(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Thank you all.
This is the 13th annual Isaac Asimov panel
debate.
I’m your host and moderator this evening,
Neil deGrasse Tyson.
I’m the Frederick P. Rose director of the
Hayden Planetarium, where I also serve as
an astrophysicist with the American Museum
of Natural History.
Thank you all for coming this evening.
For the first time, this event this evening
will be live streamed on the Internet.
See, so you could have stayed home.
You see?
We waited until now to tell you that.
Sorry about that.
Isaac Asimov is—the name is no stranger
to any of us, certainly no stranger to anyone
seated here tonight.
He was a polymath.
Perhaps one of the last of his kind.
Maybe Gardner was another one, who just was
really great at a lot of things, and bringing
it to the public.
And he was smart and ambitious.
Isaac Asimov was a native New Yorker, did
much of his research for his 500-plus books
that he’s written, sourced from the research
libraries here at the American Museum of Natural
History.
And when he died in the 1990s, we wanted to
find a fitting tribute to him.
There are a lot of ways you could possible
raise funds and commit them, but one we figured
to have his name live on would be to celebrate
his life and his science advocacy with this
panel debate.
Like I said, it’s in its 13th year.
And I just want to publicly thank Isaac Asimov’s
family and friends, who started the original
fund to make this possible.
If you join me in thanking them.
These debates are designed not in the traditional
sense of a point/counterpoint, three-minute,
two-minute reply.
That’s what politicians do.
We try to do it a little differently here.
The panel debate is really a conversation
that we will have.
We have six physicists here—sorry, five
physicists and an engineer.
And it’s as though you are eavesdropping
on our conversation at the bar.
And in that way, you get to sample some of
the spontaneous thinking that goes on when
people grapple the bleeding edge of scientific
discovery.
And so in that sense, it’s a debate because
there’s typically not enough data to resolve
the conflict.
And that’s where things get interesting.
The format of tonight is I’ll introduce
the six panelists, one of whom will be sent
in via Skype.
And they’ll each give two minutes opening
remarks, and we just go straight into it.
We’ll do that for about an hour, and then
we go to Q&A, represented by you in the audience.
There are microphones up front.
We will also be soliciting questions from
the Twitterverse.
That is a parallel Universe to our own.
It’s there whether you want to believe it
or not.
Let me just give some brief introductions.
The full profile of each panelist is in your
program.
Oh, by the way, I didn’t even tell you the
topic of tonight.
It started out where we would explore faster
than light particles based on the announcement
at the European Center for Nuclear Research
that they may have discovered just such objects.
And some later results—later like a few
weeks ago—came out that maybe there was
a mistake in the measurements.
We don’t know.
We said, well, let’s broaden this.
We have tremendous brain power coming to the
stage.
We will not simply talk about whether you
can travel faster than light, but we will
explore all ways modern physicists are testing
the fundamental laws of nature.
That is this evening’s topic.
Joining me on stage now is David Cline.
He’s professor of physics at UCLA, with
a specialty in neutrinos.
David, come on out.
Where you’d go?
There you go, David.
Thank you.
We have coming over Skype we have Gian Giudice,
if I pronounce his name correctly.
He should be sliding on to our monitor.
There he goes.
Gian Giudice.
He’s a theoretical particle physicist at
the Center for European Nuclear Research.
And we will be chatting with him about the
experiments being conducted there.
Next is Sheldon Glashow.
Shelly, come on out.
Professor of theoretical physics, Boston University.
Shelly.
Oh, did I 
say he has the Nobel Prize in physics?
I forgot to mention that.
I’m sorry.
But that’s not even the most impressive
part of Shelly’s resume.
He’s a graduate of the Bronx High School
of Science.
One of seven Nobel laureates from that school.
All seven are in physics, by the way.
Next, Christopher Hegarty is an engineer with
the MITRE Corporation, specializing in everything
GPS.
GPS, the system we’re all familiar with
that prevents you from getting lost, is also—you
might not know—a remarkable test of general
relativity.
Christopher, come on out.
Next we have a senior researcher at the Italian
Nuclear Physics Institute, and is a member
of the OPERA Collaboration at the—where
are we here—Gran Sasso Laboratory.
