[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: 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 was working 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 feel like there was a missed opportunity. You wrote a follow-up
called "Beyond Star Trek". And I feel it should have been
named "The Physics of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Krauss". LAWRENCE KRAUSS: You're
taking that out of my-- I put that in my appendix. SPEAKER 1: Oh, you did. LAWRENCE KRAUSS:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. SPEAKER 1: Oh, you did now. 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 model of particle physics, and its implications
for our existence, and what promises to be the
greatest story ever told so far. Join me in giving a warm
welcome to Dr. Krauss. LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Thanks. Well, it's a pleasure to
be here and see all of you. And 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 in any case, the quote that
I had here along with the music comes from a book
that actually a friend of mine-- who is a filmmaker
named Werner Herzog-- recommended to me. And you might have seen his most
recent-- well not most recent movie, but second-most recent
movie, "Lo and Behold", which is about the internet,
which is nice. There's another one
that just came out, which is a fiction,
called "Salt and Fire" that I'm also in as a villain. But it's a weirder movie. But anyway, this book, which
is called "The Peregrine" is about a peregrine. And but it is a
wonderful naturalist book if you ever want to 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
thrust of the content of my book, which is
that the world we live in is an illusion. And it's been an amazing story
for particle physics and-- oh, look at that. OK, is there a
reason that went off? Auto-power Off engaged. Auto-power Off was engaged. So waiting for
projectors to start. Good. I'm very impressed
with the technology. So anyway, the standard
model of particle physics-- and in fact, particle
physics in general-- has been about
trying to understand the fundamental structure
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 one of the reasons the
subtitle of the book is called "Why are we Here"-- is that universe that we
exist in is an accident. In a well-defined way,
which I will-- well, I'll talk about until
the projector gets there. I'll get-- let me just get
to the slide I want to do, so when the projector
actually turns on, which is certainly not now. Oh, a light just came on. That's good. We can get to the
image I want to show, which is of a window in
the wintertime with ice crystals on it. I was actually just in
Phoenix where I teach. And I gave a lecture on this. And I had to explain to people
those were ice crystals. But here we go. 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. So let's say this one. OK, if you evolved on-- and we
can use that word in the US-- if you evolved on that
crystal, what would happen? Well, the physicists-- I don't know where
it is in that one. But anyway, let's
say with this one. Oh, no. There it is. The physicists
working in this world would say, well, OK, I
can work out the forces. The forces along the
spine of the crystal are very different than the
force that's perpendicular. So they come up with laws of
physics, which would explain and predict how things moved. And there would be one set
of forces in this direction, and forces in the
other direction. And that would seem natural. There'd be theologians
who'd explain why God ordained
that direction to be the proper direction for life. And there'd be wars
fought over whether that was the right direction or
that was the right direction to pray to. And all of that would have
significance, which of course is completely illusory. It is just an accident. The crystal can point
in any given direction. 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 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 we, of, course-- the world looks like
it's designed for us. But at a fundamental
level, it's actually antithetical to our existence,
as I'll describe to you. Now, the story is
long and winding. And obviously, I said, I want
to give an abridged version so you can get back to work. So I want to start
fairly late into this. But the story actually begins
2000 years ago with Plato and then works through
Maxwell and Einstein, talking about the
major revolutions that have changed our 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
we made progress when two things that seem
very different on the surface seem 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 to magnetism, which seemed so different, are
really exactly the same thing. One person's electricity is
another person's magnetism. That led to the realization
of space and time, which seemed 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 seem 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 I talk about those things
at great length in the book. So up to that point,
we had we developed the theory of electromagnetism
and a theory of gravity. And all seemed well until
we got to a later stage. And I wanted to begin the
later stage with this guy, who all of you know, I assume. It's Richard Feynman,
who was probably-- well, was one of the greatest
physicists of the second half the 20th century. And what he won the Nobel
Prize for-- with others-- was the recognition that, of
course, at a fundamental level, the world is quantum mechanical. And if we want to have a
theory of electromagnetism, we need to put it in 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 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 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 of 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 same thing that's
used in Washington in corporate America, which
are now the same thing. If you can't see
it, anything goes. OK, that's basically it. And we'll learn more about
that with the investigations over the next year,
I certainly hope. So the idea is that this
