Shawn Ryan Show - #312 Sabrina Pasterski - Theoretical Physicist on the Hidden Code of the Universe

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski is a first-generation Cuban-American theoretical physicist from Chicago whose life has been shaped by flight and physics. She began flight lessons at age nine and, between ages 12 and 14, built a single-engine Zenith CH 601 XL aircraft from a kit, making her own engineering modifications after fatal midair breakups involving the model. At 16, before she had a driver’s license, she flew the aircraft solo. The FAA later allowed her demonstration flight to validate her modifications before grounding the fleet. At MIT, Pasterski became the first freshman selected for NASA’s January Operational Internship, received the inaugural MIT Freshman Entrepreneurship Award, interned at NASA Kennedy Space Center and CERN, and graduated first in her MIT Physics class. She earned her PhD from Harvard in 2019 under Andrew Strominger, focusing on quantum gravity, then joined Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics at 27 as its youngest faculty member and one of only three women on staff at the time. She now leads the Celestial Holography Initiative, and her honors include Scientific American’s 30 Under 30, Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science, and the Albert Einstein Foundation’s “100 Greatest Innovators.” Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Live better longer with BUBS Naturals. Get 20% OFF on collagen, MCT creamers, and more with code SHAWN at https://bubsnaturals.com/srs Go to https://calderalab.com/SRS and use code SRS for 20% off your first order. Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out at https://roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide. Sign up and get 10% off at https://betterhelp.com/srs #ad Sabrina Pasterski Links: Perimeter Institute - https://perimeterinstitute.ca/people/sabrina-pasterski Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Sean. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Man, I've been excited about this. So you're labeled, and I know you're probably going to downplay this, the next Einstein. You don't like that. No, I mean, it's just not accurate, but I do like this notion of, I don't know, thinking a bit about what that legacy is and like our feel as a whole and how do we kind of leverage that or do good with it. Well, I think we're going to get into all that. But, you know, the stuff you're doing, I don't even know, I don't even know how to say it, but it sounds like, And we're going to get into it a minute, but it sounds like what you're studying is if everything is a hologram. Most literally, yeah.

Like the thing that I study is that. And I do find it's fun, like, to kind of take a step back and talk to people who are not researchers to see how they interpret the words that we attach to things or how, like, visceral, literal, like the researcher versus like the person you're talking to takes it. Right on, right on. You ready to get into it? Absolutely. All right, let's do it. I'm going to start you off with an introduction here. Sabrina Gonzalez Pastersky. Born in Chicago, Illinois, first generation Cuban American.

At age nine, your first flight lesson ignited a lifelong obsession with flight and physics behind it. Between ages 12 and 14, you spent two years building a single engine Zenith. Rejected by Harvard, waitlisted at MIT, you got off the wait list because of the airplane you built. earned your PhD from Harvard in 2019 in high-energy theoretical physics, leading the celestial holography initiative, a project aimed at encoding the entire universe as a hologram to unite quantum mechanics and general relativity. Named to Scientific Americans 30 under 30 in 2012 in Forbes 30 under 30 science list in 2015, one of the Albert Einstein Foundation's 100 greatest innovators in 2018. First woman to chair the flagship annual strings conference for the global string theory community,

first female to graduate number one in MIT physics. And like I said before, many consider you to be the next Einstein, which you hate. You don't like that. I mean, I think I'll probably benefit from it too much, but that's, and that's a bad thing. Yeah. It's a cool label. Be proud of that. But so actually, before we get into it, can you give me a quick, I think I know what string theory is, at least a little bit. But is this like, what are they, quantum communication?

Oh, so basically there, like quantum information are they kind of like the sense in which you might be thinking of, like, if you were talking to someone who does quantum computing and those facets is more like in holography, there are definitely connections between foundational aspects of like entanglement and different like protocols you can do in a quantum mechanical system and then mapping it to a gravitational one. So string theory is not related to that directly,

but there's a sense of which the research I do probably is like more closely related if that's what you're asking. But basically the whole point is we want to try to as a field, not individually, understand like what the basic rules are. What are the laws of nature? And if you aren't going out and measuring things, what do you really have at your disposal? You're roughly trained to use mathematical consistency

of your frameworks to try to piece together a picture. And so if you have rules for the very short distance physics and very long distance physics that are kind of in their own world, and you want to try to have a framework that connects both of them, you run into various problems. And string theory is one example of a route that people have found to kind of avoid the pitfalls of like understanding how to have a graviton

or how to have like a quantum mechanical system with gravity. But in practice, you're roughly setting one little facet of these mathematical frameworks and trying to push it pretty far or generalize it to different situations. Okay. What is the... I read something that China was working on communications

where though they will vibrate half of an atom and then no matter what the distance is, the other half of the atom will mimic exactly what... Talking about some entanglement or what? Yes. I don't know which... That's what I was thinking about, quantum. entanglement. Sure. So I think that the, I am less like on top of all of the experiments when

it comes to trying to see like not just entanglement, but maybe like some sort of like position dependence or whatnot, which is like closer to like seeing like how gravity and quantum interface. But so I don't know exactly which experiment, but I know that there's a lot on like kind of the, there's a lot of progress on like the quantum computing side of things, which I guess is like the closest thing to an engineering subfield right now within like high energy theory, but a little bit not high energy. All right. Yeah.

Right on. All right. So a couple of things to crank out here. Yes. You got a Patreon. Okay. You got a community. Yes.

So we got them happy. They're the reason that I get to sit here with you today. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So they get the opportunity to ask every single guest to question. This is from J.D. Pardon. Okay.

At 12, you weren't playing video games. You were in a garage building a Zenith C.H. 601 XL. What did that mechanical grease under the, under the fingernails experience, teach you about. solving abstract physics problems that a textbook never could. I think it's not, it maybe didn't teach me like enough for what I have done so far, but it definitely instilled a sense in which like there's a value to trying to find the things that can be straightforward and systematic and build something cool out of it.

And I think that that's one thing that maybe theoretical physics personally felt like it was lacking because I had this bias of growing up around people who like built cool shit or whatnot is like, is there a sense in which? which you can try to find the engineering aspects of what you do and the systematic things and, like, build tools for that. So that's the thing that that project probably has instilled in me, but I don't think I've, like, live that out yet. Right on.

Yeah. Right on. And then I got you a gift. Okay. Everybody gets a gift. Okay. Gummy bears. I heard.

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yeah right but but so I want to do a full life story on you and then get into everything that you're doing right now. So where did you grow up?

I grew up in Chicago, Illinois, and in the city, but near the outskirts of the city, part of the city where a lot of, like, firemen and cops would, I guess, live because they had to live technically in the city. You know, I love, like, Chicago is a kind of fun, like, well-designed city where you have, like, a lot of, like, awesome public schools. And I went to an Edison Regional Gift Center was nearby, where I lived at the time. My parents picked that location to be near.

and a nice schools. And it was, you know, fun growing up, awesome having, like, smart peers and being challenged in school. And then, yeah, I guess I can keep iterating on different parts of it, but I definitely had some enthusiastic parents. And that's where this whole, like, taking advice from mentors and kind of just following different rabbit holes led to where I am now. What did your parents do? So my parents are both lawyers, but they're not lawyers in, like, the in the way all of their lawyers fancy sense. So my dad for most of his career was a public defender. So he worked for like Cook County.

And then my mom works for the EPA. So more like I think the regs for like making sure that companies that accidentally polluted like various like groundwater or things that like affect people like they have to pay and fix their problems. Wow. So nothing to do with physics. Nothing to do with physics. But my dad did have an electrical engineering like undergrad degree.

And so definitely growing up. like we were the ones doing repairs in our house. We didn't really hire contrastors except for maybe some things that had to be welded. So that was interesting too. And you did your first flight lesson? Was either one of your parents a pilot? They weren't at the time.

My dad got a license much, I mean, he got a license at some point pretty soon after. But maybe he had a relative back in the day that had flown or whatnot. And I had like Harry Potter was cool at the time. And I think I wanted like a flying broomstick. So like they definitely convinced me like Santa Claus was real. It was really funny.

I think they'd use these extrinsic motivation things to get me to be a good kid or whatnot. So, like, I was convinced Santa Claus is real because the presents were awesome. But, like, I guess I got a little greedy and I wanted, like, a flying broomstick because, like, Harry Potter was cool. And then they were, like, flight lessons. So, like, I mean, too. That's cool. I mean, it's like, and it's funny because it's a bougie style hobby, but it's very much more like they would just do anything for their one kid, if that makes sense. Like, it's like, yeah.

That's awesome. My mom's family, like, so her dad was like a carpenter when, and then he like, they moved from Cuba. And then on my dad's side, his father was a bit in trouble with the things. At some point, that's why he became a public defender. And so to them, they made it. And then, you know, they want to invest in their kid. And so that, so in, and you build a plane. Yeah, I mean, but the thing is.

But the thing is, age 12. Yeah. And that comes from the fact that, like, I mean, like, people do this, right? So, so what's the way that this stuff works out? So you're a nine-year-old flying, and then your dad's like, oh, look, my kids are like so cool flying. Like, like, who are these people that they can meet? You go to a lot of, like, air shows. Like, because he was a lawyer, so he has some sense of regs.

Like, there was this kind of fun thing of looking for, like, how can you get around the fact that you'd have to be, like, 16 to fly alone in the U.S. But in Canada, you can only do this at 14. And so I had found out that, like, Jamal Arkansas was this aerobatic pilot who had gone up to Canada to flight train to get through this kind of legal loophole of how old he could be to fly alone, wrote an essay about it. And then I started getting these mentors in the FAA. And then my dad was super encouraging of, like, going out and networking. And it's very easy to network when you're a cute little kid.

You don't have to be good at public speaking. You're just like, you're just a kid with some pictures of you, like, flying or like with a big parachute behind you. It's like overpowering. And like you can walk your way into things. Like you bring like crispy cream donuts to the FAA. It's perishable, you know. And you start making friends, and then you see all these people who are, you know, building kit planes. And then you're like, damn, it's hard to get into school these days.

Like, can you do some sort of trick to get into either like these, like, selective high school, MSA where I went or MIT? And, yeah. And then I always just trusted my, like, I thought my dad was new to everything because he was really like kind of a jack of all trades fixing things around the house. So when he is like over my shoulder or like teaching me how to do some things and I'm just going and riveting things together, I'm like, this is. great. I know if he says it's fine, it's fine. And it was cool because basically before

it turned into this set of mentors suggesting, oh, you could do this thing, like, whenever. It was just that much effort put into like school projects. So I had like, like, I think whenever like people were like first burning DVDs, we'd have like a room in our house of one of the bedrooms they painted chroma key blue that I would go and like reenact little teens for my history projects. And like, like, you could. and put into I had some like Doctor Who episode or something like that. So it was, we'd like, we'd basically, we're just trying to do like, like, say, a plus star on every little school project, which is a bit of a waste of time, but just a

funny little, like, effort. And then to translate that into something where then the narrative was like, okay, you're going to take flight lessons. You're then going to, like, you know, try to build an airplane and then want to work for these aerospace companies, like a linear kind of story arc with a bunch of, like, fast-paced, like, projects type of thing in between was something, I think that came out of this otherwise, like intense, like, go do it well. attitude. What age did you start reading? Oh, I mean, I don't know. I don't think, I don't recall

myself as being like a better reader than my class. If anything, when I was in kindergarten, like Alison Larrabee could read all of the joke cups. And so like, I mean, I could read, but like maybe my vocabulary was not as expansive. And so then my parents would like buy all of the Dixie joke cups, like, you know, in bulk to then be able to at least read the words on But then the kids still would just go to Allison Maybe because she was like the first person like that they knew could read the joke cups Or because she had more friends, I don't know But like, yeah, so I don't think I was necessarily reading faster

But I probably was talking a lot early on And they used to do a thing where it's like if I could write it out Then they'd let me like if I asked for a car ride at some random time of night If I could write it on the little chalkboard they'd take me on a car ride So a lot of extrinsic motivation a little Right on right Do you have any brothers and sisters? I don't, and that's probably wild.

The intense story stuff is because it's like one kid, one shot, you know. What else, I mean, what else were you designing, inventing, building as a kid? I mean, I would say that, like, the, it wasn't anything that, like, before it would have been just, like, going all out on every little class project just for the heck of it. Not, nothing that cool. And I think that, but the one thing is it was, like, kind of, like, it was pretty clear to see how easily. like the goals were shaped by either like strong reactions to or like taking on ideas from like the people that you talked to. So like when I was flying, everyone would be like, oh, one day you're going to be like flying the or Boeing one day when we're like taking a vacation.

I'm like, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. And then you see these people building kit planes super cool at these air shows when you're putting it together. They're like, oh, one day you're going to be building the Boeing. I'm like, ah, I don't want to do that. And so it's just more of like a someone says you can do it. And then my dad's like, yeah, you can do it. And then we see how you can do it. Or then someone's saying you will be doing it. You're like, no, I don't want to do it. And so then you pivot. And so that's how I accidentally pivoted into physics later, like we can get to because I was like, ah, it's not as cool if you're not actually like, you know, the designs aren't really changing and you're not like putting together.

I mean, it was somehow more fun to have something where you do straightforward work. Somebody else kind of told you the steps before you modifying it or fine like that. But then you have a product that you built versus when you're just engineering something a little, it's like a little too theoretical. I might have all go the whole other extreme of. purely theory, which was maybe a bad choice, but it kind of... What did you get you into physics? Yeah, so funny story. So basically, I think the first hint at it was the high school I went to, this math and science

school, like all of the, like a large fraction of the faculty had PhDs. And so I didn't grow up with people who had PhDs. I mean, my parents both had like, you know, their lawyers. So they went to like, you know, state schools for that. But suddenly now all of your peers think they have to get a PhD to be cool. So that's a weird thing. like suddenly have this mind shift where, okay, I need a PhD. Probably not true, but like that starts, I mean, definitely not true, but that starts

seeping in. The person who founded my high school was like a former director of Fermi Lab, and he'd have like these lunches with Nobel laureates with like, they'd come in and give talks, and then he would have lunch with the students if it was just him every Monday or something I remember. Wait, hold on. Yeah. I thought you went to public school. I went to, no, it's a public school.

So like, so not for, so this is not Chicago public school. So I went K through eight, Chicago public schools. And they have like these kind of magnet-like programs, like give to center type of thing. They have different types of magnet programs. So CPS is like so large that they have fun schools for kids who like school, I guess. Okay. Then I went to the state school that's three years, boarding school paid for like mainly by like state of Illinois.

Math and Science School and Math and Science Academy. So I think it's funded under the umbrella of like University of Illinois or whatnot. There's precedents in South Carolina, I believe, in Texas and others where it's just like a STEM. boarding school that the state runs that it's public. Wow. But it's like you get this, you take the SAT to get in and things like that. But it's kind of actually cool that there are these like, like, yeah, public schools. You took the SAT to get in?

Yeah, I mean, and these scores for kids getting in like to high school are not that good. And I definitely wasn't the type of person who did well on standardized tests. I did well in like the ones in school because I cared about the teacher. I'm trying to impress. But yeah, it was neat because it was a public school, but it was very much like a little bit of this vibe of like a... Gifted. Private, yeah, type of school experience in the sense of, yeah, you're at a boarding school. But it was nice because then it could get kids from all over, like, even our elementary school

was, like, you're busing kids in from all over the city. And so you have a lot of, like, just gifted kids from, like, various socioeconomic backgrounds there. And then similarly with, like, the boarding school aspect lets you be from anywhere in Illinois. Wow. So it was nice. Wow. Yeah.