Please join me in a warm welcome of Laura
Patrizii.
Laura.
I keep trying to get the name right, Laura.
She was in Italy when the neutrinos arrived.
So, we have to get some—did I leave someone
out?
Who’d I leave out?
Oh, there she goes.
Thank you.
And last among our five here, and certainly
not least, is Gabriela Gonzalez.
She’s professor of physics and astronomy
at Louisiana State University, which is the
academic home of one of the most advanced
observatories of gravitational waves ever
conceived.
Let’s give a warm welcome to Gabriela.
Gabriela.
So, let’s get my stuff together here.
So, I’d like to know a little bit more about
each one of you, so why don’t we start at
the far end.
David, just tell us what drives you in the
day.
Spend a couple of minutes doing that, and
then we’ll get into our beer talk.
(David Cline) My microphone’s on?
Okay.
So, I study neutrino physics.
Actually, there was a picture up here of the
detector I use, but it’s gone now.
And neutrinos were thought at one point never
to be detectable.
There were invented in 1933 by Wolfgang Pauli.
It was discovered in 1956 by Professor Reines.
So, I’ve devoted much of my life in the
study of high-energy neutrinos, low-energy
neutrinos.
In particular, tonight I’ll be talking later
about looking for neutrinos with faster than
the speed of light with a counter detector
to OPERA.
But, anyway, neutrinos fascinate me and I
hope they will fascinate you.
Thank you.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Thank you.
Gian Giudice, welcome to New York.
At least your avatar is here in New York.
If you can tell us just how you plug into
the world of physics.
(Gian Giudice) Sure.
I apologize for my last-minute problem and
not for being able to be physically there.
But I’m very glad to be at least virtually
there.
After all, I am a theoretical physicist, so
I don’t care too much about actual reality.
It’s an interesting experience because it’s
the first time in my life that I wear a jacket,
tie, together with pajama pants and slippers.
I’m a theoretical particle physicist—
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, you’re in your
underwear now is what you’re telling us.
(Gian Giudice) Well, pajama pants.
I’m very glad that theoretical physics exist
and is supported by society because I’m
not a very practical person.
I’m probably—there’s not much else I
could have done in life.
I was educated in Italy.
Then I had the privilege to do research in
your country.
I worked at Fermilab near Chicago and at the
University of Texas at Austin.
These were fundamental years for my research
because they really shaped my vision of particle
physics.
And then finally I moved to European laboratory
of CERN.
And how can I describe CERN?
I think that if God were a particle physicist
and if he had to create Heaven, then he would
build something very similar to CERN.
So, very privileged to work in such an intellectually
stimulating environment.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, excellent.
Well, thank you for those opening remarks.
Shelly, what do you got—it’s your third
time, I think, on this stage here.
(Sheldon Glashow) Third time here, yes.
Look, I agree with the previous speakers.
And neutrinos are my favorite particles, too.
But we’re here, I think, to talk a little
bit about relativity as well.
And we all know that the special theory of
relativity was introduced back in 1905, and
there have been doubters ever since.
And one of the great fascinations that I’ve
enjoyed is looking at tests of the special
theory of relativity.
And let me just recall that.
Fifteen years ago or so, in the late 1990s,
my dear-departed friend Sidney Coleman and
I got into the game as theoretical physicists
to see what we could say about tests of the
special theory.
There had already been all sorts of experimental
tests.
There was an atomic physics experiment that
was sensitive to 21 or 22 decimal places done
by some experimenters at the University of
Washington, as I recall.
Could we as theorists do better?
It seemed an absurd question, but we did.
Because we realized that if, for example,
particles traveled faster than the speed of
light then there would be consequences; processes
that would ordinarily be forbidden become
allowed and processes that are ordinarily
allowed can become forbidden.
And on that basis, we were very proud of ourselves.
We did an experiment.
We said people have seen protons—cosmic
ray protons of such large energies that they
couldn’t have had these energies if relativity
were violated.
And we put a limit on the passable superluminality
of protons of 10 to the minus 23.
I mean, that’s an absurdly small number.
And, yes, even theorists can do experiments.
Thank you.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
And that’s not even what you got the Nobel
Prize for.
