We’re Not Alone. String Theory Explains Aliens, Time, AI & The Hidden 95% of the Universe | Dr. Lara B. Anderson

The Universe Is WAY Stranger Than You Think… And Physics Might Prove It What if EVERYTHING you thought you knew about reality is incomplete, or just flat-out wrong? In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Dr. Lara B. Anderson (theoretical physicist & string theory expert) reveals the shocking truths about our universe that most people, even die-hard science fans, completely misunderstand. From hidden dimensions to time behaving differently across the cosmos, this conversation will change how you see existence itself. Dr. Anderson breaks down: - Why string theory could be the missing key to EVERYTHING, uniting quantum mechanics & relativity, redefining reality itself - Real explanation behind dark matter & dark energy, and what might actually be powering the expansion of the universe - Unsettling truth about the fate of the universe: are we heading toward another Big Bang, or total catastrophe? - How physics proves time isn't universal and why it behaves differently depending on where you are in the universe (and what that means for time travel) - Difference between multiverse vs. extra dimensions, and the actual physics suggesting both could exist - What other dimensions might look like & why we can’t directly see them…yet - The true shape of the universe - Why studying the Big Bang might tell us exactly where everything is headed next - How math lets us explore realities we physically can’t access due to technological & budget limits - What exists beyond our solar system & how much we still don’t understand - Why life almost certainly exists elsewhere and what discovering alien civilizations could mean for humanity - Could AI finally solve the impossible math behind string theory? - Possibility of undiscovered particles that could completely rewrite physics - Surprising truth about The Big Bang Theory TV show from a physicist's perspective - what it got right & what physicists complained about This isn’t just physics. It's a full-on reality check. If you’ve ever wondered what the universe is really made of, where it’s going, and whether we’re just scratching the surface of something far bigger, this is the episode you can’t afford to miss! Receive a free LMNT Sample Pack with purchase just visit https://drinklmnt.com/mayimHead to https://www. Superpower.com and use code BREAK at checkout for $20 off your membership. Unlock your new health intelligence. 100+ biomarkers. Every year. Detects early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpodGo to https://tidd.ly/4uVltMe and use the code MAYIM50 to get $50 off your Elastique order. Visit https://drinkag1.com/BREAKDOWN to get a free AG1 Travel Case with 7 free AG1 Travel Packs in your Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription, order while supplies last. Learn more about Dr. Lara B. Anderson & her work: https://www1.phys.vt.edu/~lara137/ Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There are lots of things we don't understand about the universe right now.

• 0:02Mayim Bialik?

  This seems like a really big problem.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  I would be very surprised if the universe isn't absolutely full of life. I work in theoretical particle physics and string theory. Very much the stereotypical nerd physicist from the Big Bang Theory.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  Early 20th century physics showed us there are more dimensions than what we see around us. I'm totally fascinated with how organisms could arise, how they could function. So it's got mass, it's got energy, and it's not the stuff that the stars near us are made of. There's a lot of discussion about new proofs that are being generated in collaboration with AI.

• 0:33Mayim Bialik?

  What does it mean for this next level of evolution?

• 0:36Speaker 00

  We're in a really remarkable moment. Are these things going to be conscious? What happens when these things become much smarter than us? I find it really scary and really exciting at the same time.

• 0:53Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.

• 0:54Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 0:55Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to our Breakdown. Today, we're going to be speaking to an expert in string theory. But we're not just going to talk about this incredible theory, which is a fundamental component of theoretical physics. We're going to be speaking with Dr. Laura Anderson. She's a professor of physics and mathematics at Virginia Tech, and she studies theoretical high-energy particle physics and string theory. She's going to discuss the biggest mysteries of the universe: dark matter, multidimensionality, the multiverse. What holds the universe together that we cannot see and still do not understand? And what does it mean to say that reality is actually comprised of more dimensions than we can even perceive?

• 1:40Jonathan Cohen?

  Take a quick second and check to see if you're subscribed. Don't miss out on all new episodes of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown. We cannot thank you enough.

• 1:49Mayim Bialik?

  And now it is a pleasure to welcome to the Breakdown Dr. Laura Anderson.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Thank you so much. It is my pleasure to be here.

• 1:58Mayim Bialik?

  We'd like you to start with sort of telling us what you study and why you chose to study it.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  I work in in high-energy theoretical particle physics and string theory. Connecting to to your own background, very much the the stereotypical nerd physicist from the Big Bang Theory. I have to say that show really did channel our people well. I appreciated the the insight into into physicists that was given there. But yeah, I I study theoretical particle physics and and string theory. So the work I do is is theoretical, meaning I use computers and equations to try and understand how the universe works, what makes up the universe. So what are the basic building blocks of matter, energy in our universe, and then what equations, what laws of nature do they obey?

• 2:45Speaker 00

  And for me, actually, the way I got into this was was very much a sort of transformative moment when I was a kid. I went into a planetarium at age 12 years old, and I saw a star show that had been designed by Stephen Hawking, actually, that was about the origin of the universe, you know, the Big Bang, black holes, expanding universes, galaxies, all this stuff. I just thought it was so freaking cool that people could figure out stuff like that about the universe by observation and by, you know, thinking about it. So I marched out of the planetarium at age 12, and I was like, I want to do that.

• 3:17Jonathan Cohen?

  What do most people get wrong that you're trying to explain?

• 3:21Speaker 00

  One thing that I think is difficult about physics is that a lot of the ideas of how you think about things, how you ask questions, how you test those questions, they're very different than how you would explore things in, you know, your everyday life. So when people talk about doing research on something like that normally means, you know, you like look stuff up on the Internet and you think about it and stuff. But but that process of how do you pose questions, how do you then try and decide, you know, what the answers are? And unfortunately, have lots of great ideas that don't work. That's something that I think is not super appreciated.

• 3:57Mayim Bialik?

  I want to know about when you first heard about Big Bang Theory, because I'm curious, sort of in the cultural vernacular, and then we will absolutely get into all of the hard science. Did you hear about this? Did other people say like, hey, there's a show about physicists? I'm just curious personally, when you sort of discovered that there was a show about... Because when I auditioned for the Big Bang Theory and they told me they wanted a female Sheldon Cooper, I hadn't ever seen the show. And so I Googled Sheldon Cooper and I said to myself, oh, this is like all the people I went to grad school with. Like, these are like all my friends. Like, this is how we talk. This is how we function. And so I found it fascinating that there was a TV show about it, because I didn't know about it either. So I'm just curious what your first foray into understanding

• 4:41Mayim Bialik?

  there was a show about people like you.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  I think it was probably, you know, my family, extended family saw it. It was like, hey, you got to check this out. Random anecdote. The show had been on for like a couple of years and I was at a physics department and I was hanging out like this big table full of people in my field. And the show came up and there were some people that were saying, you know, this is like stereotyping physicists and this is like so unfair and stuff. They were kind of grumpy about it. But I looked down this table and like, just like the perfectness of the setup, right? You know, these were exactly, you know, the people that were talking about going to the comic book shop and playing video games are like super into their equations. And, you know, it was the sort of irony of that situation of like, yeah, they're stereotyping us, but here we all are doing what we were doing. It was very cute.

