183 | Michael Dine on Supersymmetry, Anthropics, and the Future of Particle Physics
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
Sean Carroll | Wondery
4.8 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2022
⏱️ 100 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Modern particle physics is a victim of its own success. We have extremely good theories — so good that it’s hard to know exactly how to move beyond them, since they agree with all the experiments. Yet, there are strong indications from theoretical considerations and cosmological data that we need to do better. But the leading contenders, especially supersymmetry, haven’t yet shown up in our experiments, leading some to wonder whether anthropic selection is a better answer. Michael Dine gives us an expert’s survey of the current situation, with pointers to what might come next.
Support Mindscape on Patreon.
Michael Dine received his Ph.D. in physics from Yale University. He is Distinguished Professor of Physics at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz. Among his awards are fellowships from the Sloan Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, American Physical Society, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the Sakurai Prize for theoretical particle physics. His new book is This Way to the Universe: A Theoretical Physicist’s Journey to the Edge of Reality.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host Sean Carroll. So physics, |
| 0:04.8 | it's in a crisis. Have you heard that? Have you heard the physics in crisis? We're in trouble |
| 0:09.2 | because we haven't found new particles. Super symmetry and string theory and dark matter have been |
| 0:15.3 | proposed as these wonderful theories, but no experimental evidence has yet been brought forward |
| 0:20.7 | that these might be on the right track. We are lost in our own thoughts sitting in our arm chairs |
| 0:26.8 | rather than confronting the reality of the world in a direct way. Or so we are told. I don't |
| 0:32.1 | think it's quite that simple. I don't think the physics is in a crisis, but there is something |
| 0:36.1 | really, really interesting from the kind of history of science point of view about the present |
| 0:41.4 | moment in fundamental physics and particle physics and cosmology, namely that we are really, |
| 0:47.1 | really good at explaining the data. You know, we have theories, the standard model of particle |
| 0:51.2 | physics, the core theory, general relativity, the standard model of cosmology. We're almost too good. |
| 0:57.3 | We have these theories that fit all the data we have, but also we think we have really good reason |
| 1:03.8 | to believe that these theories are not the final answers. It's easy to come up with questions |
| 1:08.1 | we can ask. These theories don't provide sensible answers to. So that puts us in a bit of a pickle |
| 1:14.0 | in terms of how to make progress, right? I mean, we would like to build bigger and more powerful |
| 1:19.2 | instruments to probe the natural world, whether they be particle accelerators or observatories, |
| 1:25.5 | dark matter detectors, etc. But we don't know exactly what we're looking for. So where are we? |
| 1:31.7 | Why aren't we somewhere else? Are we driven to questions like the multiverse and the |
| 1:36.8 | anthropic principle? Is it okay to be driven there or is it somehow embarrassing to be driven |
| 1:42.3 | there? That's what's on the table today. We have as our guest Michael Dynan, extremely distinguished |
| 1:47.6 | particle theorist. Michael is maybe the leading person over the last few decades at taking ideas |
| 1:54.8 | from big picture questions about string theory, supersymmetry, etc., and connecting them to |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Sean Carroll | Wondery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Sean Carroll | Wondery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.