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Visit bubsnaturels.com today and use promo code Sean for 20% off your order. Bubbs naturals.com slash Sean. So that got you... So all the PhDs got you into physics. So it was a PhDs plus the fact that the founder was a physicist like a Nobel laureate in physics, who then somehow when like the plane is final assembly like near an airport nearby this high school, and he thinks it's cool.

He's like, oh, you can be a physicist. And then suddenly that gets into our minds. And then all of these aerospace executives who were running these private aerospace companies. So I guess not Richard Branson, but Elon Musk and Bezos both liked physics for whatever reason. Like they either dropped out of some physics-ish material science degree. or thought about majoring at Princeton. So my heroes were these guys who, like, could just do cool shit.

Like, they had built a company to have the resources to then do something that's valuable, but not necessarily profitable. Or I'm sure they found ways to make it profitable. But I thought that was cool. I think they're doing all right. I think they're doing all right. No, no, but even in the scope of, like, can you, like, how do you just build a? No, I get what you're saying.

So I thought that was the coolest thing. And I wanted to be like that. And I figured, okay, like, if I just work for them, would I ever still be like that? I don't know. And I got a little dissolution about, like, what's the product I'm going to build? If you build, like, some suborbital thing, if, like, you accidentally kill a rich person or is it going to just be dead, you know? But they did a good job. They didn't do this.

I'm surprised. I'm like, damn, like, they could accidentally kill a rich person. No, you know, so, like, you're, so that type of thing scared me a little bit. And then I figured they like physicists. So, like, how can I be cool to the people I find cool? Let me go into physics, which is, like, the wrong reason to go into physics. And then, by the way, like, I grew up with a bunch of the kind of, like, kind of. like mechanics slash engineers who maybe see like the physics has like this bottleneck that the

physicists aren't doing it right like there's got to be some cool tech that can come out of this and I'm like yeah I'm going to go in that field and it's like completely not like you got to hide that at least when you're actually trying to like get by in that field right on very much a wrong reason to go into the field but yeah wow what I mean what was what was the first project that really grabbed your attention oh I mean you obviously love it you're still in it. I'm still in it. No, but I still think the thing,

it's for that bigger picture goal. So I think the thing that grabbed my attention is more, you know, I liked my math and science courses in school. I think that maybe in hindsight looking back, just the notion of being, computing something draws your attention in in a way where then once you're in it, you're in it, you're hooked. And that's good for my job mechanically

in the sense that, like, our job is to compute things. But I do think that I was still more excited by the bigger picture view or this notion of the possibilities of what physics could do, then in practice what it is in the same sense that, like, you know, someone working at Google isn't necessarily actually like it's a thing about search. They're doing one specific little widget or something, you know, type of thing. But, yeah.

Right on. Where do we go from high school? Oh, so from high school, we go to being a little bit too cocky and like being like MIT for aerospace, Harvard for physics, and then not getting in because you wrote too many poems or didn't really, like, I think that one thing about the admissions of these schools, I mean, it's so much luck. So that's a bit sad. I think that grad admissions is fairer because you're already kind of differentiated in your skill set and like the people admitting you are the people who care

about the field that you're going into. But I think I thought like all these other kids, they're taking the AP courses. They're checking off all these boxes for their extracurriculars. They don't want that. They want something different. It's like, no, maybe it's just like, you know, like, they're seeing a large array of applications. You don't want to like be anomalous in a negative way. You just like check the boxes and more or something. I think I didn't, I didn't handle it right. But then I knew how to bother people because I'd been networking since I was a kid. So we found like Sheila Woodnell or who else? I think we should might not have help with admissions. It was more like Earl Mormon. But basically I'd be this kid with this little like photos of this

airplane belt walking around and like my parents would drop me off at different places. So like wandering MIT hallways to try to like say hi to someone with this book. And I'm just like, Okay. And then I just patiently wait. I mean, probably not as cool as like waiting for like a little sniping mission. But like, you're just there. You're like, somebody's here. I'm going to say hi to them. The mission is to get this book in the hands of some MIT. Wow. And you meet cool people. And it was like you give flowers to the secretaries or whatever, things like that. So a lot of networking as a kid and eventually it helped because I had some friends who could be like, hey, in Mission's Office.

Like maybe she didn't present this clearly enough in her application. This is kind of cool letter in. And then I got in off the waitlist to MIT. You got in where? Off the wait list to MIT. Yeah. That way. Because you try to get into Harvard too, right? Yeah, and I got rejected. But, I mean, to be fair, lots of kids get rejected.

Lots of awesome kids get rejected. It's not something, it's something more about, like, teaching you not to, like, rely on other things happening for you that you can't control, right? So, like, yeah. What was it that got you off the wait list of MIT? It was probably this type of networking thing, like, you know, trying to, like, rely on some people who could, vouch for me once you're on this wait list. It wasn't the plane? Well, there was a plane, exactly.

So I'm saying this whole, me going around with like the little, like, photo book of the airplane and then meeting MIT. You literally brought the photo book of the airplane. Believe me, I would like, I had little business cards back in the day. I mean, I think, I mean, I like, it's very cringy. That's awesome. I blame my dad. No.

But like, it was like, you had little, like, photo books of the plane, little business cards, and, like, thinking of who you want to meet, and you're going to meet that person. and then you're this cute little kid. I mean, like, you get a little bit less cute once you're in your teenagers. But between, like, you know, 12 and 14, you're pretty cute. So, like, walking around, like, with that, like, trying to introduce myself to, like, various MTV faculty, say, or, like, at the air shows, various people in the FAA, or, like, maybe Peter Demandis, or folks who had done cool stuff in either, like, the private aerospace,

like, like, Anoushansari had gone up in a Soyuz capsule, and then Demandis had the XPRIZ. So, like, definitely a lot of, like, trying to network, but with, like, like a little. Man, that is, I'm going to do that with my kids. No, with the kids, I mean, it works with, it's like an arbitrage opportunity. It's like there are things that, like, the kid can get the access and the, yeah. That's smart.

I love it. I love it. So how did you like, how was it getting into MIT? So, I mean, it was very, it was a relief because I didn't get into college otherwise, right? I mean, I was very dumb. I was, like, very narrow-minded in the sense of, like, or, like, laser-focused on, I want this thing or this thing. None else.

I have standards. But you can't, like, how. standards if you're not like what they want but I guess it helped to be able to have a little bit of that story and some of that network to like petition or whatever put a good word in once it was on the wait list so yeah how'd you like it oh I loved MIT was it challenging yeah but I love that you know and I think that's the thing is like actually I loved it way more than my experience at Harvard but like not to say that other people don't like each for their own but it was just I like the fact that it was intense

And like, like, you knew where you stood. It wasn't a bunch of kids bullshitting. Like, and, like, you'd take, you know, you'd take the courses that you're ready for and then get you up to the next speed and not a bunch of, if everybody gets an A, then you can pretend that you know stuff and you have kids sitting in on courses they shouldn't be in. And then, like, who knows what? It's like babble versus it just felt more, like, went in, worked hard. You got something out of it.

I love structure and, yeah, something helping push you. Right on. Yeah. Yeah. What exactly were you studying that? So I ended up majoring in physics. So when I went in, there's like a lot of just general institute requirements at the beginning first year or so. I was able to sneak into being like this internship at Kennedy Space Center with a bunch of older Aeroastro kids.

And then I think it was after that first summer, I also interned at Boeing. And I guess at the time I was scared of like this whole like narrative of like the airplane build and like flying as a kid like how much that would confine me. And so I guess my rebelling was like going, the other option was physics somehow. And so I liked my physical courses I did well. And I just pivoted into like lemming major in physics. You did an internship with Boeing? Yeah, but it wasn't, I mean, probably is a lot of kids do internships. It was probably because of the plane and stuff like that and these connections that I was maybe considered as a freshman or like younger than maybe other people would have.

But, you know, you end up. You were, you did an internship as a freshman at Boeing? Between, I hope I'm right, but between freshman and the sophomore year. I'm, like, if I'm not memory. I mean, as a freshman, you were named the first in MIT history. There's a little entrepreneur thing. Yeah. Which, but I wasn't very entrepreneurial.

I don't have any companies. Lots of MIT kids have companies. But I hope, I hope, the spirit is there for the wrong application. But when I was at Boeing, I probably, and this is the type of mistake that I would make often is you have, like, you make awesome mentors that you want to learn something from, but sometimes you want to not just literally take their advice. And so I think that my family and I, we accidentally would, you know, work for the person that gave you that introduction rather than thinking about, okay, where else at Boeing would I rather be necessarily? So I ended up in this arm where they were doing some cool, like, R&D for a project that didn't feel like it was ever going

to be built by Boeing because it was kind of a McDonald-Douglas acquired branch of the company. And that disillusioned me a little bit, not because it should have, but because it's just like, like, engineering isn't always the same thing or academic engineering isn't always the same thing as, like, building something. And I think that I thought it would be closer to, like, move, fast, break things, do cool things. And I think if I had seen any military side of Boeing, it would be a very different experience. But I was kind of just like, you know, sometimes the technology of within a given field isn't the thing that then advances that field. And so, and again, because of these stupid reasons of like a bunch of, like, we like not knowing enough about physics to realize that isn't the right route. Like, you know, maybe studying like the fundamental laws of nature would help you more than studying, like, coding or something if, like, the new tech is like other drones or better engine design or whatever for, like pushing aerospace forward. So very naive, but kind of disappointed with the fact that you could see that even at a big company that's doing some awesome things, like there's a sense.

in which you can get lost in the R&D phase. You just mentioned something. I think you said that the latest technology in a field isn't necessarily what's going to advance humanity. How do you make that determination? So I think what I'm saying is just like a lot of times you can see it in like, and I see this in physics with people who complain about physics

who are not necessarily in the in crowd or whatever. And like they can say true things and maybe draw the wrong conclusions about intent or about what to do about it. I think that oftentimes, like, you can just kind of see that there's, like, a lot of little hanging fruit and then it stagnates a bit. And, like, I mean, to the extent of, like, you know, the design for, like, a passenger airplane really hasn't changed so much.

And so, like, do you just look at, like, try to find a definition of progress and see that it's slowing down and not blame yourself for not being smart enough, but try to see, like, what do I actually care about? Do I like it because I like doing the thing or do I want a product? And once you have the product in mind, probably it's easy to, you know, you know, to decide what you need to learn and go do. Okay. Yeah.

Let's rewind for a minute. You had a high school internship at Blue Origin. A little bit, but that was so short. That was like, I mean, so the internships at Boeing was a real normal internship. And then the one where it was at Blue Origin was, some mentors were nice and like, let me, I forget exactly. I probably kind of, I'm glad I can pretend that this idea. I don't remember exactly all the utility of the thing that I was playing with at the time there. And then the one at NASA was also very much more like show intel.

It felt like we were learning like operations instead of any particular cool tech. But we got to see a lot of fun stuff on the tours. What kind of fun stuff? Like I thought the coolest thing was somehow these like tiles where you could heat it up and it would still be really hot on the inside and you could touch it in the outside. Like that was fun. But it was just like going around to different parts of like Kennedy Space Center, literally getting a tour with a bunch of aerospace engineer students.

And at the time, and this is kind of funny too, because I used to think it felt a little bit bullshitty to have these, and again, I don't know, like I'm not not insulting experts, but something felt off about there being a whole enterprise around like how you organize your enterprise. It feels like kind of like prompt engineering now. It's surprising how much of a discipline do you make the things that feel like soft skills. And so that internship was very much like trying to see how different parts of NASA were working together or like that, but it's such a high-level view that I think I was like, this isn't the

tech. And maybe in hindsight, though, I should have appreciated it more. But I think at the time it was just weird going from like, you know, rivet, rivet, plain to. What are your, what are the other interns? Were there other interns? Yeah, I mean, one of them, I think I ended up going, they were awesome. I was probably just a little bit annoying because I was younger and like, and I was like,

ITAR, ITER, ITER, no. This is a kid of Lars that's freaked out over like, ITER things. But, like, who could see documents? But basically, they, like, one of them, I think, was going to go in the Air Force. Maybe he did, I hope, so I don't know. I didn't really follow up because I ended up

going to a different major leader. But I think one of them had internet SpaceX or things like that. So it was a, you know, I think I didn't appreciate how valuable your peers are until I started going more towards physics just because then I got into the whole like research community and stuff. But yeah, I probably was just annoying little freshman in that thing. How do you think they felt about you? How much younger were you than ever? No, no. I mean, no, I think I wasn't that much younger. But enough when you skip a year or so, like, right, college is, yeah.

If you're, how old, I would have been, like, 17 or something and they're like 21 or two, it's still a bit different if you're, yeah. they're more independent and like kind of. And then you had an internship at CERN? Yeah, so then I went over to physics because I guess, so I made that choice for physics because I liked my physics courses and again, all of these tech people who were in aerospace were my heroes and they liked physics. So I'm like, I'm going to try to impress them. How hard can it be?

And then, but the mistake I made was I guess that I just kind of took the first internship type opportunity from the person who was technically my undergrad. advisor and so was at CERN. So CERN is cool, but I'm sure that like, like, I didn't necessarily make the right choice in the sense of I wasn't like scanning all opportunities of things within the field I could be interning it or whatnot. I was very lucky that the one year that I do, the first year I go to CERN, they discover the Higgs boson. But like, you know, science is slow, especially in like a big collider. Wait, the first year you went to CERN. They're like, they're discovering Higgs boson. That's nothing to do with me, but just the right timing of like,

discovered what? The Higgs boson. Oh, sorry. What is that? It's like, so trying to understand the the origin of like masses for like these standard model particles. It's an extra field that was conjectured to be there to describe also like electrolyte symmetry breaking, et cetera. Like the the field content of like the things that mediate interactions between particles. And so basically they have a new discovery in a way where that's like really rare, but like, you know, sample bias of like you're in there. They do cool stuff.

So like, okay, that was neat. But again, CERN is huge, right? So it's just, it's interesting to also see how hard it is to make some measurement for like some quantities within theories that are also esoteric. And so it's a fun thing to see the engineering side of physics research. But, but again, I was just, I'm just a kid, I'm just a kid, like, having some fun doing like a little, little bit of like a, I think it was some just for my undergrad thesis along the lines of like some data analysis. back of the envelope thing for a future detector type of that. But what is that what there's a lot of conspiracies and all kinds of stuff going on about? I wish that stuff was cool.

See this thing is these conspiracies, they're never like, it's always just not as cool as they make it sound. And- What are they doing? They're just colliding like particles, right? Like you want to send things in at higher, higher energy so they get close enough and then you can start to see the structure of the thing. So imagine like you have like this bag of corks and you start to see that like the kind of component nature of the, like, the kind of component nature of, of your protons and things like that. So it's just you're colliding and then you're trying to measure what's coming out and you want

to like try to infer how your theory of the interactions is consistent with that. What is coming out? So I mean, so I mean it should be jets at some point, these things hadronized. So like basically you're colliding, say, depending on the collider, you're putting like say electron positron and other colliders and this is like, say, two protons are colliding. And you're going to have the protons are made up of some like, quarter. and then they're going to have some interactions and then they're shooting out other quarks, but there's other particles in your standard model field theory,

and those interactions will determine, I guess, the rate at which different things are produced. And so there's a theoretical thing you're modeling, like, those very short-distance-scale interactions, and then you're trying to infer from the energy deposited or, like, different particle tracks that this thing is actually what happened to then say something about your theory. And that's fun, and that's cool. But the scary thing is just how big, like, how hard it is to, like, probe those high energy skills. And you see these huge, I mean, the collider itself is like, you know, these rings are amazingly huge. It goes around three countries, right?