(Sheldon Glashow) Well, no.
To be honest, that had to do with something
I did as a mere infant back in 1961.
A long time ago, one of my first papers written
after I graduated—got my PhD from Harvard
University.
By the way, I also taught there for 35 years.
Gave up because 35 years is enough to teach
it anyplace.
Yeah, so I got my PhD, and then ran off to
Copenhagen.
That’s a story in itself, but we’ll skip
that for the while.
And that’s where I wrote the paper that
won the Nobel Prize.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Excellent.
Christopher, what does it mean—well, this
is your opening remarks, but you’re not
from an academic setting.
You’re in a MITRE Corporation.
In your comments, opening remarks, can you
just tell us what that is?
Because I think many of us might be unfamiliar.
(Christopher Hegarty) Yeah.
MITRE Corporation is a private company that
manages five Federally-funded research and
development centers.
I am an electrical engineer.
I am live here in New York because I like
things that are real.
I absolutely hated my modern physics class
in college, and never wanted anything to do
with that voodoo stuff.
Although, I have to say I’ve been working
for the past 20 years on GPS, and I’ve grown
to like modern physics a lot more because
it is used.
Both general and special relativity are very
important to the operation of GPS today.
And you can see it with your own eyes.
If you don’t apply the corrections that
Einstein derived for us, it doesn’t work
anymore.
And I like that much better than seeing cubes
from the side, or whatever my textbook talked
about.
So, that’s why I’m here.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, thank you.
Laura?
(Laura Patrizii) Well, first of all, I would
like to say that I’m very happy to be here
and honored for being here.
Thank you so much for inviting me.
I’m from Italy, as you can easily guess
from my accent.
And I started my career—professional career
as a physicist in the so-called astro-particle
physics, which is a quite new field.
I mean, it dates back to the 1985, something
like this.
And it’s a field in connection between particle
physics and astrophysics because there is
strong connection.
And neutrinos are a link between those two.
But now I didn’t start with the neutrinos.
Actually, I started with magnetic monopoles,
with an experiment with the Gran Sasso—you
will hear about the Gran Sasso later on a
lot, I think—which was looking for those
magnetic monopoles in cosmic race, which the
existence of magnetic monopoles would prove
the unification of three fundamental forces.
And then I shifted [unintelligible 15:50]
to neutrinos.
And I am one of the guilty person tonight
because I am member of the OPERA Collaboration,
which has claimed that the neutrino can fly
faster than light.
But, okay, you will hear more about this later
on.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yes, we will for sure.
Okay.
Yes, Gabby?
(Gabriela Gonzalez)I’m Gabriela Gonzalez,
and I live in Louisiana, but you hear an accent
from much farther south.
I was born in Argentina.
Came to do my PhD in the U.S. in Syracuse,
New York and loved what I did and stayed there.
I started working, even at that time in the
early ‘90s, on a beautiful project called
the LIGO Project, which is testing a prediction—but
I think it’s a most striking prediction—of
Einstein’s theory of relativity that says
that space time itself can vibrate, can produce
gravitational wave.
We all produce gravitational waves that travel.
We’re out to measure these tiny waves that
come from black holes.
And I’ve been working on that ever since.
I’m the spokesperson for a big collaboration
of hundreds of scientists that are working
on this.
And I hope I tell you more about that later
on.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You certainly will.
So, thank you all for your opening remarks.
I want to spend a couple of minutes before
we put on the boxing gloves.
I’d like to just—I want to explore just
the way physics gets done today.
We have a couple of you who are part of the
CERN collaboration.
So, CERN is how you pronounce the word, which
I think in French that’s the sequence of
word, but in English it’s the European Center
for Nuclear Research.
You swap some letters back and forth and you
get CERN.
And that’s where you have the Large Hadron
Collider.
And so, David, just to go back to you, this
is—can you tell me just something about
this Large Hadron Collider relative to previous
colliders?
Just what is it and what is it doing for us?
(David Cline) Okay.
Is it still on?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) No, it’s not.
Can we get the mic there?
Is it going?
Try again.
(David Cline) Can you hear me now?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) No, take that.
(David Cline) Okay.
