Conversation
with Physicist Brian Schwartz - March 9, 2006
Brian
Schwartz
Vice
President for Research and Sponsored Programs and
Co-Director, The New Media
Lab
The
Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
===============================================================
PG
- I'm looking for metaphors from this discussion that I can pull out for the Big
Bang text.
BS
- Before we start I want to give you some information about a dance piece by Liz
Lehrman. She uses dancers of all ages.
PG
- Like the dancers in the Mark
Morris Dance Group and the Netherlands
Dance Theater.
BS
- We were at her studio in Tacoma Park, WA. I'd never seen improvising in dance.
In music and theater, yes. She had all the dancers improvise
to the word "fit." They immediately all came together like parts of
a kinetic machine, using the metaphor. I went there with an astrophysicist friend
and so we gave the the phrase "Big Bang" and
they improved to it and it was sensational.
The
idea in Lehrman's piece, Ferocious
Beauty, was based upon the Human Genome. The dancers lined up into two lines
like strands of DNA and they would combine and break, repeat etc. They were being
playful with it.
PG
- I'd like the idea of different colored costumes. Four for
the four amino acids.
BS
- No, it was just scientists lining them up and letting them do their dance. It
was humorous. There was a fun to it. It wasn't really scientific, it was just
fun.
PG
- All art is absurd if you think about it and the funniest stuff, for me, comes
from a sincerity akin to Charlie Chaplin's example.
===============================================================
BS
- When I teach my class, and somebody says that they have troubles, what I say
to them is:
"Every
second on the Sun 600 million tons of hydrogen are being converted to 596 million
tons of helium and 4 million tons are disappearing according to E=MC2,
every second. This has been going on for
5 billion years and will go on for another
5 billion years. This star is one of a hundred billion in our galaxy and there
are billions of galaxies - and you're worried
about something?"
The
problem is the smallness of this tiny piece of the Universe that we occupy. The
action that is going on is so tiny compared to the vastness of this, with the
Laws of Physics going on. Stars are exploding; stars are being formed together
etc. It is almost frightening to comprehend.
PG
- OK. Here's one narrative idea:
"I
don't know if you should even be hearing this because it's so amazing we're even
here at all. The Universe, let alone our consciousness of it, isn't impossible,
it's just so incredibly improbable that this thing came together and that we can
experience it. It's amazing that we are even talking about it right now."
I
think that I want to start the piece out along those lines as if in place of,
when in public speaking we are taught to warm up the audience with an ice-breaking
joke. However, this is a very serious "joke."
BS
- Ultimately, when anybody thinks about our place in the Universe, one has
to have a metaphorical way of looking at it.
PG
- How about a prelude? The prelude would be the Quantum Gravity Era (QGE) and
as far as I'm concerned, everything was just fine then: a big misty fog with tiny,
tiny bits of matter coming into being and disappearing. But then what happened? Was it a brane bumping into another brane? Was it like
out of the Twilight
Zone's A Penny for Your Thoughts
where a guy throws a quarter into a newsstand box and it lands standing on its
edge and gives him special powers until it gets toppled over later in the day?
Once again, it's not impossible just incredibly improbable.
Are we experiencing something like that, something so unusual?
That
is the kind of subjectivity that I am trying to bring into the piece. And
then, after that as a kind of prelude, it could lead up to the Big Bang but
I want it to have that kind of mystery about it. It could be a nice way to start,
the QGE, as far as we can project and imagine it. Once the Big Bang hits and starts
the second section of the show…well, I have a problem with a "BANG!"
sound. Firstly, there would have been no air or ears to make and perceive sound
as we know it.
BS
- I think that is a very good idea and yet leads me to say: I would think that
what would be interesting is going backwards
in Time. What everybody has trouble with, and how I'd like to keep it simpler
in a sense, that branes and fancy stuff like that, what people want to know is:
what was there before the Big Bang?
