an interesting point and I think you know look honestly I think Neema does really you neema's in an interesting position I mean he is you know he was regarded as the young you know Hut genius um and but nothing that he has done has actually been proven I mean it's so he's recognized for what he's done and the Brilliance and his passion and his

01:04:45 Insight but um we don't know if anything is right you know um saas has actually had more things done but you know uh nothing completely proven either and I you know I think there it's very interesting to look at the two of them right now but this idea of proof is very interesting because I'm I'm obviously not a scientist but I understood that for instance uclid was proven and then suddenly you had the non idian

01:05:15 geometries and suddenly uh two parallel lines did meet and and so so does that happen constantly I mean I think what happens so my view of this is we we have the the theory that works in a certain regime maybe it works only at low energy it works at slow speeds it works at large distance scales and then when we get the ability to move Beyond those limitations we realize aha that actually Newton's laws are a nice example right

01:05:46 the the macroscopic world around us Force equals masstimes acceleration I push on something with a certain Force I'm going to get a certain acceleration for a given mass and then you're confronted with a speed limit to the universe the speed of light so there's a problem there I must not be able to get a certain acceleration for a given Mass with a given Force when when you get past that point but it doesn't mean that Newton's laws were invalid or are invalid in a context so I think that's what most often happens is that we

01:06:17 realize that there is context beyond our initial understanding or things that we didn't think matter do actually matter it's about universes beyond our universe what can we imagine yes it's also interesting when you're talking about morality as as playing a role and it's almost incon and and in some ways it's reflected by the attachments that one makes to this world and and Quest

01:06:47 literature is so focused on you know I mean the Orest Gilgamesh the very question of or Mor it his at the center and so much of quest literature is about going away and ultimately returning rightous yes yes I mean you know the Wizard of Oz you know the last lines on The Wizard of Oz is you know Aunt Emma there's no place like home but it's you know it's because the wizard is a failure yeah but there's almost a suspension of mortality in in

01:07:19 in the The Journey that's taken but there's always the return and I I I wonder about that as a fe feature that when one is pursuing the quest one has to set aside that aspect of experience I have a question for oh sorry did you want to answer um to go to art for a second because you've written novels as well as non-fiction and I would I mean in working on non-fiction there is a sense that you

01:07:50 have evidence that you're trying things out all the time that you're finding what seems true with in quotes or something but what seems accurate and I would imagine there's a process like that for fiction what feels absolutely right to would you talk a little bit about that well uh in both cases you have to construct a theory uh of of the universe a model whether it's based on the fact that Morgan ate porridge for breakfast or um more Brown Jews or your

01:08:23 invented character d did these things and what you find out as you were saying in the film is that um as soon as you establish one fact um a multitude of facts uh follows that if it's brown shoes and not black then there are consequences for this in every direction um I find it much more difficult to write fiction than non-fiction because in non-fiction so

01:08:55 much of the work has been done and you don't need to have the memory that you have to have for fiction uh when was he born and how many children did he have and you have to jot these things down and invent these these archives um but yes essentially they're the same process yes and I would I mean there I just from my novelist friends there's a sense of True North in some way once when you when you have it you know you

01:09:28 have it and when you don't have it you know you don't have it that's right but it's not till you finished the book I know right but you know it's actually interesting I me because right now I am working on a script so it's a fiction script and I it feels exactly like it did when I was in the editing room at the end of Particle Fever and you know I think the process is very similar and you know with film The interesting thing with film is um you go through these different phases and the the script stage is like Theory

01:10:02 uh you're coming up with a theory of the world basically um and then you go to experiment um which is uh like going into Film Production and that's suddenly you need lots of money and equipment and lots of people and it's completely crazy and you're just getting data and you know especially in film but I think in physics too to a certain extent you just like hope that it's working and making sense and then you come back to the edit room which is like going back to the theorists and it's like okay here's the data this is what the real world is like

01:10:32 and you revise your theories or you revise your you know the script is now a lost and you have the film that you have and so you know the long period in the edit room was taking all this data and what is our story and what is and you're you're but but we were approaching it it was like writing fiction uh and that's what people always say anyways in documentaries it's the editing is where the writing is and now I'm working on a script that's a fiction script but it's the same process for me I have I'm even

