Brian Greene on how the universe is made of string

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jim talks a man who studies the universe at the largest and smallest scales imaginable. When Brian Greene was just twelve years old, he wandered round Columbia University in New York looking for someone to teach him mathematics, with a letter of recommendation from his school teacher. While his mother wanted him to make money, his father encouraged Brian to pursue his passion, which was trying to understand the nature of the universe. He studied physics at Harvard University and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. While at Oxford he learnt about a bold new Theory of Everything which predicts that the universe is made not of particles but rather tiny strings which vibrate in multiple dimensions. Now a Professor at Columbia University, he has worked on string theory ever since. He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the rise and fall of string and superstring theory and why when he first started to think about what would happen to the universe at the end of time, he experienced a feeling of ‘hollow dread’. Producer: Anna Buckley

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and trust me you'll get there in a moment but if you're a comedy fan
0:05.2	I'd really like to tell you a bit about what we do. I'm Julie Mackenzie and I commission comedy
0:10.2	podcast at the BBC. It's a bit of a dream job really.
0:13.0	Comedy is a fantastic joyous thing to do because really you're making people laugh,
0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
0:22.0	But you know I also know that comedy is really
0:24.4	subjective and everyone has different tastes so we've got a huge range of comedy on offer
0:29.6	from satire to silly shocking to soothing profound to just general pratting about. So if you
0:36.2	fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	Welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:43.0	BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts.
0:48.0	Today we're talking about superstring theory,
0:51.0	the idea that at the tiniest length scales far, far smaller than atoms,
0:55.8	matter is made up of strings vibrating in multiple higher dimensions.
1:00.0	Okay, listen, before you switch off, can I just say that of the 7.5 billion people on this planet,
1:06.2	my guest today is very probably the most capable of explaining this difficult subject.
1:11.6	He is Brian Green, professor of physics and mathematics at
1:14.4	Columbia University in New York, and he's a bit of a science superstar. He was
1:19.1	born and raised in New York and as a Rhodes scholar studying in Oxford he became interested in string theory
1:24.8	and went on to make a number of important contributions in the field.
1:28.4	He's also an Emmy Award winning television presenter and his books for which he's probably most famous have
1:34.2	sold over 2 million copies worldwide. Brian Green welcome to the Life Scientific.
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