So,
you get these questions and us scientists just say, "Well, before the Big Bang Time
didn't exist and space didn't exist etc." So I'm thinking about music, "What
if there was no Time?" Now, I'm challenging you because music and Time go
together.
PG
- This brings us back to the music of John
Cage and how his music sometimes reflected the discoveries of Quantum Mechanics
i.e. we are all one field. When one has a number of musicians having random figures
to play, in their separate tempi, and they're excellent musicians we'd hope, their
lines coincide once in a while and create occasional aggregate melodies which
just appear and float away, like matter in the QGE.
BS
- Exactly something like that. Still though, what would music be like in no Time?
In other words, ah, this is a question which I do not have the answer for.
PG
- In my field we call that music that is aperiodic.
BS
- But that has Time.
PG
- Aperiodic means that it has no rhythm, no pulse. The musicians just have sequences
of notes on the page that are played rhythmically randomly. Chance
music. As far as the audience is concerned (the perceiver) they will combine
these events into logical, perceptible quanta, off-chance melodies. Our desire
is to make sense of all we see and hear, no?
BS
- OK, maybe that could be a way of doing it. The question is,
when would somebody be aware of Time coming into being? When would somebody recognize
from your music that Space came into being? Because, what's implied at the Big
Bang, is that both Space and Time got created at that point in the "explosion."
Again,
the best way of dealing is that of the model of a balloon. There is a balloon,
and it's only the surfaces of it that we know about, and as the balloon blows
up there is more and more surface. Forget about knowing what's inside or outside
of the balloon for a moment, but that's all that's happening but that's all there
is, so…
PG
- As far as my love of counterpoint goes, there is another strand that I want
to weave into the piece and that's the separation of the Four Forces. The first
one being Gravity, and as far as I concerned, that's the rhythm of the piece in
a metaphorical sense. The after that…
BS
- There's the Strong Force. Then after that the Electroweak Force which then…
PG
- Like, I want to have four musicians play in unison and then to separate out
into two lines of counterpoint and then they
can separate out into all the other Forces. Well, maybe I'll find a way to cheat
around that hard and fast rule. I mean, it has to be something that one would
want to listen to! But the idea is that there'll be more and more counterpoint
as the piece expands, at least when it's representing linear Time. I'm planning
on using these four musicians plus the narrator, a role I'm calling The Astronomer which, even though played
by Charles Liu at our shows, could be played by anyone of any sex, age or race.
The
thing that sort of drags me down musically is that I don't wish to create a piece
that basically cools down as Time goes on. I don't want the most exciting part
to be at the beginning.
BS
- Remember though that as the Universe expands it becomes more and more complex.
PG
- That's where the counterpoint will come in.
BS
- Maybe the thing is that, as it's becoming more spacious, it becomes more complex,
more interesting, more varied. It's not just expanding homogenously,
it's expanding and getting some specialties. Specialties like stars, like planets,
and the ultimate specialty, Life.
PG
- OK then, a musical metaphor could be that, as it expands, it can still be slowing
down but the music could be constantly bifurcating so that's how it could become
more and more intricate. If it starts out in pulses of quarter-notes
(when it does achieve a pulse), it could slow down but split into eighth-notes,
then sixteenth-notes, thirty-second-notes etc. Much like
a Balinese gamelan model. That's what I'm thinking and will make this seem
like, well I don't want to say fractal,
but I'll say fractal.
BS
- Well then, the other thing you could get in is Chaos. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
states that everything is cooling off, expanding and becoming more and more homogenous.
That's only true on the big scale. On the small scale, Life comes about and, counter
to the increase of entropy, we can build buildings etc. So, I see within the Big
Bang and the creation of the Universe, at the same time, the "Creator"
was smart enough to allow exceptions. These exceptions are, you know, the exceptions
of the geniuses of the people as well.
PG
- So, even as we get smaller, down to the Quantum level where everything becomes
one, on our scale I am me and you are you, that's a chicken, that's a pear, that's
an apple…
BS
- That's right. That's what's exceptional about it. That at the same time it allows
for organizations that allowed for Life. It could have been that, whatever it
was, that it didn't allow for it. We still argue about
whether life is a universal thing. There is this famous equation, The
Drake Equation or The Green Bank Equation and Carl Sagan was a proponent of
it, which is the formula for life occurring.
The
rate of the formulation of stars, planets, how close the planets are to the suns
etc. They keep multiplying the formula and get a very small number. But,
this very small number multiplied by the number of stars makes it almost a certainty
that there is life elsewhere.
PG
- As we know it.
BS
- Well, people get worried, and this is a very sophisticated point of view, that
there are certain numbers that are anthropomorphic that say, "We are here
because we are here," and that if anything were slightly off i.e. if the
speed of light were a little faster or slower…
PG
- …if the Earth's axis was tilted a couple of degrees more in either direction…
BS
- …that all kinds of things would never have occurred. That's a very sophisticated
point of view. There are two arguments: whether the planet was placed right or
not and the second being whether the fundamental numbers of nature would allow
life.
PG
- There's around 20 numbers, right?
BS
- There are many, many numbers. Some fundamental natures
would never allowed an atom, it would never exist. Some
fundamental natures would never have allowed a proton. In other words, things
would not have existed because what they're
made out of would never have existed so we wouldn't even consider it.
PG
- In the Nova series "The
Elegant Universe" they try to stress, and I'm sure you've seen it or
know of the concept, that they use a model called "A Universe Machine"
which uses around 20 or so numbers that represent all of those factors that if
any were "off" by a couple of points…
BS
- …even a part of a tenth of a tenth…
PG
- …yeah, anything like 0.07 instead of 0.08…
BS
- …then the whole world would be different.
===============================================================
PG
- So, what I came for is…well, you see that I have an idea how the piece could
begin and end but what about all the stuff in-between? Now after the Big Bang,
if you look at the sheet I gave you (a Big Bang timeline) I just wanted to know
your reflections and metaphors in your own words. I know the science is the science
but to please add anything that you could say about it point by point. Just
a take on each thing.
BS
- What is interesting at Planck Time…
PG
- 10-43 seconds…
BS
- Yes. What is interesting to a physicist, that is almost incomprehensible to
the public is, that we can run the movie of this world backwards.
That is, back to 10-43 seconds. We physicists really believe that we
understand everything back to that. We can't go back to Time=0 but we can go back
to Time=10 over 43 zeros. It's like a movie running backwards and we can do that.
PG
- If this were the game of horseshoes that's pretty close!
BS
- All the Laws of Physics, all that we know, do not break down until that point.
There's no doubt about it. Again, this is a film running backwards.
PG
- They don't break down until Planck Time.
BS
- Yes. Then if someone asks, "What happened before that?,"
then it begins to become a question which has no meaning. We believe that Time
got created then, that Space got created then so we cannot answer even though
the normal question we be, "And what happened before that?" We duck
the question by saying, "It didn't exist."
PG
- They're working on it!
BS
- Some parts of String Theory deals with Time, and whether Time is continuous.
Is it discrete after Planck Time, in units of Planck Time because you can't divide
up Time any finer than that.
PG
- Is that because we're human and logic as we know it tells us that something
must have happened before that. But like you said, all we can know (experience) is only what goes back to that point.
BS
- Now this is even harder in my view…with Quantum Mechanics, which was discovered
in the 20s and even Einstein wasn't happy with it, we were able to see manifestations
of QM in our transistors, computers etc. and that the world that we really know experiences it. Now, the concept of Quantum Time, there's
nothing that we're close to experiencing it, we don't know what it means, we
don't know how it's used. It's just so far beyond.
PG
- In everything I've read, everything I've seen, the basic thing that every undergraduate
learns, is how we cannot rectify the very large with the very small i.e. Relativity
and QM. They make sense in their separate realms but they disagree with each other
tremendously.
BS
- What was always really nice, and I've always thought that, there is a movie
called The
Powers of Ten. Did you see it?
PG
- As a kid.
BS
- What is so wonderful about that film is that it goes from the human scale all
the way to the edge of the Universe. Then it goes from the human scale all the
way to the scale of a nucleus. And in order to understand the edge of the Universe
and the inside of a nucleus you're really into Quantum Particles and all. It's
really like a cycle, you come full circle.
I've
always wanted to teach a course where each week I'd spend at a different dimension
(scale). The course would be called Dimension
One. I'd start out with the biggest dimension, or rather,
I'd start with the smallest dimension. I'd start with sub-atomic particles and
String Theory then I'd build up. Next would be protons and neutrons, after quarks,
then I'd get to atoms, then molecules, then I'm beginning
to do some chemistry. Then I'm putting molecules together and then I'm doing biology
- organs and proteins, then I keep building up. I get to the human scale then
I doing biology/anatomy and sociology. Then cities and geology
and volcanoes. Then I'd go to the sun etc. and so on.
I
thought it would be a very good survey course for the non-science major. You could
have imagined that I could have taught the course using Time as a dimension: from
the smallest unit of Time, Planck Time, through the Inflationary Period and up
(pointing to the Big Bang chart). So I imagine courses called Dimension
One or Time One as a very good way
of knowing everything you wanted to know about science because at every dimension
you're into a different field: atomic, nuclear etc.
===============================================================
PG
- Back to the piece…the biggest thing for me to map out according in Real Time
is the linear time of the Big Bang events. Because, (makes swooshing sound), so much happens in the smallest amount of time. It keeps going through
powers of ten. I think the best way is to just go the sequence of events in chronological
order instead of power of ten because it'll be so hard to perceive on the human
scale. The Big Bang and then Planck Time and then the Inflationary Period…
BS
- The Inflationary Period, that's such a strange Idea. Suddenly Space increases
by 1050.
PG
- Can you give me a visual metaphor? The Universe goes from the size of a pea
to the size of a stadium?
BS
- No, no, no! The size of a pea to…
PG
- …the size of our planet?
BS
- No, bigger than the Universe is. The Universe got created, um, if you know what
a Light Year is…?
PG
- 186,000 miles per second.
BS
- Way, way, way bigger than that, just gigantic. What happened is that,
very suddenly, and what is not yet understood… Our Universe is 13 billion years
old. So, what you could say is like, if I could look at 13 billion years I could
look at the edge of our Universe. Not true! Because of this expansion that occurred
(spread arms out wide), because now if we look here (holds fingers together
into a fine point), and let light move out from here it filled just a small
part (hands form a globe) of the Universe (spreads arms out wide).
PG
- Are you saying that there was a time when things moved faster than light?
BS
- The Space. You see, that's the thing.
It's not the motion of things, things that are moving apart, but the Space, the
Space itself expanded. So two things that were once close together are now almost
infinitely apart and these things cannot communicate. Now if I had a calculator
I could calculate, over 13 billion years of expansion it might be trillions and
trillions and trillions of years before the light could travel between our two
points. It's a very strange concept that the Universe inflated the way it did.
How we know that it might be true…
PG
- Yes, what was observed?
BS
- …is that there is a certain flatness
to the Universe and the only way that this flatness could have come about is that
it had to have spread out quickly. Otherwise, the Universe would have been a lot
more lumpy. Then, these pictures from the COBE
satellite or whatever that satellite is…
PG
- Is it like if I drop a lump of oatmeal on the floor as opposed to if I slammed
it on the floor it would spread out so much further? Is it unlike that?
