The Greatest Story Ever Told...So Far | Lawrence M. Krauss | Talks at Google

1. 0:00 – 0:05

   Intro

   1. SPSpeaker0:00

      [instrumental music]

2. 0:05 – 1:35

   Host introduction and Krauss’s background (cosmology, books, public science)

   1. SPSpeaker0:05

      Hello, everyone. It is with pleasure I introduce Dr. Lawrence Krauss. Dr. Krauss is the foundation professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. He has made significant contributions in cosmology, where he was one of the first physicists to suggest the existence of dark energy, a substance which may be responsible for 63, sorry, 68.3% of all the total energy in the observable universe. Dr. Krauss is also a tireless advocate for public understanding of science. He served on the Science Policy Committee for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, contributed articles to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Newsweek, and written several New York Times best-selling books on science, including his previous book, the well-noted and well-regarded Universe from Nothing. My first exposure to Dr. Krauss's work came with one of his early books, The Physics of Star Trek, which I found enthralling for its thorough and altogether serious look at the physics, plausible and otherwise, of one of my favorite series. As a brief aside, Dr. Krauss, I, I feel like there was a, a missed opportunity. You wrote a follow-up called Beyond Star Trek.

   2. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss1:06

      Uh-huh.

   3. SPSpeaker1:06

      And I feel it should've been named The Physics of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Krauss.

   4. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss1:10

      I-

   5. SPSpeaker1:10

      [laughs]

   6. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss1:11

      You're taking that out of my p- uh, my, I put that in my appendix.

   7. SPSpeaker1:14

      Oh, you did?

   8. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss1:15

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   9. SPSpeaker1:15

      Oh, you did. Now-

   10. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss1:16

       Okay

   11. SPSpeaker1:16

       ... uh, today Dr. Krauss is here to talk about his latest book documenting our current understanding of nature, the history of one of humanity's greatest scientific achievements, the standard mode- model of particle physics, and its implications for our existence, in what promises to be the greatest story ever told so far. Join me in giving a warm welcome to Dr. Krauss.

   12. SPSpeaker1:34

       [clapping]

3. 1:35 – 4:13

   “The hardest thing to see is what is really there”: illusion, accidents, and the book’s premise

   1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss1:35

      Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Well, it's, it's a pleasure to be here and, uh, see all of you. And I, I, I understand it's lunchtime, so I shouldn't go overtime, so I'll make a shorter version than normal because I know you have really important work to do, so. Um, in any case, uh, the, the quote that I had here along with the music, um, comes from a pl- a, a book that actually a friend, friend of mine, who's a filmmaker named Werner Herzog, recommended to me. And, um, and, uh, and he, you know, you might have seen his most recent m- well, not most recent movie, but second most recent movie, Lo and Behold, which is about the internet, which is nice. So there's another one that just came out, um, which is a fiction called Salt and Fire that I'm also in as a, as a vil- a villain, but, uh, it's a weirder movie. But anyway, this, this, um, the mov- this book, which is called The Peregrine, is about a peregrine, and, um, but it is a wonderful naturalist book if you ever wanna read it. But the quote is what's particularly important, which is, "The hardest thing of all to see is what is really there." And that's really the, the thrust of, of, uh, of the content of my book, which is that the, the world we live in is an illusion. And, uh, it's an, been amazing story for particle physics and, and, and, oh, look at that. Okay, is there a reason that went off? Auto power off engaged. Aut power, auto power off was engaged.

   2. SPSpeaker2:59

      [laughs]

   3. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss3:00

      So waiting for projectors to start. Good. I'm very impressed with the technology.

   4. SPSpeaker3:07

      [laughs]

   5. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss3:08

      Um, the, uh ... So anyway, uh, the standard model of particle physics and, in fact, particle physics in general, has been about trying to understand the, uh, the fundamental structure of, of matter and energy. And it is really an amazing story of how different the universe is at fundamental scales than the scale we see. And one of the real implications and, and one of the reasons the subtitle of the book is called Why Are We Here? is that, um, the universe that we exist in is an accident. In a well-defined way, which I will, well, I'll talk about until, until the, uh, until the projector gets, gets to there. I'll get, I'll be-

   6. SPSpeaker3:47

      [laughs]

   7. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss3:47

      Oh, that, l- let me just get to the slide I wanna do so when we get, when the projector actually turns on, which is certainly not now.

   8. SPSpeaker3:54

      [laughs]

   9. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss3:55

      Um, oh, it, oh, a light just came on. That's good. Uh, we can get to the image I wanna show, which is of a, of a window in the wintertime with ice crystals on it. I was actually just in Phoenix, where I teach, and I show, I gave a lecture on this, and I had to explain to people those were ice crystals. But, uh, here we go.

   10. SPSpeaker4:13

       [laughs]

4. 4:13 – 5:57

   Ice-crystal thought experiment: how “meaning” can emerge from accidents

   1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss4:13

      Um, and so these are beautiful, but what I want you to do is think for a second of what it would be like if you lived on one of them. Uh, so say this one, okay? If you evolved on, on, and we can still use that word in the US.

