Tina Srebrotnjak: Please welcome Robert J.
Sawyer.
[applause]
Robert Sawyer: So, it's a particular pleasure
to get to introduce my old friend, Lee Smolin.
I've had the joy of knowing Lee for a number
of years now.
We've run in into each other at various interesting
conferences and things.
He is a founder and senior faculty member
at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical
Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, although he
was born in New York City.
And he is the author of numerous previous
best sellers, probably most controversially
and famously "The Trouble with Physics", and
his book tonight, that we're gonna be talking
about is "Time Reborn" which actually, as
we will get into over the course of the evening,
is at least as controversial as "The Trouble
with Physics" and is stirring up both lay
interest and a lot of professional interest
because it says something counter to what
has been the prevailing paradigm in Physics.
Let me introduce you to my friend, Lee Smolin.
[applause]
Lee Smolin: Thank you.
I don't see why this should be controversial.
As my mother said, the only people who will
be upset with this book are people who think
there are truths outside of time.
[chuckle] But that's not hardly anybody.
RS: Well, time is very much on my mind today,
Lee, 'cause it happens to be my birthday today
and I can think of...
LS: Happy Birthday.
RS: Well, thank you.
Thank you.
And I can think of no better way to spend
it than with a friend, having an interesting
intellectual conversation.
And given, how much time is on my mind, and
given that the first word in your book's title
is Time, we probably should define our terms.
So, to Lee Smolin, physicist, what is time?
LS: The activity of time is the process which
generates the future out of the present.
How's that?
RS: That's good.
Alright.
Now, alright.
Well, let's look at it this way.
We talk about, as I said, it's my birthday,
53rd birthday.
So, 53 years ago, I was born and all the events
in the interim are fixed and done, immutable,
in your estimation, what about what's to come?
Is Robert J. Sawyer's future life carved in
stone or is there room for things to surprise
me and surprise the universe and what is left
to come?
LS: So, let's do a little bit of method here
because I'm speaking as a human being.
RS: Yes.
LS: And you asked me what I think, and I'll
tell you what I think.
But the point of the book is that I used to
think, I used to have one answer, and I changed
my mind and now have another answer.
RS: Yes.
LS: I'll tell you what those answers are,
in a minute.
And the book is a recounting of the path that
I took to change my mind.
So, I used to think like many colleagues that
the future is completely determined and predictable
from the present.
And one way to recount this is Tom Stoppard
in his play Arcadia, had a character Thomasina.
And I won't get the quote exactly.
We could be boring and read the quote in the
book, but...
RS: But we won't have to pay permission fee
if you don't quote it exactly too.
[laughter]
LS: You see that kind of writer?
But he has this character say, that if one
was really, really smart, or I think a modern
version would be if one was really, really
good at programming a computer, one could
write the equation that would tell all the
future from the present.
And, therefore, the future is fixed in anything
that...
The rest of your life is fixed, the rest of
my life is fixed, and everybody else's here.
And she goes on to say, "Even if nobody can
be so smart as to write that computer program,
the mathematics behind it must exist even
if you could, and therefore, it's hopeless."
RS: Right.
LS: Now, that used to be what was called the
Scientific world view.
It grew out of Newton's work and developments,
later of Einstein and quantum theory and so
forth.
I think, it breaks down.
It's been fine so far as it goes, goes restricting
to little pits of the universe.
I think it's a fine assumption, if you're
controlling everything in the laboratory that
you can probably get the next 10 minutes to
be determined before things wreck you coming
in from the outside.
But, I don't think that it's the right conclusion
when it applies to the universe as a whole.
So, no.
I think the future is open and I think that
this is a scientific world view.
I'm not going mystical on you.
I'm not being romantic.
I'm not trying to say we live in a universe
which is friendly to us.
But I think, we live in a universe that is
a lot friendlier to us than the one that Newton
conceived.
RS: Certainly, when I was in high school we
were taught in physics that if you knew the
momentum and direction of all particles, setting
aside Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and
so forth, then you could predict the future,
and that I was also taught that we lived in
a block universe.
That it was almost like you would...
LS: In high school, they talked about that?
RS: It was a good high school.
Oh, yeah.
I had a great high school teacher, George
Laundry, that almost as if all of time were
motion picture film frames stacked one on
top the other, and that now just happened
to be the frame that was illuminated.
But just because, say, you were watching Casablanca
for the first time, there was no ambiguity
about how it was gonna unschool, whether or
not Ilsa was gonna stay or go with Rick at
the end, was as fixed as the moment you happened
to perceive as now.
And you're saying that's not, in fact...
You've come to around to believing that that's
not in fact, this Minkowski cube used the
term as the not how reality is conceived.
LS: Yes.
And there are two reasons for that.
One reason is that, it's not enough anymore
to ask what are the laws of nature.
This has been a task of science and particularly
physics for three centuries to discover what
are the laws of nature.
And we've made a lot of progress especially
in the 20th century and a little bit even
in the 21st century.
But once you know what the laws of nature
are, there rises another question.
Why those laws?
Why the electron is there?
Why are there electrons and protons and why
is the electron so much lighter than the proton?
Why is the neutron just a little bit heavier
than the proton?
And why is there gravity?
And why is gravity a lot weaker?
There's dozens and dozens of questions like
that.
They're about 'why' these laws.
How did nature, how did the universe choose
these laws rather than different laws that
we can easily, equally well conceive of?
And when you ask that question, you realize
that you have a choice.
LS: You either become a mystic of one version
or another, either a theological mystic or
a mathematical mystic and you say, "There
is some deep reason, blum-blum-blum-blum beyond
our comprehension, why those are the laws."
And then, you're outside of science.
Or you make up some fantasy that there's an
infinite number of other universes in which
all the possible laws are and we just happen
to be in this one.
And you're outside of science for sure.
We can talk about that if anybody disagrees.
Or, you face the power of really explaining
in some scientific way how the laws came to
be what they are.
And the only possible way of doing that, I'm
convinced, is if they change in time.
If the laws are not fixed, if they can change
in time.
This is actually understood by a very smart
philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce in the
1890s.