• 5:25Mayim Bialik?

  When people would ask me, like, how do you feel about the show stereotyping people? And, you know, and I said, you know, there's all different kinds of physicists and in particular, there's all different kinds of women in science. And I had professors that looked like models and I had professors that looked more like Amy Farrah Fowler. So like, to me, like, there's all different kinds, but I absolutely based my character on...

• 5:49Mayim Bialik?

  A composite of two actual humans in my circle, who were incredible women, incredible scientists, incredible mentors. So for me, it was a way of honoring the quirks about many of us. And yes, many of us find our way to science. Let's go back a little bit because your specialization is mathematical physics, right?

• 6:09Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 6:10Mayim Bialik?

  I wonder if you can also explain a little bit about how those two sciences come together and what's special about the work that you do.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  If you want to decide how something works in physics or the universe, you sort of have two tools to try and attack that. You can either do a measurement and you can say, I predict that when I drop an apple, it's going to fall at this rate. It's going to hit the ground at this time. You can make predictions and you can test those predictions. Or you can try and say, let me model mathematically what I think is going to happen before you do that experiment. And then hopefully you do both and see that everything agrees, both your theoretical understanding and your practical observations. So in the kind of work I do, a lot of things to directly test the questions in particle physics that we would want to understand,

• 7:00Speaker 00

  you would need immense particle colliders like the size of the solar system to be able to smash atoms together and directly access energy levels and see how particles behave in that way. So instead of being able to do that, because we don't have the budget for a solar system sized particle collider right now, you can also try and mathematically work through what's going to happen in all these different scenarios. And that mathematical consistency of the number of things that you can observe about the universe and write down and then figure out, if this is true and this is true, then how do you fit that together? What does that imply for the next thing? That type of mathematical consistency is really powerful for ruling a lot of things out. So that's, yeah. The role of theorists is to try and understand what should be looked for in experiments

• 7:44Speaker 00

  and then to make sure that our theories, as we're developing them, are mathematically consistent.

• 7:50Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, and I think that's an important point, especially for people who might be listening and not really have a handle on a lot of these sort of larger concepts. You know, what mathematical physics is doing and what the theoretical world allows us to do is to study things in a way that they can't be studied in the real world, either because of physical limitations or conceptual limitations. But, you know, one of the things I love about math, I'm just like, you know, a math person, like, it's a language. It's a language that allows us to access these different pockets of the universe that we can wonder at, but these are the ways that we actually study what is beyond when

• 8:35Mayim Bialik?

  we can't necessarily touch it or see it with the naked eye, if that makes sense.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  In my field in particular, when you're asking questions about fundamental physics, not only is there a question of, you know, the size and scale of the experiments, but many things are really hard to visualize or to, you know, beyond the scope of what we're familiar with. So, one that comes up in string theory is this question of what's the shape of our universe that we live in? So, is our universe actually three spatial dimensions, like a box, you know, up, down, side to side that we can see, plus a time dimension? Or could there actually be additional dimensions beyond that?

• 9:13Mayim Bialik?

  We have these planets, right? And because of lots of interesting reasons, they're spherical, right? And we know that there are also, you know, in the solar system, we know that there are other planets and that they have these kind of elliptical shapes, right? That they kind of move around. But then if you were to ask me, like, what's beyond there, I would just be like, a lot of black and a lot of stars and a lot of planets, and it just goes on forever, right?

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 9:45Mayim Bialik?

  How close am I? Because if you ask me the shape of forever, you know, it's like, this feels like a hallmark card. What is the shape of forever? I just think it goes out in like, every possible dimension to infinity. Is that a shape?

• 10:05Speaker 00

  What's beyond the solar system? As you said, there's, you know, lots of galaxies. There's these big structures of, you know, like walls of galaxies, lots of empty space. And we are limited in the way our ability to probe the universe actually by where in the universe, you know, we can see back to from the light that has reached us. Or more recently, through things like gravitational waves that have reached us. So, um, short answer is we don't know, actually. You know, the very far distant structure of the universe. There's parts of the universe that we don't have access to yet. Um, but we do know some structure about the universe. So one of the things we know, for example, is that the universe is getting bigger. It's expanding and that already is hard to visualize, right? So if you say like, expanding into what, right? It's, you know, it's a three dimensional space that's, that's, you know, getting bigger.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  So the analogy that people use is if you were to look at like the surface of a balloon as you were blowing it up. If you were to draw a bunch of dots, like on the surface of that balloon, as you blew it up, all those dots would be getting further apart from each other. But there's no center to that expansion on the surface of the balloon. Right? Um, so the same thing is happening to our universe is that every part is getting further away from every other part. But that expansion is not happening in our three dimensions. It's in some sense, happening into a larger dimensional space was one way to think about it.

• 11:21Mayim Bialik?

  What does that mean for things to be getting bigger in a larger dimensional space? Because what I picture is kind of like, you know, if you picture a firework, like before, you know, they kind of arc, right? That's what I'm picturing, but also the expansion is happening quite slowly. To me, can't it just expand out into every dimension that it's already in? Meaning I'm picturing like all these vectors, right? And the vectors are just going out from whatever the center is, right? And it's just like, again, this is like, I feel like a five year old. It just keeps going.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  So here's the thing, if we were like the firework analogy, you would need a middle of that explosion, right? You need some point in space where like all the bits are coming away from that point. And what we see, looking at universes, there isn't a middle like that. Every point is getting further away from every other point, but not from like one center part of our 3D space, if that makes sense.

• 12:21Mayim Bialik?

  Where is it expanding from, right? And where is it expanding to? Because if you look at like a map, right? And you would say, oh, if I were to zoom out, we are evolving around the sun in our solar system. But if you zoom out and there are, I don't know, how many other solar systems?

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Uncountably many.

• 12:44Mayim Bialik?

  Right, so you don't have one center from which things are expanding. I mean, I also, the thing that I love about physics is also, these ideas can be applied to like our human existence, right?

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Very much so, yeah.

• 12:59Mayim Bialik?

  If I grow, if I grow as a human even conceptually, right? What is the limits of human growth and expansion and expansiveness? It's a beautiful thing. My Be Alex Breakdown is supported by Quince. You know those pieces in your closet that you reach for over and over again? That sweater that somehow works with everything? The jeans you know will always fit just right? The bag you carry everywhere? Those are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe, and that's what Quince does so well. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, premium stretch denim. The designs are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. And as the weather gets colder, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe, from warm, responsibly sourced down jackets,

• 13:44Mayim Bialik?

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• 14:29Mayim Bialik?

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• 14:41Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, we left this thread hanging, which is 3D space, maybe time. And we speak to a lot of people who have either had near death experiences and have gone off and experienced and come back with all this information. And they're like, where is this?

• 14:58Mayim Bialik?

