"Unified Field Theory"

World Science Festival
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To Infinity and Beyond: The Accelerating Universe

Published on Jul 15, 2015
​  Dark energy is cosmology's biggest mystery—an anti-gravitational force that confounds the conventional laws of physics. It makes up more than two-thirds of the cosmos, but science is still grappling to explain what dark energy actually is. In this program, top physicists search for clues to this mystery in both the earliest moments of the universe and far into the future of the cosmos.
Josh Frieman, Priyamvada Natarajan,
Adam Riess, Jan Tauber, Neil Turok
Original Program Date: 05/28/2015

A Thin Sheet of Reality: The Universe as a Hologram

World Science Festival

Gerard ’t Hooft, Leonard Susskind, Raphael Bousso, Herman Verlinde
Original Program Date: Friday June 3, 2011
Published on Dec 29, 2014
  What we touch. What we smell. What we feel. They’re all part of our reality. But what if life as we know it reflects only one side of the full story? Some of the world’s leading physicists think that this may be the case. They believe that our reality is a projection—sort of like a hologram—of laws and processes that exist on a thin surface surrounding us at the edge of the universe. Although the notion seems outlandish, it’s a long-standing theory that initially emerged years ago from scientists studying black holes; recently, a breakthrough in string theory propelled the idea into the mainstream of physics. What took place was an intriguing discussion on the cutting-edge results that may just change the way we view reality.

Rebooting the Cosmos: Is the Universe the Ultimate Computer?

Published on Dec 9, 2014

  As computers become progressively faster and more powerful, they’ve gained the impressive capacity to simulate increasingly realistic environments. Which raises a question familiar to aficionados of The Matrix—might life and the world as we know it be a simulation on a super advanced computer? “Digital physicists” have developed this idea well beyond the sci-fi possibilities, suggesting a new scientific paradigm in which computation is not just a tool for approximating reality, but is also the basis of reality itself. In place of elementary particles, think bits; in place of fundamental laws of physics, think computer algorithms. But is this a viable approach? Is the universe the ultimate computer running some grand cosmic code? A discussion among the brightest minds in digital physics to explore math, computer science, theories of consciousness, the origin of life, and free will—and delve into a world of information that may underlie everything.

World Science Festival

Hidden Dimensions: Exploring Hyperspace

World Science Festival

Published on Jan 15, 2015 Extra dimensions of space—the idea that we are immersed in hyperspace—may be key to explaining the fundamental nature of the universe. Relativity introduced time as the fourth dimension, and Einstein’s subsequent work envisioned more dimensions still--but ultimately hit a dead end. Modern research has advanced the subject in ways he couldn’t have imagined. John Hockenberry joins Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, and other leading thinkers on a visual tour through wondrous spatial realms that may lie beyond the ones we experience.
Escher String Quartet, Brian Greene,
Lawrence Krauss, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Shamit Kachru
Original Program date:June 5, 2010

Measure for Measure: Quantum Physics and Reality

Published on Jun 20, 2014
  When no one is looking, a particle has near limitless potential: it can be nearly anywhere. But measure it, and the particle snaps to one position. How do subatomic objects shed their quantum weirdness? Experts in the field of physics, including David Z. Albert, Sean Carroll, Sheldon Goldstein, Ruediger Schack, and moderator Brian Greene, discuss the history of quantum mechanics, current theories in the field, and possibilities for the future.
Participants: David Z. Albert, Sean Carroll, Sheldon Goldstein, Ruediger Schack
moderator Brian Greene Original Program date: May 29, 2014
Published on Oct 3, 2014
​The nature of time is an age-old conundrum for physicists, philosophers, biologists and theologians. The Newtonian picture of time—a kind of cosmic clock that ticks off time in a manner that applies identically to everyone and everything—tightly aligns with our experience. But with special and general relativity, Einstein showed the fallacy inherent in experience: the rate at which time elapses depends on circumstance and environment. These discoveries raise even more basic, long-standing puzzles: What is time? Is it a fundamental feature of reality or something we humans impose on experience? Does time come into existence with the universe or does it transcend it? Why does time exist at all?