But, it took a lot for some of us scientist
to begin, in this present period, to begin
to think that, laws, if we're gonna understand
them, they have to have a history like anything
else we understand.
And if they have a history and they change,
and that means you can't predict the future
'cause they might change again.
RS: Let's talk about a couple of things and
I want to preface this 'cause you mentioned
philosophers and philosophy, that amongst
Lee's academic credentials besides what I've
already mentioned is you also have an appointment
in the Department of Philosophy...
S1: I'm so proud.
RS: At the University of Toronto.
I'm delighted for you.
[chuckle] Believe me you're a philosopher
who doesn't get to ask, "Do you want fries
with that?"
This is terrific.
[laughter]
LS: No, really.
I am very proud because I admire them so much
and to be admitted.
Usually, I felt like a guest in the House
of Philosophy, like "you can come for dinner,
but you can't stay".
[laughter]
RS: And these are fundamental philosophical
questions.
I don't want to...
I'm too much of the novelist to not want to
go in linear fashion as we get to the big
reveal that the laws of physics, you believe,
can change.
I want to talk a little bit about something
you set aside because it's the prevailing
paradigm, certainly in science fiction, is
this multiverse notion right now, that there's
all these parallel universes and parallel
realities, a panoply of universes and we happen
to be in one of this multitude.
This idea permeated into science fiction from
the realm of physics 20, 30, 40 years ago.
We learned so forth, 50 years ago.
And now you're saying, "We were wrong to buy
into that.
That there, in fact is...
"
LS: Well, what I've been saying to my friends
when they start to go in that direction, I
say, "Look, fiction is best done by professionals.
And I can introduce you to one."
[laughter]
RS: But it came out of the world of physics,
this notion of parallel universes, multiple
universes, indeed as a solution to that problem
of why this one universe seems so finely tuned
for the existence of complex chemistry and,
ultimately, life.
LS: It came from some speculation by physicists,
yes.
RS: And there's still a lot to hold onto that
notion.
LS: Sure.
Sure.
RS: And so one of the radical ideas in the
book is that, there are not concurrently a
lot of alternate universes.
You reject that notion.
LS: That makes me wildly uncomfortable because,
as a scientist, we can't observe them and
science is not about what might be true.
We can make fantasies about other universes
and tell stories, but science is not about
what might be true.
Your business is about what might be true.
Science is about what can be demonstrated
to be true from argument, from public evidence.
RS: So, because a parallel universe can't
be causally related to this universe, it's
irrelevant whether it exists or not?
LS: Yes.
RS: Yes.
Fair enough.
But, in your...
In "Time Reborn", which by the way is a wonderful
book, a lucid book.
I have to do a little plug here.
Give me a second to do it here.
LS: Don't have to, but I thank you for it.
[laughter]
RS: You know, there are a whole bunch of people
writing wonderful, science non-fiction books
these days.
We have Dan Falk in the audience here, who
previously wrote a wonderful book about time,
for instance.
But Brian Greene and others who are doing
terrific books, Ray Jayawardhana here in Toronto
as well.
This is lucid, clear absolutely engaging read
from beginning to end.
And what's fascinating about it is, how many
paradigm busting ideas you drop in along the
way.
What we would call the episode ending cliffhangers
if it was a multi-episode TV series.
Because although you reject as an irrelevancy,
multiple universes concurrent with this one,
much of your talk in this is about a succession
of universes, one after the next, and bringing
a Darwinian notion of evolution to cosmology.
LS: Well, that's one of the ideas which illustrates
the basic theme.
And the basic theme is that by considering
that hypothesis that the laws of nature have
evolved in the past, one can make a hypothesis
about how they evolved.
And those hypothesis is about the past can
be checked by observations of the past, cosmological
observations and other kinds of observations.
Now, my own history started with cosmological
natural selection in the late '80s and the
early '90s.
And that theory made some predictions, and
those predictions continue to be tested and
so far has held up.
But that's not primarily my purpose in this
book...
RS: Right, right.
LS: To advance that theory.
That theory is an example that you can answer
more questions, more scientifically, by doing
what would seem to be counter-intuitive, which
is thinking that laws are changeable in time,
rather than imagining that the laws of nature
are these transcendent, perfect things which
live outside of time, which is what I thought
for years.
That's why I went into science was to have
the privilege of discovering those transcendent
laws.
But now, it seems to me such a weird notion.
There are laws that are outside of time.
How can they possibly act?
The laws are sitting outside of time, but
they're acting on every little molecule in
that water glass, and the ice, making it melt,
and everything like that, but it's outside
of time.
So, how in the world did the molecules know
that the laws are there?
And how do the laws know to act on the right
molecules and not the wrong molecules?
You know, 'cause if it make the glass melt,
we'd be in big trouble.
So, I've gotten to the point where what used
to be the standard metaphysical idea and standard,
I think, now fantasy of my profession, not
everybody of course, but many of us, just
doesn't make any sense.
How can anything be outside of time?
RS: Right.
So, if the laws of physics have changed over
time, that's the postulate in the book here,
the laws of physics have changed.
What were they before and why did they change
during the course of the existence of this
particular universe?
LS: Well, I don't think they have during the
course of this particular universe.
RS: Right.
LS: And...
Because that can be checked with.
There are observations of very distant galaxies
and very distant means long time ago because
it takes light, billions of years to travel
from there.
And by those observations, we can check what
are the electrons have the same masses, the
same properties as they have in our universe,
in our planet, and they seem to.
But then we come to the Big Bang, and the
Big Bang in standard cosmology, 20th century
cosmology, was positive to be quote "The First
Moment of Time".
RS: Yes.
LS: But as you marry relativity theory with
quantum theory, we discover, this is my day
job...
Is I'm trying to build on that metaphor of
marrying.
But I'm like the preacher that you try to
marry them and they keep coming back because
you didn't do a good job.
[laughter] But anyway, with the marrying...
The completing the revolutions of the 20th
century by combining relativity and quantum
theory, we don't have a completely verified
approach to quantum gravity yet, but every
one of the partial approaches we have, suggest
that there was time before the Big Bang.