BS
- No, no. It's as if the distance between two points suddenly got so far
apart that they will no longer ever communicate. In other words, let's put it
this way: if you and I were near each other then the expansion occurred (spreads
arms out), I would have a little circle around me where I'd know everything
about the 13 billion years around me and you'd have the same circle of 13 billion
years around where you are, but we'd still be incredibly far apart and Time would
have to go on for a long, long, long
time before we could ever think of communicating. And I mean a long time. I could do a calculation at
some point but it's just so different from what most people are thinking.
You
know, it was only when I taught this did I understand it well. If this room was
the size of the Universe we can only see this much of it (with forefinger draws
a small circle on opposite palm), a small circle of 13 billion years and that's
small compared to this room. You see, most people think in simple terms: that
the Big Bang occurred and that for 13 billion years things have been expanding
out.
PG
- That's what I've been accepting but you say that's not right.
BS
- No, it's not. It's much richer than that, it's much more mysterious than that.
PG
- You're saying that's all we'll ever be able to perceive?
BS
- All we can see are these 13 billion years. I have this fantasy: the COBE satellite
is getting very close to, like the face of God or something but, that's just what
we can see. But another person in another
part of the Universe, far way, and I don't mean the brane type thing, I mean in
another part of our Universe, we'll
just never communicate with them. It's
too beyond. So that is what Inflation has given us. 10 to the 50 zeros is,
wow, it's a big number.
If
you and I were here we'd just get so far apart. Again, it happened in a fraction
of a second. It's so far apart and it's beyond the speed of light. If you and
I were talking with each other and now suddenly because of the expansion of the
Universe (Inflation) that in 13 billion years we still can't talk to one another.
Well yeah, it could happen someday, if the Universe lasts long enough but we're
not talk 13 billion years but billions and billions and billions of years.
PG
- You mean it would take so long that it's even a question of if the Universe
would last that long?
BS
- It's not a question of whether the Universe would last. Most people think that
if I took 13 billion years and everything that it's surrounding, that I would
know everything that I could know about the Universe. If I put out a light ray
for 13 billion years in all directions, that would be the Universe. No. That's
a very, very small part of the Universe and that's not understood by most people.
PG
- Well explained. Thanks.
BS
- Now, check with Charles. I'm not an astronomer. I'm a solid-state physicist.
PG
- Thanks, that's good.
===============================================================
BS
- After that there's radiation filling the Universe. That a period at 10-12
seconds where what happens is that there's a certain amount of energy, a soup
of gluons, protons and other sub-atomic particles. Things are so hot that they're
banging into each other and they can't really form atoms. It's just too hot. It's
like, we may be attracted to each other but things are moving too fast so they
fly apart.
Whereas,
when things slow down we'd be unable to break that bond. You and I will end up
being connected. At that point the proton will form. Now there's a real particle
that exists and stays there. Eventually, not only will a proton form but an atom
will form. So, since the things that make up the proton stay together, atoms will
come next.
PG
- Is that where the Strong Force comes in?
BS
- The Strong Force is what is going to keep the nucleus together. The question
that people don't understand when I'm out here describing the Strong Force is:
you learned in elementary school that like-charges dislike each other, they hate
each other. They repel. North repels North in terms of poles, South repels South
etc. Most students when they learn science, and the question that is never
really asked is about Helium.
Helium
is supposed to be two protons and two neutrons, but for the moment, two protons.
The protons are positively charged. How can two protons, which hate each other,
which want to repel each other, be fit inside this nucleus and they're so close together? I know if I take one proton of Hydrogen
and take another proton of Hydrogen and try to move then together, they don't want to move together. If I could
that'd be fusion, like the sun works
with Gravity and temperature and all.
How
could I get them together? To stay together as Helium? What it is the force after Gravity
called the Strong Force and a very strange force it is because at far distances
it doesn't act, the Electromagnetic repulsion…
PG
- Right, it all happens within…
BS
- …only when I get them close together within 10-13 cm and then pffft! They like each other suddenly. They outweigh the repulsion even
though they'll still trying to push apart. They still
have the same charge, they still hate each other but the Strong Force outweighs
it.