01:11:04 using you know some of my organizational software you know that I was using in the edit room keeping track now of people and stories and there is a and there is a life to it but it's it's there's a for me it's a very similar process there's a you know trying to imagine imagine various outcomes and what are the ones that work and what is the thing that is consistent and the characters have become their own people and oh you start talking like oh this person wouldn't do this you know exactly and it's it's so completely parallel I

01:11:35 mean I I just it's that you um offered of of the quest is useful I think for these creative processes because um all the uh stage of accumulating material and then uh putting it together it is that that Quest but it's only on that return Journey that you realize what you have whether it's a golden fleece or empty

01:12:07 hands question okay people want to line up at the microphone and and please uh identify yourself and and uh keep your comments in the form of a question hi my name is Olga a I'm okay okay okay thanks

01:12:37 thanks okay um first um I probably probably the difference between s scientist and artist scientist um uh the science experiment has to be provable and has to be repeat repeatable and artist usually tries to do something absolutely original and nobody can repeat it and also I uh Alberta said that probably a few

01:13:10 fools consider that King Le is actually bad play I'm not sure about fools but Leo taloy famous uh writer yes he did like he considered him primitive and you know that he wrote peace War and Peace and anakar so probably it's I don't know if he was full but he was absolutely of course Very arrogant

01:13:42 person but still he heing prob nobody up okay and my question is to Sara actually um I uh after you finished your film um I read that um um uh actually exact number exact mass of higs bazon bazon is um 126 plusus 0.4 and um there are actually theories

01:14:16 that didn't uh um connected to Super symmetry or multiv that predict exactly these these number and um but still my question is um uh like Shing question what do you think is idea of M multi more dead or more alive after all these uh discoveries that okay so that's a great

01:14:49 question right so the mass of the higs within the standard model was actually a predicted number based on all the other information that we had the mass of the top cork the mass of the W all the measurements that we had and our understanding of how this Theory fits together if you have a a higs bon within the standard model that functions as evidence for the higs field which gives us Mass it should be a certain number we had a prediction right and we didn't find the higs at exactly that prediction

01:15:20 um before the lht started but the idea is if it's a standard model model higs BOS on it's got to be close to that it has to be around 118 a number that's not that far from where we'd actually explored right so the further up away from that prediction within the standard model the more exciting it is from the perspective of maybe there's something else that we have access to through this particle beyond the standard model so that that was kind of the excitement there if it's is it really far away from the

01:15:50 prediction of 118 so that it must be something else so there's that thing that's happening how close is this to what we expect from the standard model um and you could argue about 125 it it turns out to be close enough to the prediction that it's perfectly consistent with the standard model so there you have that and then you look at other ideas well maybe we don't say definitely not standard model but even within that close enough to be standard model it could actually be something else it could be super symmetry it could

01:16:22 be the Multiverse it could be this and you look at all of this these different spaces in terms of these different theories and try to understand what do they predict for this particle's Mass right what do we learn from that and I think the the issue with the higs at this mass is that it makes some of our favorite theories a little bit uncomfortable for super symmetry I would say a mass of that higs Bon means that some of the best motivation for super symmetry you lose at that mass so super symmetry could definitely be reality but

01:16:54 it wouldn't solve all of the problems that we hop that super symmetry would come along and solve in terms of the Multiverse I don't think it gives us information in that it doesn't rule it out as a possible idea I'm sorry I'm not adding any content beyond the film I think it captures pretty well where things stand um the the funny thing about the higs or one of the funny things about the higs is that so many of us were hoping that it wouldn't be there um what it does and I used to say that I hope we don't find the higs and now

01:17:25 having been even some small part of the discovery I think it's an absurd thing to say because it was thrilling right I mean it's it's amazing that that prediction actually was true but um the higs ban ties up the standard model really neatly in some ways and doesn't get us Beyond and we know that there's so many things about the universe that we don't understand it would have been wonderful if the answer to the generation of mass actually took us in some step further beyond the standard model but I I think right now it's it's