RS: Yes.
LS: But the Big Bang was not the initiation
of the world, of the universe, it was a transition.
It was a kind of a big explosion, and there
was some things before.
There was a universe before it, and it's natural
to think that in those extreme conditions
of that fantastic explosion, the whole universe
kind of melted a bit and then refroze.
If you see the laws being fixed, it's like
ice being frozen.
Then the universe, you squeeze it and heat
and squeeze and heat it and it melts and then
refreezes.
And in that moment of melting, the laws could've
changed.
RS: This is the fundamental assumption of
the book that the laws could conceivably have
had different values than they do.
The ratios of electron to proton, the four
fundamental forces, the ratios of their strengths,
could have been something different and arbitrarily
are what they are.
But coming back to what I was getting at a
few minutes ago, there was...
There's a selection pressure that led towards
this kind of universe.
LS: That's the idea of cosmological natural
selection.
That's not the only idea which I've considered
and which is described in the book, but it's
the best...
RS: No, no.
Of course, we're going through them one at
a time, Lee.
[laughter]
LS: Okay, I'll have faith.
We'll get there.
RS: Yes.
LS: Yeah.
[laughter]
RS: Well, what idea do you wanna talk about
from the book?
LS: No, no.
I'm happy to talk about...
RS: Okay alright.
'Cause I...
I mean, this, to me, it's a fascinating...
LS: Okay, I'll get...
There is an idea I wanna talk about from the
book, but you'll get precedence.
RS: I think we'll get there.
LS: We'll get there.
RS: This notion, because it goes contrary
to what those of us who did not go on and
do physics as a career, were mostly taught,
which is that these laws are mutable.
They didn't have...
This question whether they had any possible
variants is a new notion for most people.
And I think, we have to take them through
it a little bit, and how the selection process
occurs.
What I'm leading up to is, what I think is
the coolest idea in one of the coolest ideas
in the book, is what the universe was selecting
for and that it wasn't for us at all.
LS: It couldn't have been for us because...
RS: Which is not the anthropological...
LS: We don't play a role in helping the universe
reproduce.
So, I was wondering how the laws of nature
were selected.
And I had a little sailboat.
This was back in about 1988, 1989 and I was
sailing back and forth.
And a dear friend, Laura Kukas had said, I
should think about this problem a little bit.
And I thought, the laws are selected out of
a vast catalogue of possible laws and it's
selected in a particular very unusual way.
Because we know something interesting about
the laws as they were selected, which is that,
they have a form, in particular, the masses
of all the particles turn out to have values
such that a very complex, interesting, universe
results.
It turns out, had the laws been picked randomly
or we could just focus on the values of the
masses of the particles, had they been picked
randomly, the universe would be boring.
LS: There would never have been galaxies,
there would never have been stars, there would
never have been much around except hydrogen
gas.
And the whole complex history of the universe
leading to complex patterns on every scales,
from the clusters of galaxies down to the
molecules that comprise ourselves, that universe,
full of beauty and complexity, is the result
of very special tunings of the values, of
the masses, of the particles.
And I wondered, how could that be?
And I thought, is there a place in science
where there's a process that scientifically
explains how things were chosen, such that
a great deal of complexity results.
And I thought the only place where that happens
is in biology and natural selection.
So, I thought, can I steal?
'Cause science is very good, if there's a
method that works in one problem, it's very
good to steal it to attack another problem.
[laughter]
LS: So, can I steal the methodology of evolution
and apply it to cosmology?
Well, what do you need?
You need a universe to be able to reproduce
itself.
You need there to be information coded with
changes just slightly on when the thing reproduces
itself, and which determines how well it reproduces
itself.
So, the values of the masses of the particles
can be like the genes, and how could the universe
reproduce itself?
Well, there was an idea already around that
I could borrow from Johnny Wheeler and Bryce
DeWitt, whose names you all probably don't
know, but they are sort of the great pioneers
of the field of quantum gravity, of marrying
relativity and quantum theory.
And they both, in the early 1960s had conceived
of this idea.
Now, it has to do with black holes.
And if a star collapses into a black hole,
there's this horizon that no light can get
out of, but let's wonder what goes on inside
that horizon.
LS: The star passes through the horizon, we
can't see it anymore, and it keeps getting
denser and denser and denser and denser.
And what happens according to general relativity,
Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, is
in a short amount of time, it's crushed to
infinite density.
And then, according to general relativity,
time stops, because the equations can't process
any more information once things are infinitely
dense.
So, the time just stops, according to the
equation of general relativity.
Well, according to the same equations, time
starts in the Big Bang.
So, they had thought, maybe, if you add some
uncertainty from quantum mechanics, this stop
isn't a full stop, it's a bounce.
And so, the star which had collapsed to almost
infinite density explodes again, and that
explosion creates something like a new Big
Bang, but it's in a region of the future which
we can't see because there's still the horizon
around the black hole.
Am I making sense?
Audience member: Yes.
LS: But we can't...
RS: This is Toronto.
These are bright people.
[laughter]
LS: I know.
I'm so proud to live here.
I mean that.
I'm a very proud immigrant.
So, there's a balance and a new universe is
created to the future of where the black hole
was.
And this is a method of reproduction of universes,
and Johnny Wheeler had already talked about
that.
He had already talked about the laws of nature
changing, maybe getting "reprocessed" he called
it, when that happened.
So, I borrowed that, and all I had to add
is that the laws should change only ever so
slightly, so that there's cumulation of effects,
so that the child's universes are very, almost
identical and just a little bit different,
from the parent universes so then, there can
be selection of traits.
So, if we're a typical universe, then we have
a parent universe.
And did that parent universe have a lot of
children, or a few children?
Well, this has been going on for many generations.
LS: And so, it's much more likely that we
are the child of a universe that had many
children, than that we're the child of a universe
that had just one child.
Because those universes that had many children
predominate.
This works just like Darwin.
We are, as creatures here on earth, we are
the descendants of millions of generations
of creatures that thrived and reproduced.