electron emits this particle-- this photon of light. But that's impossible. It's not allowed. The electron just sitting
there cannot emit a particle of light, because where
did the energy come from? If the photon carries energy,
where did the energy come from? The 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 OK. That's allowed by the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which is
responsible for that 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
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. OK? And I'm sure Google does
this every day at some level, because if you get the
money, and as you put it back before anyone notices, you can
do whatever you want with it. Right? And you know, there's
a lot of trading that goes on in that regard. So it's exactly the same. So the photon can violate
energy conservation here. As long as it disappears
before you can measure it, you're fine. 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
make electromagnetism a long-range force. The electron here repels an
electron in Alpha Centauri.-- OK-- 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 arbitrary 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 related to the fact that the photon is
massless, in this picture. OK? And this photon, because
you can't see it, it's called a virtual photon
because it doesn't really exist. It just-- you can't
ever measure it. If you look for
it, it's not there. OK? And great. And so this picture-- this is a complete
picture of the quantum theory of electromagnetism. You absorb and emit
these virtual photons 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. Based on this theory,
you can make predictions and compare them
with observations to 14 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 1940s, when this
was developed, this was great. We now have a complete theory
called quantum electrodynamics, which explains and
predicts perfectly, every measurement you can
make in atoms and other things where electric
fields are relevant. So that's great. OK? And that looked
great for nature. But then nature intervened. OK? Nature intervened with
the fact that the neutron is radioactive. Now this should
disturb you because-- I remember I first learned
about when I was in high school from a guy named Tommy Gold,
who was a wonderful astronomer. But it should disturb you,
because most of the particles in your body are neutrons. Right? Neutrons and protons
make up atomic nuclei. And for a heavy nuclei,
certainly there-- average more neutrons
there are protons. So the number one dominant
particle in your body is a neutron, OK? If I take a neutron
here and hold it up, it will decay in 10 minutes. 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 praying for
your neutrons to decay. But they're not. And why is that? An accident of our existence. So what's neutron decay? Well, neutron decays into
three particles-- a proton, it's just a fancy way
of writing an 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 one part in 1,000. And so the neutron has barely
enough energy to decay. If its mass was less than the
sum of these three masses, it couldn't decay. Well, again, it would
violate energy conservation. So it's just barely more than
the mass of these particles, which is why it lasts so
long, because 10 minutes is a hell of a long time in
particle physics units. OK? I mean, so 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? So it's an accident, OK? What happens when I put
a neutron in a nucleus? Well, it follows the nucleus. And it gets bound. What does it mean to be bound? Well, some of you know. But otherwise, it means that
takes energy to get out. You lose energy
when you get bound. And so the neutron
follows the nucleus. Loses energy, but E
equals mc squared. So the neutron gets lighter. And when the neutrons gets in
a nucleus, it no longer as-- its mass is too small to
decay into these particles. So neutrons are only
stable in nuclei by that accident that 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 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, and all the things that on
which our lives are based would not exist, just because
of that fortuitous fact that these particles have
almost the same mass. OK, that's interesting. But 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. Suddenly, a new force had-- 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 force is it and how 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 20th
century, Enrico Fermi, who was the last particle
slash nuclear physicist, who was equally good at that
theory and experiment. The two fields have become
sufficiently complicated that you can't do both now. OK? He was the last one who was
able to do both really well. 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 they built in the
University of Chicago underneath the football
field, which I've always viewed as an inspired choice,
because if anything went wrong, you'd just kill
football players. And there's no loss. And so Fermi 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. But he didn't take it well. And he, in fact, just said,
I'm not going to do theory. Now, I'm going to 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 his theory was
built upon by others. Now the really
important thing-- there are many important
aspects of science that I want to
try and emphasize, and I try to
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. OK? And keep copying it until
it doesn't work anymore. It's like Halloween 56 or
whatever it's going to-- 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 force, let's make it look
like this force. So we can draw a
picture [INAUDIBLE]. And it looks the same-- sort of. A neutron-- OK, so
protons, made of quarks. But that's a little
added complication. Doesn't really matter. And then 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,
so 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 emitting it always produces a lot of
energy, because 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 short distance
before it has to disappear, like the [? massless ?]