I mean, well, they're near a border, but yeah. But, yeah, so very interesting engineering feats for fundamental physics. And that's cool and something I probably didn't appreciate as much as I, like, because I went into theory. Obviously, somehow didn't appreciate it enough. But, yeah, it's cool. I don't know. You end up knowing so little compared to all the way things you wish that you know about the stuff. Is there any truth to the fact that you're trying to create some type of a black hole?

They're not trying to, no. I think that there's, so that was a fun thing to see. I think I finally met one person who is kind of this back of the envelope, fear monger, fun guy for the billionaires. You know, like, because I can understand, like, you mean, you're probably from a defense kind of point of you want to understand the risks or whatnot. And I'm like, I wish it were that fun. I wish it were that risky. Like, nah. Like, if we were, I mean, I'd love to be, like, building wormholes,

but they're not going to be, like, you're not going to be able to transverse anything. No, so it's so sad. This is the no-goes that are the worst thing. Like, I mean. I'm just curious because it sounds like now you're into, you're really into black holes and you're saying. Yeah, no, but I, like, again, I spent most of, like, my childhood convinced that, like, there was cool stuff that could be done. And then most of like the like learning grad school or an eventagrided grad school, the hard way, it's not that cool.

And then being upset at the fact that all these people overhyped things and like, it's not as cool. Quantum computing is like way overhype. And then suddenly AI actually is useful. You're like, holy shit. So so I don't know where I should land in the end or what I should learn from the fact that like, yeah, completely dissolution to like overly enthusiastic in a couple weeks. How long were you at, sir? Oh, just like two summers, like whatever the, like less than 90 days or whatever for the. the work permit, I forget now, but just two summers.

I mean, what's it like there? What's it like when you walk in? What's in there? It looks like old buildings. Like, I think that it's a bunch of, the weirder thing about it is the way that it interfaces with, say, the U.S. institutions or things like that. You'll just have a lot of, like, I don't know what year, like 50s or something. They look like dated buildings, but with a bunch of people in offices. And then all of the cool, expensive technologies and the actual, like, detectors, say.

So it just kind of looks like, I don't know, like, what you would imagine probably some industrial complex thing. Is it, I mean, do you go underground? I wouldn't for what I'm doing, but sure, for a tour or if someone was actually like putting together, the other detectors, absolutely, yeah. They do tours? Yeah, they do, yeah, when it's not running, yeah. I've got to check it out. Yeah, they got a hard hat. So how do they get two atoms to collide in a two?

So this is way above my pancreate, but it's a bunch of magnets accelerating. things to like like higher speeds and then I wish I knew I should literally like I should probably know a detector sign but luckily I'm not technically studying the manufacturing of like engineering of the things to test experiments I'm like purely in the theory side do you see when the particles hit so they would see the tracks afterwards so that's a funny thing too is like you're not actually seeing like you don't see the Higgs boson you're seeing like the fact that the things that came afterwards are consistent with it being there and I think that that was a kind of funny thing too

again, very silly, but maybe visceral in the sense of like, you're not actually seeing the thing, you're inferring the thing versus like for gravitational waves, it really is like it's a sound wave where they're seeing the, you know, the mirrors move apart. And that's kind of fun. It's fun when it's the, they're just, they're actually seeing the thing. They're saying they're seeing instead of indirectly inferring the thing. Interesting. Post processing is. What does that all mean?

To each their own. I think that, sorry, you know, what it means in some sense is like you've tested a particular theory. And so you're kind of ruling out some parameter space of, okay, there's no super partners or things like that too, or we understand the tiggen mechanism. Do you say super partner? So, like, basically, I think that at some point a lot of people were looking for, like, extra particles that would come if there was this, like, symmetry-related fermions and bosons. So things that want to, like, be apart from one another, like, you only want to, like, fill one in each state versus things that like to kind of cohere or have, like, amplify each.

That's a bad analogy. But there's two types of particles, like integer spin and half integer spin. And some people were trying to conjecture that when you build these colliders, you're going to see more and more particles. And then that'll change the way that we think of these frameworks being organized and things like that. But, you know, turns out maybe not. Maybe we don't know when the next, like, new discovery is going to be. And so it's weird because then you're trying to fund an experiment where you don't know what the answer is going to be.

And you're like, how expensive is it to motivate or to build this thing? Wow. Yeah. But luckily, I'm not as involved in that. I'm like purely theory for the sake of that way I can be decoupled from these like high-cost experimental ventures for a bit and then just tackle that problem of kind of like mathematical, I guess, induction or something on the theoretical physics corpus I think is one way we say it. I didn't really think much about skin care before, but after enough long days travel and stress, you start to see it in your face whether you want to or not. That's what got me into Caldera Lab. It's a straightforward routine.

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Where do you go from CERN? So from CERN, I use the fact that it's easier to get into grad school, via experimental things, to get into grad school at, like I went Harvard at MIT school options. I went to Harvard because it would be more easy to pivot, I thought, because I'd already worked for the people at MIT. And then at Harvard, I think I was, it was like quantum competing or string theory. And I thought that quantum competing was overhyped. So I picked the other one. And I don't know how people feel.

Like string theory was still cool back then. And it was like, you know, Brian Green was very much making it cool when I was a kid. And I still think it's super cool, but it's not for the same, like almost for the same reasons that people sometimes hate on it a little bit. So can you give me a dub-down version of string theory? Maybe. So you basically, quantum field theory is giving you these fields that explain why particles are identical because they're like, the electron is just an excitation of this field. So like I have multiple electrons or excitations of the same field. You can think of, say, the mechanical process of how I'd compute some amplitude, like these

predictions for CERN, as a bunch of world lines coming in with some rules for how they interact and split off and create other particles. String theory is kind of chubbing out this graph to, like, a sheet, kind of like a literal pair of pants, say, so interacting and, like, you have this world sheet. So what it does for you is it kind of two things. Like one thing is it kind of opens up this UV behavior. So it sort of points, it's kind of just like this branching of like a tubing thing. And then the other hand, it also gives you a particle spectrum.

So basically, it's like you can imagine, okay, let's try to build some mathematical framework within which I have the spectrum where I have this graviton, they expect this gravitational field. And then I avoid some pitfalls of trying to treat gravity as a quantum field theory too. And so, and then people just keep building off of it. And then there's years and years of papers that you're like behind on. when you're a new grad student. But the main idea is trying to find some underlying mathematical framework that can let you have,

you know, your cake can eat it to like gravity and a quantum theory. Okay, okay. All right, all right. So we go to Harvard. We go to Harvard. Get your PhD. I'm working on my PhD. And I think the whole airplane story, I have a bunch of friends who are like in aerospace

who think, oh, this kid's cool. I'm doing some fun research with like, with Andy and friends with like spin memory effects, stuff like that. but then and then you get overhyped really quickly because, you know, any press is good press if you're trying to start a company, but not if you're trying to get along with the 2,000 people in a field that like, you know, are sometimes bombarded by like, what is string theory doing, do, the type of thing. So like, very much closed ranks type of thing. So that happens in the middle of my PhD. So I, like, I guess I'm lucky that I didn't take all of these advanced grad courses and just took a lot of E&M for like some of the stuff that my advisor happened to be doing was very like, you know, you have a charge when it accelerates. it radiate. It's kind of like, when you have an antenna, like, you're seeing, like, the, the radio signal from some charges moving up and down antenna. So it was very easy math compared

to a lot of stuff that people do in my field that I could latch on to and then think of some sort of fun little experiment, well, not real experiment, more like a thought experiment type of thing of how you'd measure in your momentum loss in spiraling binary system, say. So I have a fun result pretty early out in my career, but it's like, it's a lot of luck that, like, you know, if Andy's on the paper, then people care and people will write about it as been memory effect or something versus it's, like, so you get a little bit of like, that's cool, I'm lucky in hindsight. Very much love the kind of way that sometimes ideas can come together really quickly, and then other times you're wasting a lot of time just being stuck.

So I'm lucky to have some good experience at the beginning of my grad program, but then I get hyped up in a silly way with this Einstein bullshit. And then I'm like, oh, because my family thinks He's awesome, you know? Like, I mean, yes, when I was a kid, if I was going to be a physicist, wouldn't you want to be like an amazing physicist? Like, of course, that's the goal. You go to Linda, you go to these conferences where all these Nobel laureates get to hang out and you're the students who get to meet them. And you're like, this is the life. I mean, maybe not exactly. I think it's better if you earn the money and then you whatever. But, but like, there is a lifestyle to like just being good at your job would get you. And it's like, I wish I were real,

you know, because like hype will just go away at some point. So I've got a taste. of the dark side with that, but also seeing just a little bit more of the sociology of why do people like this narrative of like an individual doing something cool and how does that fit into the fact that within our field, the people who write like popular science books are not necessarily ostracized, but it's just like it's distance a bit. And then it's hard to work with them. So like it's funny, the people that you see as the physicists publicly are like not the real physicist somehow. Interesting. And I don't, yeah, and I think it's just funny politics almost or you want you want to be under the radar you know no I don't know I mean I am you

I wish I did like I wish I did no I want to be for the sake of wanting to do well in my job I need to be right um I don't want to be above the radar as a physicist in the sense of like I don't deserve attention as a physicist right I wish that I did something cool enough where I felt like this wasn't complete like whatever thing but I do think what I want is that there should be a way for you know the fact that, you know, people care about science is good. Like, how do you better kind of link together, like the folks who are good at outreach or the folks who are lucky enough to have opportunities to have outreach and the research in a way that benefits the research is the best for, like, the physics? And I'm excited for that being something that we can change now. And I think

that maybe, I don't know if it's because I'm faculty now or because the times have changed with how science is funded, that people are more open-minded to, you know, a little bit of, like, um, being creative with how you interact with industry, for example. And that's exciting to me, because things can get done a lot faster when you're not just in a group of people who have all decided, this is the way it's done. Gotcha. Because it's been like that, yeah.

Where did the Einstein analogy come from? I think it's just some Ozzy article trying to be flashy and it was good clickbait. I don't know. Like, I mean, to be fair, like, you wouldn't use those words. I mean, you are studying gravitational waves, and then people just try to be nice. I don't know if it was a girl boss time of, of a decade or whatever, 2016, 2015, 2016, I guess.

So that stuff, I have no clue. I'm pretty sure, you don't see the articles before they come out. I didn't want any ridiculous comparisons because mostly, you know, airplane build kit stuff probably makes it a cool story. And then you're doing fun stuff with, you know, top people in the field. And sure, Hawking starts, like, to work on stuff with Andy. So there's that part of it, too. And he, Hawking is one of the few examples of somebody who is, like, known for their research

and their outreach and, like, actually really good at both. I think it's rare to have somebody where they're popular. and they did really cool stuff. Penrose is another example, I'd say, and I'm sure there's more that I could start listening, but it's rare. Ron Musk. See, he was my hero as a kid,

and then I went through different phases of how I feel about the guy. What? No, I don't know. I got to hear this. So when I'm a kid, and this is me being very, very, and not realistic,

but, like, I'm in high school, and I see, like, this, like, Quanta article about Tallulah Riley taking, like, physics courses at Caltech, and I'm like, she's not a physicist. She's just taking a few physics scores. I could do better.

This guy thinks, I mean, I'm like, I'm a kid. So this is dumb. But I was like, these guys like physics, damn. But I didn't understand to what extent they did. So, like, I saw him as somebody, like, post this thing to Iron Man in the sense of build cool shit and get people to build cool shit. And, like, I thought if I were in his shoes, I'd do the same thing, right? And then you see, like, you start getting a little shaky of, like, how much does he actually know how to do? It's like, you know, how much is a team behind him that's really holding it up and then how much, like, like, I thought, okay, if I, like, get the PhD or something, I'll be the actual expert to then be able to be more legitimate in a position where you get to do cool stuff.

But I think that's the kind of wrong attitude. So, like, so I went through phases where I was, like, very dissolution with the fact that he kind of represented science or tech. Like, people believed whatever he said was, like, right, and that he also was the engineer and he also was all the stuff. Not saying he is or isn't, but I'm saying, like, there was definitely this sense in which there's no way he's actually doing all the stuff because I, I see how hard it is for people to do all these things, right? And then you, you know, you get over it or whatever, and you realize how, you know, there's a lot of value to being able to get other people on board with the same vision

because then you can really push for it. And as long as that push is to something that's possible, then you're good. If it's a push or it's something that's impossible, that's scary. And I think that that was something where, again, before the AI stuff, I was very disillusioned in being like, man, they were, like, taking buzzwords and concatenating them with, like, quantum computing and what else was I solution by. Like, you'd see things that as a physicist,

you know, like, there's certain no-goes and they're still getting funded, and you're like, ah! Like, you know, like, we don't have, like, this lack of vision. We wish we were doing cool stuff, but, like, somehow we can't. You know, now I think that's changing. And the same time, these people are just overselling things

kind of adjacent to what we do and acting like they're going to be better because they're entrepreneurs and, like, we don't know what we're doing. And I was very, almost resentful of that at some time. But I think the coolest thing, now is like, damn, like the products they're building with like Claude Code or whatnot are super useful in the sense of, you know, as a physicist, not many people in theory know how to do much more

than like pen and paper or use mathematics or whatnot. If I wanted to like think about questions that are more like systematic, like you just want to like compute all of these different things numerically or whatnot, those are not valued because their field is so small that one person doing it would be considered a waste of time because they're not going to have a chance of getting a breakthrough. But, you know, when you have tools that open up your ability to basically, like, instead of hiring a dev team, like, you don't need the resources for that. You can still, like, just do it yourself. That's really cool.

So I'm, like, super grateful that maybe some of that hype led to technology that's actually useful for my job, or at least the things that I wish my job were. So I think my opinions clearly oscillate a lot about some of these folks. What do you think? Do you think we're going to make it to Mars? So I think, I mean, I think he could make it to Mars, depending on his definition, right? So, like, when I was a kid, it was really almost grim or, like, very pragmatic. I was like, you just want to get to Mars.

You don't necessarily need to come back. So, like, can you do, like, you know, the first person to go to Mars one way? It could bring a bunch of, like, genetic material in a long arc and have it, like, cryotently frozen out. I was thinking, like, send him one way. So I think someone can get to Mars, absolutely, if they change the definition or the scope of what their goal is. But, but, yeah. How fast do you think we can get that? Oh, I don't.

I'm not going to be the expert on that. I think that I definitely would be parroting things when I was a kid off of what other people were saying. And I do think it depends what you want for it. Like I always thought, you know, man missions were cooler than automated missions. Like, the vibe was cooler. But it does make sense sometimes to not risk, you know,

life and limb for no reason. I do think that, yeah, I don't, I think it depends what the goal is. I think, like, I'm open mind. did for getting around red tape to do something cool. And again, I kind of also, I really liked, like, it's weird because I think that I had, like, secondhand sci-fi, because I never, like, read these sci-fi books growing up, but all of, like, the people I admired did.