  We speak to a lot of people who leave their bodies or whose consciousness seems to leave, right, this body. And they have experiences that often involve experiencing an expansiveness of their being in the universe that they have no scientific basis for. Meaning, if you take someone who's never studied physics, either theoretical, practical, any kind, what they describe is, you know, experiencing traveling, right, into all of these other aspects, right, of the galaxy. And some of it could be the things that your brain sort of fills in. But can you talk to us about multidimensionality?

• 15:40Mayim Bialik?

  Is that a kind of place where consciousness can exist in a different dimension? What are the choices for other dimensions besides, you know, the sort of XYZ plane and time?

• 15:53Speaker 00

  There's this beautiful quote by Arthur Eddington, early 20th century physicist, who said that the universe is not only stranger than we suppose, but it's stranger than we can suppose. So I think it's fun to explore some of these things that really stretch our own visualizations of how all this works. So we were just talking about the expansion of, you know, the, the physical size of the universe. Just to go back to that balloon for a second to help us visualize what's about to come. So if you imagine the surface of a balloon, right, all the parts are Moving on that balloon further away. But the expansion of the balloon isn't happening on the surface, it's actually happening in the middle of the balloon, right? So that would be like a two dimensional surface, all the parts are moving away, but it's expanding into three dimensions. So that's the the kind of picture that you think of for our universe is that our universe is three dimensional.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  But it's expanding into four dimensions. And now this is where, at least for me, my brain kind of stops because you think, what does it mean to have four dimensions, right? How would we have, you know, up, down, side to side and whatever else is is happening? Um, that mathematically is really easy to write down. But our human minds, based on just all of our experience in the world to date, can't really visualize what that would be like. So the the analogies that you could sort of play with is you could imagine. What would it be like if we imagined instead of our three D world, a two D world? Right? What if you, you know, you lived on the surface of a table, right? What would you see? If you were to see like a three D creature move through your two D world.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  You'd only see the cross sections of that, right? Like as it passes through your world, you'd see, you know. As something enters, you'd see a circle of one size get bigger and then smaller again as something move through. So you'd see sort of a two dimensional shadow of a three dimensional thing. And mathematically, you can write down exactly that same sort of structure for our universe. You could say if there were four spatial dimensions or more. What kind of three dimensional shadows would we see of something that was four dimensional that could, you know, move through our universe? In the kind of work that I do in string theory, it's actually essential for the the sort of consistency conditions of physics. Um, that there are more dimensions than what we see around us. Um, and they don't all have to be the same size.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  So this is another thing that's sort of hard to imagine when you say like size of a dimension, what does that mean? Um, so an analogy that I use sometimes is if you imagine looking at something like. A wire, something very, you know, thin from far away. It would look like it's only a one dimensional object, it has a length. But if you were able to like zoom up really, really close to it. Um, you would see that it has a thickness, right? It has another direction to it, it's actually a two D surface. So this is a question we can ask in physics is that our universe looks like it's three dimensional. But if you were to zoom in really, really, really small to all the the space that we look at. Could there be other like that thickness of the wire? Are there other directions that things could move? Other directions that energy can move into that particles could interact with?

• 18:48Speaker 00

  And then you could ask, you know, what is the consequences of that for physics? So a long time ago, I I tried to explain what I do for a living to my grandma. By saying that I wrap up extra dimensions for a living. So I I wrap up these extra dimensions. I try and say if they were really small. What would be the consequences for for physics and what would we observe?

• 19:06Mayim Bialik?

  Jonathan just sent in our in our little chat here a hypercube image. And I'm going to say something very strange. When I looked at this, it made me feel like crying. Meaning I had an emotional reaction to seeing something that is outside of the bounds of what I think I can perceive. Does that make sense?

• 19:34Speaker 00

  Being attracted to things that expand the way that we think about stuff is is really cool. I definitely felt that you mentioned as one of your guests, Michio Kaku. He wrote a bunch of popular science books and I remember reading one when I was about 13 years old. And again, just that feeling of being like, wow, this is so cool that people can figure this out by thinking about things, right? That you can think about things differently and then imagine structure that you never knew was possible.

• 20:00Jonathan Cohen?

  I think we should tackle what is string theory? Because the layperson has heard about it, but probably doesn't quite understand how to explain it or how it's practical to them.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  String theory is an attempt in one consistent theory to try and model basically all of the fundamental interactions that we see in nature. So first I have to say, what do we mean by a fundamental interaction? So we think that everything that we see in the universe that accelerates, speeds up, slows down, does so for basically one of four reasons that we figured out so far. This includes gravity, so things that are holding us to the earth. Right now, structure of the solar system, all that good stuff. Uh, electromagnetism, which is basically, um, you know, electrical interactions in atoms. That's the structure of the whole periodic table. That's why I can't put my hand through my desk right now is, you know, electric repulsion between electrons.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Um, and then there are two other forces, the strong and weak nuclear forces that are responsible for things like radioactive decay. Um, and for holding together like the center of nuclei. Um, so those forces describe basically everything moving or accelerating that we see. And we have a really beautiful framework in theoretical physics for making predictions that are extremely accurate. Like accurate to thirteen significant figures for how three out of the four of those work. Um, at very small distance scales. So this is called the standard model of particle physics. We have this great uh, ability to describe uh, the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism. And we also have a description of gravity, thanks to Albert Einstein. Um, that describes gravity as the curvature of space and time that he developed in the early twentieth century.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Also, an incredibly predictive, really beautiful theory. It's why modern GPS works. And these two frameworks for gravity and then the other three forces. They're really, really useful, really, really powerful and fundamentally incompatible. If you try and sort of put together our understanding of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory with gravity. You end up getting really stupid answers. Uh, these are so-called disastrous infinities. So you can like try and predict things and it just doesn't work. You, you get wrong answers, manifestly wrong answers. So string theory is an attempt to put all of those fundamental forces, including gravity, in one coherent framework. And the basic idea is what if matter wasn't little point particles? Like an electron that you imagine like a little ball floating through space.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  What if instead all of the matter that we see was actually made up of extended one-dimensional objects? Like little strings? And just like a violin string could vibrate different ways and produce different notes. String theory asks, if you had these fundamental strings, if they vibrated in different ways, could they become different particles? So they could they vibrate one way and be an electron, vibrate another way and be a quark? It turns out if you ask that sort of cute idea, like can you make different particles from different vibrational modes of a string? If you ask that quantum mechanically, you actually get Einstein gravity for free. So you end up with a theory that must be gravitational.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  So these strings can only move through spacetimes that obey the equations that Einstein wrote down, which is like super duper beautiful. The catch unfortunately is that in order for all this to work, you need your universe to have more than three spatial dimensions and one timeline dimension. So that seems like a really big ask. So that's where the wrapping up dimensions comes in. You could say, could this actually be consistent with experiment? And what would the consequences of that be if it was? If there were extra dimensions, what would it mean for physics? What could we predict? What could we test?

• 23:36Mayim Bialik?

  How can a string be one dimensional?

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Just having a length.

• 23:41Mayim Bialik?