[? case. ?] So you want a short-range force, just
exchange a massive particle-- a long-reach force--
a massless particle. Everything works fine. But it doesn't, because
this theory gives the best predictions in nature. This theory gives
nonsense, because when you do the mathematics,
you get infinities. Physicists don't
like infinities, computer scientists don't like
infinities, mathematicians love infinities. But we don't. So 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. And it was kind of
amazing how easily they were willing to
give up this picture. And one of the things
about the book-- which is one of the reasons
this is the great story-- wasn't easy. In particular, there are lots
of red herrings and dead ends. And physicists are people. And that means they're
pigheaded, and prejudiced, and biased. And they often want to
go in a direction, even when that direction is futile. But the great
thing about science is it drags the physicists
or the scientists, kicking and screaming,
in the right direction. So the individual scientists
may be prejudiced. But eventually, because
of nature, they're forced in the right direction. In this case, these people, you
know, especially-- actually, it was interesting. In Berkeley was the
main place that people wanted to give this up. And they created a
kind of zen version of physics, which is appropriate
for Berkeley in the 60s. And it was the sound of one
particle clapping, basically. But it actually, was the
basis of string theory got generated there, as a way,
an alternative to this picture. And it failed
miserably there, too. But that's a different book. The point is that these people
were looking at the problem. And you want to shake them,
because, in fact, they had the answer. 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 answer
was right there. And the answer came from a very
different area of physics-- superconductivity. So 1911, Kamerlingh
Onnes discovered-- a Dutch physicist discovered--
that if you cooled mercury down to four degrees above
absolute zero, then the resistance went to zero. Then 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, because
resistance is precisely zero. It seems like it
shouldn't be possible. But it is. It's a remarkable
phenomenon that he named superconductivity. And it's so weird
that it took maybe 50 years 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, OK. So what's this got to do
with what I just discussed? Well, nowadays, we
have high-temperature superconductors so we can do
need experiments in high school physics classes, because 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 magnet. It's a fun little
game to play in class. OK, 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. Their mass is out here. They travel at 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 of the time until finally, someone
began to think about, well, what if what if we live
in a cosmic superconductor? And what if it's like
swimming in water? OK? You swim in water, you
feel you're really fast. Maybe Google has a pool here. Probably does. I don't know. And but what if you
fill it up with-- oops, sorry. What if you what
if you fill it up with molasses instead of water? Well, then you won't want to
go swimming, first of all. But if you did go swimming,
you'd swim a lot slower. Be a lot harder, you'd
feel a lot more massive. So what if we live in a
cosmic superconductor? And everywhere through space-- can't resist this--
everywhere through space, there's an invisible field
permeating all of space. And some particles interact with
that field, and get resistance, and 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 [INAUDIBLE] diagrams. This is the one I showed you
before, but turned sideways. And these are the ones for
the weak force, the one that produces that electron neutrino,
in terms of 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 it'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 can be short-range. But the neat thing is,
if they're massless, then the mathematics 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 electromagnetic
interactions 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. We were dragged to this
picture unwillingly, as I say. 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 wondrous--
one of the great aspects of science, and art, and
music, and literature, because 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 it
apparently works. But at this point, it's
kind of religious, right? Just think what I just said. Imagine there's an
invisible background field everywhere throughout nature
that determines why you exist, OK? 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 it which is religion. And it isn't, though,
because it's physics. And what does that mean? That means if it's,
there we have to find it. So if this invisible background
field-- it's 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. We spank the vacuum. We 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 space, maybe I'll kick out real
particles associated with that Higgs field. I'll call them Higgs particles. How can you do that,
where 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's located in Geneva. And in fact, if you
go to the airport-- and Google probably
has offices there-- 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, 100
meters below the surface, is a tunnel that's
26 kilometers around. And what we do is we accelerate
protons at 99.9999998% the speed of light
in one direction, and then protons at
99.99999998% the speed of light in the other direction. And we try and collide
them at certain points-- three different
points in this circle. They will run thousands
of times every second. Here's the French-Swiss
border, by the way. So they cross the
border with passports and all that thousands of
times each second, which Trump will want to change, no doubt. And this machine was
built to be able to see if we could kick particles
out of empty space and produce these
Higgs particles. This ridiculous picture
actually worked. Now, in this
country, we have sort of anachronistic day we
celebrate called July 4th, which doesn't mean
anything to anyone else. But now, it has a
cosmic significance, because on July 4, 2012, we
reported 50 events produced in the Large Hadron
Collider that looked like Higgs', that
walked like Higgs's, that quacked like Higgs's, and
we thought were Higgs's, OK? And in the intervening five
years now-- almost five years-- all of the experiments have
fine-tuned those results. And they have exactly
the properties that were predicted
of the Higgs particle. Exactly. This is an amazing
triumph, because it means that this ridiculous
picture, which we're pushed to, is real. It means we live inside of
a cosmic superconductor. And it means that
we were driven not just to propose that picture,
but to build this remarkably complex machine to do it. And to me, this is