PG
- Well, what I know is Gravity and the Electromagnetic forces reach is infinite
and the other two have to be so close together.
BS
- Yes and the short range is the size of a nucleus: 10-15 m or 10-13
cm.
PG
- Thanks.
===============================================================
BS
- I think with the music…
PG
- Oh, I'll take care of the music! What we're doing right now is fantastic.
BS
- I'm trying to think of metaphors. Again, I like the idea of backwards.
PG
- You like the idea of backwards.
BS
- Yes I do. I like the idea that somehow I'm going to run the film in reverse.
Ever see a film of somebody playing on a pool table and how all the balls go apart?
Well, if you run the film backwards all the balls come together. So, what's interesting
about this is, like the film, the Laws of Physics work forwards and backwards. So I can get back to where I was by reversing the film.
That's how we physicists conceive the Big Bang.
PG
- Hmm. For me that works better musically. The whole show could be called the
Big Bang Backwards, like in the Three Bs, which works as a musical joke too.
BS
- But you'll ask how did we get there? In other words, you don't want to start
off like "BANG!" of something like that. Musically you might, and people
might see it metaphorically:
"We're
here now and we're experiencing music. I'm going to take you back to the creation
of Space and Time, but quickly, a little bit like The
Powers of Ten. We're going to get you right in there. There's all this
music and, again I'm speaking metaphorically, and rapidly I'm going to go back
to where there is no Space, there is no Time, and then I'm going to take you forward
much more slowly, through all the evolutions of the past until I get you back
where we are."
That's
my metaphor for thinking about something like this.
PG
- This is really helpful. So, I don't have to tell the story in linear time.
BS
- Forward and backward. It also makes it like, I just think
it makes it like, well, everybody who does an artistic piece about the Big Bang
starts it out with an explosion and I think it's not the way to start.
PG
- Yeah. It's just plain old out-and-out corny.
First of all, there never would have been a sound because oxygen didn't exist
yet let alone ears to hear it.
BS
- In fact, what might be interesting again…
PG
- But I'd like to move backwards. Ever see the film Memento?
BS
- Oh yes. That was a very good film and it was very challenging to comprehend.
It really challenged you until you began realizing and then you really get into
it. At the beginning there's this mystery, he's writing on his body etc. It was
wonderful.
PG
- The whole thing about backwards makes it interesting. I could just start out
right NOW and keep going back and that way we're only moving towards something
that gets more exciting.
BS
- It could be that you're moving backwards, and again I like The
Powers of Ten because it did these different dimensions, it went slowly
but in reverse it went like vrrrt!
PG
- Like the whole floor falls out.
BS
- So there's this ability to like (swoops arm), it ruins the whole thing.
It might be that at some points you might want to go backwards and
forward. To waiver a little bit (makes oscillating gestures) and make it really exciting. Like, "Ooh, this is really interesting,
we've got Inflation and let's do that again!" or something like, "Now,
let me replay it a different way."
Half the audience gets it the first time, another quarter the second time etc.
In
teaching, there's this famous story about a Professor Purcell at Harvard giving
a lecture. This is Purcell talking:
"I
explained a concept very, very well. A student gets up and says, 'Professor, I
didn't understand it.' I thought a little bit and explained it a second way. The
student gets up again and says, 'Professor, I still
don't understand it.' I thought some more and explained it a third way. The student
got up again and said he still didn't understand it. I thought even more and explained
it a fourth way at which point I said, "Now, even I
understand it!"
So,
in a sense, the challenge is that you have to think about it one way and then
you have to get away from linearity which I think you do. This is at least a strategy.
PG
- In all my studies about this, I've heard so many people describing these things
in so many different ways, like a single light that refracts through a prism or
an image in a hall of mirrors. Every mirror brings the object into more of a complete
vision of its totality, because, there is
no one way, is there?