I still kind of like the Earth. Like, I, like, I'd rather, if I had the same resources, it probably would be more, like, less aerospace now. It would be more, like, infrastructure, like, trains and things like that. Just, like, a lot of things you can do, people would, care about Terra firma, but, but yeah. So, but it's funny because it can align like your vision a certain way. Like if you want to get to Mars and you think, oh, I need some sort of like invention to do that, then we got to like build this AI to be smart enough to help us figure out how to do

that. And then we need to like, you build the eye to also figure out the health of the energy problem so that we can scale it up the right amount to be smart enough to do that. So like it's a kind of funny thing when you can use the end goal to tell you how to get somewhere. And so maybe he's used that or maybe it's just a good marketing scheme. I don't. I don't know, but yeah. Do you think we're going to need to go to Mars? I mean, need. I think I don't feel that existential, like, need the same way in the sense of, like,

the point where you need to get to Mars if you're not already able to go there. Like, try to avoid that first, maybe. And you actually would have more expertise on that side of things, how scared you are about, like, chaos. Oh, man. I always think the world's ending. Yeah, but, like, that's a bias that you'd have. I mean, I'm sure that they have to, they have to get.

you like, train to, yeah, to save it, right? Yeah. Right. I don't know.

I don't know. But who else do you look up to, did look up to? I mean, I looked up to, I mean, different parts of lots of people, but like at the time when I was a kid,

it was because, you know, it was Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX were the ones who were kind of these big players in this private aerospace industry. And they were like,

whenever any parts of their companies were at these air shows, like that was the cool stuff. And I, again, I like this notion of trying to make profitable or build something that wasn't necessarily the, like, its best value proposition wasn't so much the capital that it could get, even though you try to make it self-funding or something like that. Like, I like that kind of encapsulation of doing things.

Because I think, like, for example, theoretical physics research, you can have a lot of YouTubers go around and debate, like, why is a taxpayer funding this or is it stagnating? And it's kind of missing the point that, like, okay, so say you defunded, like, this. subfield, who's going to actually know quantum field theory amongst the people who are doing data-driven stuff that doesn't, like, you know, that's making progress now. So it's like, how do you take advantage of the fact that, like, there are things that are worth funding that are not necessarily, like, worth funding because they make money or because they have a product, and then try to align it in like a kind of maybe not corporate structure or something where you

make it so that it doesn't need to rely on things like always having been that way, you know, Can you innovate in that space of trying to fund or have self-fund valuable enterprises that are not driven by profit but driven by the thing that they're after? So whether it's space exploration or like solving physics or something like that. I'm inspired by that a lot. Who's doing that? I mean, I hope we can do it. No, I don't know. See, the thing is right now, it's this funny, we're at an interesting time where I think like the technologies that like everybody cares about, you know, AI, whatnot, really can help doing the job that I do.

There's a thing of like, I don't know how to make the right pitch for somebody who believes it's going to do everything, you know. And also conveying what exactly it means to solve physics or not. So, like, in practice, like, I do think there's a sense in which, like, we're trying to axiomatize these laws of nature. And maybe there is some uniqueness or rigidity to that structure that it can find. But I think that a lot of people think, oh, there's a particular open problem and it's going to write a paper that the researchers are going to be like, whoa, this is better. and that's what physics research is. So I'm scared of not having a good collaboration, say, with the industry folks and the academic folks

to really kind of pin down, okay, say you can accelerate science, did you finish it, or did you now open up a new chance to build more infrastructure for how, like, that knowledge is stored and related to one another? Because we don't just want to answer about it. Like, I think that if I was an engineer, like I want to know the answer to like this math equation to like predict what I would need for my engineering problem

versus for physics. It's more like, okay, here's the answer, but why? and really just distilling the kind of compressing that basic set of rules that lead to that why. And so I'm scared slightly that like, you know, if this field is stagnating because we're only individuals doing something and we can't make our field very modular as it is because it's just like, historical precedent or whatever the number of bill is, that when somebody comes along and actually does have a result that's better than these things, is it like, oh, let's just put all our eggs in one basket now. Like, this is the better bet.

And I think it should be a fun collaboration. And I think that the night thing now is that there are a lot of, some crossover is with people like spending sabbaticals at these big tent companies. And they, some care about researchers is great. But how do you make it so it's not just like, I think I like academia in a way. I don't know, it's institutions, right? But can you try to use the fact that there is some value proposition or exchange there to like try to drive like innovation for like, let's try to get the best product that like can do theoretical physics well? Maybe I'm using other people's products for it not, fine. If there's any IP or value in that, use that to help fund a field going forward instead of it being relying on taxpayers, whatever, for a very specific small, like, highly purely theory thing, because there's value that can come from the engineering side of it.

So, for example, when you build CERN or you build these other, like, big detectors, a lot of the time the value proposition isn't, okay, we're learning something about the loss of nature, which is cool. But it's also that all of the engineering that's going to go into that is going to be super valuable. Can you do that with theory? And I think that now the answer is yes, and maybe it's already being done in some sense, like when they're selling intelligence and they're getting fundraising for those companies, maybe that is the pitch and that's what they're doing. But I find it fascinating to be kind of, I feel like we're back at this like moment when Stern helps invent the World Wide Web.

Like, can you, instead of like whining and begging, like, oh, we should have like had better structures that like endowed like a field or something like that maybe it's not even the right thing to do, can you do that now without like begging for things to have been different in the past and just like, you know, there's opportunity to now go for it and do it right. Don't just care about papers, care about some of the infrastructure, you know. CERN helped build the World Wide Web. I mean, that's what they say. I hope I don't get all the facts wrong.

But yeah, like they were, they're trying to, they have a lot of data and they're wanting to like serve it to different places. And I think DARPA gets a lot of credit too there for actually like what you think of is the internet. But, you know, like when I used to, and this was the type of thing that bugged me a lot because I think I had these heroes in tech that thought like, oh, if the physicists maybe just did things differently, they'd have like all these, whatever cool thing. And then you walk into the door of where I worked and there'd be a thing on the side because it was funded by a tech person

of like saying how quantum mechanics like leads to like the transistor or technology and like understanding general relativity helps with like timing of satellites and GPS. Like imagine if you had quantum gravity or like the blue sky research you do now might lead to something cool in the future. And I believe in blue sky research and it's great. But I think the thing is like normally it's still there's a reason for it. You know, And, like, how do you, like, it's a weird pitch to try to say, oh, it's work before, so keep giving me money now. I don't, it doesn't feel honest.

I mean, it's, in some sense, yes, but, like, I didn't like that. I think the cooler thing would be, again, to try to see, like, how do you align things that are valuable with the thing that you want to do as a physicist and, like, go from there? Because there's anything that you want to be able to do if you can't do it already, there's something missing. And it probably, if you're human interacting with it, it's an engineering thing, it's a product you could build and not like an equation you're trying to solve. So I think that's a fun thing that's kind of opening up probably because of the way that like funding is weird in academia right now.

Like, you know, can you decouple this? Like we basically view universities as just educational institutions until you go to grad school and you realize it's a research institution. And like all of the great grades you get in undergrad, you realize like they don't care. They just care about their research. This is like, this is not that. This is like some way the U.S. like is basically funding private institutions to do research at scale. And, uh, And the overhead seemed crazy, but that's just how they funded in Europe. They'd be funding the schools more directly. So, like, there's such a dichotomy between, I think, how I used to see MIT or Harvard

before I went to grad school and how I see it now of, like, completely different value propositions or priorities in the institutions. And so, like, you know, how do you make sure research gets funded and is super cool? And it's maybe, like, that the experts in the field are the ones deciding, like, how the resources for that field are allocated, rather than it being kind of, okay, it, you know, you know, You know, these institutions get money from revenue streams from teaching students. So it's like the best people in different fields all in one. Or big tech says, ah, it's broken or whatever.

Like come into our private lab, you know. Wow. Wow. Let's take a quick break when we come back and start getting into space. Most gear looks good until you actually start using it. Then you find out pretty quickly what holds up and what doesn't. That's why I keep coming back. back to Roka.

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Check them out for yourself at roca.com and use code SRS for 20% off site-wide at checkout. That's R-O-K-A dot com and use code SRS. Welcome to Hollywood versus reality. They do it, right? What does he do in the movies? Tell me if I'm doing this wrong, because I don't watch any of the shit. Little flick like that, right?

Seems pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Gotta silence it. In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living. Proprietary magazines. Supposedly the best engineering in the fucking world. When that breaks, you're... And now we're bringing them back.

It does look pretty fucking cool. I gotta admit that. All right, Sabrina, we're back from the break. We're going to get into your current work. Gravitational memory effect. I need you to slow down just a little bit for me. I'm not on your level quite yet, maybe by the end of the interview. I just talk fast.

Yeah, so, okay, so. What is gravitational memory effect? So there's different kinds. The easier one is not the one that I came up with. It's much older. And it's this notion of you're going to have these big, bodies out somewhere in the galaxy or whatever or far away, coming in and colliding, and then when they collide, they're going to coalesce maybe into like another black hole

or whatever it is, but there's some ripples in the space time that come out to you. So these gravitational waves are propagating away from this collision expend. So this is like indentations in the weave of space? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think actually it's pretty accurate, a sense of like I'm looking at like, say, at a given time, the positions of some mirrors that have been moving back and forth. So the thing about the memory effect is basically that there is like a very like long time scale thing that's imprinted because of this scattering process. Hold on. Can I make another?

Yeah. Would this be like the wake of a boat? In some sense it's almost literally. I think that the thing about the wake of the boat is there's different approximations for like a deep water wave and like it's not as universal. I think like I have a friend who is a family who's like into like nautical stuff. So I think we concluded that like there's a sense to which sound waves in the world. water could be approximated as having a memory effect, like if they're deep underwater, but like a surface wave is not going to have a universal relation between the, um, the boat passed and then it moved.

But, okay, so imagine, let's do the buoy analogy. So I don't think the math works out the same, but imagine you have like some boat passing and you knew that like you could infer like the amount of like munitions on this boat because like the buoys moved a certain amount. No, like you know what I mean, like some, some net property of like the thing. So it's not as cool as that because I think that in this In that situation, it's not a universal relation between the things that scattered had some kinematics that then set the value of this shift. But yes, you have these two gravitational, like, detectors and some probes sitting very far away, just mining their own business. They're sitting along deodontes. This wave passes, and then the distance between them is going to change.

Okay. And, like, depending on where they were relative to this thing, there's a certain, like, pattern in the sky that it would. And you're seeing that there's a relationship between this distance changing and, like, the kind of net kinematics of the amount of, like, energy. in the things that we're scattering and the waves coming out. And so there's this relationship that's like conservation of energy generalized to this kind of fun asymptotic symmetry version of it turns into deterministic imprints in the night sky of these move detectors.

And then to see the angular momentum analog, you have to go a little bit sub-bleeding, which is the spin memory. Oh, shit. Okay. I think I'm picking this up. So you're saying, okay, how do I just, how do I explain this? Okay, so if we have a sheet or a board,

blanket or something and I put, I don't know, a mark on here and a mark over here. And then we put a ball in the middle. Then they come inward. Is that what you're saying? So that would be kind of an analogy for like maybe like the just gravitational like potential kind of curving you in. I think this is closer to the buoy analog. So the math is wrong.

This isn't true for this case. I'm pretty sure of like imagine that you could have some buoys pretty far away and you knew that there was always a shipping route where they go, like, from here to there. And, like, the only options are, like, the direction in which they came and, like, maybe the, like, the momentum of that boat. And you could infer from the buoy shift those types of quantities, regardless of whatever they did in the middle. So that's not going to be true for the water wave. I'm pretty sure it's not true for the deep water wave case. But for the, uh, this gravitational system, there's a symmetry reason why I can see that type of shift. Like, the buoys move by

certain amount. That means blah. Like, this amount of energy was deposition. positive, like, type of thing. Okay. So does the imprint stay like that in space? That's the whole point. So this is supposedly, like, at the very end it stayed. Now, in practice, that's not super useful because we do these things where we have a theoretical framework where the math is

rigorous, and then it's completely BS in the sense that's not the thing you're going to measure. So, like, in my framework, I'm doing that single, whatever, ship crossing type of thing as the entire everything that happened in the whole world, infinite amount of time. But what you do then is you say, okay, there's this effect that this

framework studies, but it really is only accurate for like each individual scattering experiment is like a chunk. And so there's a shift from that scatter experiment. And then sure, something else is going to move it around later. But if they're spaced off enough in time, can I approximate this thing as like the memory effect? Okay. So let me re-explain this to you to see if I'm getting it.

So basically what you're saying is it will leave an indention, an imprint and the fabric of space. Yeah, exactly. And it will stay there forever until something else. moves it. Yeah, something else moves it. And then there's a very formal version where we say, imagine you wait for infinite amount of time, tell me the beginning and the end, and that's technically the memory effect.

But in practice, it's closer to, like, let's pretend there was just one thing that happened, one thing you're detecting, so one event. And as far as those times are concerned, it's a lot longer than any other thing later moving it. Okay. And so then that's a memory. And you discovered this. I discovered a variant of this based on the connection to these symmetries.

What is the variant? So this variant is like angle of momentum loss instead of energy loss in the gravitational waves and the spinning particles kind of. So basically it's like, and this was the kind of fun thing. So I come into my PhD and you're almost just going to do like classical radiation. So like, you know, you accelerate a charge, it's like emitting radiation. And the fun thing about, you know, gauge theories. So gravity and electromagnetism kind of fit into this framework of the, you know, there's an extra symmetry when you try to write down a field, like a set of equations that are local.

So what happens is that when you have a charged object, so say you take some cat and you're like, I don't know, like some riboelectric effect thing to get some charge on like the fur, you're like static electricity or these things where you see like this balance of charge. You probe it far away, right? So I can with gauge theories or with like these like, the fun thing is I can be away from the charge and see it. So I don't need to come up and pick up, oh look, I have like an electron charge. I can see the electric field as like pulling me in like you were saying with this blanket and like the, it being deformed.

So like I can measure the some features of the object in the center from the boundary. And that's kind of one of the ingredients to this kind of holographic principle of like, can I just talk about the things in the boundary in isolation as its own theory. But for the very specific scope here, it's like that gouse law type of setup of, okay, if I am very far away and I measure like the electric field, everywhere in some sphere, I can determine the total charge inside. The analog of that when I then have an accelerating, like, scattering experiment is kind of like this imprint of this universal. Like I know from this low energy part of the radiation, something about the kinematics of the

charge of scattering. So it's like Gauss's law, but applied to some scattering process. What makes the particles scatter? Is it a collision? It's their own interactions with each other. And that's the funny thing. It's these long-range interactions that are busing in a curse. So like the fact that they're charged and then they're going to like have some photons exchange between them or other particles is the thing. But we basically, like, there's something about the very low energy that is universal almost because of these classical equations of motion. So, I guess, long story short, when I do this idealization where I pretend I'm in flat space,

that's my world and I want all of these solution sciences equations that obey these boundary conditions, then I see that, you know, things at the boundary are going to move. So, like, what you're saying is I have, like, these two detectors are sitting there. They're not just going to stay there. They're going to move, but they're going to move by a certain amount that's maybe a certain, like, controlled parameter as compared to where they are if I just push them out to infinity. And so, like, because you have this kind of whole symmetry framework that you're importing from other instances where it's been useful in physics, you can apply it here and you realize, oh, look, that tells me something about soft limits and scattering, tells me something I can observe. Yeah. So early in my PhD, they had this connection between like soft physics and a synthetic symmetry word identity and then my first paper was on like the subleading soft

version of that which was new and some people had speculated that there might be a enhancement of the angular momentum like the rotation symmetry of the of the world in some sense and then when you keep pushing that further then you can tie it to this experimental version because as someone else understood that there is a physical, like the space-time physical thing you're measuring is related to the waveform that otherwise computing with this quantum field theory computation. And yeah. So anyway, basically, long story short, is you were just taking some mathematical framework and then trying to copy-paste it to a new application once you have, like, one iteration.