humanity at its best-- the willingness to go where
nature takes us, first of all-- independent of whether it's
the way that we want to go. But then to amass the
resources, to look at, to build this machine just
to determine why we're here-- and, of course, one of
the benefits of science, which many people herald, and is
responsible for all your jobs-- is technology, which is great. But you know, it's a little
bit unfortunate, too, because that means
when you have science, and people always say to
me, well, what good is 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 looks like it has no utility. But, of course, we don't ask
those things about a Mozart Concerto or a Picasso painting
or a Shakespeare play, or you pick your favorite
whatever-- an Eric Clapton song, whatever. And science is exactly the same. The real virtual 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 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 21st century. The Gothic cathedrals
were beautiful things, built over centuries by
thousands of artisans, using the highest
technology of 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 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
out here is this called the compact
muon solenoid, which is not so compact. It has this same amount of
iron as the Eiffel Tower, for example. It's hard to see it. I have a better picture
of it because I'm there. 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 just amazing to see
the scale of everything compared to the
scale we exist at. But the machine, you can't
have almost enough hyperbola. I have a whole chapter
in the book about it. For example, every second of
the Large Hadron Collider, an update is generated
for more than 1,001 1-terabyte hard drives, which
is relevant to all of you. It's every second we have to
process that much information-- 1,000 terabytes of information
in that experiment. And that means, as
you can imagine, that you have to filter
that information. And it's incredibly complicated,
but interesting from a computer science point of view. But it more than just
that, for example, 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. Every aspect of the
machine is remarkable. And the fact that
we're willing to do is to just address
this question of why we're here, seems to me to be-- the bravery of the people who
devoted their lives to building this, and the people who
devoted their lives to coming up with a theory is one thing. But I think part
of my book that I-- maybe that part of the
title that's the best-- is the "so far" part-- the greatest story
ever told "so far", because this 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 still the same-- just as boring and untrue. This one changes. And it doesn't change
just because 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 you know, so
I think of this-- I happen to like
impressionist art. And I like art in general. But what I really like
of an impressionist art is that it's beautiful
from a distance. But when you get close
up, it's really crappy. OK? And that's science,
because great, we've developed this
incredible model called the "standard
model" that explains every experiment we have
ever been able to perform in particle physics. But then, 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 freeze the way it did,
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 is going
to get better. And the story will get
better, and more interesting, and produce a universe
that may seem more strange. And that story that
we've developed and that we've now
validated, as I say. Is a story 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 on that windowsill. Those people who live there-- OK, 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, and therefore, make it seem
special, are accidents. The underlying universe is
not only not designed for us, but as I said, antithetical to
our existence, because if the W and Z particles and all
the particles and 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, because
no bound objects could exist. There wouldn't be
any people, any, stars any galaxies
anything that we could see. And these physicists on this
window, on this crystal, might, eventually discover
that you know what? This is just an accident
of our existence. And crystals in different
directions could form. And there's nothing special
about that direction. And maybe they'll discover that
at like 4:00 in the morning one day. But then at 6:00 in the
morning, the sun will rise. In Seattle you may not--
there's this thing called sun. And then rise, and then
melt all these crystals. OK, then their symmetry
would be restored. There would 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
that the Higgs field and look at the value it has,
then it's just teetering on the edge of melting. OK, 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 of course, everything we see disappears. Now don't be don't be worried. There's still time to
buy books and stuff. 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 frame 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 this is a long process
if it's going to end. But if it does,
the universe will revert to this symmetric,
beautiful form. But there'd be no life. So even this beautiful
universe that looks like it's designed
for us will disappear. And well, there certainly
would be no life like we see. And I want to just end up
with some notes about how this picture relates to this
sort of history of science in a real way, because
we are evolutionarily evolved to look for design. We always look for designs. Our eyes pick it up very well. And many of you are
talented looking for design, which is probably
why you're where you're here. OK, 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, because you like something. Or you want it to be that case. And we all want design. We can 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 Googleplex
or this building? My favorite is the
Buckminster Fuller domes because when I was
growing up, every hippie had one and lived in them
and did neat things in them. And there are evidence of a
very interesting intellect, Buckminster Fuller, who
was a really exciting guy-- crazy but interesting. Well, just take soot. Take soot-- if you take
soot, you'll find out, in the soot are molecules
called carbon 60, we now call
Buckminsterfullerene, which are beautiful geodesic-- domes. And there's nothing
less-designed that 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, of the greatest scientists
of all time, Charles Darwin. And if you haven't read
the "Origin of Species" the last paragraph of
it is really beautiful, one of the most beautiful lines
in any science book ever were. "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 design. It was that they couldn't
see the colors of flowers, they wouldn't reproduce. 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
with the forces of nature may have been unified
