And you can calculate now to a precision of better than a percent the spectrum of all those particles

that were being discovered at Berkeley. This was my dream.

Hi, and welcome to the Origins podcast with Lawrence Krause. This week, I had a discussion with

the theoretical physicist David Gross, who won the Nobel Prize in 2004 for his contributions to understanding one of the four fundamental forces in nature, the strong force, which set the basis and really completed the description of the standard model of particle physics.

A model that's so good, a fundamental theory that's so good, that not only

can we use it to calculate certain processes to 14 dozen places of accuracy and compare them to

experiment, but it's also withstood the test of time for over 50 years, every single observation

at the fundamental scales has been in accord with that theory.

David is one of the preeminent theoretical physicists who's been involved not just in the development of the theory of the strong interaction called quantum global dynamics, for which

you won the Nobel Prize, but also he's one of the founders and developers of what's called

string theory, and we talk about that as well.

Our discussion spanned physics from the 1950s to today, and David has a unique knowledge, not just of theoretical physics, but of the history of physics as well.

I've experienced an incredible series of episodes, and we talked about those and his interaction

with some other well-known physicists.

It was a fascinating discussion, again, I think unique

in illuminating aspects of the process

of scientific discovery and potentially the future of science as well.

I hope you'll enjoy the discussion as much as I did.

With no further ado, here's David Gross.

Well, thank you very much, David,

for allowing me to virtually be with you in your study

and have a conversation.

...