So, as a universe, we must be the descendant
of many generations of universes that managed
to reproduce themselves very well, better
than other choices.
That means our universe has a lot of black
holes in it.
And that's the prediction that Robert was
talking about.
That the laws of nature are tuned to make
many, many black holes.
Now, why should such a universe be friendly
to us?
Is that the question you're gonna ask now?
RS: Sure.
Let's go with that.
Yes.
Yes.
[laughter]
RS: We seem irrelevant to the process.
We seem an epic phenomenon.
LS: We seem irrelevant to the process, but
to get a black hole, you need a really massive
star, which at the end of its life, collapses
through a supernova explosion, but leaves
enough left over, that you can't start its
collapse and becomes a black hole.
So, you need a really massive star.
So with a really massive star you need a big
cloud of dust that's really cold because when
things are warm, they expand.
You know that, you heat up air and it expands.
So, if you have a cloud of gas and dust and
you just heat it up, it expands, so it ain't
gonna collapse and make a star.
So, you need to be really cold, so you need
a coolant.
So, anybody know what the coolant is?
Do you know what the coolant is?
RS: That cools the universe?
LS: That cools the clouds of gas and dust
that become big fat stars.
RS: I don't know.
LS: Carbon monoxide.
RS: My goodness!
LS: The coolant is carbon monoxide.
So, you need carbon and you need oxygen and
that's why the universe is full of carbon
and oxygen according to this theory.
And that's why it's friendly to life as a
by-product.
RS: We're lucky.
[laughter] So, we have this succession.
Now, where the Darwinian metaphor...
What I'm going to ask you is that Darwinian
metaphor breakdown, there was an origin of
life on earth, depending on who you ask, 3.8
billion years ago, 4.0 billion years ago,
before which there was none whatsoever.
Does this chain of ancestry of universes recede
infinitely into the past or did it have a
beginning?
LS: Oh, no.
RS: Oh, no.
Alright.
LS: Don't have to know.
[laughter] I'm a scientist.
I just kinda get a little...
I just kinda advance the subject a few steps.
RS: Few steps 'cause of the philosophic question
there is still, whether or not time had a
beginning.
LS: Yeah, and that's...
There are times at any era in science, there
are questions which have been answered; there're
questions which are too deep to answer; and
there're questions which were just right,
which we're just getting ready to be able
to answer.
And uptill now, we were talking about those.
But does time have an ultimate beginning is
too deep, I think.
So, come back...
What you can do as a science fiction or come
back in 500 years and interview somebody.
RS: I will, absolutely.
And, hopefully, we'll have the answer for
that.
Well this...
I want to actually go back a couple of years
and speak, well, we'll come back to the book
in a minute, but to put a different flavour
on things for a few minutes, you started as
a physicist by reading...
Your interest in physics started with reading
Albert Einstein.
LS: No better.
RS: No better, absolutely, as a teenager?
LS: Yes.
RS: Tell us about that, how you got introduced
to Einstein before you'd taken a physics course,
before you'd seen a physics textbook.
LS: Well, I was a high school dropout.
But I'd learned a lot of Math before I dropped
out and I got interested in Architecture because
of Buckminster Fuller.
Does everybody know who Buckminster Fuller
is?
He is a visionary, great visionary architect
who I had been privileged to meet.
And, I got fascinated by his geodesic domes,
and I got fascinated by the idea of stretching
them into size and shapes and elliptical shapes
and I imagined, you could take the triangles
and they had the surface of geodesic domes
and make any surface using little triangles
stuck together.
And I...
I was a high school dropout and I needed to
do the job.
So, I got this idea that I was gonna design
swimming pool covers made from domes stretched
out because there were very few swimming pools
around, so the dome would have to be stretched
out.
And I advertised in the newspapers to do this
and I began to do research as to how you would
design these geodesic dome, stretch geodesic
dome swimming pool covers, so they wouldn't
fall down 'cause that would be bad.
[laughter]
LS: And, the Math that I needed, so I went
to the public library and I started looking
up the Math that I needed.
The Math that I needed was called Tensor Calculus
and I got some books about it and it turned
out that every book about it had a chapter
about General Relativity Theory because that's
the same Math that Einstein used.
LS: And so, I got interested in Relativity
and I went to the library again and got a
book of Essays about Einstein.
There was this autobiographical memoir in
it, in which he described why he went into
science and he...
He painted a picture of this fantasy of there
being these perfect beauty and truth behind
the the veil of appearances which for him
was painful.
He had a lot of adolescent angst all through
his life.
And it appealed to me.
He said, "Life is tough and short, and your
girlfriend leaves you, and your band breaks
up, and things like that."
And, but, you can aspire to transcend all
of these to a beautiful world of truth by
trying to find the equations behind the world.
And I...
Man, I was just hooked and off and running.
LS: Now the funny thing, the really funny
thing, the end of the story, which was pointed
out to me by a journalist, Dennis Overbye.
I didn't realize that it was right in front
of me, is it the models of quantum space-time
that later with some friends we developed
and looked at quantum gravity, looked a lot
like taking the curved surface, in that case,
the geometry of space and forming it with
lots of little triangles.
[laughter]
RS: Like a geodesic dome, yes.
Fascinating.
So, I just wanted to give people a little
sense of where you got to and remind you that
even if you've dropped out, you can still
become a famous physicist.
Einstein was a dropout too, wasn't he?
LS: Umm...
RS: And then...
LS: I'm not sure if he quite was a dropout.
Yes, he was at one point.
RS: Yeah.
Yeah.
LS: And he walked from Italy where his parents
were in the electrification business to Switzerland
and ended up talking his way into a kind of
preparatory school for University.
RS: Yeah.
That's my recollection too.
So, we have this fascinating book "Time Reborn"
and it postulates this notion that the laws
of physics may have changed over time.
Actually, argues that they must have changed
over time.
And one of the things we're taught in science
class is, its great to have an idea, but your
idea has to be testable, has to make predictions.
LS: Right.
RS: So, what predictions does this make that
you and your colleagues at Perimeter or elsewhere
will be testing in the years and decades to
come?