   2. SPSpeaker4:25

      [laughs]

   3. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss4:26

      Um, uh, if you evolved on that crystal, uh, what would ha- what would happen? Well, the physicists, uh, let, uh, I don't know where it is in that one, but anyway, let's say with this one. Oh, no, there it is. Um, the physicists working in this world would say, "Well, okay, I can work out the forces. The forces along the spine of the crystal are very different than the forces perpendicular." So they'd come up with laws of physics which would explain and predict how things moved and, and there'd be one set of forces in this direction and w- forces in the other direction, and that would seem natural. There'd be theologians who'd say, "Well," explain why God ordained that direction to be the proper direction for life. And there'd be, and there'd be wars fought over whether that was the right direction or that was the right direction to pray to. And, um, uh, all of that would have significance, which of course is completely illusory, that the, the, it is just an accident, and, uh, the crystal could point in any given direction. And, uh, but it wouldn't seem that way if you lived on that crystal, and that's essentially the world we live in. All of the facets of the world that look like, make it look like the universe is designed for our existence are pure accidents in a fundamental way, which I'll try and describe. And, uh, and we, of course, the world looks like it's designed for us, but at a fundamental s- level, it's actually antithetical to our existence, as I'll describe to you. Now, the story's long and winding, and obviously I d- I said I wanna give an abridged version so you can get back to work. But, um, so I want- I'll start fairly late into this. Uh, but the story actually

5. 5:57 – 7:28

   Unification as a driver of physics: from electricity & magnetism to spacetime

   1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss5:57

      begins 2,000 years ago with Plato and then works, works through Maxwell and Einstein, talking about the major revolutions that have changed our pers- perspective of our place in the universe. And one of the things that describes Pretty well the progress of science, certainly in physics in any case, is when we know made, made progress when two things that seem very different on the surface are seen to be different reflections of the same thing. And then we know we've made progress, and that pretty well characterizes almost all the progress in physics over the ages. From, for example, in recent times, the recognition of electricity and magnetism, which seem so different, are really exactly the same thing. And one person's electricity is another person's magnetism. That led to the realization that space and time, which seem different, are really the same thing. And what one person sees as space, another person will measure as time. We live in a four-dimensional universe, not a three-dimensional universe. And those kind of developments have progressively told us that the universe that we see is kind of myopic because we perceive these three-dimensional slices of a four-dimensional universe, which is why it seems so non-intuitive to us that the universe is four-dimensional. And when I'm running with respect to you, I'm seeing a different three-dimensional slice of a four-dimensional universe, which is why things seem strange, and relativity does what it does. And, and I talk about those things at great length in the book. So though up, up to that point we had-- we developed a theory of electromagnetism and a theory of, of gravity, and all seemed well, um, until we got to a later stage. And I wanna begin the later stage with this guy who all of you know, I

6. 7:28 – 9:52

   Feynman diagrams and virtual photons: how quantum electrodynamics explains electromagnetism

   1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss7:28

      assume. It's Richard Feynman, and, uh, who was probably w-w-was one of the greatest physicists of the second half of the twentieth century. And, uh, what he won the Nobel Prize for, with others, was the recognition that, of course, at the fundamental level, the world is quantum mechanical. And if we wanna have a theory of electromagnetism, we need to put it into accord with quantum mechanics. And the theory they developed, called quantum electrodynamics, is a theory that merges electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. And he presented a way of, of thinking about this to understand the electric force between two charges, which had been understood by Faraday and Maxwell in a slightly different way, a way we, we talk of by Feynman diagrams, as we call them. But it's particularly interesting. So this is an electron, and it repels another electron, and it does so by the exchange of a particle, a photon, the quantum of the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic waves come in particles, and photons are the individual quanta. Now, what Feynman used in developing this is a key aspect of quantum mechanics, which is central to quantum mechanics, which is really the, the same you-- thing that's used in Washington and corporate America, which are now the same thing.

   2. SPSpeaker8:45

      [laughing]

   3. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss8:47

      If, if you can't see it, anything goes, okay? That's basically it. And we'll learn more about that with investigations over the next year, I certainly hope. But, uh-

   4. SPSpeaker8:57

      [laughing]

   5. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss8:58

      But so the idea is that el-- this electron emits this particle, this photon of light, but that's impossible. It's not allowed. The electron just sitting there cannot emit, emit a particle of light because where did the energy come from? If the photon carries energy, where did the energy come from? The f-electron is still there if it's an isolated electron. It can't emit a photon because that doesn't conserve energy. But that's okay. That's allowed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which is responsible for that W-Washington rule I gave you. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle says if I measure a system for a short time, then I can't know its energy exactly. There's some uncertainty in the energy. So if I emit this photon and it violates energy conservation, that's allowed in, in, in quantum mechanics as long as the photon disappears in such a short time that I can't measure it. It's just exactly like embezzlement, okay?

   6. SPSpeaker9:50

      [laughing]

7. 9:52 – 11:54

   Why long-range vs short-range forces differ: massless photons and the logic of force range

   1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss9:52

      I'm, I'm sure Google does this every day at some level. Because if you get the money, and as long as you put it back before anyone notices, it's f-- you can do whatever you want with it, right? And that's the-- you know, there's a lot of trading that goes in, in that regard. So it's exactly the same. So the photon can take a-- can violate energy conservation here. As long as it disappears before you can measure it, you're fine. And, and so the photons exchange, and it produces that repulsion. Now, the key point is the photon has zero mass. It's massless. And that's essential to the, uh, uh, to make electromagnetism a long-range force. The electron here repels an electron in Alpha Centauri, okay? Or anywhere, in another galaxy. And the reason is because the photon is massless, it can carry an arbitrarily small amount of energy. And if it can carry an arbitrarily small amount of energy, then it can exist for an arbitrarily long time before it has to disappear without violating the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. And if it can exist for an arbitrarily long time, it can travel from here to Alpha Centauri before it's absorbed. So the fact that electromagnetism is a long-range force is uniquely, uh, related to the fact that the photon is massless in this picture, okay? And this photon, because you can't see it, it's called a virtual photon because it doesn't really exist. It just, it, you can't ever measure it. If you look for it, it's not there, okay? And, uh, great. And so this picture, this is a complete picture of the quantum theory of electromagnetism. You absorb and emit these virtual photons that, that can do anything they want as long as you can't see them. And this theory is the best theory in science. It's the best theory in any area of science. You can-- based on this theory, you can make predictions and compare them with observations to fourteen decimal places, which you can't do in any other area of science, where fundamental predictions compare to observations. So this is as good as it gets in science. And in the nineteen forties when this was developed, this was great. We now have a complete theory called quantum electrodynamics, which, which explains and predicts perfectly every measurement you can make in atoms and other things where electric fie-fields are, are relevant. So that's great,