  But nothing just has a length.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  Well, interestingly, there are some particles in nature like electrons, where we think that they, you know, from what we can observe, they seem like they're just points, right? They're not actually, they don't have a length, they don't have a radius.

• 23:54Mayim Bialik?

  But we also don't have a location for that point, meaning we have a probability that we can calculate of where you might, should, hope to find that.

• 24:06Speaker 00

  And same for these strings. So you would have sort of a probability distribution of this, this one dimensional object that you're describing.

• 24:13Jonathan Cohen?

  So now we have these strings that can shape shift?

• 24:17Mayim Bialik?

  It's not that they shape shift.

• 24:18Jonathan Cohen?

  Depending on how they're feeling, they're gonna vibrate differently.

• 24:22Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  I can go with that, yeah. Different vibrational modes, different masses, different charges, different properties.

• 24:29Jonathan Cohen?

  I think a lot of the hippie energy workers out there are like, exactly, we've been telling you that you just need to change your vibrational frequency. And all of a sudden, you're inside, you're outside, and everything around you changes. Why are they right or wrong?

• 24:47Speaker 00

  The idea of vibrational, you know, things vibrating and having different energy levels, that's one that you can do for all sorts of different, you know, distance scales from violin strings to waves in water, all those. So in the case of the hippies, I don't know what's vibrating for them, but, but it's a fair question.

• 25:07Jonathan Cohen?

  But how does that change our understanding of the nature of reality if things can?

• 25:15Jonathan Cohen?

  Change their, what they are in that way.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  The consequences of that are that if you have these little, you know, one dimensional strings that are vibrating in different ways, there being different particles, as they, they move through space, um, the kinds of ways that they could interact with each other, so the ways that they can, you know, join up, separate, different vibrations, all of that tells you about what particles could exist, and then how they're going to behave. And that allows you in principle to predict lots of things. Um, so a, a big question is, there are lots of things we don't understand about the universe right now. So we know from, uh, research in astronomy that we actually don't know what the majority of the universe is made of.

• 25:53Mayim Bialik?

  This seems like a really big problem to me.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  It's a really big problem, right? So, um, there are things that we refer to as dark energy or dark matter. These are things that we think in terms of the gravitational structure of the universe. There has to be stuff out there that's interacting gravitationally with everything else. It's got mass, uh, it's got energy, but we don't know what it is. And it's not the stuff that the stars near us are made of. So the question of, you know, what is all that energy? What is all that matter out there that's determining how the universe is, is evolving and what's going to happen to it? Um, that's something that, you know, a theory like string theory would try and answer by positing what particles and what forces might exist. Um, a fun, actually, you know, observed quantity that, um, lots of people and lots of theorists are thinking about is the fact that the universe isn't

• 26:38Speaker 00

  just expanding, it's speeding up. So the question of like, what's driving that expansion? What's producing that energy? Right? That's a great question.

• 26:45Mayim Bialik?

  What do you mean it's speeding up? I was just still trying to get my head around expanding like the balloon. What does that mean that it's, it's speeding up?

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, it means that it's, all the parts are moving away from each other and the rate that that is happening is, as you said, slow, but subtly increasing over time.

• 27:02Jonathan Cohen?

  Again, not to quote the hippies, but everyone's saying, things are moving so much faster these days and it's the speed of technology, which we're bombarded by information. But to think of... That being paralleled.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  So there's one possible thing that could be driving that expansion. So one maybe explanation for it, which is the idea that empty space itself might have energy. So in quantum mechanics, which describes how particles interact, as you alluded to a few minutes ago, things are sort of happen probabilistically. So you say, you know, is a particle here or there? You can't really say, but you can say, you know, the odds of it doing X or Y, you can figure out. So when you say space is empty, you have to say, how sure am I that it's actually empty? So could it be the case that you think you have empty space, but actually a particle and an antiparticle appeared and annihilated and then disappeared again while you weren't looking, right?

• 27:56Speaker 00

  Could it have happened in, you know, just, just an infinitesimal fraction of a second? So there could be this sort of bubbling soup of particles that may or may not exist probabilistically in empty space. And that can actually contribute energy to the universe. And then as the universe gets bigger, you got more space. So you got more energy of this uncertainty of these particles in empty space. And that can actually drive expansion. It can make the universe accelerate even more.

• 28:25Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, the universe is expanding. It's expanding more than it was, right? Let's say a second ago and a year ago and a light year ago. And it's not only expanding more, it's expanding faster. So I can't help but think, like, what are we careening towards? You know, when you think about sort of the big bang theory and you think about whatever led to the fact that like, you know, we're all stardust and all of those beautiful notions, that's our evolution story. What's our catastrophe story, right? That we can tell ourselves about this expansion that's happening at even a more rapid pace?

• 29:08Mayim Bialik?

  Like, I picture us hurling now through space, right? With some catastrophe looming. Is that just my, you know, puny human mind?

• 29:18Speaker 00

  No, that's a totally fair question and it's one that scientists have thought about for a long time. So this is about the fate of the universe, right? So if we, as you say, if you imagine that the universe arose from some sort of, you know, big singularity or, or, you know, cosmic explosion in its past, um, where is it going? And there are different possibilities that people consider and that's very much dependent on what the universe is, is made of and, and, um, what's happening to it that we don't fully understand. But possibilities could include if you don't have enough stuff in that universe, um, it could expand for a while and then eventually gravity could kind of win out again and everything could start moving back, uh, closer and closer together until it basically recollapses, possibly explodes again.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Um, so this would be a re-collapse scenario for the universe. You could also have an expansion and this is what our current data sort of indicates is that you could have an expansion that just keeps going forever and everything gets further and further apart and colder and colder and colder, um, in the ultimate fate of the universe. So these are referred to as like the big crunch if it recollapses or the big freeze if everything just expands arbitrarily far apart, all the stars eventually burn out and everything gets cold and dark at the end.

• 30:30Speaker 03

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• 31:28Jonathan Cohen?

  Should we be concerned?

• 31:29Speaker 00

  It's gonna happen a really long time from now, much beyond the life cycle of our star. So we won't be around to worry about it. Some people say like, this could be, you know, a cycle of universes arising, getting destroyed, and then becoming again. So one possibility would be your universe collapses in and you create a new big bang that makes a new universe.

• 31:49Mayim Bialik?

  So in this other option, where everything keeps expanding, it gets cold because we're no one is close enough to a sun or any of those kinds of stars that are generating the sort of heat that in our particular planetary climate keeps us alive.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, or just phrased differently, that, you know, a lot of the energy in the universe comes from density, right? You have to mush things together to make stars and, you know, things like that. So if everything gradually gets, you know, further and further apart, you don't have, you know, clouds that are gonna condense to form stars. And so, yeah, everything eventually becomes very cold and dark.

• 32:26Mayim Bialik?

  I wonder when people talk about, you know, kind of imminent environmental concerns and the concerns of our planet's needs, how much do you consider those kinds of needs, considering the kind of thing that you study?