LS: Well, cosmological natural selection made
two predictions which were published in 1992
which both are...
Its only two but they're both holding up to
recent tests.
And it would take us...
They're both very indirect, but just to mention
what they are.
One, there shouldn't be any neutron stars
heavier then twice the mass of the sun.
There was just a paper published last week
in Nature, measuring...
'Cause every few months or maybe every few
years a new neutron star is discovered and
its mass is measured.
So, this prediction could be violated at any
time.
And the mass of this neutron star is 2.1 plus
or minus 0.4 which means it's perfectly comfortable
with...
RS: Just within the range.
LS: Just within the range.
The other one has to do with inflation and
I won't mention, but is being held up by the
recent observations by the Planck satellite.
So, those are examples.
RS: Now nonetheless, the book is terrific
and a wonderful read, but there has been not
universal acceptance of the model that is
presented in the book.
Some of your colleagues take contrary positions
to this.
How will we convince them that they are wrong?
LS: Well some...
When I thought of this idea I didn't know
any astronomy really at its...
At any kind of real level.
And the idea that the universe might be fine-tuned
for black holes was fascinating to me, but
I wanted to know how do you test it.
So, I began to talk to astronomers.
And astronomers were very kind and helpful.
And a number of them over the years, have
pointed out ways in which they think the universe
could be changed, laws could be changed to
make more black holes.
Now, my belief that I've chased down, I've
been in dialogues with a number of astronomers
most famously Martin Rees, the great royal
astronomer, a master astronomer of England.
And I believe that all those examples have
been refuted up 'til now.
LS: And they are discussed, some of them are
discussed in the book.
But that's okay because the point, the whole
point that I want to demonstrate in through
this example...
I mean I maybe really, really lucky and this
idea maybe right which would be fabulous.
But its almost as good to be wrong because
in this business of very frontier physics,
its very difficult to invent ideas which are
testable.
And so, I would be almost as happy to find
out that the idea was clearly refuted.
RS: Mm-hmm.
This value of the testability of issues was
one of the main themes of your previous book,
"The Trouble With Physics And As Related to
String Theory".
LS: Yes, yes and there are other ideas I wanna
emphasize, there are other ideas about how
the laws might have changed in time which
also looked to be testable.
You wanna ask me about one of those?
RS: Yes, I was just gonna let you go on, yes.
Give us an example of one that we could test.
LS: So, here's my favourite idea from the
book.
My favourite idea is called the Principle
of Precedence and it goes like this.
If we do an experiment now, that has been
done many times in the past, we have good
reason to believe we'll get the same outcome
as we got in the past.
Why will we get the same outcome as we got
in the past?
Well part of, one of the principles of science
is that predictions of theories have to be
reproducible.
But what's behind that?
Why do we get the same, why cant we be confident
that we'll get the same results in the past,
in the future that we got, in the past.
LS: Well, here's the standard answer.
The standard answer is there's this weird
thing called Laws of Nature.
And they live outside of time, they don't
change in time and therefore they acted to
cause the phenomenon in the past to make the
experiment turn out the way it did in the
past.
And they'll be around now, if we do the experiment
now and it'll make the experiment come out
the same way now and the same laws will be
around in 10 years, in a billion years, in
a hundred billion years, to make the experiment
come out the same way.
So, then you have to have this mystical belief
in laws of nature that live somehow outside
of time and come in and act.
LS: But here's another possibility.
What if every time you do an experiment, the
system that you're doing looks into the past
and says "are there anythings like me that
have been tried in the past and if there are,
let me pick from one of them, what the outcome
was and I'll give them back that same outcome
as that was seen in the past."
So, there's only one law of nature which is
the nature forms habits.
Nature is habit forming.
And that's...
I mean, I could elaborate but you get the
point.
So, how could this be tested?
Well you will have to invent a novel experimental
situation, a novel system that's never existed
before in the history of the universe.
And then, it won't obey the laws that we think
it should.
It will just go, "Huh, I don't know" and just
give out a random outcome.
All of these, they're much better ways to
say this, much more professional ways to say
this as a quantum mechanical person, but you
get the idea.
RS: Yeah.
LS: So, are people developing in the laboratory
systems that have never been existed in the
history of the world?
And it turns out, yes.
In the efforts to make quantum computers,
which are computers that run according to
not ordinary logic, but the laws of quantum
mechanics.
They are making new kinds of matter, which
had never existed before in the history of
the universe.
And this gives us an opportunity to see if
this expectation that they won't obey the
laws, we think they should, will turn out
to be right.
And I've had a lot of fun discussing this
with some people who work in Waterloo.
We have a sister institute for us, Institute
for Quantum Computing.
And I've discussed it with people who work
there and people who work elsewhere in quantum
computing.
And here's what they say, it's actually fascinating,
to me anyway, they say, "Well, you know the
first time we construct, we fabricate a novel
material and a novel system and we run our
experiments on it, it doesn't behave as planned
anyway.
Because experiments are hard to do and it
takes a while, it takes dozens and dozens
or hundreds of trials to get the experiment
working the right way."
LS: Anyway, and then when they get working
the right way, it settles down and it's reproducible
and gives the answer that you would expect.
So, I asked them, and this is an ongoing discussion,
"How do you tell the difference between the
system not behaving well because you didn't
do the experiment right the first time, and
the system not behaving the way you expect
it because there's no precedents."
And we'll see, but that gives you a flavour
of the idea if it's...
Again, this is an idea which is probably wrong.
All ideas about science are probably wrong,
all new ideas.
But science develops through the invention
of new ideas.
And, again let me emphasize these new ideas
about how the laws might have evolved, what's
beautiful about them to me and what's compelling
is that they're testable.
This particular version, unlike the other
version, if it turns out to work, we would
see the laws of nature evolving in our laboratories.
That, to me, is, it's probably wrong, but
if it's right it would be a wonderful discovery,
so I think it's, that's compelling enough
to look into it.
RS: It's interesting, what you said here,
of course, it takes human beings to build
these quantum superpositions in states that
have never existed before.
And they're what upset the universe from being
complacent about giving out the same results
over and over again.