8. 11:54 – 14:39

   Neutron decay and the “accident” enabling heavy elements—and us

   1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss11:54

      okay? And that, and that looked great for nature, but then nature intervened, okay? Nature v-- intervened with, by the fact that the neutron is radioactive. Now, this should disturb you, okay, because, uh, I remember I first learned about it when I was in high school from a guy named Tommy Gold, who was a wonderful astronomer. But, but, uh- It should disturb you 'cause most of the particles in your body are neutrons, right? Neutrons and protons make up atomic nuclei, and for heavy nuclei certainly there are, on average, more neutrons than there are protons. So the number one dominant particle in your body is neutron, okay? If I take a neutron here and hold it up, it will decay in 10 minutes, okay? And you will notice, maybe to your chagrin, that you've been here for more than 10 minutes and they're still here. You may be pray- praying for your neutrons to decay.

   2. SPSpeaker12:42

      [laughs]

   3. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss12:43

      Um, but, but they're not, and why is that? An accident of our existence. So how does nu... what's neutron decay? Well, neutron decays into three particles, a proton. This is just a fancier of writing electron. A proton, electron, and a neutrino. Another particle. The key point, however, is that the neutron and proton weigh almost exactly the same amount. The difference between these two masses is, is one part in 1,000. And so the neutron has barely enough energy to decay. If it, if its mass was less than the sum of these three masses, it couldn't decay. Again, it would violate energy conservation. So it's just barely more than the mass of these three particles. Which is why it lasts so long, 'cause 10 minutes is a hell of a long time in particle physics units, okay? I mean, so it sh- it seems like an eternity. So this is a very long-lived particle, but short-lived by our standards. So how come you're still here? Which you may be asking yourself.

   4. SPSpeaker13:37

      [laughs]

   5. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss13:39

      Um, uh, so the... it's an accident, okay? What happens when I drop, put a nu- neutron in a nucleus? Well, it falls the nucleus and it gets bound. What does it mean to be bound? Well, some of you know, but otherwise it means that you... it takes energy to get out. You lose energy when you get bound. And so the neutron falls in the nucleus, loses energy, but E equals MC squared, so the neutron gets lighter. And when the neutrons gets in a nucleus, it's no longer has, um, um, its mass is too small to decay into these particles. So the n- neutrons are only stable in nuclei by that accident of the fact that the neutron, proton mass difference is so small, that when it falls into a nucleus, it no longer has enough energy to, to, uh, decay. And that's why you're here. That's why there are heavy elements. If it weren't for that, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that, that, uh, on which our lives are based would not exist. Just 'cause of that fortuitous fact that these particles have almost the same mass. Okay, that's interesting. But

9. 14:39 – 18:43

   The weak force problem: copying a successful theory, then hitting infinities

   1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss14:39

      more interesting for physicists was, well, this was a little disconcerting because suddenly this implied there was a new force in nature. The neutron was discovered in 1932, okay? Suddenly, a new force had to, because electromagnetism can't cause this decay, and gravity can't cause this decay. So there had to be some new force in nature that would cause that decay. And of course, the question is what kind of forces is it and how we can, can we understand it? The first person to write down a theory for that, any kind of theory, was one of my favorite physicists from the twentieth century, Enrico Fermi, who was the last particle/nuclear physicist who was equally good at, at, at theory and experiment. It-- the two fields have become sufficiently complicated that you can't do both now. Okay? He was the last one who was able to do both really well. He was very, uh, he, he also, historically in the Manhattan Project, was the one who was assigned the task of building the first nuclear reactor, the first sustained chain reaction. And so he built it, they built it in the University of Chicago, um, underneath the football field, which I've always viewed as an inspired choice, 'cause if, if anything went wrong, you just kill football players, there's no loss.

   2. SPSpeaker15:44

      [laughs]

   3. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss15:44

      And, and, um, so Fermi, uh, uh, built that successfully, but he also wrote down this first model of this, and he submitted it to the journal Nature, and it got rejected. Which heartens many of us who submit to Nature and get rejected.

   4. SPSpeaker15:59

      [laughs]

   5. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss15:59

      Um, and, uh, but he, he didn't take it well, and he, uh, in fact just said, "I'm not gonna do theory now. I'm gonna just go do experiments." Which was good for him, it turned out, because the next experiment he did won him the Nobel Prize in physics. So it worked for him. But, uh, but as his theory was built upon, uh, by others. Now, the really important thing, there are many important aspects of science that I wanna try and emphasize, and I try and emphasize in the book because they have relevance well beyond the esoteric physics I'm talking about. Relevance, as I'll describe in some sense to the quagmire where we find ourselves living in right now. But the one thing that's really important about science is that it's like Hollywood. And maybe like Google actually, probably in that regard. If it works, copy it. Okay? And keep copying it until it doesn't work anymore. It's like Halloween 56 or whatever it's gonna... As, as long as you can sell tickets, keep copying it. And so if we have a theory that works, copy it. So here's the best theory in nature. So the idea was if you have a new, if you have a new force, let's make it look like this force. So we could draw a picture, a fine argument, it looks the same, sort of. A neutron decays into protons. It's made of quarks, but that's a little added complication. Doesn't really matter. And then an electron and neutrino come out. And if this works by the exchange of a particle, then why not imagine this force works by the exchange of a particle? But this force is very different than this force. This force works across the universe. This force, the weak force, operates only on the scale of nuclei. That's why we don't see it on human scales. It only works for on the scale of nuclei. So it's very short range. This is very long range. It's weak, this is strong. How can you relate those two things? Well, if you make this particle massive, then what happens? If this is very, very massive, then it always carry-- then emitting it always produces a lot of energy, 'cause E equals MC squared. So if it's massive, you can't help but have a lot of energy produced here, and that means you violate energy conservation by a huge amount, which means the particle has to disappear very quickly by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Because otherwise that huge amount of energy would be noticed. So if you emit a particle that's very massive, it can travel only a very short time, and therefore only a very f- short distance before it has to disappear. Unlike the massless case. So you want a short-range force? Just exchange a massive particle. A long-range force, a massless particle. Everything works fine. But it doesn't, because this theory gives the best predictions in nature. This theory gives nonsense, 'cause when you do the mathematics, you get infinities. Physicists don't like infinities, computer scientists don't like infinities. Mathematicians love infinities.