You're trying to see what's modular about, like, some computation. And then you get to import that and find something new because you pulled it out. Wow. Yeah. Wow. I mean, Stephen Hawking cited your solo and joint papers in 2016. Your dissertation is the only, is only the second Harvard Physics PhD published in physics reports. The other author won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah, I mean, yeah, these things are fun, but it's always fun that you can, you probably find a way to find a cool little way to frame what happens or not. But the Hawking's thing was cool because, again, he, you know, he visited at the end of, like, near the end. of his life, he was, he came to Harvard, which was an H-C., just the entourage. We were, like, we were on a Congo line in this boat, like, kind of like those little river cruise type of thing, but in the Boston Harbor that was, like, hawking his whole entourage, and I was like, literally doing, like, a little congo line behind him, and, like, I mean, you can't, you can't,

you can't make that up, you know, it's a fun, it's a fun experience, so, you know. So what is, what does this discovery mean? I don't think it means that, I mean, it means I'm lucky that something experimental is going to come out of, like, something I did maybe. I don't think the things that I've done have, like, that deep of a meaning or something where, like, everyone should know these types of things necessarily. It's more like the fact that, you know, there is some value of trying to take these frameworks that are very abstract and try to distill parts of it that then you can try to then push for the more realistic versions of it. I think that's a fun kind of paradigm, and it's, like, fortunate that there was some observables of this. But at the

same time, like I'm using Einstein's equations to get it. It's more of a test of like the boundary conditions being a good physical assumption than a test of the theory itself. Right. So, so I think that it's not like super, super exciting to me, but like it's not like, you know, I wouldn't say, tell your audience is important. I think it's pretty cool. A lot of things are cool, though. Lots of things in this building. Pretty cool. Is the, is the universe expanding? So again, I think that that's a funny thing. I do think if you talk to a cosmologist, they believe in like the cosmological constant, like, isn't necessarily being actually, like, sorry, there's this experiment right now that's, like, trying to promote that maybe the cosmological constant is, like,

changing over time. And a lot of string theorists love that. A fellow, like, a faculty member when I was in grad school at Harvard, like Rafa's kind of colleagues with Andy, he is very into the swamp one program and trying to test things. I think that I am not too into, the experiment to know like why a lot of because I just don't trust the results yet or whatever. But I think that a lot of things are up in the air in the sense of, you know, like there's always qualifications to things. So like it's good at face value trust the actual results of an experiment, but you want to understand what are the extra, like, what is it actually seeing versus what you're actually

over interpreting it as seeing? And so one option that a lot of people like is, okay, maybe the cosmoltoal constant is changing over time and then it'll be asymptotically flat or are. the wrong sign, opposite signs to be where string theory likes to live. So I just, I guess I end up being very agnostic in a weird way, which is not good because somebody should just answer and say, yeah, blah, this is our model of MDM. But it is true that stars, galaxies are moving farther apart. No, no, sorry. So there's a sense in which yes. So I think what I'm saying is I'm taking it to be, like, okay, you're looking at these various stars far away and you know, like, okay, so the

fun thing about physics is you're often saying the laws that I have here are the same everywhere. So if that's true, I know some features of my star or cellar formation, so I know, like, the spectrum of the lines that are supposed to be there. So if it's moving further away, I'm going to see, like, different frequency shifts and things like that. So there's a lot of cool stuff that you can see where, like, yes, that's not in doubt. I think the thing that I latch onto, because, again, like, it's too, it's close to this, like, is your framework even physical, is, like, the statement about, like, some parameter,

like the cosmos or constant in Einstein's equations and whether everything I do, I'm, like, a flat earther as far as, like, cosmology is concerned, because I just set it to zero. And, like, now there's some experiments saying maybe that's okay. No, but not, but, like, what things are constant versus functions of other things that contain it for time, roughly? I mean, we got to get the... But the expansion thing, sure. You're not a flat earther. No, no, I'm joking.

So I don't want to encourage a flat earth. Sorry. So, like, you know, like, sorry, so the essential which you're on the earth and you see, like, the curvature scale of the horizon or whatever, or you're not seeing. And you're saying, the world is flat. There is a, I'm just trying to make a joke and probably it's dangerous to do it at the actual. platform of the fact that, like, you know, do we see the curvature scales of like the universe that cosmological constant at the scales where I care about it for particle detectors or for these gravitational waves from LIGO? And I'm always setting this constant to zero instead of like

whatever, 10 to the negative, like large power. So if the universe is expanding, or or if we want to say the galaxies in stars are getting farther apart? I mean, I feel like that means the universe is experience. No, no, no, I'm sorry. I think I'm saying, I'm not saying no, I think you're right, but I'm saying that the physicists are worried more about, like, why is it, right? Like, is there a reason that there is some, like, various, like, cosmological constant there, or, like, is it all just, like, the different, like, matter distributions and things like that that try to govern the reason where are you think? So the, I'm, I should have just said, yeah, but instead I was like, oh, by the way, there are experiments that are, like,

maybe, like, changing our opinions a little bit or calling the question, some notions of those parameters that describe this thing. So if it's expanding, what does that mean there's a wall? So the fun thing about cosmology, if you're doing like a holography for like the sitter space times is there is like a literal horizon where you can, like as one observer you're not seeing the whole thing. And so the world that I live in is like kind of understanding the mathematical structure you can attach to the kind of the boundaries of the space time.

And in most situations like in the ADS context, which is this like wrong sign, Cosmodal Constant version toy model, or in the case where I do, like, it's really the space-time boundary and not the boundary of some observer. And then you have to deal with observers, and the sitter is hard for lots of reasons. So I just go, ah. So if it's expanding, wouldn't that the fabric, the indentions, what do we call it, the gravitational memory effect, wouldn't that change? No, it does.

So you're absolutely right. And in the sitter, like, the types of, like, I, you're basically propagating a wave on a curve background versus a flat background, and it changes the form of it further away. And people have papers trying to talk about it, like memory on the observer horizon and the sitter, which is the closest thing. But the thing that's relevant is like, you want to think about, like, what scale is that important as compared to what scale I'm, like, seeing the wave coming from this inspiring binary system.

And so, like, at least, for example, a lot of things I do are also relevant to, not the memory effect so much, but, like, these asymptotic symmetry stories can be applied to amplitudes. And there what you're doing, you have, you have, you have, start. any of this collider. And like, it's such a small scale where these things are interacting and that the detector itself is considered to be at infinity. But it's not infinite. I mean, it's huge, but it's like, like, that's hardly infinity. And so, like, can I pretend or ignore that expansion for some things? Sometimes yes. And then sometimes no. Gotcha. Wow. We actually have a, I have a hot question here. It has to go with flatter.

You ready? Okay. I'm ready. I think I'm accidentally reading this. Here we go. Yeah. Surveys have found that up to around one in ten Americans say they agree with statements that the earth is flat. From a scientific standpoint, what actually proves whether the earth is flat or round, and not just in theory, what real world evidence or systems make that determination undeniable? I should have prepared more because I know the best answers, but I would just say, like, look at the pictures from them, like, satellites or, like, people up in space. You can see the horizon. I mean, like, like, what, I guess I don't know what, why those don't work, for example.

You know, when, like, if I talk to someone who was a flat-Earth or what would they try to say if I said, you know, look at the ride and see it's curved, like, or go up on like a. I'm not a flat Earth. Yeah, I don't know. But I've talked to a handful of them. And they always, they always have. What's the excuse of these? I can't remember what their excuse is. They think satellites are balloons that are not in space.

I do know that. I don't know what the argument is. It goes on here a little bit more. because technologies like GPS, satellite communications, and global navigation, all operate as if Earth is curved. So what are the strongest proofs and could any version of a Flat Earth realistically reproduce those same results? Okay, I'm trying to, like, I would say no, but like I think what I'm saying, I'm trying to think of like, how would I be the defense attorney for a Flat Earth? You know what I mean? Like, like, what would I try to do to make them feel as right as possible by commenting the hell out of everything they want to?

I mean, like, I think that you can't, once you're trying to say, like, I mean, you're trying to apply a framework beyond its scope of applicability. And that's what these types of technology or, like, something far away above the earth is seeing that it's wrong. But, like, you know, to their credit or not, like, when you're on a map, like, you know, you print out your little chart. Like, you're not going to go that far off, like, when you're driving around town, pretending that, you know, the Earth around you is flat out, unless you try to park your car on a hill and you forgot to put your parking. break on it. I don't know. Like, basically, like, and that's not for the curvature, but just for it's a but I think that, I don't know, I think that it's emblematic of the fact that it's hard to believe the things you don't have input for. You know, like you build your intuition.

We build our intuition, you know, walking around in a way where, like, you might not notice these things. Like, do you notice the, like, phases the moon? I don't know, like, how much people pay attention to those things or how much it affects their lives. And then doubling down on that worldview is sometimes funny, sometimes scary. I don't know what the right the take on it is, but like, you know, there's value to questioning, I guess, like, how much your assumptions or like the visceral world that you live in and the intuition you get from that actually extends beyond the things that you're able to probe yourself. Like, you can't go and just jump up into space and look down and go like, oh, never mind.

Yeah. Well, maybe soon, though. Maybe so. Maybe you go send them up. Like, hey, they go free air, like they'll say it to get on the free, like, several middle flight or something. Yeah. Follow up. Yeah. What's the biggest misconception people have about black holes? And is there anything about them that still completely breaks our current understanding of physics?

I think that if anything, okay, so breaking your current understanding, I think that sometimes it is the paradoxes that show that there are problems in our understanding. So I think that maybe breaking isn't as active word I don't think I want to use. I think that, like, again, I always feel like I don't even understand these stuff well enough. And I think that's one problem when you're going to feel that everybody's confused is, like, how confused are you? Like, when I say I'm confused, does that mean I'm actually confused? Are you, like, less confused?

Like, who's really more confused? So there's these paradoxes that come from, like, basically trying to say, okay, I think I know, like, it shouldn't be that ridiculous if it's a big black hole. Like, the horizon isn't that special. I only kind of know it, like, kind of, like, teleologically or, like, away from, like, I don't know at the moment that I pass the horizon. So then why can I put some quantum fields on it? And then I have paraproduction.

One of them will go out to infinity. The other one's going to go inside. And suddenly you run into these like issues of, uh-oh, like did I evaporate into a thermal system now? Is it not unitary and all this fun hawking stuff? So I think the thing that one should take away is that there are still, I think, situations where people don't understand all the assumptions they make where they can just, you know, follow one step after the other, think that they're doing something

that seems logical or not. And then they realize, oops, together something was wrong. And so it's not breaking physics. It's showing that there is something broken. in our assumptions. Like, it's not, like, the physics has to be right. I think we believe that. It's just we don't quite know, again,

like the regimes in which our assumptions are valid or which one is the wrong one. So yes, there's a lot of active things. Like some people, I think I saw have colleagues who believe that as soon as you cross the horizon, there's like some like firewall or fuzz balls. Like there's like different models for what happens behind it.

But we're all basically just playing with some frameworks, like mathematical frameworks that give us intuition for what we might guess and then we're not precise enough with what we're assuming when we compute something, and then, oh, this don't fit together. Like, that's the vibe. But I think I wouldn't try to scare, like, a random person with it. I would just point out that somehow the bread and butter of, like, a physical theory

where you don't make a measurement is seeing that, like, these assumptions don't tie together. So something has to be wrong than popping any it back and trying to fix it. I mean, what is a black hole? So, I mean, I think some sense, like there's literally just a sense in which, like, I have so much matter in some region that now even light can't escape. And the way that I see it is like from a penrose diagram, there straight up is just some reason that I cannot region that I cannot access from infinity.

So it's very much like a feature of the geometry. But then there's other fun things about like the fact that if you put enough energy in some region that you're going to end up creating a black hole. And that often is tied into this question of like quantum gravity has to be weird and different, you know. And so like it's just and it's neat though because you see. how much people, like when they see, even though it's not actually the horizon, when they see like these images of a black hole and like the Christian disk around it or whatever,

like generating the light, like engineering is cool. The fact that they can like reproduce that image or stare at a black hole. But like it literally is like a black hole in the picture which is kind of funny, right? Like, you know, like the way the light is bending around it. But I think that the fun thing is really just more like the way a physicist would at first intercommoder is like there's a very specific solution to Einstein's equations. So this is a frontial equation with a Pacific pollution that then has some weird-ass properties of like the causal structure of like where like particles are going to end up. What happens if something goes on it?

So that's the type of question. So basically I think a lot of people would believe, okay, when you first go through, you don't really know that you went through because like it's the black holes can be different sizes, right? And so like if it were large enough, the curvature scale when you're crossing the horizon isn't so extreme. But eventually like if you just did like, you know, little probes on this background, I think people talk about like spaghettification or like you're going to be stretched out eventually when you get closer to where the curvature is larger and blowing up at the singularity. But I think that's a funny thing is people like you understand this classical geometry and then you start having problems putting quantum fields on it and answering some fun like paradoxical type of questions that then people aren't sure like they think that the singularity is something so highly curved that the approximation of just treating it classically is bad now.

so then they don't know what happens if they have a thing. But it's not, like, I think that's easy enough to try to say, okay, if I, like, have some nice numerical simulation and I can just write down this differential equation, like, for how something would propagate on a classical, like, black hole background, that you could have something just, like, going through the horizon for a little bit and probably, like, in that model it looks fine. But it's just, like, how valid are those,

how hard is the numerics, first of all, to do near certain regions and the way you set up for a scattering process for it is also hard. But it depends on, like, basically the problem is that sometimes it's the question you're asking, ends up being not the right question or things like that type of problems. I just, I still, I don't understand how it can swallow light. No, I mean, so, but it's basically like you're writing, like, how do I say it? So, like, you have this metric is telling you, like, the, if I have a coordinate system for my space time, and I have then a notion of, like, the distance between points on it.

And, like, a nice coordinate system is often. and subduction of like a spherical coordinate system where okay like very far away I have this like you know directions in the night sky and it's like a time direction in this case and then in that coordinate system like the there's a solution to this differential equation that Einstein gives you where you don't have any matter sourcing outside and it ends up being a black hole solution where there ends up being a horizon and you can just kind of play around with like how does like the energy like redshift or whatever things like that it's it's a fun it's very much just a math problem You know what I mean? Like you're playing with a given solution. So it's like kind of like it's harder because it's not linear, but like when you're doing like multiple moment expansions and E&M or like just like literally like if you give me some charge object, put it here. What's the electric feel far away? Or I don't know if they've any fun. I think if I try to make an analogy that you could probably help figure out one with some telecom like reverse engineering from all these different radio signals. What's happening? I don't know.