But the novelty in the universe, ultimately
is a human generated phenomenon.
LS: Mm-hmm.
RS: That, actually is cool.
So, even though, the universe may be selecting
for black holes, it is aided and abetted in
its complexity by the existence of rational
thinking beings.
LS: Well, there are different ideas, but certainly,
I believe that the universe itself generates
novelty.
And I think that, the creativity that we human
beings have, that you're fortunate enough
to develop to a high level in your novels,
that all of us in different ways in our life
are inventing, creating solutions to problems,
inventing novel ideas.
I think, we are partaking of the ability of
the universe to create novel, to create novelty.
So, I think, that it's, imagination is not
in a mirage, it's not an accident, it's not
a fallacy or a fantasy.
I think, imagination is a deeply important
and human organ, which reflects and focuses
the ability of the universe itself to develop
novel, novelty.
RS: When we say, "novelty", just so we're
clear about it, we mean things that have never
existed before.
LS: Yes.
RS: New ideas, new structures, new patterns
that are completely, [A] have never existed
before, and [B] are unpredictable that they
would exist.
LS: Right.
So I think, for example, it's not true that
there's some platonic space which exists timelessly
of possible plots for novels.
RS: Right.
LS: I think, sometimes you borrow, I'm sure.
But from time to time you invent a genuinely
new plot for a novel that has never existed
before.
And that is genuinely something new.
You bring into creation genuinely something
new, which then reproduces, is reproduced,
is published in many, many copies, goes into
peoples minds and changes the future.
RS: Which, of course, is wonderfully affirming
of the human condition.
One of the things that we talk about in physics
class a lot though, was that a great amount
of physics and chemistry, which is a subset
of physics, is time-reversible.
That you can't tell if you run a film of a
physical process, so to say.
You can't tell whether it's running in reverse
or running forward, but novelty coming into
being would imply that there are detectable
directionalities to time, is that true?
LS: Yes.
Yes.
And so much of life, of what we experience
and what we observe is irreversible in so
many different ways.
The birth of a child, if we spilt the water
and the soda there.
An unkind word said thoughtlessly to a friend.
There's so many things that we do and that
we experience in our whole lives that are
about irreversibility.
RS: Okay.
LS: Yet the laws of physics, as we understand
them, as we understand them to this point,
are reversible, as you say.
If you take a movie of anything and you study
it at the atomic level and you run the movie
back that's a possible history of those atoms.
Even though, it's extraordinarily unlikely,
it's what we have to believe.
RS: Right.
That film of somebody walking backwards, for
instance, you could technically do that.
It would just be bizarre that somebody was
actually doing that for miles...
LS: Comedic.
RS: Comedic even, yeah.
LS: Comedic, comedic.
So, how is it that if the laws of nature are
reversible in time, so much phenomena is irreversible?
Well, this is a question that's been developed
and thought about and I won't tell the whole
history, some of it is in the book.
From the 19th century onward...
And the punchline is that the initial conditions
of our universe have to have been extraordinarily
improbable according to the standard way of
thinking in order so that, so much of the
world is not reversible now.
Had the initial conditions of the Big Bang
been random, been typical then the universe
would've just been forever in what's called
Thermodynamic Equilibrium.
And in Thermodynamic Equilibrium, nothing
much interesting happens and nothing irreversible
happens.
All that happens is molecules and atoms dancing
around in boring ways and they can be easily
reversed.
LS: I'm very aware there's much more to explain
here, but the fact that we don't live in that
boring equilibrium universe is due partly,
as I said earlier, to the laws of nature being
very special, and also partly to the initial
conditions being very improbable, being chosen
very specially.
Now that's weird.
How can the universe be improbable?
There is only one universe, so how can it
be that the one thing that exists is improbable
to have existed?
So, I think there's a kind of problem there
and one of the opportunities, if time is really
real and the laws of nature are evolvable,
might be that under the laws that we think
are reversible there are deeper laws which
are not reversible and which do things which
are not reversible like bringing into being
novel structures and novel laws at all kinds
of levels from the most fundamen...
See, there used to be this prejudice that,
"No laws can arise in sociology and biology
and economics, they emerge, so to speak, but
the fundamental laws are fixed."
And what I'm thinking about is emergence all
the way down.
RS: Terrific, we're...
Time is our enemy tonight, we're gonna be
out of it shortly.
But we do have a microphone set up in the
centre aisle here for people who have questions
for Lee.
Please, do get up and use the microphone if
you have a question.
And while people make their way to it, I'm
going to ask Lee the question a science fiction
writer has to ask, which is, is time travel
into the past possible?
LS: You know why you're asking about the future
'cause I have an answer for the future.
RS: I know.
[laughter] Tell us the answer to the future.
LS: If time travel from the...
Well, no actually, if time travel...
No, actually I got you, if time travel into
the past was possible then people in our future
would be utilizing it to come to us.
RS: Right.
LS: And we would've met the future.
RS: That's my thought too, that there'd be
a crowd applauding when Neil Armstrong set
foot on the moon in July 1969.
The tourists would've come to watch it from
the future.
LS: But that's not the science fiction question,
I thought you were gonna ask.
RS: What did you think I was gonna ask, Lee?
LS: What I thought you were gonna ask is,
if you can do an experiment and see by it
misbehaving if it's made out of material that's
really novel.
RS: Yes.
LS: You can tell if in the past, there have
been civilizations that invented quantum computers.
RS: Ah yes, that's a great plot.
LS: And, well, you could write a book about
that.
RS: I could write a book about that, that's
right, the quantum imprint on the past.
I'm astonished to see nobody has stepped up
to the microphone here.
They don't have to be hard questions.
[laughter] While this gentleman makes his
way to the microphone I'll just remind you
that the book is entitled "Time Reborn" and
it's Lee Smolin is the author and it's in
bookstores everywhere, worldwide now in English.
You've got a British, a Canadian, and an American
edition out now.
Yes, sir?
Speaker 4: Dr. Smolin, are you suggesting
that unless I can imagine it, conceive it,
think it, it does not exist?