• 32:42Speaker 00

  I think these types of concerns are so far distant in time scales that we do not have to worry about them as humans. I mean, they're fun to think about, but in terms of what will happen to our planet and our sun, you know, this is many, many, many lifetimes of suns in the far distant future that you would have to worry about anything like this. I do think it's really fascinating to ask, you know, what can we determine about this? And can we figure out, you know, what's in the universe so we can decide, you know, whether these scenarios happen? The specialness of star formation, the specialness of, you know, solar systems, of being in the sweet spot for the earth such that life could form. There's all sorts of great questions you can ask like that in physics about what it takes to get not just life, but complexity, right?

• 33:25Speaker 00

  What does it takes to build complicated things like we see in the universe? And it's all really special. Just to mention one kind of quirky one, when we're talking about higher dimensions. If you said, "I want to build a universe and I'm willing to build it in any number of dimensions," right, don't care like what's gonna happen. If you try and build something like a universe in two dimensions, two dimensions is just too simple to actually be able to build rich structure like we see in the universe, to be able to build stars and galaxies and stuff. If you go up higher and you say, I want to be in four, you know, big macroscopic dimensions. I just want this, you know, big higher dimensional universe. It's actually, things sort of generically miss each other. It's it's too much space to build complicated things.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Um, you, you, it's hard to build, you know, stable gravitational orbits like we build, um, you know, our solar system out of. So three dimensions is actually kind of a sweet spot to be able to build something like our universe that is complex and stable and can support stars and planets and galaxies and us.

• 34:23Jonathan Cohen?

  I heard that potentially there are more dimensions than three dimensions, but potentially they are hidden. We don't, we haven't observed them fully. How does that relate to the multiverse that Marvel keeps showing me?

• 34:38Speaker 00

  This is related to this, this quantum mechanical uncertainty that we were talking about a moment ago. So if you have a particle and you say, I'm gonna, you know, take this, this very small electron, right, that is, you know, makes up atoms. And I'm going to, you know, shoot it at a target. Okay, I'm gonna ask, where does this thing hit? If you try and do that, it isn't like shooting a, you know, string of of billiard balls at a target. You don't just get, you know, here's where each ball hit. What you find is this, this distribution of, you know, almost like a wave of how things could have behaved. And that is in quantum mechanics, the fact that we don't know for sure where these little particles are, that they are extremely hard to pin down.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  And so that theoretical probability distribution of like, these are all the possible things it could do, that actually gets realized as a physical measurement of this weird distribution of possibilities being realized as, you know, the results of where did my, my electron hit when I shot it at the screen? Um, so people have tried to ask, you know, can I interpret those different possibilities? Is the particle here? Is it there? Is that some sort of like physical real thing, right? Is there one universe where it's here and there's another universe where it's there? That's the idea of the multiverse. Um, I personally think that that's not really a scientific question yet because we have no ability to probe those in multiple, you know, versions of a universe happening simultaneously. So there's no real measurement we could do that would distinguish that from just

• 36:04Speaker 00

  the, the mathematical notion of probability that we're using. Uh, but it's a really cool thought and I like all the multiverse movies too. Um, saying, you know, there's one version of me in another universe that's doing something different.

• 36:15Mayim Bialik?

  When I got to study this, you know, and we got to think about parallel universes and things like that, you know, it's fascinating, not just, again, kind of conceptually, when you think about what it means for different selves of you, but this notion that there are different versions possible of every reality that we also think that we can see. From people who have had near-death experiences to physicists, to, you know, psychologists saying, you know, everything that we're seeing is what we're perceiving and what's being projected upside down on the back of a, you know, retina that, you know, sends information and, you know, through all of these different cells. But, you know, the easiest example is, you know,

• 37:00Mayim Bialik?

  when we describe a color, that's actually the one wavelength that's not being absorbed, right, by an object. But Donald Hoffman talked about, you know, what if we see reality as we're already wearing the goggles, right? This is the VR experience, right?

• 37:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:19Mayim Bialik?

  And so I think when we think about it in terms of particles, in terms of probability, in terms of the double-split experiment, it's exciting, and it's exciting in a creative way. And obviously, people who are, you know, creating science fiction and talking about these things get to take it to all these different levels. But we also get to talk about sort of the mathematical level, which is, I think, equally entertaining.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  You can't really have one without the other and that you need to be able to explore these ideas, right? If things are just, you know, only explored in a lab or only explored in mathematics, that isn't the thing that captures people's imagination. So I'm very grateful to Marvel for exploring all this, too. And in terms of like the physical consequences of this, you know, there's a lot of current research in things like quantum computers, where people are trying to like revolutionize computing and cryptography and all these things that will have really big real-world implications that are based on this sort of, you know, composites of reality and all this uncertain probabilistic behavior.

• 38:21Mayim Bialik?

  Many people who, let's say, experience flashbacks from trauma describe it not as a memory, but as being placed in a completely different

• 38:33Mayim Bialik?

  Time and their bodies, their thoughts, in many cases, their physicality responds as if it is in a different epoch of time. And obviously, that's not proof of anything. That's not the way we decide things in science. But I wonder if you can talk a little bit, for example, about the difference between remembering something and having, you know, an experience of being in a completely different timeframe. Is that kind of time travel with a lowercase t? Is there another way to imagine that we can experience time in a nonlinear fashion?

• 39:11Speaker 00

  One of the things that early 20th century physics showed us in a really remarkable way is that there is no universal notion of time for the whole universe. That this is very much a local thing that is based on how we're moving and where we're positioned and that clocks will tick differently all over the universe in different scenarios. So to give a couple of examples that one might have heard of, if you're moving really, really fast, so, you know, if you're in your rocket ship and you're zooming off to another planet, this is Einstein's famous twin paradox where, you know, you say you have two different people, twins, one of them gets on a spaceship and moves very close to the speed of light far away, one of them stays on Earth, they come back and they are different ages. How is that possible? That's something that really is possible in physics, that clocks do not have to be universal.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  Another example is that in your, when you're near very strong gravitational field, so if you were in, you know, a planet that's really close to a very large black hole, clocks will tick differently on that planet than they would, you know, here on Earth. And so you can have manifestly extremely different perceptions of time between different observers in different parts of the universe doing different things. And that can come up with all sorts of, you know, paradoxes and contradictions that aren't really contradictions but seem like it because of just how non-universal time is. So I think that's a neat thing, that, you know, time doesn't mean something for the whole universe, right? You can't just like say now and then that's a universal thing that everybody gets to agree on. The question of can you go back in time?

• 40:40Speaker 00

  So is, you know, time travel possible? Lots of physicists have thought about that over the years. And yeah, I'm not going to be the definitive word on that. Some people are still, you know, thinking concretely on this. But we can say that if you try and write down a physics theory that allows time travel, that allows these so-called closed time-like paths where you know, you go back in time and do something. Physics breaks down really fast. You end up with all sorts of nonsense answers. So this is the famous, you know, you're going to go back in time and shoot your grandpa and then you get a logical contradiction. Right? That happens in physics all over the place. If you have time travel in the sense of you get to go back. So in terms of consistent physics theories, I would say there is no universally agreed upon consistent physics theory that allows time travel.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  It seems to be really hard. The universe seems to protect itself really strongly against such things. Does that mean that, you know, that's absolutely the case? Maybe there's some clever way that this can be done that we don't know about yet.