But, yeah. What, what do they look like from, I mean, how do I say this? Yeah. If we were to do, if we were to do like a 360 model of a black one. I mean, I think the best thing is like, I forget, which I'm going to get the name of the movie wrong, but like Kip Thorin was a scientific advisor to this whatever. Oh man, I wish I had better recall of like names of cool movies. Interstellar maybe. I hope I'm not wrong on that.

Where they actually ran a, like, you know, simulation for what it looks like. I think that you have pretty good, like, images from either, like, that movie or... I've seen the images. But you've seen the light coming out of it, right? So, that's why it's like... They look like... So, you know, if my fist here is... Or my hand is the black hole, what does it look like from this angle?

Yeah, but you... Is it flat or does it look the same? Oh, no, it should be around. It should be... So it's actually a hole that's... You can access from any direction. And so ironically, I definitely have, like, colleagues who play with these type of, like, race simulations more than me. So the way, when I see black hole, I see like a metric, I see an equation

written down and I like, uh-oh, this blows up here. That's not, but, um, but the point is that when you're seeing the simulations, I think a lot of it is you're seeing, like, imagine it some stars behind it and then how that light from the star is coming to you. And so, like, maybe it looks funny because literally, like, you're not necessarily seeing the fact that nothing, you're also seeing nothing came from it, kind of, but you're also seeing some, like, funny lensing of, like, the stars behind, like, their light kind of going on GEDSX around and coming to you. So some of the artifacts are that, which I guess is what it looks like.

But the funny, I think there's an interesting, you literally know what it looks like. And I don't think it would be that hard to like do some sort of simulation of like you're falling a geodesic down. And then there's a bunch of them. Yeah, I want to look at it from the bottom from the top. You know, it's just like question of like, how do you want to set up? From the back. So roughly has the normal like non-rotating buckle would have like spherical symmetry. A lot of buck holes are actually kind of rapidly spinning.

So there is some like asymmetry. you can see like it'll depend on like where you are compared to this axis of rotation. But there's not like a front and back thing. It's more like an axis of rotation difference. So what is the shape? It looks like those like roughly looks. It's like a, I mean, sorry, it looks like when those images of the like the black hole have this kind of funny like distorted ball looking thing.

But again. Three dimensional though. What does it look? No, that's yeah. So you're seeing it. It's like if you're a surface of evolution around it, I think is the rough picture. Like, the things are symmetric roughly around that. But, again, assuming that, like, and I think there's no reason to some otherwise that, like, the light sources around it are kind of evenly space because this thing is rotating.

So there's a rotational symmetry, and you should do it that way. Do you think it could swallow a planet? Are there? I mean, I have no reason to think. Not. I guess the question is, like, what is, like, sorry. So I have to take a step back and make sure I'm not, like, saying something the most for the experts are going to be concerned. But, like, to the extent of what do you want to consider a planet?

Like, I think that, like, just because something is, like, gravitating. And it was always there. Like, you know, our planet, we're orbiting something that if I just wasn't moving, like, this way, I'd be falling in. So, like, you know. So, like, it's not just because it's there doesn't mean it's like swalling a planet, but sure, something could fall into it. And I guess if you wanted to say, like, the only thing I'm worried about is to whatever

extent, the thing was the original, like, thing the planet was rotating around that you called it a planet for that reason, you know. But, yeah, it's like, it's a hole where you don't see the light coming out. But I don't think there's anything stopping it. I don't know if I've ever looked or tried to find a nice and miracle simulation of just imagine that I have a bunch, me and a bunch of other particles with some light sources are together falling across the horizon what it looks like. I think it doesn't look that special.

And the thing that looks special is you're outside and you're seeing all the light around it. It's kind of being warped by it. Okay. I'm sure it would look kind of fun. Like, I don't know why they don't. Like, you could do it. I mean, there's nothing, like, that's just a differential equation you're trying to solve. It's like that.

Yeah. All right. tracing. All right. Let's move into celestial holographs. Yeah. What is... What is that? So it's a... This is what you're doing right now, right now, right? Yeah. So, yeah, a lot of, I think some British

twister people have some fun, like, sense of humor of how they name things as far as, like, celestial sphere and the heavenly equations. I think there's fun things. But, so celestial sphere literally is, you know, night sky, stars. If you're, like, you're, like, you're, like Millennium Falcon or whatever, and you're accelerating, you might imagine that, like, you'll see the distribution of the stars and the night sky move around a bit. So, like, they're going to dilate. And so that's somehow seeing that there's, like, the boost symmetry of the space time is a dilatation of this sphere. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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That's betterh-H-E-L-P.com slash SRS. So what we're doing is trying to do, just like map all of the observables that we want to have to this night sky times a null direction that's complicated to do what, so we just project it back down to the night sky. And the reason why we do it is, again, because we're just copying and pasting and then generalizing things that have worked before. So both someone like Hawking thinking about putting quantum field theory on a black hole or someone who's like a string theorist who's saying there's like 10 dimensions or 11 dimensions and I'm going to. like have all these, all this extra field content that I then have to like have this extra dimension like wrapped up and be tiny and ever see it. But both of those types of frameworks end up leading to this cute notion that somehow the easiest way to get around describing a quantum gravity system is to find an equivalent non-gravitational system that it's dual to. And so from the

hawking point of view, it's like there's a sense in which this black hole behaves like a thermal system where the entropy is this area law. And so, okay, there's this fun kind of almost information theoretic vibe to like how gravitational solutions. Then from the string theory side, there's this kind of more complicated, like some theory on brains, back reacting, da-da-da, where you have a more precise actual equivalence between. I know some very esoteric, like, bulk strings on like some gravitational space time. That's the wrong cosmological content, wrong number dimensions, yada, yada, but it's

equivalent to another gauge theory that I know. And so a lot of people in my field love, like, those precise dualities because then they have power on both sides. Maybe some things are easy to compute as a geometric object and other things are easier to compute on the other side. And so you can study like different like strongly couple limits by having this other approximation or other um, yeah, approximation that's valid. But both of these things to me are just saying, okay, you have again this effort. So like there's a reason to think that maybe one tenet of quantum gravity is this holographic nature. And then we're trying to apply it to these asymptotically flat space times, which are again the kind of the flat earthy

analog of cosmology. But like don't, maybe I shouldn't say, I should have same. Sounds like the, I have the core question here. Is everything we see in 3D space, 4D space time actually projected from a 2D surface like a hologram? See, that's the thing is I would say in some sense, yeah, by definition, but like how physical is it? Like I think what I'm saying is that, and maybe this is a problem with someone who ends up sending too much time just in equations and not in like real world. Like if you can describe things the same way, you might as well use whatever definition is useful for some things, right? So I think I don't always take it to literally in the sense of, like, we are in this celestial sphere. It's more like,

can I convert everything to variables on that celestial sphere? And does that help me organize some scattering computations in a way that would just get computationally complicated to compute all these five-med diagrams or something like that? That's the kind of goal. Like, I think I view it as like, it's another math framework that ideally if we do it right is equivalent and then don't over-interpret it like the physicality of that per se, but it probably is my own problem for not trying to take things more literally because we are setting physics after all. So I don't understand. I'm trying to understand this.

So are you trying to prove that everything we see is a hologram? I think that I'm trying to build a version of a holographic framework that works for space times that are not anti-decider. So like space times that are more relevant for like scattering. How does gravity want to be described by a boundary system? So we're trying to build that out. And the same time, if it were true, then the two things are equivalent, not that like, so like if A equals B, I'm not saying everything is B.

I'm saying everything that is A is B, right? So I'm more like saying there's equivalent set of things. Like you can imagine a world where maybe I, I don't know, try to project everything down to the earth. and then talk about some rules for how those things interact. And it was more convenient to talk about the extra dimension. I don't know. But like you're not trying to lose content that way. It's not supposed to lose anything.

But it is neat to think, okay, like if everything is described in terms of boundary observables, then it does kind of call in a question which questions are well defined in the bulk, for example. So celestial holography is your way to prove this and use it to unite Einstein's theory of general relativity with quantum mechanics. The two foundational theories currently contradict each other. But again, there's a lot of people where you could probably motivate their research as inspired by. And the question is, like, I'll go in.

So it's funny, these things go in and out of fashion. Like, I think I've heard from some, like, postdocs now that it's not cool anymore undergrant applications to be talking about, like, quantum gravity. But I still think that's why we go into, like, we don't go into the field because, there's two maybe reasons why people go into the field. I think some people genuinely like paradoxes. And it always bothered me because it's just like any paradox where someone actually had the answer in the end, like, you just defined it wrong. So I went into physics because I like that I didn't have to learn as much.

I mean, the sense of I don't have to have like an excellent working memory nominally if the laws of physics are simpler to then figure out what the rule. The rules are simpler than the solutions. So I like physics for that. That doesn't necessarily bode well when you have a very complicated corpus of things and so on it. I think the reason that we study something like quantum gravity is again because we have this bias or we think that, you know, whatever the law is, of nature are, there's a fundamental set that then lead to all these different regimes that you're studying. And if you didn't have that bias, maybe you shouldn't be doing that job. But if you have that bias, then the thing that you should be doing is trying to, again, merge various rules into a

single set of rules. And so I guess the big outstanding one is this like short distance physics and long distance physics because at some point then we know there's quantum mechanics and we know that the GR is important. So like there's some sense in which the actual observations guide you to this still open kind of problem of how, what theoretical frameworks can consistently limit to both. I think, I mean, to the extent that like why should the rules of like tennis versus hockey have to be united, right? Like, like, I think that like it's kind of cool that we think that the laws of nature are like there's something fundamental about it. There's something highly compressible like about that description. And I think that's a fun hypothesis even rather than

just a belief to try to test it and you can kind of automate what you do as researchers in the future. But yeah. So are you saying that everything in space is potentially projected from a 2D surface? That would be, sorry, I think what I'm saying is if, so like space time. So for me, it's like, it depends. So sometimes you use the word space to mean space time, but it's three plus one dimensions is our world. And then the boundary is one dimension lower typically. And the celestial sphere is two dimensions lower because.

the boundary for these flat space times is null in a way where like basically no other direction can talk to each other. So again, the point would be can we find an equivalent description or almost like we've seen it work in the past. How do we apply it to this regime? And then how do we learn something by seeing how we can't import it? So again, physicists are constantly using mathematical frameworks that they already have and trying to tweak, like apply them to something different and then realize something goes wrong and then try to like learn about that framework by seeing how to modify it to make it work. And so like in some sense, answer is yes, but at the same time, you know, you want to try to see if I built a framework like that,

would it tell me anything different about the structure at scales I can't see? But like ideally, like it's a bad framework if it can't like in principle encompass the things that we do have the intuition for in the bulk or inner rule. This is way over my head. But it's way over everybody's... I mean, the type is the thing is, like, you know, like, I think that I... Especially when the type happened when I was younger, I was very much like, I'm going to go and read a bunch of textbooks because I want to be able to, like, answer good questions or like, you know how to tell the flat earthers why they're wrong or like you're representing science somehow in a funny way. And it's just like, ah, like you need a much better working memory for that or or I don't know. I think the thing is that, you know, you don't need it.

Like, in our job, you can do this kind of like you're diving in and you're doing a computation. And then sometimes you lose sight of the breadth of it. But I also think that now it's a fun time where you can kind of take a step back and see if there are things where, you know, the resource limitations or just the way the physics is done doesn't need to be that way because like now, you know, one researcher doesn't need to hire a whole team of like data scientists to treat the corpus as a data set and do something with it. Like there's a lot of power to having like funny eye tools and like you get to just basically play around with doing things that you never would want to do normally as a good. researcher because that wouldn't help you with your career. Okay, I'm going to ask you some very, very, very basic questions to try to understand this. We'll see. Are you saying that a planet could be a hologram?

Yeah, but in a weird lawyer sense, not like in the way, you know. A star. No, I think what we're saying is like all these objects that you're thinking, you're in the bulk and like there would be some state on the boundary theory that's equivalent to it in these types of holographic setups. I don't want to say that I understand flat space holography to the level where like I'm confident in that, but in ADSCE of T. context, their dictionaries are like, yep, like this massive state is this other operator

in the CFT type of... Potentially, everything we see in space could be a hologram. Or are you saying the fabric of space? Everything, basically the whole point is that there's two equivalent theories. So the thing that you have in the bulk you want to have in the boundary theory, can you formulate a theory that lives one dimension lower that isn't just so, like, is there a natural sense in which you want to live one dimensional lower? And for example, one, maybe one kind of intuitive thing of why it might be nice is that

I have a global symmetry, so I have something that's not related to these long-distance interactions. Then typically I need to go and like kind of measure the charges of the objects throughout the constant time slice that I'm in. We're saying this is Galsall story, that I can measure the electric charge in a configuration by just having some probe of the electric field like at infinity. And so in ADS-CFT, there's a sense in which this boundary theory is evolving in time and you want to find the dynamics of the boundary theory.

So there's a dynamics of the boundary conditions of the bulk theory that end up, like, I guess, telling you as an equivalent presentation of the bulk theory. So I think the fact that it is holographic is deeper and probably if it were true has deeper implications for like the right physical quantities to be talking about in the bulk. But again, and so I think that's the sense in which, sure, if I felt more confident that the state of the dictionary were where I really had a good intuition for that thing, then I could try to pull back and say, let me like the fact that it's a sense. What does that mean for what's a good thing to talk about in the book? But I don't think it's formed enough for me to have that type of assertion or make that type of enthusiastic claim given the danger of like how it's interpreted. What are you visualizing in your head as you describe this? I am visualing as a penrozyagram with a sphere and just some like light shades, I guess.

Probably that and or yeah. Some basically just a bunch of penrozyrogograms where the slides and the talks they would give. I mean, you're visual, I can see it. I think you're visualizing. Yeah, I do. I know, but that's not necessarily very helpful, right? So, like, that's a problem with, like, when you're a grad student, they often say, like, shut up and compute. And I used to take it as, like, a personal offense.

I'm like, I can think, too. But the point is you're trying to be trained out of using your physical intuition, you know, for the things that you're doing. Because, again, like, you know, you can't see 10 dimensions. You can not even barely see, like, you know, four if it weren't three plus one. And so like how do you, what can you physically do in this world where we clearly are interacting with certain energy scales, three plus one dimensions at time? How do you get out of that? And then you build this intuition by computing things, I guess.

So then your intuitions are roughly a bunch of computations or a bunch of lower dimensional projections of things if you happen to have someone who can make nice figures. Yeah. What do you believe happens when we die? Oh, God, I don't know. but yeah I mean my mom's very Catholic I don't

no I think the thing it's like that's a funny thing physics probably tells you like gives you some sense of which questions you want to ask or not and I guess the right answer from a physical point of view is I don't know right do you think about it I luckily like I'm happier

so I guess I don't but no I think that the weirdest thing is often I can fight with people I think are friends in a fun way of like how to interpret the observer. So like, yeah, like, I definitely think that if you, and I mean, to the example, we don't agree. Like, I don't know actually who's right on it. If, like, how much is the fact that, like, I am a me?

