Brian Keating interviews Sean Carroll about his book Something Deeply Hidden & Many Worlds (#029)
Episode description
Find Sean Carrol online and listen to his Mindscape podcast
Sean M. Carroll is a Research Professor of Physics at CalTech. He is a theorist who thinks about the fundamental laws of nature, especially as they connect to cosmology. His research involves theoretical physics and astrophysics, especially cosmology, field theory, and gravitation. He has worked on questions involving dark matter and dark energy, modified gravity, violations of Lorentz invariance, extra dimensions, topological defects, cosmic microwave background anisotropies, causality violation, black holes, and the cosmological constant problem. Currently, most of his attention is focused on the origin of the universe and the arrow of time, including the roles of inflation, baby universes, and quantum gravity.
Quantum mechanics is the most important idea in physics, and physicists themselves readily admit that they don’t understand it. But rather than treating this situation as an urgent call to action, they have traditionally pretended that the problem isn’t there. In Something Deeply Hidden, Sean Carroll argues that this situation is embarrassing and unnecessary, as we do have a very promising way of understanding quantum reality: the Many-Worlds theory, pioneered by Hugh Everett. This book demystifies the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, explains the Many-Worlds approach at a level never previously attempted in a popular work, and argues that an improved understanding of the foundations of quantum mechanics is crucial to making progress on quantum gravity and the emergence of spacetime.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices