3min chapter

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217 - Leonard Susskind: String Theory, Fine-Tuning, and the Physics of the Multiverse

Robinson's Podcast

CHAPTER

Intro

Delve into the concepts of string theory, fine-tuning in physics, and the multiverse through discussions on fundamental particles as vibrating strings, dark energy, supernatural explanations, and scientific challenges. Featuring insights from physicist Leonard Susskind, this chapter covers groundbreaking ideas in physics.

00:00
Speaker 1
Why do people of some degree of intelligence vote for a certain candidate for president? I don't know. It is not my view that it's an open and shut case, that this view of physics, the anthropic view and all of that is correct. I would only say that it's the only explanation of certain things that we have. These other people who are skeptical about it have a perfect right to be skeptical about it. It's reasonable to be skeptical about it. But in their skepticism, they should also think to themselves, let me find another explanation. That has failed. It's failed repeatedly over and over again. There have been hundreds and hundreds and maybe thousands of papers why the cosmological constant is what it is, why it's so small. They all fail. Their mathematics is wrong, their physics is wrong. they all fail one after another. And I would say the real question or a question is how do we confirm these ideas by some kind of standard kind of scientific thinking? Maybe it's best to say we've gotten stuck. We don't know how to dismiss the idea because it's the only good idea around. On the other hand, we don't know to confirm it and we simply have to wait for smarter people with better ideas to tell us how to do observations, to tell us how to do experiments, which might confirm this idea. Hello,
Speaker 2
this is Robinson Inherart here with the introduction to an absolute banger of an episode, and this is Robinson's podcast number 217. And this episode is with Leonard Susskind, who is Felix Block, professor of physics at Stanford University. He is without a doubt one of the most towering figures of physics of the last 50 years, he's among the fathers of such revolutionary concepts as string theory, black hole complementarity, the holographic principle, and the string theoretic landscape. This last idea, the landscape, is what we talk about in this episode. More particularly, it's how string theory, which reimagines the fundamental particles of quantum mechanics as tiny, vibrating, one -dimensional strings, responds to the fine -tuning problem, which is that it appears that so many of the constants in physics, which according to the standard model of particle physics are random, seem perfectly selected for the existence of human life. If some of them were even slightly different, we would not exist. So in this episode we get into string theory, dark energy, God and supernatural explanations, the multiverse interpretations of quantum mechanics, and the future of physics. For more detail, you should absolutely read his book The Cosmic Landscape, which covers a lot of these topics and a link to which you will find in the description. On my end, reviews, comments, likes, subscribes, these sorts of things are endlessly appreciated.

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