The Power of Principles: Physics Revealed - A Conversation with Nima Arkani-Hamed

Howard Burton

• Publisher: Ideas Roadshow
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9781771700252
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Astronomy & Astrophysics

This book is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Nima Arkani-Hamed, faculty member at the renowned Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Nima Arkani-Hamed is one of today's leading particle physicists. In this extensive Ideas Roadshow conversation Nima discusses how we discover the laws of nature, the "scientific method", the relation between theory and experiment and how we can push our understanding well beyond where experiments can currently reach. With his unbridled enthusiasm and engaging eloquence, Nima takes us inside the world of a working theoretical physicist, sharing his frustration at some of the ways that physics is communicated to the general public while revealing how he and his colleagues hope to be steered towards the truth without experiment to guide them.This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, Beyond Nymphs, Dryads and Leprechauns, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. Physics Time Management - Giving it your allII. The Problem with Popularization - Not what it used to beIII. In Feynman's Footsteps - A genuine challengeIV. Describing Reality - The latest thing vs. the eternally significantV. A Timeless Community - Walking with Galileo, aided by WeinbergVI. Against Relativism - Science, culture, and truth with a capital "T"VII. Strongly Constrained - The effect of VIII. combining relativity and quantum mechanicsVIII. In Search of a Formula - Predicting clicks and theoretical candidatesIX. A Principled Example - The inevitability of the HiggsX. Supersymmetry - Platonic convictionsXI. Reacting Precipitously - The sad tale of the supposedly superluminal neutrinosXII. Tangled Pillars - The relationship between relativity and quantum theoryXIII. The Pull of the Truth - Plunging in, in the right vicinityXIV. Choosing a Better Description - Thinking your way into the futureXV. Beyond Space-Time - Mathematics to the rescue?About Ideas Roadshow Conversations Series This book is part of an expanding series of 100+ Ideas Roadshow conversations, each one presenting a wealth of candid insights from a leading expert in a focused yetinformal setting to give non-specialists a uniquely accessible window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be encountered through standard lectures and textbooks. For other books in this series visit our website: https://ideasroadshow.com/.

The Conversation

I. Physics Time Management

Giving it your all

HB: I’ve had this question that’s been rattling around in my head for some time. I go into the bookstore and look at popular science books, and I ask myself, Are there people who should be writing a popular science book who aren’t doing so?

It seems to me that there’s a bit of disconnect between what the general public is aware of through popular science books and what’s really going on at the front lines, who’s really driving a field forwards.

Now that’s completely understandable. After all, it’s naturally difficult for the public to really get a good glimpse inside the sausage factory. But one of the things I really wanted to talk to you about is just that: looking inside the sausage factory. So here’s my question to you: why haven’t you written a popular book?

NAH: Well, people ask me this question a fair amount. Like most physicists, I really love talking about physics. I definitely enjoy giving public talks. I enjoy interacting with non-physicists about what’s going on in the subject. It’s something I’ve thought about, but I’m quite certain that I’m not going to do it for a very long time.

HB: Meaning what, exactly? Until you’re old enough that you can’t contribute much to science anymore?

NAH: Well, this is really the main point. There are many reasons why I’m not investing the time right now in writing a popular book, but the most dominant reason is that, while it’s very important for the general public to know what’s going on, and I definitely enjoy doing this sort of thing, it is not the most important thing for me to focus on right now.

I think that our real job is to push physics forward and to try to learn something new about the way nature works. And that’s a very tough business. It sounds obvious, but it really is a very tough business. There are some people who, by whatever combination of their personal history and their talent or whatever, are positioned (or have already made significant contributions to) our understanding of the world.

And by this I mean something in a really serious sense. Not, Are you one of the leaders of your generation? or Do you have a great academic job? or something like that. I’m talking about things that will actually matter on the 100, 200, 300-year timescale, if not longer.

There are those who, by a combination of talent and luck and whatever else, have either done that already or are more easily capable of doing that. Then there are people who will never do that —and naturally not everyone in academia is focused in that direction anyway.

And then there are people who are right on the bubble. And I consider myself to be one of those. It’s conceivable that I might be able to have some really important impact and push physics forward, but it’s by no means obvious.

So my thinking is that the only thing that’s in my control is giving my utmost to single-mindedly focus on the hardest problem, the most important problem that I have any hope of making some small progress on. The ability to concentrate and focus like that is absolutely crucial.

Of course it doesn’t mean that I don’t do anything else with my life. And actually, giving public talks about physics is one of the things that relaxes me. I enjoy doing it. It’s an enormous amount of fun.

But I don’t think of it even remotely as my actual job. My actual job is to try to figure out something about the way the world works. And I’ve been both blessed and cursed, I think, with just the right amount of talent, ability, motivation to have a chance of doing it.

HB: Why cursed, exactly? Because you’d like ten times more talent?

NAH: Well, ten times more would be fantastic. Ten times less it would be fairly clear that I couldn’t do it, which would lead to a very different life.

Look, I realize that I’m in a phenomenal situation. But it means that the aspect of this business that is just flat out hard work is very important to me. It’s the one thing that I feel is really in my control. If I didn’t do that I would kick myself forever for not having given everything I had to try to do the things that are really important.

And for me everything flows from there. Our real job should be to figure out important things about the way the world works. We have huge problems: I mean really dramatic, zeroth-order, very important mysteries about the way the world works—things that anyone would be interested in knowing the answer to. Of course we’re interested in knowing too. But my point is that they’re not questions only of interest to egghead specialists: I think they’re things that really matter to everyone. And we have the chance to tackle them.

It’s not up to us when big breakthroughs happen; often big discoveries are made when it’s their time to be made. And you could be unfortunate enough to live through one of the doldrum periods where what’s going on is more or less an incremental addition to our general knowledge.

HB: And there are an awful lot of those.

NAH: Yes, there are an awful lot of those. But I genuinely have a sense —and I don’t think it’s just blind optimism, I really have this sense—that we’re in a very exciting time right now.

After 300–400 years of barrelling through developments in physics that have given us some deep understanding about all sorts of basic things about the world around us, we’re now at the point of addressing some of these very profound questions about where the universe came from, what’s the origin of space and time, and so forth. These are finally the questions that are on the docket.

HB: I remember you once telling me years ago that you thought about this question of timing back when you were a graduate student, or perhaps even an undergraduate: that you’d been thinking about the timing of a major experiment like CERN’s LHC in terms of how it might impact your career.

NAH: Absolutely. The prospect of all these wonderful experiments happening (even though they’ve been delayed a little bit) was something I was long anticipating, and played a major role in pushing me in a particular direction. You have to think of your research career on a big scale and over the long term. We only have thirty or forty years or so in which to try to push things forward.

So that’s my view. I don’t feel that this is one of these random times in the development of the history of the subject. I think it’s conceivable that really, really big things are at stake, and making sure that we get that right is by far the most important thing that we can do as scientists.

Once we figure that out, telling people about it—telling people about whatever new-world view emerges if we get there—that’s going to be incredibly important too. But it’s not comparable in import to pushing things forward.

II. The Problem with Popularization

Not what it used to be

HB: So I get that. I get the fact that it’s an important time; and I get the fact that, either way, it’s your time, and you naturally want to be focusing on what you think are the most important issues and where you feel that you can make the most significant contribution. And I understand that writing a popular book would take a huge amount of time away from that. So, notwithstanding the fact that you believe passionately in the importance of communicating science and scientific ideas, you naturally want to focus on actually doing science...

Table of contents

• A Note on the Text
• Introduction
• The Conversation
• Continuing the Conversation