Like, somehow I feel like physics can still describe or it doesn't obviously, like, tell me I couldn't have, you know, some objects that end up having these complicated, like neural nets in them that interact with the environment and it changes the set of it. And so it feels like they're making decisions based on that, da, da, da, da, da. But it's a different question than, like, I feel, I'm me and I interact with the world. So, like, I think if I want to say that physics covers everything, that I probably do want to have the observer be part of the system, but I definitely have friends who are definitely not religious writing like that and still kind of call that observer thinking the question. I just don't know because, again, I guess I don't like open systems.

I don't know. Like, from the point of view of what are we doing as a theory. But, yeah, there's fun questions that are related to this in the sense. of like, who am I versus, like, and is it the same thing as, yeah, I don't, I think how active the observer is or something like that. I still probably am biased to not including that, but maybe that's dumb. That could easily be dumb, you know. Do you and your mom talk about this?

No, no, because like, oh, she, sorry, I'm not good at, when either of us are good at debating. No, I don't. She definitely sees what I do as a variant of religion, and I'm like, nah. But I also, it's very easy because I think we're so close to, like, end up going too far with questioning the stuff. She came from, like, she came from Cuba when she was a kid and they weren't allowed to be religious there. And so I think that, you know, it means a lot more to her partially because of that. But also, I mean, it gives her, like, a very sense of, like, guidance in the family life and things like that. She, I mean, it means so much to her, right?

But you don't, you don't. No, and the other things, I personally view attention with the, like, dogmatic aspects of, like, that you know the answer. Like, I mean, what I love about physics is that, you know, there is a sense in which, like, the, even though, first of all, like, the level at which I actually understand these things is so, so silly and whatever. But there's a sense about science that if it's done, right, and honestly, like, you can have these revelations. Like, you can learn something about nature. And I think that whether religious or not, everybody appreciates, like, nature. And so we're trying to find the rules. And if anything, that seems pretty close to the spirit of, like, the part of religion that gives you the, like, the, like, answers or some, like, sense of, like, this is the way things are, right?

It means that you're trying to find an origin story, right? So, like, that kind of origin story aspect of it, I think that science is after. But I think that I like the fact that we are supposed to admit when we don't know things. Sometimes that doesn't always, it definitely plays out in a way, weird way because a lot of people think they're experts and then, like, talk down to people who do. And so it's very dogmatic in practice, but it's not supposed to be that. And I love that about it. And that's the thing that turns me a little bit off of religion sometimes. It's just like, you know, like can you question things or whatnot? But I think this notion of not knowing is clearly fits into this notion. Like, if you thought there is something creating everything, maybe that's more of a reason that we're special or more reason that the rules have to be simpler because. But like I tried to be more agnostic. And I also am against the kind of dogmatization side of it a little bit. But I'm happy. to try to debate or change my mind at low. I seriously, my mom, and it's just like, yeah, why aren't there, women, priests, you know? Right on, right on.

So what do, what does it mean if, what does it mean with the hologram stuff, if it's projected from a 2D? So, again, I think the thing that it will mean is once I understand it better, that there's some types of things you do or don't want to talk about within the bulk space time. But I do think, like, I care about physics, not because, I mean, you land on this one little corner of it that you get to play with. And it's somehow the best bet for you because it uses the things that you know. But like it always frustrated me, like how hard it would be to jump between different fields. Because you, like, imagine if you have no experiment calling

different parts of the research canon, it's just going to get harder and harder when there's more alternate attempts to something. And I don't know enough about loop part of gravity to tell them why they're wrong. And I'm just basically vouching because I like, I trust like one other person's opinion who might have looked at it. And so this is a funny thing where like, like, there's just the kind of the output of other people that are also really smart is hard to internalize and compress. So I like this notion of being able to think about taking a step back and saying, like, we value physics for this type of reason of like finding these deep questions, trying to like see that nature seems to be, like, have this highly compressed description. How would

you go about finding it? Like, can we view ourselves instead of like individual people who maybe do a great thing and they could call themselves an Einstein or whatever of that? Instead of it, like we're responsible for this legacy. We're custodians of this canon. Are there tools now that we have that we can be, like, help curate and, like, condense it more systematically? And I think that that's an exciting time for me because I love that notion of, you know, don't just stay in my little corner. Like, how would I get out of that corner, first of all, personally? But then how is it also, like, you view that venture or something super valuable, I think, and closer to these kinds of, like, deeper questions. But I don't think I think about the deep questions enough because I'm in the computations, because that's the thing where the intuition comes from and then just get stuck philosophizing if you're not.

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BenMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. How would this change the Bit Bang? Oh, I think that it's... Bang theory. I think the Big Bang Theory thing would probably tell me that something about my framework has to be tweaked or something like that. I view it more, because again, like, you know, like a cosmological origin side of thing is very much, like not part of the thing I'm setting up. So the first side of it, if I need to include Dissiter, the stuff that I'm studying is more of like a stepping stone to understanding how to generalize logography.

And then the second part of it is, again, like initial conditions or things like that. We're not necessarily always, sometimes we're thinking about the equations and not like the solutions of the equations and the particular ones that are relevant to the real world. So I would say that it's not going to do for the Big Bang. It's more what will the Big Bang tell me I need to like specify once I understand better if my framework encompasses that or not. Yeah. Do you believe we can time travel? Forward at different rates. How so?

Oh, I mean, sorry, I think I'm saying it's like, I'm just making the joke of we're all going forward in time. But to the extent that even they have this in this interstellar movie, if I got the name right, like this kind of twin paradox of like your clock is affected by gravity. And so you can, you know, go around and come back and have age differently than your twin, but you're only still going forward and whatnot. No, it's fun because we don't, like, and that's a kind of fun thing, too, is like, it's, there's. still cool stuff, like, but the no-goes are there. And we never, you never really get to play with all the fun things, I think. Like, I, um, like, it's always this funny thing of like, sure, you can do this thing, but the caveat is it's not physical or whatever, like, right? So this thing about, like, you can age differently, but you can't, like, go back in time

to anything. And it's also because it would be pretty, sometimes things are built into assumptions. Like, it would cause a lot of other problems if you can go back in, like, a closed time, like curve. You're influencing your own future. Um, but, But like, yeah, I just wish that, I think the thing is that, like, in order to make progress in the field, you have to be so in the nitty-gritty that you don't get to, like, have fun, like, bullshitting around with, like, the things that people think physicists do. But progneter is pretty close. We have a pretty fun.

We have people who do, like, quantum foundations and, like, a wide variety of just theoretical physics, where sometimes that it feels a little bit more like maybe what the stereotype of a physicist or the chalkboard debating, like, existential things is. Right. Let's talk about quantum mechanics versus Einstein, the fight at the edge of reality. Yes. Where do we start? We're referring me as a fight, man.

No, I see. More like, again, this is the type of thing of why do we believe that the laws have to be coming from the same thing, right? I think that that's a pretty bold and fun assumption. And if you can imagine that if somebody thought, like, at every different energy scale, just there's some new things, because that's the way it is, that you couldn't predict, that's a very different vibe than thinking that, like, there's a mathematical consistency or some kind of underlying principles that will carve out of space of theories that still can be consistent with observations. So what I view it as is, again, as a hep theorist, we're making this bet about the structure

of these, like, laws of nature that probably has some consequences that you wouldn't be able to see when you're just in the nitty grid of it. And that excites me a lot, thinking of, like, okay, if I could zoom out and see the the structure of the corpus and like how which theories are actually consistent with each other wouldn't that be fun um and so i think i like that because that feels closer to the kinds of things that excited me about physics as a kid now it's still further away from a lot of like there's some companies now that are trying to do like AI for physics with a thing of like we're gonna like you know like robots are going to come out of the physics thing it's like i don't i it's probably

not physics the way i define it when that's the case but there is cool Like, you can unlock cool things when, like, you're changing the way you're doing things. And I think that I, sorry, forget this quantum gravity thing. It's, again, it's about trying to condense this corpus. You're trying to, like, find a single description that can limit to two different things. And right now, we really have only a limited number of suggestions, like roughly string theory is a framework. Can you try to find other ones? You probably never would if you're just sociologically in a field where everything you're learning is in the context of, like, within string theory.

It probably would be some variant of it at any point, just almost by accident. So I think it's kind of fun to do a little bit of a meta layer and think about, like, what are we actually after as a field and be clear about those goals. What is the Perimeter Institute? Oh, I love it. So Perimeter is founded by Michael Zaridis. He's one of the co-founders of BlackBerry. And he's one of these, like, you know, tech entrepreneur physics fans. So, like, I mean, obviously, like, ahead of his time with the smartphone type of thing was an engineer, awesome engineer.

and then liked physics that put a lot of money into a physics. I'm not sure. Like, I mean, like, you have to be a fun kind of, I don't know if it's a brilliant idea or a silly idea, but it's definitely good for the physicists. So what I love about it is that it's like a research institution that's like a private public partnership. So like his money is highly leveraged and like the Canadian government supports it

just for theoretical physics. And so it's neat because you can imagine, you know, if you cared about the product, you care about research, having something where the whole institution is dedicated to that is a very different vibe than again, like a university where you are, like, you're pooling like your auditoriums or your dorms or things like that. And it's all these different research directions that are together sharing some resources and you're kind of like cross-sectioning the field and then it's a reputation of that place that draws some talent in or not. I think there

is value to this kind of cross-sectioning research by the product or by the discipline. And perimeter is an instantiation of that, but like with the downside of it being in just one place in Waterloo, Ontario, you know, where he's company was and things like that. So I understand he said... You went there instead of taking a $1.1 million. Yeah, but these packages are for like research funding and things like that. So, and researches, I guess, I don't know, people are expensive. So that's where these things scale and sound like fancy numbers.

But I mean, yeah. But at Brown, it would be very much like Ivy League professor sounds cool. You're teaching a lot. But again, you're just kind of at a university that may have one reputation for other reputations, I don't know, like that type of vibe of like within the U.S. system, Harvard will get more money than Brownwood. And then versus at least at Perimeter, it's kind of a startup vibe, but, or at principle, could be, and then you try to make it that, which is fun, but we'll see if they let. Yeah. So what are you doing at the Peromerant? Yeah, so I do my research there. So I do my Celestilogapy

research, and it's basically like your faculty, you don't have to teach, you mentor, mostly like master students up. And then you're, but they're more forgiving or like the kind of institutional things that you're helping with. It's normally, it's like instead of being on committees that are just like in a big department at a university, we don't care, you're closer to being able to help guide the institute sometimes. And so it's kind of fun because you get to think, okay, like, we're this institute that has like outreach teams, it has like teaching teams separate, like that really value each of those

facets of physics. How can you help with that as the researcher? And I love that type of question. I love thinking about like how we can position ourselves to collaborate more with, like tech companies for like AI for physics or things like that. And I don't think that question is as meaningful if you're at another university because, you know, that university doesn't care about theoretical physics. They can change their mind and who they hire later and they can be at or overtime.

And sure, there's probably awesome like CS departments at places. But like, you know, like you can really focus on a thing when it's your whole mission. And I love that about free I. Do you think AI is going to, what do you think about it? I'm excited. I'm sorry. Like I used to be more. So like, again, I think my opinion, at least I'm happy that my opinion can change.

I feel like that's a positive thing. But, like, I was definitely more, like, jaded by, oh, people oversell things. And, like, what if they oversell things too much the extent where then it hurts the, like, it's not, like, there is value to expertise that I think that sometimes people over correct things and they don't trust, like, science and stuff like that, right? So, like, how do you engage with, like, hard conversations of, like, where is this field going or things like that without throwing maybe out of. with the bathwater or like making it hard to like collaborate. So I used to be more like, oh no, they're going to say they're going to do all these things. I know that my heroes kind of liked physics. So is it going to be like the guys of the funding get access to all the data, start making some claims of theories and then like we don't know enough to be able to tell

them why they're wrong, yada, yada. The route that ended up happening instead is more like, oh, we're going to like take the top people in the field, like not like the Harvard for us. is not not me. And just work with them and collaborate with them first. It's a funny reputation thing. But it's fine. It makes sense. It's a business move. It makes sense. But it's a funny thing where we're more a part of it than I might have thought. I thought it would be like we're going to get overwhelmed with a bunch of crockpot papers by physics enthusiasts. And it's less that and more more this funny thing where it's just we're all in the labs for a little bit or not. But like, how do we really do this right? Instead of it being like, okay, so say one company,

wants to show that they're doing some research, they can work with a few top researchers, and then the top researchers can say it's interesting. But, like, we want to do cooler shit than we could have done before. And how do you, like, I think that it's, it's funny. It's like, you think it wouldn't be that hard to try to just get all a bunch of strings first. Just like, let's do, what they do for math, write down a bunch of, like, well enough to find questions and dare someone to, like, try to automate it.

And even we could do, we could have more fun. We could say, like, okay, Sam, and you're saying chat GPT8 is going to solve quantum gravity. Let's put some parameters on that and make a bet. And if you, like, do it by that time frame, whoever did it gets that prize pool, if not give that money to fund the researchers. I don't know. Like, I think there's a fun way to do like XPRIZE with these deadlines. Because the thing that scares me the most is there's a lot of confidence.

And once you start playing with the coding side of the products, I can see you the confidence in it. But like, to what extent, like a company can always pivot and you can be like, that claim is bullshit. But they still will find something else that works and that's great for them. So you don't want to short the company or anything like that. Like, how do you call them out a little bit when they're, overzealous, that overzealousness can hurt you. On the flip side, though, I found that, like, you know, the agentic coding, vibe coding capabilities are just amazing because you can have all these little daydreams of how you want to interact with the physics paper. And like before,

when I was a perimeter, they were supportive of me, like, trying to use some of my, like, grant money or startup money to, like, hire some interns from, like, local universities to code something up. But, like, I was a shitty coder, so I'm not good at managing people at tasks that I don't know whether I'm asking them to do. And then, like, I was so bad, I couldn't even, like, basically host this thing locally to show people what it was. And within a few weeks, I could basically redev the same thing with Claude Code, which is like amazing. So like, I kind of see that sometimes that hype or that push can drive a product to a level where, like, now I don't need to hire a dev team. As a physicist, I can start to do, play around with things

that I couldn't have done if I didn't know how to code myself. So there's skill sets that are open to me because it's been kind of democratized. So I'm grateful to that. And that's a bit in tension with my kind of er, about like, we're going to solve physics. and then it might like, you know, take the funny way to ask. So, so, so, like, well, at least like, thank you. What are you going to do if they solve physics? No, but this thing is, that's the question. It's like, what does it mean to solve physics?

I want to make sure we have the same definition of that. Because I do think that it would be hard to imagine actually solving physics to the extent where, like, until you build an experiment, you can't rule out the space of theories. I think the coolest thing is to try to think, okay, there's a lot of things in our field that you would never do because, again, resource limitations. So when you have a couple of thousand people who, awesome smart people, like, Like, definitely, like, I feel dumb all the time. They're awesome people.

And they do their thing. And, you know, like, you self-select accidentally for the type of people who just love mathematics to the extent where then, like, you can accidentally be ostracized if you are too ambitious within that framework because, again, who are you? Right. And then also just it doesn't help you get a job. So, like, there's some things where it's like almost like an emergent phenomena of things that people cry to say are institutional problems.