01:17:56 inconclusive it's consistent with a standard model higs it doesn't rule out super symmetry though it's making it a little bit less attractive and it leaves us with the idea of the Multiverse hanging and every theorist out there including probably David Kaplan who said oh all of my theories are ruled out went back and thought about how do I adjust that so that it actually still works I'm sorry I don't have a better answer it's very inconclusive

01:18:26 um I I really don't understand uh this topic too much I'm definitely going to research it now that I've seen this movie but um my understanding is that the higs Bon generates the higs field which gives um particles mass is that correct so if if you're on a lake in a boat M think of the lake as the higs fields okay if I add energy to the lake if I splash the lake and this is not my analogy I should say Mike hildr thank you wherever you are if I splash the

01:18:57 lake it's an exitation I've added energy to the lake there's a wave that goes out the wave is the higs Bon the evidence for the higs fields existing is the fact that when you add energy to it you actually have a particle that's created so the higs Bon tells us that there's this field everywhere in the universe and it's the higs field everywhere in the universe that that gives us a way to to have mass for particles um and so the other thing I wanted to

01:19:28 ask was would it be possible to explain to Layman um he more of the mechanism in terms of which the higs field makes particles have mass look look at the little film that she did right so we did yeah yeah I think so I here's here's how I think about it um you have to first understand what the definition of mass is because how do we think of mass we think of mass as The more mass I have that's kind of like the more stuff right um so if we're going to

01:20:01 think about Mass from a perspective of the higs Bon and particles let's shift our thinking a little bit okay um a massless particle so a particle out there with no Mass like the photon so the photons coming to my eyes they're light particles now I can't see you anymore um a massless particle travels at the speed of light it has no choice a particle that has has no Mass fundamental particle travels at the speed of light okay um particles that do have mass can't travel at the speed of

01:20:32 light they can't get up there as much force as you put on them they can't get up there so the question of mass is is slowing things down how is it that we slow things down what is the mechanism that means that some things can't move at the speed of light that all the massless particles move at it's kind of similar to the idea of mass as stuff right The more mass you have the harder you are to get going maybe you'd say that at I don't know if it it works perfectly um so the idea of the higs fields being the mechanism for that is that this higs Fields some particles it

01:21:04 can't slow down at all it doesn't have any interactions with them okay those are the massless particles so the photon travels through the higs fields the field is there but it doesn't have any interaction with it other particles that do have mass they they see the field they're slowed down by it it's like they're traveling through molasses and the more they see the field the more they interact with the field the more slowed down they are the more massive they are so I would say that's the mechanism for how it works I think you leave many of us wishing You' been our phys I just

01:21:35 thinking there you go hopefully I'm telling the truth thank you really hey um I had a question for mark and um you were talking about how the sort of creative process for creating editing films parallels um the process of I guess progress in in theoretical physics um and I was kind of wondering about in terms of your background have you found that your background informs your artistic sensibilities in different ways um than the people that you're sort

01:22:07 of working with like do you find not just in terms of like the domain specific knowledge that was probably useful for um Particle Fever but more nebulously in the process do you find that you see things differently or think about things differently I guess I you know I don't think in an obvious way but I mean I certainly can't deny my background I think you know there are certain ways that I think uh but I think it's just there's a certain logic that I apply to things um I I don't feel I look at

01:22:37 things as a scientist you know people always say that oh I don't know what that means I um it's the way I think um as I say I feel the process of writing and writing something fiction is exactly the same as when I'm sitting in an edit room and I assume I'm using certain processes of logic that are also what I used when I was doing theoretical physics I mean when and that and so I

01:23:07 will make that comparison when I was in graduate school when I was doing theoretical particle physics it was a very similar process I mean somebody asked me after at the Q&A how did I make that transition practically it didn't feel all that different I you know I I yes I mean I I I think I have a certain logical way that I approach things but when I was doing theoretical physics I was sitting in a room by myself with a pencil and paper coming up with a theory of the universe not getting paid very