I work—(Neil deGrasse Tyson) I can’t interrupt
you.
(David Cline) Okay, good.
I can speak for a long time.
I worked at CERN for a long time, and we tried
here in America to develop our own— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) You’re on now.
(David Cline) —very large machine called
the Super Conducting Super Collider, which
was going to be in Texas.
A series of a very unfortunate events led
this machine to be canceled, so CERN, which
was then directed by my colleague— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Wait, just to clarify, you’re
describing a particle accelerator that was
proposed in the United States that got cancelled.
(David Cline) Right.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) And so stranding an
entire generation of particle physicists here
in America.
(David Cline) Now, we understand that that
may have been a tragic mistake because at
the Large Hadron Collider, which is 27 kilometers
in circumference, we are hoping to see some
particles, which are called super symmetric—you
may have heard of those before—they seem
to be at this moment outside the range of
the energy.
Now, we do think we’ve seen the Higgs boson.
Maybe we can say more about that later.
But the energy range of the SSC might have
been ideal, but now many scientists in the
world—even people from Iran, Vietnam—it’s
just an incredible array of scientists who
work on this Large Hadron Collider.
I, in particular, work on the Compact Muon
Solenoid.
There’s six professors at UCLA that I work
with, and we have our own duties for the hardware.
So, basically the Large Hadron Collider has
now been—come now the world machine, but
we’re still hoping in the future we’re
going to be able to build something comparable
to that in the United States.
So, for the time being, we’re hoping there’ll
be major discoveries there.
The only one on the horizon at this moment
is the Higgs boson.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Gian, at CERN how many
different countries are involved there just
to get a sense of this?
(Gian Giudice) Right.
So, the [unintelligible 20:03], but in the
LHC experiments, a lot more countries are
represented.
Essentially, I would almost all countries
in the world of all continents—I mean, hundreds
of countries.
It is really truly international endeavor.
And that’s a nice thing.
When I was saying that CERN is Heaven, there’s
much more physics involved.
It is really the idea that science brings
people together, joins nations.
CERN was funded soon after the war, and as
you can imagine— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Wait,
this is America, so you have to be specific
about which war you’re talking about.
Funded after the war, please specify.
(Gian Giudice) It’s the only one that is
in my view as an Italian— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) That’s the Second World War (Gian
Giudice) —so, that’s the Second World
War.
And as you can imagine, Europe was divided
and also did not—was destroyed and did not
have the resources to fund the fundamental
research.
So, that point was a special political endeavor
to bring together nations that were just fighting
a few years earlier.
And science [unintelligible 21:26] to bring
people together and also to start something
new.
To bring back from United States many of the
scientists that had to leave and starting
in the ashes of a destroyed Europe something
new.
And I think that mission was really a success.
And now we see that CERN is expanding even
beyond the borders of Europe.
And it’s truly the biggest and most international
center for science at the moment.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Excellent.
So, it’d be fair to say then that CERN in
Switzerland and the International Space Station
are two examples of extraordinary international
collaborations.
Perhaps the greatest international collaborations
outside of the waging of war.
Would you agree?
(Gian Giudice) Yes.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yeah, okay.
(Gian Giudice) I wasn’t sure you were referring
to me because you’re looking at David, at
least from my point of view.
But that’s what I said, so I certainly agree
with what I said.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) All right.
I want to spend a little time just starting
off thinking about what it is to test what
we call fundamental physics.
Shelly, let me ask you: Are people still testing
thermodynamics?
Or Maxwell’s equations; these classics physics
from the 19th century, or is that just in
the books and we’re on to other things?
And if we are on to other things, why ignore
19th century physics and only test 20th century
physics?
(Sheldon Glashow) Well, yes.
Let’s pick— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) My question
was not a yes/no answer.
Just so you know, I’m on to you here.
Go on.
(Sheldon Glashow) You mentioned many things.
Let’s think of classical mechanics.
Think of the mechanics that was that apple
fell on the head of Newton and he created
classical mechanics: F equals MA and all that
stuff.
That’s a great theory.
It is a true theory.
Now, what the hell could I mean by that?
Because it’s not true for things that move
too fast.
When things move too fast, you have to invoke
the special theory of relativity.