   6. SPSpeaker18:42

      [laughs]

10. 18:43 – 21:59

    Dead ends, scientific stubbornness, and the unexpected clue from superconductivity

    1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss18:43

       But, so, but we don't, so, so the, uh, the idea is how to get around them. And this was a fascinating and severe problem. It's so severe that actually in the 1960s when it was kind of first recognized, many physicists were willing to give up the pretty picture. They said maybe this unification of relativity and quantum mechanics just doesn't work on the scale of nuclei. A- and it was kind of amazing how easily they were willing to give up this picture. And, and one of the things about the book is, uh, a- as, which is one of the reasons it's the greatest story, it wasn't easy. In particular, there are lots of red herrings and dead ends, and physicists are people, and that means they're pig-headed and prejudiced and biased, and they often wanna go in a direction even when that direction is futile. Okay, but the great thing about science is it drags the physicists or the scientists kicking and screaming in the right direction. So the individual scientist may be prejudiced, but, uh, eventually because of nature, they're forced in the right direction. In this case, these people, you know, and especially, actually it was interesting, and Berkeley was the main place where people wanted to give this up, and they created a kind of Zen version of physics, which is appropriate for Berkeley in the '60s.

    2. SPSpeaker19:52

       [laughs]

    3. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss19:53

       And it was the sound of one particle clapping basically.

    4. SPSpeaker19:55

       [laughs]

    5. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss19:56

       Um, but it, it... And it wa- actually it was the basis of string theory got generated there as a way, an alternative to this picture, and, and it failed miserably there too, but, but, uh, that's a different book. Uh, the point is that these people were looking at the problem, and you wanna shake them because, in fact, they had the answer. Well, the answer was right there for people if they hadn't been looking in the wrong direction. With hindsight, it's so much easier to see things, to see that the, the answer was right there, and the answer came from a very different area of physics, superconductivity. So in 1911, Kamerlingh Onnes discovered, a Dutch physicist, discovered that if he heated... if he cooled mercury down to four degrees above absolute zero, then the resistance went to zero. It didn't just become small, it went to zero. And that means if I have a mercury wire, and I hook it up to a battery, and I start a current going, and then I cool it to four degrees, I take away the battery, then the current continues to flow. And it doesn't just flow for an hour or a day. It flows forever. It never, ever stops 'cause resistance is price- precisely zero. It seems like it shouldn't be possible, but it is. It's a remarkable phenomena that he named superconductivity, and it's so weird that it took maybe 50 years to, to be able to have a theory of this, and it has to do with the rather complicated interactions of electrons and materials, which is nice. Okay, so what's this got to do with what I just discussed? Well, nowadays, we have high-temperature superconductors, so we can do neat experiments in high school physics classes 'cause we can put a superconductor now in dry ice, and there's some materials that become superconducting at those temperatures, and then we can play with them in high school classes. And for example, if you have a superconductor in dry ice, and you put a magnet above it, the magnet will levitate. Why? Because it turns out magnetic fields cannot pierce the superconductor. They die off the surface of the superconductor, so do electric fields. But that means the magnetic field lines basically get repelled by the superconductor, and that's enough to levitate the, the magnet. It's a fun little game to play in class,

11. 21:59 – 26:01

    Cosmic superconductor and an invisible field: making force carriers ‘act massive’

    1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss21:59

       okay? Again, what's this got to do with anything? Well, now I want you to imagine that you live in this superconductor. And now you, I ask you, what are the laws of physics in that superconductor? Well, for you, if you live in that superconductor, electromagnetism is a short-range force because electric fields and magnetic fields when they enter the superconductor die off exponentially fast it turns out. So if you have a quantum theory, if you develop quantum mechanics in that superconductor, you'll describe electromagnetism as a short-range force, and that will mean that the particle that's exchanged is massive. And indeed, in a superconductor, photons are massive. They have mass. They have, they're massless out here. They travel the speed of light. In a superconductor, they're massive. They travel much slower. It's just the way it is. Now, again, this should start bells ringing in your head, but it didn't for the physicists at the time until finally someone began to think about, well, what if, what if we live in a cosmic superconductor? A- and what if it's like, like swimming in water, okay? You swim in water, you feel you're really fast, and, uh, maybe Google has a pool here. Probably does, I don't know. And, um, and but what if you fill it up with molas-- Oops, sorry. What if you, what if you fill it up with molasses instead of water? Well, then you won't wanna go swimming, first of all, but, but if you did go swimming, you'd swim a lot slower. It'd be a lot harder. You'd feel a lot more massive. So what if we live in a cosmic superconductor and everywhere through space, I can't resist this, everywhere through space there's an invisible field, um, uh, uh, permeating all of space, and some particles interact with that field and get resistance, the, and be, appear as if they're massive, and other particles don't. What if that were the case? Well, then you could draw these pictures, these Feynman diagrams. This is the one I showed you before but turned sideways, and these are the ones for the, for the weak force, the one that, uh, produces that l- uh, electron neutrino. It turns out there are three particles involved, but that doesn't matter. But now what if these particles are massless just like the photon, but they interact with this invisible background field that's everywhere, and they act like they're massive in our superconducting world? And that means that the force they mediate looks like it's short range. Well, that would explain how it could be short range, but the neat thing is if they're massless, then the mathematics of, of the calculations involved by the exchange of these massless particles is the same as that for a photon, and in fact, instead of producing infinities, it produces correct results. Moreover, in fact, the mathematics is identical. So not only do these forces appear similar, in fact, they could be the same force. And nowadays, the picture is that these two forces which are so different in the world in which we live, each of which is responsible for our existence, the electro- electromagnetic interaction is responsible for all the interactions in the biology of your body. The weak force is actually responsible for the processes that power the sun, as well as the existence of heavy nuclei. And both of them are essential for our existence, but although they're very different, they're really the same at a fundamental level, and at a fundamental level they wouldn't look at all like the forces we see in the world in which we live. This incr-- we were dragged to this picture unwillingly, as I say, and, and for a long time, a lot of people went in other directions. And it's amazing to think that we were willing to picture a universe that is so distinct from the universe in which we live, so uninhabitable, if you wish, so foreign and so alien. It's one of the wonders, one of the great aspects of science and art and music and literature, is that it forces us to view our own perspective of our place in the cosmos differently, in a way that may not be the way we wanted. So it's an amazing intellectual triumph to propose that, and it apparently works. But at this point, it's kind of religious, right? Uh, just think