LS: No, I'm a big believer in objectivity
and I'm a realist.
S4: Oh, objectivity?
How do you mean?
0:46:48 LS: I think that there is a real world
out there and it is recalcitrant to our desires
and hopes and expectations and beliefs.
[laughter]
RS: Recalcitrant is an a excellent word for
it.
[chuckle] Is that satisfactory, sir?
S4: Okay, thanks.
RS: Thank you.
Yes, please?
Speaker 5: Hi, you mentioned that you dropped
out of high school and I guess, I was trying
to do the Math on Wikipedia and it looks like
perhaps you got your PhD from Harvard at the
age of 24, and I'm curious about the journey
of how that transitioned.
RS: Harvard, graduate at 24, high school dropout
preceding that, how did that happen?
[chuckle]
LS: First of all, I got really lucky and I
got really lucky in the choice of mentors
several places along the way.
But let me just fill in why I dropped out
because it's a little less surprising if I
tell you, which is a little embarrassing.
I went to a new experimental school as was
the vogue at the time that I had actually
helped start.
And the first week of the school, the teacher
said we see ourselves not as teachers, but
facilitators and we ask you to look around
and think, where in the community is the knowledge
that you seek and we will help you go out
into the community and facilitate your discovering
the knowledge that you seek in the city.
I went home and I thought about that, and
I came back in the morning, I said, "The knowledge
I seek is in the university, so why am I here"?
[laughter]
LS: So, I just started dropping into classes
without permission and all that, but it's
kind of worked.
Then at that time, I wanted to be an architect
to emulate Bucky Fuller.
When I realized I wanted to be a physicist,
I realized I had to get a real education,
and I talked my way into a college, which
was Hampshire College, where I discovered
Herb Bernstein, who was a great teacher and
mentor, without which, I would have been one
of those nerds wandering around the halls
of MIT, dropping out again, yet again.
S5: Thank you.
RS: Thank you.
Yes sir?
Speaker 6: Troubles with physics, there was,
the page where you were talking about Technicolour,
and you suggested that could be possibly that
Higgs boson is made of different types of
quarks.
LS: The Techniquarks, so to speak.
S6: Yes, yes, yeah.
So, do you still maintain the same possibility?
LS: The most frustrating situation has come
out of the Large Hadron Collider, which is
that the standard model of particle physics
is verified in all the details that we can
test.
The Higgs seems to be there alone, a single
one.
It seems not to be composite, as far as we
can tell with experiments, made out of more
fundamental things.
There are no new quarks, there are no new
forces, there's no new symmetries, there's
no new nothing.
So, to nature...
So, the year since the early '70s when the
standard model was developed, there's been
a plethora of very interesting ideas about
what's beyond the standard model, and the
large Hadron collider was built primarily
for us, not to discover the Higgs boson, which
we all believe, it had to exist, but to seek
what was beyond the standard model.
And none of those ideas have been verified.
There's not a bit of evidence for any of those
ideas so far, that could change.
That includes unfortunately Technicolour.
For those of you who'd know what Technicolour
is, well doesn't matter, because there's no
evidence to the idea.
[laughter]
RS: Next please.
Please step right up to the mike.
Speaker 7: Hi, last time you were here, you
were talking, I asked you about Stephen Hawking,
and the fact that he was on the Discovery
Channel, saying that he'd...
I believe the Americans had a time machine,
and he'd like to go into the future, to find
out if they were on the right track for string
theory, and...
LS: Even then...
The only thing I'll say is this, "Stephen
has earned the right to have fun and to have
a wicked sense of humour, which he has."
[laughter]
S7: Yeah.
RS: Fair enough.
S7: Well, basically, back in the 2000, when
this Britannica book of the year, discoveries
of the year, they had a laser that was faster
than the speed of light.
Basically, I think that...
LS: Not really.
But let's, that would be too technical for
discussion.
It's not really faster than speed of light.
S7: Well, basically that's when Stephen Hawking
started to come forward with the possibility
of time travel and he wanted to get into...
RS: Dr. Smolin has indicated that he thinks
Professor Hawking is having some fun with
people.
And I think we'll move on to the next question.
LS: I don't have a comment for you on that.
RS: Thank you.
Next please.
Thank you.
Speaker 8: How the way I understand is the
universe is increasing entropy.
So, the black hole is the final manifestation
of the largest entropy you can expect?
So, how does it condense into some small,
little thing, become very highly small entropy
and then expand again?
RS: You're asking, how a black hole gives
birth to a universe?
S8: How that cycle reverses out?
I just want to understand a little bit.
LS: I don't think that the, I don't think
the, I'm aware that to give you the full answer,
I would spend 5 minutes boring most of the
people in the audience, so let me just say
I don't think that's an issue, and if you'd
like to discuss it, I'm happy to discuss it.
S8: Thank you.
RS: Very good.
Are you standing in the queue there sir?
Speaker 9: I guess, I'm looking and thinking
about the Higgs boson, and dark matter now.
In your opinion, is there dark matter, and
does it matter?
[laughter]
LS: Thank you.
It would be very romantic, if the explanation
for the dark matter where there was no dark
matter and instead the laws of gravity were
different on the scales of galaxies and clusters
of galaxies.
But that's a set of ideas which, to a theorist
is more attractive, is more romantic, because
it's more fundamental than just as another
particle which happens not to have an electric
charge that we've missed.
But I have to say that all the attempts to
make good on this deeper explanation, have
not been impressive so far, although, there
are some small...
There's an idea called Modified Newtonian
Dynamics by somebody called Milgrom in Israel,
which goes someway towards covering the phenomenon
that galaxies seem to have extra matter in
them.
But the idea when extended does not seem to
hold up completely.
So, it looks like dark matter is the most
parsimonious hypothesis.
On the other hand, it hasn't been discovered
either, so the jury is out.
RS: So, a lot of physics to be done.
Sir?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I got the new book from
the library yesterday and I jumped ahead in
thinking if you thought time was real, Professor
Smolin, and how you would deal with Einstein's
views that it wasn't.
