Follow-up interview with Frank Wilczek (B&I 24)

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wilczek Episode 24 of Books and Ideas is a follow-up interview with Nobel Prize winning physicist. Dr. Frank Wilczek. We discuss the questions that we didn't get around to in Episode 23, including the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics, String Theory, and dark matter and dark energy. Dr. Wilczek also answers some questions from listeners and tells us a little about his current work.

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Click here if you missed Dr. Wilczek's first interview

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Main Topics from this Episode:

  • 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics
  • String Theory: a look at how it differs from the standard model and the question of whether it can be tested
  • Dark Matter and Dark Energy: 95% of the matter in the universe remains unexplained!
  • Anti-matter: where science meets science fiction
  • Dr. Wilczek's research: Could axions be dark matter? Using quantum mechanics to create new electronics.
  • Questions from listeners
Announcements: Episodes 23 and 24 are based on Dr. Wilczek's excellent book:

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Interview with Nobel Physicist Frank Wilczek (B&I 23)

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Episode 23 of Books and Ideas is an interview with Frank Wilczek, PhD from MIT. Dr. Wilczek won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2004 and recently published an excellent book aimed at general readers: Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces. This book provides an excellent review of current ideas about the meaning of both matter and space. In his interview Dr. Wilczek helps us understand the current evidence that matter is actually made of particles that are massless. He says "I jokingly say that the more important law is Einstein's Second Law m=E/c² (which is of course just a rearrangement of E=mc²) but this suggests that what we really should be doing is not explaining energy in terms of mass, but explaining mass in terms of energy." The second surprisingly concept that Dr. Wilczek helps us tackle in this interview is the idea that space is not empty. "Space is a medium with a variety of properties that make it, not only an important component of reality, but really the primary component of reality." These ideas are supported by experimental evidence, but the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland is expected to expand knowledge even further. The purpose of the LHC is a main focus of this interview. Dr. Wilczek has agreed to come back on Books and Ideas to answer questions about dark matter and string theory.

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Additional Show Notes and Links: Frank Wilczek, PhD Other podcasts mentioned in this episode Recommended Reading: Announcements:

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Review: "The Trouble with Physics" (B&I 2)

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troublewithphysics-small.jpg Show Notes This episode turned out longer than I planned. After I recorded a piece about Lee Smolin’s book The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the fall of a science, and What Comes Next, I decided to wait until the next episode to discuss my Audible.com top 10 for 2006. I think Smolin’s book makes an important contribution on several levels. First, it is an excellent review of contemporary physics and puts string theory into context. It is also a candid look at the trends in contemporary science that are stifling original thinking and creativity. It is a passionate defense of the traditional scientific method (making predictions and testing them with experiments). If physics, which has always been thought of the purest science could lose site of its principles, we are reminded that science is a human endeavor, prone to human error and human desires. Listen to this episode now Episode Transcript (Download PDF) Subscribe to this podcast Subscribe via iTunes™ Note: This post was amended on October 5, 2009 (to fix a glitch in WordPress) Comments are closed. If you want to comment please join our new Facebook Fan Page.
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