in a simple way, we, as the universe
evolved, produce structures, like all the stars and
galaxies, and people, and all the structures we see
today, by a simple process. And that universe is no more
designed for us than life is. That, we're carrying on that
Darwinian process, which for many people is disturbing,
because they want the universe to be designed for them. It's comforting. But the universe doesn't
give a damn what we want. And we have to learn that
you know the universe is made terrifying. But it's also
incredibly awesome, and that universe that
isn't designed for us can actually be
more interesting. It can be one in which our
lives are more precious, because 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 origins of matter. But now I get paid to do
it because the story has gotten better. The story has gotten
better because we continue to push the boundaries in our
thinking, but more 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 want to go. And I want to end
by, in some sense, by saying I'm worried about
the future at the present. In the current
budget, for example, proposed by the president, the
entire field I talked about-- particle physics-- the support for that is
being reduced by 20%-- $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 founder 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 Corporation
for Public 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. In the same budget,
proposed a $2 billion line item, which is
the first installment of a wall with Mexico. OK, so you've got
this wall that's going to protect us from
hoards that are unknown, at the same time, killing all
of the support for culture, and largely the
support for science. 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-- not the first big--
but the biggest accelerator in the world until
the Large Hadron Collider was built. And in 1960s, he was
called before Congress and asked 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 you regard one another, the degree
of men, our love of culture. It has to do with,
are we good painters, 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 a
beautiful statement, and is particularly
poignant today, because we risk getting
rid of everything that makes this country
worth defending in an effort to 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 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 so I want to 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, because I grew up in Canada. And I was educated. But the next line, which
is not so well-known, 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 OK, because
we are fortunate-- more fortunate to have evolved
this consciousness that allows us to ask these questions
for the short time we are here. And so we should enjoy our
brief moment in the sun. Thank you. AUDIENCE: So you made an
analogy with the arts. I think the obvious
rebuttal there is that it's easy
for people-- anybody to see the value in the arts. It's sort of directly
titillating the senses. You don't have to have to
gone through music school to appreciate Bach. LAWRENCE KRAUSS: You don't
have to be a scientist to look at the Hubble
Space Telescope picture and see it's amazing. I mean, 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. AUDIENCE: Yeah, the Higgs
particle, for instance. That's a lot of
explaining to get to that. LAWRENCE KRAUSS: Yeah,
that's why I wrote a book. But the point is, you
know, not everyone has to understand
the Higgs particle. But it's there for those
who want to get there. Just like it's there for those
who want to pick up a guitar and learn how to play it. But you don't have to
understand the Higgs particle. What's really neat is you can-- anyone can understand 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 are
taught that 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 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 get also more
misinformation. And the only way I can tell
the difference is science, is skeptical inquiry, reliance
on a 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 younger, they're like orgasmic. We called them aha
experiences-- when you suddenly see something in 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 you want to-- if we want to have an informed
electorate who can actually distinguish policies that are
related to empirical reality from policies that aren't. So there's actually an
imperative as well as a joy. But I agree with you that at
least the perception among the public is that you
can enjoy music, art, literature with a 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. AUDIENCE: It is definitely
worth it, trying to-- LAWRENCE KRAUSS:
Yeah 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 OK to not-- I mean, the information is
irrelevant in the school. Most of what you
learn in high school-- well, sure reading,
writing, and arithmetic-- but beyond that, most of
what you learn as an adult is going to be way beyond
what you learn in school. Most of the physics
I do as a scientist, I learned after my PhD. And so those tools
are important. But the joy is there for
everyone at different levels. And I think what we don't do
well enough is tell people, it's just amazing how
you can enjoy music without being a musician. 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. AUDIENCE: I had a small
question about your discussion of Berkeley earlier. I was wondering what you
think about scientists kind of believing in the
theories they're working on without proof to
drive it forward. LAWRENCE KRAUSS:
Well, they have to. I mean some-- science
isn't based on faith. But if you're going to spend
20 years of life working on something, you've got to
have a I-- wouldn't call it a belief. But you'd have to
say to yourself that there's something tells you
it 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 is shown to be wrong, you throw it out
like yesterday's newspaper, even if you spent 20
years or life on it. That's the difference. But certainly, you cannot work-- the builders of the Large Hadron
Collider or the developers of the standard model couldn't
have done what they've done-- or even the string
theorists now-- the people that my
colleagues who-- I have students of mine who are
well-known string theorists, you know. I just wouldn't want my
daughter to marry one. But they have a good reason
for doing what they're doing. And the hope is that
somehow through 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
Higgs was discovered that lots of string theorists
went in and just jumped ship, because suddenly, there was new
particle physics to look at. So yeah, we all have to
have that kind of faith. But the difference is
that the faith in science is eminently shakeable. The wonderful thing is
that it is not ironclad. 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 utility
beyond its utility. OK, good. OK, I guess I'll. Thank you.