01:23:39 much as a grad student and then I started writing a script and I I just changed rooms you know but I was still sitting there with a pencil and paper thinking about the way you know more humans interacted um but with a certain log that you apply to it and it it felt to me it felt very similar so I I I don't know I I think the creative process is the creative process and you know you have certain ways I I mean I do know that I I I think

01:24:12 that you know I can see that I approach certain things and there's a certain logic but that's a fundamental thing that doesn't have to do with science either I don't think I think that any artist is applying a certain logical process and working out the consequences that's that's that's similar uh I don't know if there's a a metal level at which the brain is working that jumbles things together I wouldn't know I just think the way I think but I think for me the process is extremely

01:24:44 similar I have question can I you you have while while you're going there I'll tell a quick Einstein joke okay that supposedly a reporter came to interview him I have no idea what this is true I read it somewhere it's probably not true but and and said Professor where do you get your ideas and Ein said said what do you mean and he said well do you get them when you're taking a walk or in the bath or playing your violin and Einstein thought for a moment and said actually I've only had one or

01:25:14 [Laughter] two okay so my question um it actually sort of arose when we were discussing or you were discussing saos um and I remember from the movie he said that um there was he told this anecdote of how Paradise to him was frightening and he started to cry and as it just made me start to think about fear um and fear as how it plays in the role of a quest or its role in a quest so I guess I was just wondering how for

01:25:45 you for you guys what was your experience with fear does it have a role in what you do does it drive you to as s would do go find what what exists out there so good question I mean there's a there's a there is a certain fear I mean certainly there are points you know there were points in Particle Fever where I had a fear that this was not going to add up to anything uh I mean I always thought that it would at some way

01:26:17 but the the the the fear of creating something that nobody responds to that people don't understand I mean it was a long process uh we tested the film at various you know along the way and you know each I mean it's an interesting thing with this with the process where you know you're working intensely and and you think oh yeah okay I've got it and you show it to people and they're like they don't get it at all and you think wow oh okay now you know I have to

01:26:47 go back and uh you know there's a certain fear that for me it drives me on I mean I would say that I I don't I think fear makes me work harder uh it doesn't uh make me run so I guess that's my own personal reaction so far anyways yeah well failure is an option it's it's a feared option yeah um so I think that's yeah that's definitely true and with every book you write it doesn't

01:27:18 really matter that you've written another book the new one could be a disaster I mean you you it's got its own constraints and requirements and you don't know you can do it so you have it's just so fascinating to me is sort of coming out with your dialog that fear for you drives you but it's also you need order to be successful Quest To Conquer there for me there is an interesting fear that happens rarely um where I think if this works

01:27:52 out it changes what I wanted to do it changes the way I was thinking about the subject and and that's a a big fear because it forces you to start all over again and it it but when it happens you know that you're onto something interesting I think it may also be a question for me of how How Deeply you are into it you know so the longer the further I went the the the the you know

01:28:24 more at stake I felt about not fa failing and you know pushing and pushing and pushing I mean I don't know at an earlier stage you know you know there might be a wisdom in an earlier stage sometimes of abandoning something and you do that in in a minor way all the time I mean you know in a minor way you know you try an approach and you have to make a quick assessment now that's not going to pay off and I have to go in a different direction you Lear from that you learn from saying yes

01:28:55 you that's that's true actually you know and it reminded me I forgot it when you said it a quote I think it was whad who said that in in philosophy um when you come up against a contradiction that's the end and in science it's the beginning and I thought that was a very interesting point which relates to what you said too and and to pick up with your image of the quest which I I find very interesting and useful um any Quest um that's engaged

01:29:25 without fear is not worth engaging but it's also a matter of degree you have a certain amount of fear that can motivate you if it gets to be too much fear in your [Laughter] par um one of my favorite quotes is what Einstein wrote back when he was asked to describe his process and he said first everything came in the form of images and then he felt the deep emotional desire to communicate

01:29:55 and that's what led him to create formulas I think that's so beautiful because it's an imagination emotion and the desire for communication which has to be part of Science and so that's a little bit of a background to the question which may otherwise F sound a little bit out in left field but I'm really struck at now how Neuroscience departments are hiring physicists and that there's some way in which Neuroscience is bringing the