12. 26:01 – 29:14

    Testing the “ridiculous” claim: ‘spanking the vacuum’ and the Higgs particle at the LHC

    1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss26:01

       of what I just said. Imagine there's an invisible background field everywhere throughout nature that, that, uh, determines why you exist, okay? It sounds a lot like things you would have heard in the Bible or Star Wars or something like that. So... And it would be. It would be just an extraordinary claim without evidence, which is, y- which is religion. And it isn't though, 'cause it's physics. And what does that mean? That means we have-- If it's there, we have to find it. So if this invisible background field, if this weird, ridiculous picture is true, and it is a ridiculous picture, it's one we should be highly skeptical of. If it's true, we better find it. How do you find it? Cosmic sadomasochism.

    2. SPSpeaker26:42

       [laughing]

    3. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss26:43

       You spank the vacuum. You spank it hard. What do I mean? Well, all fields in quantum physics, all fields are related to particles. So if I dump enough energy at a single point in space, and let's call this field the Higgs field. If I dump enough energy at a single point in space, maybe I'll kick out real particles associated with that Higgs field and call them Higgs particles. How can you do that? Well, you build the most complicated machine humans have ever built, in this case, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, which is a particle accelerator. It, it's located in Geneva, and i- in fact, if you go to the airport, and I'm-- Google probably has enou- offices there. If y- if you go there and you'll see the lake and then the little water spout there. But underneath the farmland, right outside the airport, which is beautiful pastoral farmland, a hundred meters below the surface is a tunnel that's twenty-six kilometers around, and what we do is we accelerate protons at ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine eight percent the speed of light in one direction, and then protons at ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine eight percent the speed of light in the other direction, and we try and collide them at a certain points, three different points in the dete- in this circle. They go around thousands of times every second. Here's the French-Swiss border, by the way, so they cross the border without passports and all that. Thousands of times each second, which Trump will wanna change, no doubt. But, but, uh, we-- And this machine t- was built to be able to see if we could kick particles out of empty space and kick Higgs and produce these Higgs particles, if this ridiculous picture actually worked. Now, in this country, we have an, uh, sort of a anachronistic day we celebrate called July fourth, which doesn't mean anything to anyone else. But now it has a cosmic significance, 'cause on July fourth, two thousand and twelve, we reported fifty events produced in the Large Hadron Collider that looked like Higgses, that walked like Higgses, that quacked like Higgses, and we thought were Higgses, okay? And in the intervening five years, now almost five years, all of the experiments have m- fine-tuned those results, and they have exactly the properties that were predicted of the Higgs particle. Okay? Exactly. This is an amazing triumph because it means that this ridiculous picture we w- which, which we are pushed to is real. It means we really live inside of a cosmic superconductor. And it means that we were driven not just to propose that picture, but to build this remarkably

13. 29:14 – 32:47

    Science as culture and collaboration: the LHC as a ‘Gothic cathedral’ plus its technical extremes

    1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss29:14

       complex machine to do it. And, and to me, this is humanity at its best. This, the willingness to go where nature takes us, first of all, independent of whether it's where-- whether we wanna go. But then to amass the resources to look at-- to build this machine just to determine why we're here. A- and, and of course, one of the benefits of science, which many people herald and is responsible for m- all your jobs, is technology, which is great. But you know, it's a little bit unfortunate too, because that means when, when you have science and people always say to me, "Well, what good is it? What, what does it... Does it make a better toaster? Does it make a faster computer? What is it?" And if it doesn't do those things, it's, it looks like it has no utility. But of course, we don't ask those things about a Mozart concerto or a, a Picasso painting or, or, or a Shakespeare play, or you pick your favorite whatever, an Eric Clapton song, whatever. And science is exactly the same. The real virtue of science is exactly what I said earlier. Not the technology it produces, which is nice, but its cultural significance, which is the fact that it forces us to ch- to, to get out of our myopic picture of ourselves, just like art, music, and literature, to see ourselves in a broader sense, to get a better perspective of our place in the cosmos. In this case, to be willing to build these amazing machines. I call the Large Hadron Collider the Gothic cathedral of the twenty-first century. The Gothic cathedrals were beautiful things built over centuries by thousands of artisans using the hi- highest technology at the time. They didn't know how to make these ceilings so they wouldn't fall in for a long time. All working together. Well, the Large Hadron Collider was built by 10,000 PhD physicists, and then, and then many more engineers, in fact, from over 100 different countries, speaking dozens of different languages, many different religions, all working together for a single purpose, which is what science can do. It can unify people from all cultures. It's what Google does here. Look at all the people from different cultures working for a common purpose. That's what science does. That's humanity at its best. And the machines are unbelievably interesting, complicated. This is one of the smaller detect-- well, one of the larger detectors, sorry. It's not the machine. It's just a detector in the machine. The smaller detector I have here is this, called the Compact Muon Solenoid, which is not so compact. It has the s- same amount of iron as the Eiffel Tower, for example. It's hard to see it. I have a better picture of it 'cause I'm there. Um, but it's really re-- you, when you go there, and if you do go to... And when the machine's down, you can every now and then go down and, and, and it's just amazing to see the scale of everything compared to the scale we exist at. But the machine, you can't, it's, you can't have almost enough hyperbole. I have a whole chapter in the book about it. For example, every second at the Large Hadron Collider, enough data is generated to fill more than 1,000 one-terabyte hard drives, okay? Which is relevant to all of you. It's every second we have to process that much information, 1,000, uh, uh, 1,000 terabytes of information in that experiment. And that means, as you can imagine, that you have to filter that information and, and it's incredibly complicated but interesting from a computer science point of view. But it more than just that. For example, the, the tunnel that it's in has to be evacuated. That 26-kilometer-long tunnel has to be evacuated, so its vacuum is sparser than the vacuum outside the International Space Station. Uh, every aspect of the machine is remarkable. And the fact that we're willing to do this to just address this question of why we're here seems to me to be, uh, uh, the, the bravery of the people in, who devoted their

