Is There a Way Through the Paradox?

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Before my construction with Waffle, nobody even had the foregist idea how it could possibly be that you would have that number of gigabytes in a black hole. We're using string theory to analyze a prediction that is the same as we would ordinarily expect. But I invite all your listeners to go dig up that video. It's fascinating because I think that most people, even physicists, would have guessed that all the holographies going on at the event horizon of the black hole.

Quantum gravity research is inspired by experiment — all of the experimental data that supports quantum mechanics, and supports general relativity — but it’s only inspiration, not detailed guidance. So it’s easy to “do research on quantum gravity” and get lost in a world of toy models and mathematical abstraction. Today’s guest, Andrew Strominger, is a leading researcher in string theory and quantum gravity, and one who has always kept his eyes on the prize: connecting to the real world. We talk about the development of string theory, the puzzle of a positive cosmological constant, and how black holes and string theory can teach us about each other.

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Andrew Strominger received his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently the Gwill E. York Professor of Physics at Harvard University. Among his awards are the Dirac Medal, the Klein Medal, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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