01:30:26 psyche together which is the source of imagery and emotion um with the Sciences so I wondered I think Yale has started on that as well yes so I'm not in the Neuroscience department at yel yeah I can't speak for them I think that um I can try to answer it in in some way and then see how other people feel I think that one of the miraculous things about Einstein and his theories was he was

01:30:57 working with um physics that we can't directly relate to meaning speed of light special relativity in particular speed of light length contraction time dilation these things that we don't actually experience and he set up very straightforward thought experiments he put you on a train and had you turn on a flashlight and he had two brothers or two astronauts and one of them travel and the other one stay at home he set up

01:31:29 images in some ways stories um places that let you access that contradiction with something that you did understand and I think that that is incredibly powerful it's something we're floundering with with the higs for example right to have this be something that we all can can grapple with in ways that we can understand I think that the ability that we have to imagine or to have ual images associated with what we're trying to understand um with the Frameworks that we have is really tied

01:32:00 into how much progress we can make in terms of our scientific theories so those two things that's the only access I I have to trying to answer your question I don't know in the March Round Table uh Rob read the background of the people so we have neuroscientists but one of the people at that round table on the subject of Consciousness is a physicist so the there is no question and uh one of the people who's been at round taes here a couple of times Andrea

01:32:30 califano who is a topnotch microbiologist who is close to discovering significant things about cancer and who always says he always thought he would go to physics discover something go to microbiology discover cure of cancer and then discover the Cure of Alzheimer's he's about to move to the Alzheimer territory and he was a physicist so I think physics gives us tools to tackle complicated problems and to model complicated systems and um a lot of the

01:33:04 yeah so I I I think there's a natural way that the different branches in science can interact with each other more and more yeah yeah I'd like to uh touch on something that Mark brought up about the um scientist as genius and it seems like the s u project with 3,000 scientists uh many of the major leaps at least in the past in science like with Einstein he was a lowly patent clerk in Baron when he did his four major papers on the

01:33:34 photoelectric effect and his first theories of Relativity and I was thinking about cernus who um was a a church Canon when he developed his heliocentric theories even though there had been prior heliocentric theories going back to ancient Greece but in some cases the mere fact that you have collaborative effort um you know in Germany they said that um Einstein was a Jew and therefore his science was Jewish science which was less uh accurate and they burned his books um so the mere

01:34:07 fact of having collaboration in some cases Waters down science so that's why you have in many cases the great leaps in science at least in the past you also had gentleman scientists leasia and others who um would be in their little laboratory but they wouldn't necessarily have to listen to 20 other guys and I was thinking again about Einstein where 20 years at Princeton working on his field theory he accomplished not a lot whereas in one year as a baron patent clerk he wrote four Earth shattering

01:34:39 theories so is it better that and again going back to this genius theory of of uh of scientists that isn't it better to be the little guy in the corner that everybody says you're wrong than being with the 3,000 people who say this is what the consensus is and you know just like with the uh talic theory of the Universe versus the cernic theory if you're going to go with the consensus you're going to go with té but if you're a cernus you're going to say wait a second I think that the sun is the center not the earth I I would push back

01:35:11 on well I think we need to get at the reason that there are thousands of us who are gathered at CERN working on this together we are at the point where we are gliding protons at 99.999999999% of the speed of light um the that people have described that Enterprise I don't remember if this was in the film or not but people have described the Enterprise as the cathedrals of our time right the the amount of resources that you need to

01:35:42 muster the ideas that go behind it the building of the structure that the the lone person working in the corner is not going to make a Large Hadron Collider this is a seven b ion doll machine so um I I think that that a lot of the collaboration it's part of what makes it so fascinating as a as a species if we're going to take the next step in this exploration we need to pull our resources um Financial intellectual

01:36:13 passion we need to all bring that to Bear to to answer some of these um questions now what we're doing at CERN is testing theories okay and and um and and coming up with ideas for sure but um a lot of the intellectual work that we're doing is trying to figure out how with this physical experimental apparatus we can access something like super symmetry or the Multiverse or go after some of those ideas so there certainly is still room for people in