• 41:36Mayim Bialik?

  Is it possible that one of these other dimensions that we get to think about holds an experience or holds things on a time scale that don't have to exist in a way that would impact the physical world? So that we wouldn't be dealing with this possibility of kind of physics falling apart. But just as people with, you know, you could call it extrasensory perception or people who are incredibly intuitive, right? People who are in touch or tuned in, right? To other, for lack of a better word, frequencies, right? Is it possible that there are experiences or people

• 42:17Mayim Bialik?

  who have access to some other plane where this information exists and is accessible, but doesn't have to obey all of these other physical rules of the linearity of time?

• 42:30Speaker 00

  The neat thing is, is that when you mathematically model this, the rules apply to everything. So whether it's an extra dimension or is it ordinary dimension, you don't get to like get a get out of jail free card just because it's it's not something that you can observe in our our our current universe. So in that sense, I would say that, you know, things like time travel in the literal back to the future kind of sense, you don't get helped by having extra dimensions in that. Indeed, people have actually asked, could some of those extra dimensions be time like? So could you have more than one time? Right, that's a cool concept. And again, that breaks down real fast. It gets really hard to to do consistent physics in that that scenario.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  But people are still thinking about it. And then, you know, the question of what human beings can perceive, how we how we function consciously. I think that's that's a fabulous set of of questions, but not unfortunately physics at the moment.

• 43:20Mayim Bialik?

  You know, from the time that you were a little girl and fascinated with physics and wanting to study the cosmos and all the incredible things that you get to study, how has your understanding of life on other planets or life in other galaxies? How has that changed? And how do you incorporate that into the work that you do? Because it's changed really in the last several decades in terms of what we know, what we can know and what is actually possible. How has that changed your worldview?

• 43:54Speaker 00

  This this comment you made earlier about the sort of specialness apparently of life on Earth, right, that we haven't observed life elsewhere in the universe, that we seem to be in this unique position. My physics training has shown me that somehow that type of specialness doesn't arise very readily. That if you have something that's possible, if you can build complex molecules, if you can build human beings and consciousness, the idea that that would only happen once in the universe seems almost infinitesimally unlikely to me. So that is not a proof that life exists elsewhere in the universe, but I feel like, of course, life must exist elsewhere in the universe because frankly, we're just not that special. And and throughout the entire history of of humanity, when we thought we were, right? When we thought that the sun orbited around the Earth, right?

• 44:38Speaker 00

  We've we've been consistently dethroned in terms of how special we think we are. I don't have any proof of life outside of Earth, but I think that almost certainly. I mean, the universe is so vast and there's so many possibilities and such a rich environment to create complex systems and and life. I would be very surprised if the universe isn't absolutely full of life. Um, and just to to riff on that in one other direction, the other thing that I think the modern moment is teaching us is, um, even with the advent of things like machine learning, we're beginning to understand that human consciousness maybe isn't that special even, right? That, you know, you can build very complex networks that begin, and again, I'm not saying AI is thinking yet, but we're beginning to understand better how you get things like thought out of complex systems.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  So I think that's a really neat scientific question as well.

• 45:25Mayim Bialik?

  There's something about speaking to someone who literally lives in the math of physics ha- having this kind of conversation that is so thrilling to me because I want to know wha- what does that mean? You know, if you kind of like take off your professor hat, right? And then you put it back on, like, what are you picturing? Do you picture carbon-based beings? Do you picture silica-based beings? Do you picture, you know, as as many people have talked about, that if something is out there and we're not aware of it, which I'm assuming we're not in the practical sense, it likely is thousands and thousands of years ahead of us.

• 46:07Mayim Bialik?

  It may actually be some artificial intelligence that isn't even recognizable, you know, as some sort of, you know, green or gray, you know, kind of alien. What do you imagine? And what are you allowed to imagine, given your credentials?

• 46:22Speaker 00

  Again, our view of what's possible for life, for complexity, for how things would form and behave is so limited by what we've experienced. So I don't know what I visualize, but I very much am excited by the idea that there could be things just so wildly different from us, not necessarily in terms of their building blocks. Carbon is a pretty great way to build complex stuff. It's a lot better than silicon, actually. So, you know, maybe that is the ubiquitous way that this this arises in the universe. But in terms of, you know, how organisms could arise, how they could function, communicate, what would be important to them, how they would explore the universe, I think. All bets are off, and I'm totally fascinated with what that would look like.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  I'm particularly interested. It seems really hard for, you know, organisms to cooperate, to survive, to take care of their planet, to move, you know, wider in the universe. So if other civilizations have done that, that would be fantastic to learn about.

• 47:20Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, I think it would also be fantastic to learn about civilizations that aren't constantly going to war with each other, you know, because like when I think about sort of our experience, when I think about what's possible when people come together, when systems come together. I mean, even think of our body, right? It's a, it's an entire organism of cooperation, right? When you, when you extrapolate that, the possibilities are literally endless. And if you think of sort of like love and peace and hope as things that we can actually experience, I would love to know, right? Ha, ha, has someone figured this out? Because we clearly have not.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  And, you know, there's been this question in, in the structure of the universe, like, why have aliens not communicated with us if there's other life in the universe? And A, the space issue, it just is so big and it takes so long to send signals that that's, you know, one explanation, but also, you know, as other people have commented, you know, maybe when we go a new place, we don't, you know, lay down on the floor and try and talk to the ants right away.

• 48:22Mayim Bialik?

  Speak for yourself.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  Maybe we should.

• 48:24Mayim Bialik?

  Can you talk a little bit more about your understanding of machine learning? Again, you, you've been, you know, a professional in the field that is so impacted by a different understanding of how we understand the universe, because for so long, we've tackled it one way, and we're now in this entirely new era. And one of our, you know, our main interests in talking to, to Dr. Kaku was about how all of these kinds of theories are now being computed, contemplated, and really crystallized in a completely different way with quantum computing. How do you frame sort of this notion of machine learning, language models?

• 49:07Mayim Bialik?

  You know, are we creating thought, or are we creating an artificial representation of our limited understanding of thought?