14. 32:47 – 36:51

    ‘So far’: new questions, cosmic fragility, and why the universe isn’t ‘designed’ for us

    1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss32:47

       lives to building this and the people who devoted their lives to coming up with the theory is, is, is, is one thing. But the thing, part of my book that I, maybe the part of the title that's the best is the so far part. The Greatest Story Ever Told So Far. 'Cause the story gets better. Unlike that other story called The Greatest Story Ever Told, which was written down by Iron Age peasants who didn't know the Earth orbited the Sun, and it's still the same, just as boring and untrue. This one changes, and it doesn't change just c- 'cause we like it. It changes because every time we open a new window on the universe, we're surprised, and we're forced out of our comfort zone. And, and, and, you know, so I think of this. I happen to like impressionist art and, and I like art in general. But what I really like about impressionist art is that it's beautiful from a distance, but when you get close up, it's really crappy, okay? And that's, that's science. Because great, we've developed this incredible model called the Standard Model that explains every experiment we can ever, have ever been able to perform in particle physics. But then there, the minute you make that discovery, there are always new questions. Why did this Higgs field form in the early universe? Why did it freeze in place? Why did it freeze the way it did so that we, it, it resulting in our existence? All of these new questions, and the point is this story will get better because the next generation of people, as long as we continue to ask questions and have the courage to be able to look out and try and find the answers, the story's gonna get better. And the story will get better and more interesting and produce a universe that may seem more strange. And w- and that story that we've developed and, and that we've now validated, as I say, is a story which, which is terrifying at the same time as it's awesome, and the consequences are ones we may or may not like. One of the first consequences, as I said, is that our existence is a cosmic accident in a real sense. Just the same as that, that, uh, uh, on that windowsill. I mean, those people who live there, okay, that, that direction is very special, and it means a lot to that civilization. Just as all of the facets of our universe that look like it make, the universe is designed for us, that therefore s- make it seem special, are accidents. The underlying universe is not only not designed for us but, as I said, antithetical to our existence. 'Cause if the W and Z particles and all the particles in nature were massless, as they are at a fundamental level, if it weren't for this field frozen in the universe, then we wouldn't exist 'cause no, no bound objects could exist. There wouldn't be any people, any stars, any galaxies, anything that we could see. And these, these phys- physicists on this window, on this crystal might eventually discover that, you know what, this is just an accident of our existence, that crystals in different directions could form, and there's nothing special about that direction. And maybe they'll discover that at, like, four in the morning one day. But then at six in the morning, the sun will rise. In Seattle, the, the, you may know, there's this thing called sun. [laughing] And, and, and it rise, and it melt all these crystals. Okay, then their symmetry will be restored. There'll be no preferred direction. But the unfortunate thing is these people wouldn't exist anymore. And the interesting thing, and maybe terrifying thing, is that if you actually look at the Higgs field and look at the value it has, then it's just teetering on the edge of melting. Okay? There are, i- if you, it just, the Higgs particle happens to have a mass that's very close to the mass where, if you look at the model, the field could be unstable and melt. And if that were to happen in our universe, then, then of course everything we see disappears, okay? Now, don't be, uh, don't be worried. There's still time to buy books and stuff. [laughing] But, but more than that, if you actually do the calculations, it's probably stable. But even if it's unstable, if you work out the timeframe over which it might decay, it's not a million years, not a billion years, not a trillion years, not even a trillion trillion years. So it's, it's a, this is a, a long process if it's gonna end. But if it does, the universe will revert to this Symmetric, beautiful form, but it, but, but there'll be no life. So even this beautiful universe that looks like it's designed for us will disappear and,

15. 36:51 – 44:47

    Design instincts, Darwin’s lesson, and the need to “release your fear” to keep discovery going

    1. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss36:51

       and it will ... There'd certainly be no life like we see. And that, I wanna just end, uh, with, with some notes about how this picture relates to the sort of history of science in a, in a, in a, in a, in a real way. Because we are, we're evolutionarily evolved to look for design. We always look for designs. We, we, well, our eyes pick it up very well, and many of you are, are talented at looking for design, which is probably why you're sit- why you're here. Okay? But, but that design may not really be there, and we have to second-guess ourselves. One of the things that Feynman really said, which is quite important, is, "The easiest person to fool is yourself," 'cause you like something or you want it to be that case. And we all want design. We, you know, you think of human things that are developed, like Christmas ornaments. They're clearly designed, but of course, those aren't Christmas ornaments. Those are snowflakes that you just give me a polar molecule and laws of chemistry and physics, and I'll produce these beautiful things without any design. But you might say, "Well, what about human structures like the Google, uh, plex or, or, or this building?" Or m- or my favorite is, is Buckminster Fuller domes, 'cause when I was growing up, every hippie had one and, and lived in them and did neat things in them. And, uh, and, and but they're evidence of, of an very interesting intellect, Buckminster Fuller, who was a really interesting guy. Crazy, but interesting. Well, just take soot. Bur- take soot. If you take soot, you find out in the soot are partic- are molecules called carbon 60 we now call Buckminster fullerene, which are beautiful geodesic domes, and there's nothing less designed than soot. So we have to be careful when we look for design in nature. The first real example of this was from one, of course, the, the greatest scientists e- e- of all time, Charles Darwin, and, and if you haven't read the, The Origin of Species, the last paragraph of it is really beautiful, one of the most beautiful lines in any science book any- everywhere. "There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one, and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved." Now, this was a beautiful discussion of how the complexity and diversity of life on Earth, which appears to be designed, could arise naturally from a simple beginnings by natural selection and evolution. And that design, like the fact that bees could find flowers, was not designed. It was, if they couldn't see the colors of flowers, they wouldn't reproduce and, and it could be understood from much more simple principles, and you could get incredible complexity from simplicity. This same paragraph could be used to describe the universe that we physicists are talking about. From so simple beginnings where the forces of nature may have been unified in a simple way, we, as the universe evolved, produce, produced structures like all the stars and galaxies and people and all the structures we see today by a simple process, and, and that universe is no more designed for us than life is. That we're carrying on that Darwinian process which is, which for many people is disturbing because they want the universe to be designed for them. It's comforting, okay? But the universe doesn't give a damn what we want, and we have to learn that, you know, the universe is ma- terrifying, but it's also incredibly awesome, and that a universe that isn't designed for us can actually be more interesting. It can be one in which our lives are more precious, 'cause the only purpose we make, y- the only purpose we have is the purpose we make. But you know, scientists, as I said, individual scientists are products of their time. So in a letter to Joseph Hooker, he said, "It's mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life. One might as well think of the origin of matter." And in 1863 it was rubbish to think of the origin of the matter, but now I get paid to do it, okay? Because the story has gotten better. The story has gotten better because we continue to push the boundaries in our thinking, but more impor- equally important, in our looking out. We continue to be willing to build experiments and look out and be willing to change our perspective even if it takes us in a direction we don't wanna go. And, and I wanna end by, in some sense, by saying I'm worried about this future in the, at the present. In the current budget, for example, proposed by the president, the entire field I talked about, particle physics, uh, the support for that is being reduced by 20%, uh, $900 million. But more importantly, the agency that supports it, which is the Department of Energy, which most people don't realize is the chief funder of all physical science in our country, not just energy research, but all physical science in our country, is being cut by 20%. At the same time, the National Endowment for the Humanities is being cut completely. The National Endowment for the Arts, cut completely. The National, um, the Corporation for Public Bor- Broadcasting, cut completely. The Institute of Museums and Libraries, which supports museums and libraries around the country, cut completely. You add all that up and you get $1.82 billion savings in our budget, okay? In the same budget proposed a $2 billion line item, which is the first installment of a, of a wall with Mexico. Okay? So you got this wall that's gonna protect us from hordes that are unknown, at the same time killing all of, uh, the support for culture and largely the support for science. And, and, and the way to picture that was actually to me expressed best by Robert Wilson, who was the first director of the Fermi National Accelerator laboratory, the first big ... No, not the first big, but the biggest accelerator in the world until Fermi, until the Large Hadron Collider was built. And in 1960s he was called before Congress and asked, uh, the question, "Will it aid in the defense of the nation?" And here was his response: "No, sir, I don't believe so. It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the digne- the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean, all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending." And that is, uh, a beautiful statement and, and is particularly poignant today because we risk getting rid of everything that makes this country worth defending in, in effort to d- apparently defend it. What makes America great, if anything does, is the contributions it will make and the people in it will make to the legacy of the future of our children, the perspectives of the world, our understanding, the new ideas we develop. That's why people, as you can see from here, that's why people come here from around the world, because there's some benefit, because the contributions we make for the future. If we get rid of all that infrastructure just to defend ourselves, the greatest story ever told will not continue being great, at least not here. And, and so I wanna end with two quotes, one from the beginning of my book, which is a famous quote from Virgil, "These are the tears of things, and the stuff of our mortality cuts us to the heart." It's from the beginning of the Aeneid. I remember learning that in Latin 'cause I grew up in Canada, and I was educated. But, uh-

    2. SPSpeaker43:54

       [laughs]

    3. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss43:56

       Uh, the next line, which is not so well known, uh, but I point out at the end of the book is, "Release your fear." And that's the point. Only if we release our fear of the unknown, of others, of a universe that may or may not be the universe we like, only if we're willing to go into the unknown will this greatest story continue to get better. And we may live in a universe that apparently has no purpose, apparently isn't designed for us, and apparently may be miserable in the future, but that's okay because we are fortunate, more fortunate to have, uh, evolved this consciousness that allows us to ask these questions for the short time w- and we're here, and so we should enjoy our brief moment in the sun. Thank you.

    4. SPSpeaker44:37

       [applause]

    5. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss44:44

       Thank you. Thank you.

16. 44:47 – 50:12

    Q&A: appreciating science like art, teaching science as a process, and ‘shakable faith’ in research

    1. SPSpeaker44:47

       Uh, so you made a, an analogy with, uh, the arts.

    2. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss44:51

       Uh-huh.

    3. SPSpeaker44:51

       And I think the, the, the obvious rebuttal there is that it's easy for people, anybody, to see the value in the arts, to, to, to be ... You know, it's, it's sort of directly titillating the senses.