It's like it's really not anybody being a bad actor. It's just like you get kind of stuck in the way that things are done because people like, obviously like what they do and the people who like it stay in it and people who don't are expelled. Right. So imagine like you have something where it's like if you feel comfortable with things operating this way, then you stay and otherwise you leave and you resent the field. Then like that's a bad thing sometimes. But now I think, you know, there's enough. Like so you have this thing where basically before a lot of people would go and like you wouldn't value doing brute force, straightforward things that are just like scanning over spaces of stuff because that won't lead to a. breakthrough or like is it one individual you can't do it. But if you can automate that, like, sure,

like there's a lot of value to types of questions that nobody would have cared about, but that then makes it a problem with benchmarking. So like, for example, in other fields where there's more of an engineering challenge or like a very specific goal in mind, you can say, this goal is valuable and then, you know, protein folding or whatnot, they can do it. Or in even math, there's more like, I guess, like tests for kids, you know, like the community seems a bit more organized, a lot more like IMO problems, like different benchmarks of like how good is it as thing. In our field, I think that we kind of don't like often to say whose research is more valuable than others. We definitely feel like there's totally a vibe of judging things. But like the kind of ethos

lends itself to not wanting to just straight up say, this is a valuable thing that you should do because it was so straightforward to do it, it wouldn't be an interesting question. And it's like, that's dumb because like anything that's worth doing, like you'd think it'd be worth telling someone else to do, right? And so I think that we just got to get over that in our heads a bit and realize like that just because in the past you could only give faculty lines to people who happen to have a great idea, that there isn't value because the whole enterprise isn't, it's physics, it's not math. It's like there's some cohesive structure to this thing. Like how do we optimize for that?

And I think it's fun because I think tech can disrupt that a little bit in a way that isn't going to necessarily, you know, hopefully not, hopefully not in a way where it's like completely just erasing it. I think that there's a lot of value to that expertise and like how do we harness that to do something really cool with it instead of it being this thing where someone who's not an expert just thinks it looks like it's doing the right thing, you know. What is something that you want to dive into that you haven't yet? Yeah. So, I mean, for me, it's always, grass is always going on the other side in the sense of, like,

you get, you feel siloed and like, it's not like, like, no one's siloing you but yourself in some sense. Because, like, I guess for me, my, my, the one thing that I wish I, it was like, it would be easier for me if it wasn't is like, I really like extrinsic motivation sometimes too much. So like when I'm computing, I can be happy. But I like if other people care about what I'm computing. And sometimes they don't because they each care about their own thing.

And like I don't think you're a better person or not for having less extrinsic motivation. But it's hard to navigate like, you know, if every person just cares about their own thing and you're like, how do I do something this person cares about? I want to jump into their thing. But then like they see it as a waste of their time to necessarily like, you know, transfer that knowledge or something because they have their own grads since they have to do their research. So it's hard to move around in a funny way just because. everybody's doing their own little math. So I just wish that I could better parse other people's papers to understand how their notation, their ideas,

fit into the things that I've already built in my mind. And so, like, the type of thing that I'm excited about more so is just, you know, can I take Inspire up this database of all the different papers in the field and try to, like, use large language models or whatnot just for fun to see, like, how much I can try to parse, like, the different concepts that are appearing in these papers. And I think it's a fun game to be like, okay,

when I'm asked to explain something publicly, why am I so shitted? I think I've spent a lot of years, instead of getting better at public speaking, thinking like, why the hell am I so bad at it? And I think there's these tradeoffs between, you know, we are selected for, or at least in our job, it's better if you are not sacrificing accuracy. And so anytime you're making an analogy, there's so many caveats, the caveats get in the way of the intuition going through, and then sometimes you don't even think that way. So it's just like, can I try to, like, see the structure of the thing I'm studying a little bit

better by playing around with it within the scope of things that I know. So I'm like that. So I'm super excited just for the fact that like I can experiment with that all I want to because before I might need to like be better at coding in Python or like understand the inspire have ABI keys and that's API calls. And then that's like automatic now. So you get to basically just have fun and I like that a lot. And so for me I just want to basically understand better like like what is the information

content of what I work. Right? Like in the human sense, not in the ADS-C-fety sense. Right on. Yeah. Let's talk about the physics race between the U.S. and China. Yeah. Who's winning?

I mean, I think the U.S. is still, like, I mean, sorry, but, no, obviously, I'm sorry. I think this is like, and I think this is something where I'm happy to hear your side of it, too, a bit more, because I know, like, everybody who has any sort of military background has a different view or conception of China than, like, probably because physics is so useless that the type of physics that I do is seen as that, that it's nice because everybody can be able to be able to. part of it. So we love this notion that like doesn't matter what country you're from, you're contributing to like this corpus. And to be fair, everything that we're doing or publishing on archive for this. So it's not like there's IP involved and like various IP policies can affect things. So like I like the fact that there's some little slice of research that's so far away from replication, but like everybody can be a part of it and it's not like what country you're in.

And so when I see things like about like China funding an experiment, it's like, you know, someone top down could just say we're going to fund it. hey, it's an experiment. And honestly, maybe it's a good thing if they're spending money on trying to be better at, like, research for just the, like, the type of research that's just for the clout and not for, like, the military tech or something like that. And I'm like, like, make them, let them build clients, right? But I do think that the pipeline of transferable technology is much slower than it's actually building a technology. Right. So, so, I mean, my attitude is I could see that there is, and this is, and this is,

type of thing too. I think that, you know, very strong, like, top-down governance can do, and also different relaxations of, like, IP laws. Like, there's a power to that that you can see kind of Europe maybe over-regulating things compared to, like, USAI, right? So I like to think that as we are right now, and I still think it's more feasible to say that, like, the research that I do is so much less about the practical applications, and the technology for, like, these space specs like detector is, I still think that the European Space Agency, one Lisa, that, or whatever the name is going to be, that the U.S. as a part of will outperform this particular one I think that you were referring to, Tiancine or something. But I think it's great that like,

if they cared about it, they would fund it versus like you have a hard time sometimes convincing the American taxpayer that this is worth funding, you know, so. So you think they were ahead. We are ahead, yeah. And I, but I think that like, again, it's like, what do you want to be ahead on? Like, isn't it great that, like, they spend their money on the things that we don't value doing eventually, you know, type of thing. If there's a reason why we don't value doing it, maybe it's great that they're doing it. What are they doing that we're not doing? Oh, I just think that they have, like, sorry, for example, there's a lot of, I'm not sure if it's a good thing.

So, again, these could be, like, different people have different, I mean, I don't know what level you want to consider it as a regime versus a person or like what. But like there's a faculty member at Harvard or like it was there who has a lot of influence in China, which is great because then he can have research centers and he can hire people who wouldn't get jobs in America. So I think what I'm saying is that, you know, in America it's like, oh, we only want like the top person to like get a job or like these like elite things and we can get it from all over the world. And that's what we typically do. And then their route is like there's a lot of awesome people that are never going to get a job in the U.S. system. We can hire them there. And it sometimes works, but also right now is still very isolating. So, like, the U.S. would choose not to do that.

Like, we don't want to just hire a bunch of more faculty because, you know, but then once we've made that choice, they're optimizing, given that constraint, what can they do that's valuable. And I think that then, like, there's a reason why we made our choice, right? And that still has an effect of like everybody that I know like it's really hard to, it's really hard in like Indian China, I think, to like break out of those systems unless you happen to have an advisor or someone you knew who was in the U.S. system, which is insane. Like I mean, I feel bad for like the researchers. It's just like it's so sociological in some sense. Like you can't just have a brilliant idea and like get to be a part of this like club in some sense

because again it's not just a it's almost more like you can't if you don't speak the language or the right way, people don't think you know what you're talking about. or they don't understand you. And so there's like pipelines that are very limited and very much go through the U.S. and out, almost like go through like Princeton, Stanford, like Harvard, MIT and out, you know. And that sucks. But that definitely just says that it's not like we're behind in that sense, right? Are there any projects going on in China that you're excited about?

I mean, I'm less of an experimental list type of price. And I think a lot of, I mean, I'm excited for my phenomenological buddies. if they think that they can get somebody to fund an experiment that the U.S. wouldn't prioritize. I'm happy for them. I still think the things that I'm more excited about are still in Silicon Valley as far as I'm concerned. But that's my own bias is my own.

What about the U.S.? Are there any projects here that you're excited about? I mean, so... That you're not involved in. I probably don't know all the cool projects that people are doing. I think that just the way that we... I mean, in the U.S., there's a lot more money that can go into innovation in a way that when the time skills for research in a company

are so comparable to the ones in academia, sometimes that rubs me the wrong way. Like, I think that we're good at, there isn't a problem of putting money into innovation. So the question of, like, whose hands is it going to house of control? But it's definitely the exciting things in the states. You can move fast and break things in a way that I don't think you can in many other places. But probably in China, IP laws would be such that unless, like, I mean, however we follow the law with, like, copyrighted material for training things. I imagine that they could have had a lot of.

They couldn't have done that better, right? Because they don't care if they don't. Maybe I don't know the actual setup. But a system who doesn't care about IP can definitely, you know, do cool things and something. What do you think about all these UFOs and UIP sightings and stuff? I don't know. I wish they were real. It would be cooler.

But no, I don't think. I believe in aliens, but I don't believe in like aliens that have contacted us. You believe in aliens? Oh, in general. I mean, there's statistically. I mean, so like, I think there's a fun thing. So either we're super, super special or, like, sure, there probably are, why wouldn't there be life somewhere else? Where are the initial conditions for where we are so special?

I think that, you know, people who study, like, I don't do this myself, but, like, there's some, the fact that you haven't interacted with them gives you some bounds on how common it can be or, like, whether they need to be, like, in some environment where you can have water or all these types of fun things. But sure, I think that, like, I mean, unless, I mean, if anything, if anything, if anything, is called tension with religion and stuff too. Like, I think there's no reason to think you're special unless there is a reason that you're special. And so modding out by or maybe the prior being,

like we're probably not special, would tell you, sure, there's some, something like an alien somewhere. Will you ever interact with it? You don't know. But I don't believe in, like, necessarily, like, I definitely, like, I wish that we had talked to aliens. I'd have been cool.

Like, no way. So you think all these sightings are bullshit? Oh, that's hard. I mean, I want to, yeah, but I don't want to say it. Like, that's mean to say, like, that people don't believe what you see type of thing. But because I'm saying, like, I wish, if it weren't bullshit, wouldn't that be more fun? I think what I'm saying is, like, I wish things were as cool.

All these conspiracy theories make it seem like there's much more structure in organization than there is. Like, I'm just like, I mean, maybe. I'm with you. Maybe your bias, though, is that you've seen the military when it works fucking well and, like, that there is some cool shit that I wish I knew about. I've never seen like the kind of, like, the kind of, like, in the military that go into the water

and have riveted propulsion systems or whatever I don't know yeah I've never seen anything I don't I think I've only seen stuff on the news Yeah but I think what I'm saying is like I don't believe the news I know That's yeah it's funny

I don't know how many people are actively I think that we don't always give credit to the fact that People cannot realize their biases or that they are Self-Surfing sometimes like I mean like I don't know how much of it's like just Machiavellian or like emergent Machiavellian or whatever it would be like The one that really gets me is the Nimitz. Oh, wait, sorry, is that more? I don't know.

You don't know about the Nimitz? I don't know, I guess not. Multiple people saw it. It was some kind of a, what was it? It was like an egg-shaped, whatever projectile. And it went in the water. I don't believe it lost any speed. I'm out of the water.

Pilots saw it. people on the ship saw it. Okay. A lot of, it was a collective. That's super cool. I wish, I mean, I always thought these things are.

You haven't heard about this? I'm, I'm, I mean, you're in a different, like, a set of, like,

like, internet feeds. We definitely live in different worlds. Which is, no, but that's, and that's fine in the sense of, like,

I know that I have biases coming from, like, the experience of, like, like, who I would have, like, kind of,

spend a lot of time around. But, um, no, I mean, I mean, I think I always thought maybe it's cool military projects. I don't know.

And then like sometimes like optical illusions for like it being if it was physically impossible. That's what I want to ask you about. Yeah. Why how could it be an optical illusion? I mean, I don't know. I haven't seen the thing to to know that answer. But I mean like first of all, it's going to be more fun now that you can AI generate

stuff. Like we're going to have like a real like fake news out scale accidentally or militia. I don't know like that. That's scary. And then the other side, I don't understand the extent to which things are physically impossible for it to be a, just some, like, whatever, drone or something you don't know. In this case, I'm not talking about this example of going into the water. It sounds good.

But I think what I'm saying is that, yeah, I guess someone is, like, when someone does believe it is that thing, they're so confident in alien and not, like, whatever, why do they think the alien can do something that we can't do? Because if it's all the laws of physics, then probably it's the same capability. So then it's just a question of, like, how advances the U.S. military or other, whatever. or what are you actually seeing versus what you think you're seeing because you're again extrapolating

based on other things that you're used to looking at. Could it be a hologram? No, no, I'm not going to go there. That'd be a fun. I don't get a little quote for that. But, no, I think again, I'm saying more in the literal sense

of like you're probably misunderstanding what it's being seen if there's a reason why it physically couldn't be some military tech, is my prior. I'd love to be wrong. Could we project a hologram? I mean, I think what I'm saying, like, I mean, sorry, to the extent,

I don't see any reason why you couldn't do a little, like, come some save me. What's the quote from the, like, Princess Leia? I don't know. Like, that type of thing, which is the more literal version of the hologram, not the one that I would study. I don't know where laser shows are at nowadays or exactly what.

But see, the thing is I always, I think I always take the more pragmatic attitude of, like, build cool shit. Like, don't ask what is actually true, like, try to engineer a thing so that it is if it's possible. But, yeah, maybe it's less cool for the UFO type of thing. But, like, you know, imagine the thing that would have to be true for that to be real. Do you believe it's true or do you want it to be true or do you not want it to be true? Like, what's the conclusion that you draw if there's, like, really some, like, deep state type of thing that's hiding all these alien cool stuff.

I think it's all bullshit. Exactly. I do too. All of it. Yeah, but like the person who then doesn't think it's bullshit. has this probably in their mind, like a more, like, powerful versions of the U.S. government having, like, some really cool, like, men in black tech, right? I don't know. That's kind of appealing or fun. Like, I, yeah, I just, I think that we need to. I mean, it's a fun thing to think about it. Yeah, to lay off the conspiracies and make the cool stuff, like, that you can do. I like, you know what I mean? There's a lot of stuff that's, like, same isomorphism class of, like, that's fucking cool, like, this, like, whatever, like, Autonomous F-35 thing you're talking about. Like, there's some cool shit that we can do. What did you just say? Oh, like, you were, like, I was through, someone was going around and showing me the different things that you had.

Oh. I forget one of your teammates was showing the, um, some, like, a scaled down model of a military type of thing that a private company was doing. I don't know what. But, um, but no, there's, I don't know. I, I, yeah. I think, I wish that, yeah. It'd be fun if, like, people, like, if it wasn't just defense funding that got to do the cool shit. You know, like.

I'm with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're wrapping up the interview. What are you getting into next? I think I'm getting into being a shitty vibe coder and just seeing,

getting to have fun, like, do my physics. And then on the side, kind of try to look at this bigger scale picture of the corpus and see how far I can go with a little, like, do it yourself type of attitude until I need help. And then ask for help. Love it. Love it. Well, Sabrina, this was fascinating. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

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