Nobel Prize Winner Rainer Weiss: Feeling Spacetime Shudder: Black Holes, Gravitational Waves and Nobel Prizes! (#105)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2020

⏱️ 112 minutes

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Summary

MIT Physics Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss won a 1/2 share of The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 For his contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves. He was born in Berlin, where his father was a doctor and psychoanalyst and his mother an actress. His father was of Jewish descent, and the family fled Nazism to the United States. After schooling in New York, Weiss studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his doctor’s degree in 1962. After a couple of years at Tufts University and Princeton University, he returned to MIT, which he has been associated with ever since. Rainer Weiss is married and has a daughter and a son. Professor Weiss’ Nobel winning work come out of one consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the existence of gravitational waves. These are like ripples in a four-dimensional spacetime that occur when objects with mass accelerate. The effects are very small. Beginning in the 1970s the LIGO detector was developed. In this detector laser technology is used to measure small changes in length caused by gravitational waves. Rainer Weiss has made crucial contributions to the development of the detector. In 2015 gravitational waves were detected for the first time. 00:00:00 Introduction 00:08:00 Concerns about Getting The Nobel Prize 00:12:55 Imposter Syndrome? You too!? 00:18:46 Theorists V Experimentalists pros and cons 00:23:22 Thoughts on STEM Pedagogy 00:27:21 Essential Skills: using your hands and the role of electronics surplus and music. 00:33:39 Dropping Out And Finding MIT and Atomic Clocks 00:35:52 Philosophy of Experimental Science 00:39:44 Thinkng about Einstein-What’s his most cited paper and why? 00:40:54 How do you know when to quit an experiment? 00:42:26 On LIGO and the art and science of detecting weak signals. 00:48:02 Did you have doubts about detecting gravitational waves? Thoughts on Eisntein’s original work on general relativity. 01:00:00 The nature of scientific collaborations (and rivalries). 01:21:00 The circular logic of singularity theory. 01:22:38 What if there was no big bang? 01:26:56 Why did your MIT Dean draw a huge zero? 01:28:10 Staying at MIT 01:30:34 What’s it like to work on “fringe” projects? 01:33:39 Can experiments get too big? 01:40:00 What would you do with your own billion year time capsule? 01:41:00 What advice would you give your younger self? Watch my most popular videos: Sheldon Glashow: https://youtu.be/a0_iaWgxQtA?sub_confirmation=1 Sir Roger Penrose, Nobel Prize winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMuqyAvX7Wo?sub_confirmation=1 Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/3z8RqKMQHe0?sub_confirmation=1 Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Sir Roger Penrose https://youtu.be/H8G5onAqlVo?sub_confirmation=1 Juan Maldacena’s First Podcast Interview: https://youtu.be/uIzTliTHn7s?sub_confirmation=1 Jim Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Sara Seager Venus LIfe: https://youtu.be/QPsEDoOTU6k?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM ‍♂️ Find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating Find me on Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Each year on December 10, thousands of worshippers convene in Scandinavia to commemorate the death of a man once known as the merchant of death.
0:12.0	This scatological ritual features all the rights and
0:15.2	incantations befitting a Pharaoh's funeral, haunting Dirches play. As the
0:21.5	worshippers be detected and mandatory regalia, mourn the merchant.
0:26.2	He is eerily present.
0:27.2	His visage looms large over the congregants as they feast on exotic game, surrounded by fresh cut flowers, imported from the deceased
0:36.2	merchant of death's mausoleum.
0:39.4	The event culminates with the presentation of gilded graven images bearing his likeness.
0:46.5	This ritual is of course the annual Nobel Prize Award ceremonies, held every year not on the date of Alfred Nobel's birth but on December 10th the day
0:56.1	he left this mortal coil and today you're in for a treat a conversation with a very alive Ray Weiss who those of us who know him
1:07.2	know him to be nothing if not incredibly incredibly interesting provocative mercurial, mischievous and an all-around delight.
1:17.3	I talked to him about so many things in this wide-ranging interview.
1:20.3	It's really one of the highlights of my career and it's fitting we did so on
1:24.1	December 10th, which is today. The anniversary of the great Alfred Nobel's last
1:30.8	breath on this planet. I heard some never before discussed stories about some of the
1:37.8	personalities behind the pursuit of gravitational waves ranging back even to Einstein's day, but even closer to in time to people
1:48.8	who sadly as well have passed away, including Joe Weber and Ron Driever who are characters in my book as well
1:56.2	and losing the Nobel Prize as well as in other accounts of the famous story of detection of
2:01.5	gravitational waves from black holes in 2015 and 2016 in the announcement
2:07.8	that reverberated around the planet resulting in near future. You're going to hear Ray's advice for life and he's a real live wire. He talks
2:26.4	incessantly and persuasively about why it's important to do something you're curious about, even if it means that you
2:35.0	change directions in your career every five years, re-evaluating these fundamental
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