01:36:44 different Pockets around the world to be thinking on their own but the the Enterprise at CERN is is Justified and required and um um and yeah an incredible Challenge and I would say with respect to Einstein you know I don't think that most people think that oh if Einstein was tackling you know Grand unified theory when he was you know and you know when he was 20 he would have solved it I think it's also very much a matter of the time and the problems and and this is another thing

01:37:14 that Sava says that I think is really really very trenchant at the beginning where he says what distinguishes a great scientist it's you know you have to you have to know what's the right question to ask and it has to be the right time for there to be a solution that you can understand and that time when Einstein was you know coming up with a photoelectric effect and and relativity it was the right time and uh you know he made advances but uh it was he knew it

01:37:48 was about asking the right questions is almost the first question you know that I mean the first issue he knew he knew the question to ask and it was the right time and there was the right things happening it was the time to solve it and that's what what what what Sava says so really the time to solve it was then and I don't know that um it would have been different later I mean because there are many brilliant people that have come since Einstein that have tackled these problems and the time hasn't come to to get it yet

01:38:20 so okay any other question question yes along the lines of the intersection Art and Science I'm a painter and was nail in graduate school was a representation um landscape painter which always kind of irritated me because I always just considered it painting uh so down the road uh a lot having done a lot of paintings seemed to be painting like the energy in inherit nature whatever that meant or seemed to mean and then reading about or hearing

01:38:51 about what scientists consider uh the nature of things is chaotic swarming um intersecting energies or patterns chaotic patterns somehow it's come out in the work in a weird kind of way I just was curious what physicists would have to say about that um I don't think I'm illustrating science but something's coming out of the work Pollock said uh you when somebody said why don't you paint nature he Saidi am

01:39:22 nature the materials nature the materials energy I'm energy uh make sense that's interesting so I I have a colleague who um well so one of the theories that's really challenging to interact with is um quantum mechanics I think um where you have probabilities that are governing what will happen or what will be measured as opposed to uh push a a box and see how far it it will slide before it stops right um so so I

01:39:53 have a colleague who says that he thinks in terms of quantum mechanics and um he said this to be multiple times and I always ask him I I I say I don't believe that you think in terms of quantum mechanics because you couldn't drive a car if you think in terms of quantum mechanics it's just not possible so maybe what you're asking or maybe what you're saying is that you're you're remove from a framework of the macroscopic or of um how we tend to look

01:40:24 at the the landscape and seeing something else there and I think that uh people have used that kind of art to try to access ideas within physics of quantum mechanics process it's almost like I got to sick and tired of ver and there know about the energy but you know you know it's interesting because also you know when you're you're saying that um your collaborator accuses you or something of having you know a scientific cultural bi or that you're being affected by cultural and science I actually I see it

01:40:55 going much more the other direction that I do see you know people I mean it's fascinating even even from a language you know a linguistic perspective Quantum is used in so many instances has nothing to do with science there's so many instances of this where where you know popular culture has has uh taken over these words and I think one of the really interesting things that I you know thought about a lot during the making a film and and and general is that you know in both science and art in

01:41:25 the in the beginning of 20th century what happened is very significant that in both cases they went to abstraction and so before that you know painting was very literal and science was very literal anybody of sort of normal intelligence you can understand Newton you know laws of physics and painting and suddenly in both the Arts and the science we went to abstraction and it required Specialists and um you know that's what seems to emerge kind of dialectal language and I don't intellectualize it just do it it's about

01:41:56 a flow of work yeah regardless whether it's good pain or bad pain I don't conc I I I think that there's been throughout history a a back and forth between science and art and you know there's a very interesting book Leonard schlain wrote called physics and art and uh he looks at the parallels in which in often and in many instances art LED science in terms of making a breakthrough in terms of you know uh perspective in terms of light in terms of many many things so um

01:42:29 you know I say what you're feeling is a very the end of a long process that's that's been ongoing it keeps be going it's Fascination what's what's this all about what's coming out of this yeah thank okay I would like to thank all of [Music] you

01:43:02 Ma