• 49:16Speaker 00

  I think no one really has the answers to that question yet, and lots of of smart people are trying to to answer it. But I think that actually, like, as of this year, we're in a really remarkable moment for artificial intelligence as it impacts science. So for me personally, for a number of years, I've been involved in work that involved numerically approximating solutions to things, right? So you have like really hard equations that you need to solve, that you don't know how to solve. And so you come up with schemes in a computer to, you know, run code and to simulate how a solution might look. And a few years ago, you know, people started using neural networks. We tried to use some of these techniques of machine learning to make solving these equations more viable. And, you know, the immediate progress was really remarkable.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Things were so much faster. It was this really powerful new computational tool. And then you have things like these large language models, the transformer architecture of machine learning. You know, this comes in with things like ChatGPT and Claude. And at first, you know, it seems like, OK, yeah, maybe you can use this to write your your college essay. But, you know, it's not going to be impactful for science. But really, just in the last six months, in my field at least, this is really starting to change the way that people do physics and mathematics. And the type of results that you're able to get out of these large language models, the question of whether they're capable of innovating in science, can they actually reason? Can they come up with new ideas beyond what human beings have come up with? This is a very serious question that lots of people are now tackling.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  And certainly, I would say, these machine learning tools now, the large language models, they're at the point that you can have a conversation with them about these ideas, a productive scientific conversation, like you would with a colleague. And they're able to generate new ideas. So mathematicians, there's a lot of discussion in the math literature about new proofs that are being generated in collaboration with AI that humans might not have come up with before. In my field, people are really trying to push this to be able to come up with, you know, new paradigms, new ways of thinking about things. And I find it really scary and really exciting at the same time. So like, where's this leading? Are these things, you know, going to be conscious? Is there a notion of, you know, general artificial intelligence that's close by? What are we going to do with them?

• 51:30Speaker 00

  I'm not sure, but I think things are changing really fast at this moment.

• 51:34Mayim Bialik?

  Again, this is the second time I've been kind of like moved in a very special way in in talking with you because I mean, I'm just thinking about, you know, even in our lifetime, the way things used to be done. Like when I was in grad school. I, I, I talk often with younger scientists about what it was like to fill out IRB forms. If you needed to work with human subjects, you had to produce four Xerox copies and then like the printer was out of, you know, toner and you had to like go to a different printer with your copy card to take the forms to an off. Like it was just, this was just to get approval to do your research. Or when I think about what it was like to write a grant,

• 52:17Mayim Bialik?

  most of our time was spent doing things that now you do not have to spend time doing. So I'm thinking, gosh, what can we do with even just the brain power that is now open to us because of the systematic, you know, methodology we can now use to do just, you know, kind of logistical things. Beyond that, I think of things like, what's it called? When people have like AI psychosis? And people think that they have all these amazing ideas and in many cases they do. But I'm thinking like, gosh, how much of science now has kind of like blown this wide open? And I don't mean to use your own kind of metaphor,

• 52:58Mayim Bialik?

  but it's as if it's expanding out in every dimension at increasing speed.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  It's really changing the landscape of how we do science. And the questions that we can get answers to, the way that we can ask them. And, you know, a lot of people, myself included, you know, when these first, these tools were first available, I sort of viewed it as, you know, a clever way of predicting the next word. Right? You know, you just, it's, you know, it's pattern matching. It's saying, okay, when people write letters, you know, what word goes where? Um, but it's clear that they've become a lot more than that. There's, there's a lot more possibility there. And to come back to a previous point about, you know, human beings not being that special. It's also clear that if you build networks that are sufficiently complex, you know, in some sense, human brains are predicting the next word too. We're, we're, you know, we're running on algorithms, although we don't know it. And so.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  Where that stage of, you know, you have a network that is a machine that is connecting in certain ways, what level of complexity does it begin to think? And then also taking a human brain apart the other way and saying, how does consciousness mechanically form? What are the rules for how we became what we are? I think those are a fascinating set of questions, and I think we're starting to get new insight into how those things hook together.

• 54:12Mayim Bialik?

  When you look at something like trauma, and people say, why do I keep picking people who hurt me? Why do I keep going down this same path? It's because your brain knows, this is comfortable, this is the groove, we've created this pathway, and we're going to keep hitting it. And if someone triggers it in some other way, you get this notion of, why am I having the same reaction even though I know I'm safe?

• 54:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:37Mayim Bialik?

  That is what this complex system does, and it's the best that it can do. But what's fascinating is that, you know, when we get into healing modalities, and especially when Western medicine says to people, I don't know why that's wrong with you, take this pill, right? Other healing modalities say, there's another way to think about it, there's another way to create grooves in the brain, right? So when you think about AI in this sense, it's yet another level of creative conversation that we can be in. I mean, there's something that's so romantic to me, though, that I need to get rid of, that romantic notion of, there's these theorems, and we can't figure it out, and like, what's your favorite math question that can't be solved?

• 55:20Mayim Bialik?

  The notion that that might also be a thing of the past to a certain extent. What happens when theories are no longer theories, but they're actual things? Right? When we talk about the theory of relativity, we talk about string theory, what is that like for you to enter, you know, an era where there may not be as many unknowns? What does it mean for this next level of thought and evolution for us?

• 55:47Speaker 00

  So one question that I know mathematicians and physicists are taking very seriously is, what happens when these things become much smarter than us? Right? So right now, I can have a conversation with, you know, a large language model about my research, and I still know more about my research than it does. And so it will, you know, hallucinate, it'll make mistakes, and I can be, no, that's not right. And then it says, oh, sorry, I'll fix it, you know? Right? But... It could very readily become the case soon that computers, you know, these AI could generate theorems, they could generate theories as you're describing, that are right, and maybe it's hard for humans to decide if they're right or not. So there's actually a really strong community coming in, um, the mathematics

• 56:31Speaker 00

  community, which is trying to basically write code to, um, make algorithms that can verify mathematical proofs that might be too complicated for humans to understand. So they're basically trying to build the architecture within machines to try and verify machines' own theorems, so that if it's too tough for us, we can still have some way to trust it. Um, which is not a problem that I thought we were going to be having anytime soon. Um, but here we are, right? So this question of, yeah, what do we do when, when they tell us this is the right answer and we don't know if they're right?

• 57:05Mayim Bialik?

  We're too stupid. We're like Neanderthals and Homo sapiens is like, I know what to do. Go here. Mate with this person. Like mash this up and it'll be tasty. We're gonna be like the Neanderthals.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Or hopefully not, but like, how do we, how do we navigate that? Right? That's, that's a really tricky question. And, and I think we're already getting hit by that of how do we decide, you know, there's the whole like ethics issues of how all these tools are used, but also just the practical of if you have this really powerful tool, how do you guide it toward discovery? What questions do you ask it? Do you believe what it says? How do you figure that all out?

• 57:38Mayim Bialik?

  I can't help being struck by the fact that, you know, every generation believes that they know things that the previous generation didn't understand. Whether it's rock and roll, whether it's, you know, computer technology. What I'm dealing with, and I think what Jonathan also is dealing with, I have a 17-year-old and a 20-year-old, and Jonathan has an 18-year-old. But they know a lot more than I do about certain things. And the basis of my parents' parenting was we know more than you. And when you think you know more, we're gonna put you in your place. And what I now have, and this has literally happened in one generation,

• 58:23Mayim Bialik?

  I now have children who in many ways are still absolutely children. I think I definitely have a lot to teach them. But in one more generation, we may have a situation where the knowledge scales are being tipped in ways that feel a little bit scary. Go five generations ahead. This thing is expanding in every direction at a rapid pace.