And you don't have to alleviate all my confusion,
but it seemed like you were changing the relativity
of simultaneity with a relativity of shape.
So, that got my thinking, "Gee, if in the
twin paradox, if my twin roared away and came
back at the speed of light, would he come
back not younger than me, but a different
shape?"
Does the...
LS: A different size is the relativity of
science, time and shape.
S1: And how does that...
So, the stuff that Einstein said about time
being relative and us all carrying our personal
clock, all that is on this theory, not the
case?
LS: It is all the case.
It's a different way of...
So again, this will be hard to digest this
too in a minute, but rather than thinking
that clocks can arbitrarily slow down and
speed up, there's an alternative understanding
of the same theory of relativity.
So, it makes the same predictions by Julian
Barbour and some young colleagues called "Shape
Dynamics."
And the idea is that rather than time being
relative, size is relative and you can lose
something around and it might come back and
appear to be a different size rather than
have it clocked that ticked the different
number of times.
Now, they're actually the same thing and the
way to see the same thing is to think of a
clock, made of a box with mirrors in it.
And the tick-tock is a photon of light bouncing
back and forth between the mirrors and the
walls of the box and if we shrink the box,
the light is gonna bounce more often and the
clock is gonna speed up.
LS: And if we expand the box, the ticking's
are gonna be less often and the clock is gonna
appear to slow down.
So, the same phenomenon of time, if you're
into speed up or to slow down can be described
in a different way, in which the size of things
are changing arbitrarily.
That's just gives you a taste.
There's a lot more to say about that.
That gives you a taste of how...
So, in Einstein's version of the theory, size
is fixed, but time is relative.
In Julian Barbour and young colleagues version
of the theory, time is fixed and I need this
for time to be real.
So there can be an objective meaning to the
distinction between past, present, and future,
but size is relative.
And it turns out to be a reinterpretation
of exactly the same physical theory.
And it's in chapter 14, I think.
Speaker 11: Good evening.
I just wanted to make brief diversion to the
questions of philosophy and science.
I have a good friend who almost wanted to
be here tonight who did a Science of Philosophy
degree.
And I was also very nearly myself been with
Lawrence Krauss, who has gotten in a bit of
trouble for disparaging philosophers.
And I know you do both worlds and I know Physicists
have a lot of stuff to say about philosophers.
Steven Hawkins got in trouble with it in his
recent book and so did Krauss.
Do you, when you're in the Philosophy faculty
anything disparaging about being a Scientist?
And if you do, do you just sort of shrug it
off because we really shouldn't care what
philosophers think?
LS: I think there's a lot of unfortunate,
disparaging of things that you don't understand.
This is a very common human trait.
And my view is that science, when we're asking
the most fundamental questions in philosophy,
are very closely related.
And we're related through history which joins
them so people like Newton and Magnus, Descartes
were not either scientists or philosophers,
they were both.
And I aspire to be in that tradition and I
think that, I'll quote somebody that, for
me, was a great role model, David Finkelstein,
a great physical theorist, who by the way,
was the first person to figure out what black
holes really were and how they work.
And David likes to say, "That if you want
to make a leap, a conceptual leap, dealing
with the most fundamental issues, you need
a running start.
And a way to get a running start is to go
back in history and philosophy and know what
people have thought in the past about the
question that you want to make a leap with
respect to."
LS: So, I think, I mean, Lawrence Krauss is
a friend.
He's highly articulate.
He's played a very important role in the wars
about evolution and creationism in the United
States.
He's a very articulate spokesperson for science.
And I think that he over reached himself and
also, this is his hometown and he's often
here, I think that was an unfortunate book.
And the controversy that stemmed from it was
unfortunate.
And, I mean, he's somebody who's done many
important things.
It was not his best moment.
And the kerkuffle that arose from that, I
think, was unfortunate on both sides.
I mean I've heard...
Just to answer your question, I mean I've
heard philosophers say silly things about
scientist and vice versa.
LS: But, there really is a live, a connection
between them, and this gives me the opportunity
to mention that the book is dedicated to a
philosopher, Roberto Mangabeira Unger who
is a deep thinker and one of the most ambitious
and large thinkers alive today.
I'm happy to take the opportunity to make
him be better known because he's not nearly
well enough known in the English speaking
world.
He's a Brazilian who teaches also at Harvard
Law School and he, for reasons completely
of his own, had come to the view that laws
of nature must have evolved.
And we were introduced by a mutual friend,
also a legal theorist, Drucilla Cornell, and
began a conversation seven years ago that
pushed me and inspired me on this journey
that this book reports and the book is dedicated
to him.
And those who want more after reading this
book, might be interested to know that Roberto
and I do have a book which is gonna be a lot
tougher of a read than this.
This, I worked on very hard to make it communicate
to the widest possible audience.
The book with Roberto, I'll just quote the
level of his ambition.
I say to him, "Roberto, we should make this
more accessible", and he says, "But I don't
expect to be understood".
[laughter]
RS: Well, one of the beauties of this book
is that it is easy to understand.
There's not a single equation in the book,
and I want to read a quote from the back cover
from Jaron Lanier.
Did I say that right, Lanier?
Speaker 12: Good enough.
RS: Close enough.
Jaron Lanier, who wrote one of my favourite
books of recent years, "You Are Not a Gadget".
And he said of this book, "Time Reborn" from
North Canada, "Smolin provides a much needed
dose of clarity about time with implications
that go far beyond physics to economics, politics,
and personal philosophy.
An essential book for physicists and non-physicists
alike, "Time Reborn" offers a path to better
theory and potentially to a better society."
Lee, I want to thank you so much for coming
and sharing a little bit of your personal
history and some of the insights that are
in this book.
I commend it to you, it really is a fantastically
enjoyable and lucid read.
My name's Robert J. Sawyer.
This is Dr. Lee Smolin.
This is the Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference
Library.
Thank you all for coming out tonight.
Lee, what a pleasure to spend my birthday
with you.
Thank you.
[applause]
LS: Thank you and happy birthday.
RS: Thank you so much, thank you.
LS: Thank you so much.
RS: Thank you.