    4. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss45:01

       Mm.

    5. SPSpeaker45:01

       You don't have to be, you don't have to have gone through a music school to appreciate a, a Bach or anything like that.

    6. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss45:06

       You don't have to be a scientist to look at the Hubble Space Telescope picture and see it's amazing. I mean, I ... The point is that, you know what, if you do go to music school, you'll appreciate Bach a lot more. But you can appreciate Bach just by listening to it. But the wonders of the universe are easily appreciated by everyone, especially children. We beat it out of them.

    7. SPSpeaker45:26

       Yeah.

    8. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss45:26

       Okay?

    9. SPSpeaker45:26

       But like the, the Higgs, the Higgs particle, for instance-

    10. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss45:29

        Oh, yeah, great

    11. SPSpeaker45:29

        ... like, that's, that's a lot of explaining to get to that point.

    12. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss45:31

        Well, yeah, that's why I wrote a book.

    13. SPSpeaker45:32

        Yeah.

    14. SPSpeaker45:32

        [laughs]

    15. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss45:33

        But, but the point is, you know, it, not everyone has to understand the Higgs particle, but it's there for those who wanna get there, just like it's there for those who wanna pick up a guitar and learn how to play it. Uh, but, but you don't have to understand the Higgs particle. What you n- what you really need is you can, anyone can understand the, the basic world around them if we provide them the opportunity. And more interestingly, and this is really important, if we teach science as it's supposed to be taught, which is not a bunch of facts. That's why we live in this world of alternative facts, because people in school t- are taught that s- you know, almost all subjects are just a bunch of facts. Science is a process for discovering facts, and that's the process that anyone can learn, and we, and we damn well better start teaching it because, because of Google, in particular. When I was growing up, that was the place to get information. But because of Google, I can get more information from this, but I can get also more misinformation. And the only way I can tell the difference is science, is skeptical inquiry, reliance on empirical evidence, testing my ideas, checking many sources. And so that's the thing that really is the greatest legacy of science, is that process, and that's the thing we need most, not just for the enjoyment of looking out at a Hubble Space Telescope picture and getting a kick out of it. I mean, everyone has had aha experiences. When I used to work at science museums when I was young, they're like orgasmic. We called them aha experience, when you suddenly see something a new way, and it happens to everyone, and there's lots of science that we can do. But more importantly, those tools are necessary if we wanna g- if we wanna have an informed electorate who can actually distinguish policies that, uh, d- are related to empirical reality from policies that aren't. So it's, there's actually a, an imperative as well as a joy. But I agree with you that, that the, at least the perception among the public is that you can enjoy music, art, literature with a m- much lower impedance barrier, as we call it in physics, much lower wall. It seems to take a little bit more, but I do think that's a product of our school systems.

    16. SPSpeaker47:32

        Yeah. It's definitely worth it trying to-

    17. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss47:34

        Yeah

    18. SPSpeaker47:34

        ... get people interested.

    19. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss47:34

        But, I mean, I think if we teach kids not answers, but questions, how to ask questions, we're all wired to want to discover the answers. And it's okay to not ... I mean, the information is irrelevant in the school. Most of what you learn in high school is, uh, you, well, sure, reading, writing, arithmetic, but beyond that, most of what you learn as an adult is gonna be way beyond what you learn in school. Uh, most of the physics I do as a, as a scientist I learned after my PhD. And so, uh, it, it, those tools are important, but the joy is there for everyone at different levels. And I think we, w- what we don't do well enough is tell people, you know, it, it's just amazing how you can enjoy music without being a musician and enjoy ... You, you don't have to ... But the common sense view is you cannot enjoy science unless you're a technical person, and we have to get over that, in my opinion.

    20. SPSpeaker48:21

        Ooh.

    21. SPSpeaker48:21

        I had a small question about your, um, discussion of Berkeley earlier.

    22. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss48:24

        Uh-huh.

    23. SPSpeaker48:24

        I was wondering what you think about, um, scientists, um, kind of believing in the theories they're working on, uh, without proof to, to drive it forward. So like-

    24. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss48:34

        Well, they have to. It's, I mean, so, and, and, you know, f- science isn't based on faith, but if you're gonna spend 20 years of your life working on something, you've gotta have a, a, a, a, I wouldn't call it a belief, but you'd have to say to yourself that you, there's something tells you it's strongly likely to be true. And you can be completely wrong, but the great thing that differentiates that from religion, let's say, is that if you're a scientist, in the end, if it's shown to be wrong, you throw it out like yesterday's newspaper, even if you spent 20 years of your life on it. That's the difference. But certainly you cannot work the, the, the, b- the builders of the Large Hadron Collider or the developers of the Standard Model couldn't have done what they'd done, or even the string theorists now. The people, the, my colleagues who do, uh, I have, I have students of mine who are well-known string theorists, you know, so I just wouldn't want my daughter to marry one. But, but, um-

    25. SPSpeaker49:19

        [laughs]

    26. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss49:20

        But, uh, uh, but they, they're, they have a good reason for doing what they're doing, and the hope is that the, somehow the theory will make contact with reality. But if it won't, you can be darn sure, and it's already happening in some sense. You saw when the Hi- Higgs was discovered that lots of string theorists went and, and w- ju- jumped ship because suddenly there was new ex- particle physics to look at. So yeah, we all have to, the, have that kind of faith, but the difference is that the faith is not, is it, in science is imminently shakable. The wonderful thing is that it is not ironclad, and, and that's supposed to be the great virtue of faith, is that you don't give it up. But in science, the great virtue of faith is that it has no, no utility beyond its utility.

    27. SPSpeaker50:02

        [laughs]

    28. LKDr. Lawrence Krauss50:04

        Okay? Okay? Good. Tha- okay, I guess I'll ... Thank you. [applause]

Episode duration: 50:30