• 58:50Speaker 00

  I think it doesn't even take a generation to ask that question. Honestly, I think the space of change is so rapid that all of us, regardless of our age, are going to be in that position of having to grapple with something wildly new. And I definitely, I sympathize with what you're saying. I help my parents through the technology, you know, transition. I can already see ways that, you know, younger people are much more adept than I am at certain things. And I think, yeah, these brand new tools, like this is just exponentially fast. And so what does that look like? How do we keep up? What do we do with it? How do we do that responsibly? It's a tough set of questions.

• 59:24Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, the only thing that makes me feel better is that very soon and possibly in my lifetime, my children will see what it's like to be told that they don't know what's going on.

• 59:34Speaker 00

  And also the question of access, right? If you have these powerful tools, like how do we make sure that that they are available to everybody? And that people do get to use them and?

• 59:43Mayim Bialik?

  Or that they're used for good and not for evil, right? In the, I mean, I feel like many aspects of our existence feels like we're in a comic book, you know, in terms of the, the language that certain leaders use. It feels like very comic book villain. But this notion of, you know, even the, the current boundaries that we're trying to put around technology that can hack into every system on our planet, right? How do you control and regulate that when it's being devised to be used for all of these other incredible things, you know?

• 1:00:16Jonathan Cohen?

  Two very important questions. The first, if people are only listening, you have some equations behind you on the blackboard.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  I do, yeah.

• 1:00:23Jonathan Cohen?

  What are they about?

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  These are about geometries for extra dimensions. So if you say, like, what could the shape of these extra dimensions be? And, you know, they have to be really small, so we don't see them. But they can be wrapped up in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. That will change the physics that you could get out. And so we write lots of equations to try and describe what those dimensions look like. What would the consequences of their shapes be? And things like that.

• 1:00:51Mayim Bialik?

  What are our choices for shapes? Because I tap out at like a buckyball.

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  So again, it's really hard to visualize because they involve more than three dimensions. So in string theory, the the common extra dimensions that we we posit involve like, for example, six extra dimensions. And they can have holes and all sorts of a very weird and wonderful structure.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Very simple examples range from things like a donut shape to the extra dimensions. You could have, you know, a little torus all the way up through very, very crazy knotted geometries, things that are called Calabi-Yau manifolds. So there's, yeah, there's a bunch of weird configurations. That's actually one of the aspects of my research is try to say, how many different shapes are possible? And we actually don't know at present if there's a finite number of shapes that are allowed, or if it could be infinite.

• 1:01:42Jonathan Cohen?

  What do you hope you're going to discover by understanding the shape of these other extra dimensions? Like, what unlock does that provide for us?

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  Long term, we'd love to know these questions about like, what's in the universe? What's dark matter and dark energy? How many particles could exist? How do they interact with each other? So the the shapes of these extra dimensions in string theory impact things like what literal particles we would see. So, you know, we know that there are things like quarks and electrons. If you were to, you know, zoom in with your super powerful microscope, smaller and smaller distance scales, you can ask, are there other particles? You know, what would their properties be? And also, a structure of like, these questions we ask, like, what is the shape of the universe? Why is it expanding? What's going to happen to it? All of those questions are things that, in principle, a theory like string theory could try and give you. The short term is, we would need to understand what are the rules for extra dimensions first?

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  And then we can ask, you know, what would particle physics see? There's actually some fun visualizations you can do of, if those extra dimensions were so small that we couldn't see them, but still big enough that, say, very small particles could interact with them? You could imagine, like, you know, at the atomic or subatomic scale, you had two atoms that are interacting, you know, two particles that are colliding with each other. They might lose energy into those extra dimensions, or you might, you know, if they're described as a wave, you know, part of that wave might tail off into an extra dimension. So you can try and do experiments to see, you know, could that be measured? Can you see that deficit of energy? Or, you know, how things might behave in that way? So.

• 1:03:12Mayim Bialik?

  What is your favorite shape?

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  I would say these Calabi-Yau manifolds are really fun to play with. There's a lot of possibilities for, you know, their twistiness, their holes, their structure. So just in terms of like fun shapes to, you know, manipulate, look at, to, you know, poke holes in, Calabi-Yau's are pretty fun.

• 1:03:34Jonathan Cohen?

  I've never asked anyone this next question in over 350 episodes, but it feels like I need to ask you.

• 1:03:41Mayim Bialik?

  Have you asked me this?

• 1:03:42Jonathan Cohen?

  Nope.

• 1:03:42Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 1:03:43Jonathan Cohen?

  If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

• 1:03:46Speaker 00

  Oh, man, that's a great question. Right now, at this moment in my life, I want the ability to like pause time for everybody except for me. And I'm doing that because I just feel super swamped. I got way too much going on. I want to be able to like just pause all the things and then take my time and do everything and enjoy. And then restart it, you know, unpause the universe when I'm ready to get back into things. That would be a great superpower.

• 1:04:09Mayim Bialik?

  Dr. Anderson, thank you so much. This has been really, really wonderful to speak with you. Are you anywhere that you'd like to tell people to find you on the interwebs?

• 1:04:18Speaker 00

  I have a website. I would say, yeah, check out Virginia Tech Physics.

• 1:04:23Mayim Bialik?

  Amazing. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your time.

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure.

• 1:04:31Jonathan Cohen?

  Quick review. Lot of dark energy out there, lot of dark matter, lot of stuff. Every time we speak to a scientist, we basically figure out that they don't know a lot of things.

• 1:04:45Mayim Bialik?

  That's the take-home message. This lady didn't know a lot of things we asked her.

• 1:04:49Jonathan Cohen?

  They know a lot of things, but they also discover they don't know a lot of things.

• 1:04:53Mayim Bialik?

  You know, I think that's an unfair assessment of Dr. Anderson, who clearly knows a lot of, a lot of things.

• 1:05:00Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm not saying I know more things.

• 1:05:02Mayim Bialik?

  No, but I think, well, no one is saying that. But I think what's interesting is when we speak to people in theoretical physics, in the theoretical realms, like the fact that, you know, I was thinking like, what does her lab look like? Probably exactly what we saw, a chalkboard and a lot of scratch paper and a computer.

• 1:05:20Jonathan Cohen?

  You know, I didn't ask her if she dreams in equations.

• 1:05:24Mayim Bialik?

  I really appreciated her framework.

• 1:05:28Mayim Bialik?

  For what it's like to operate in this era of science. Because like I said, when you picture her as a little girl being like, I want to study that. And then you get into the field at a time when the technology has shifted so much. Everything we do about how to explore everything, it's literally expanding out in all directions.

• 1:05:52Jonathan Cohen?

  That's very true. And the final thought that comes to my head that'll leave us with is if Amy and Sheldon were on air right now and they were having date night and they were interacting with GPT, you can imagine them arguing and fighting with the current large language models.

• 1:06:15Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, Big Bang Theory happened at a time that was so special that likely could not have existed right now with the capability and the framework that we have for physics, for sure.

• 1:06:26Jonathan Cohen?

  I think both of you would be very upset with GPT.

• 1:06:30Mayim Bialik?

  Really, really fun episode. And yeah, from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.