It’s not true for things that are too small
because you have to invoke quantum mechanics.
It’s not true for things that are too big
and fat like the sun because general relativity
begins to play a role.
So, why do I say classical mechanics has proven
to be true?
Because we have mapped out its envelope of
validity.
We know exactly where it applies and where
it doesn’t apply.
And I think this is, in a sense, the modern
definition of truth in physics.
We have quantum mechanics.
We know, to a certain extent, its boundaries.
We know Maxwell’s equations.
We know that it falls apart under certain
circumstances where light behaves as particles.
We know the boundaries of classical physics.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, that’s an important
distinction.
So, when you conduct experiments to test these
theories, you’re not testing them within
the realm where you’re pretty sure it falls
within the boundaries.
You’re designing tests at the boundaries.
(Sheldon Glashow) At and beyond.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) At and beyond.
(Sheldon Glashow) Exactly.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) At and beyond the boundaries.
Gabby, you are at and beyond the boundary
of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
A reminder—and correct me if I’m wrong,
allow me to make this generalization that
special relativity of Einstein—1905—was
his extension of Newtonian mechanics; motion
essentially.
And then general relativity was Einstein’s
extension of Newtonian gravity.
Is that a fair way to think about it?
(Sheldon Glashow) Definitely.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, good.
That was a very grumpy yes, but I’ll take
it.
Okay.
But, yeah, all right.
If you’ve got to say that.
So, Einstein is looking pretty good every
time I’ve ever looked at it.
Yet, somehow you have some doubt, apparently,
because you’re involved in a very expensive
experiment to test it.
So, let me ask you: Are you testing it because
you think he could be wrong?
Or are you testing it because you’re trying
to show him to be right?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) I’m very convinced that
Einstein was right.
We are testing it because we are measuring
this prediction that has never been measured
before.
Einstein’s theory in one of the most straightforward
predictions is that masses, they attract each
other not because there is a force like Newton
said, but because they distort space time,
and then they fall into each other’s space
warps.
And it is those space time ripples that we
are trying to measure, which are very, very
tiny.
And that’s why they haven’t been measured
before.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, so what’s an
example of what will ripple space time on
a level that you’ll be able to measure?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) We are measuring— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Wait.
We’re all rippling space time here, aren’t
we?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) We are, yes.
We are all waving space time around.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
But you’re not measuring that.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) No, because it’s too
tiny to measure.
And that was Einstein’s prediction.
Einstein said that these things would never
be measured because they were too small.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, but what did Einstein
know?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) What did he know?
He didn’t even know what technology we could
have.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) All right, so— (Gabriela
Gonzalez) We use his theory to calculate how
big this was.
And what his theory says is that these gravitational
waves are coming to Earth maybe once every
year or so, changing the distance between
the Earth and the sun by an atomic diameter.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Whoa.
Wait, wait.
Okay.
So, wait, wait.
Back up.
So, these ripples you’re trying to measure
is like a wave through the fabric of space
and time.
And when you have a wave, it distorts just
like the fabric shrinking or expanding.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) That’s right.
Exactly.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, in the 93 million
mile—this is America, so it’s miles.
Sorry.
Okay, 150 million kilometers, yes.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) [Unintelligible 27:39].
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, that distance from
Earth to the sun changes by the diameter of
an atom from that wave, and you’re going
to measure that.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) We’re actually going
to measure on a much, much smaller scale,
which is still very big.
It’s two-and-a-half mile scale, so we have
these huge observatories.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Two and a half miles
is much smaller than 93 million miles.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) It is a lot smaller.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, you’re looking
for a shift— (Gabriela Gonzalez) And it’s
still very expensive.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You’re looking for
shifts much smaller than the diameter of an
atom.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) That’s right.
We are looking for shifts that are smaller
than a proton—a [unintelligible] 10,000
of a proton diameter.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, then you woke
up, and then you said, okay— (Gabriela Gonzalez)The
most exciting thing is that we have measured
already a part in 1,000 of a proton diameter.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You mean if a wave came
at a part in 1,000, you would have seen it?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) Yes.
And it didn’t come yet.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
But that hasn’t happened.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) It hasn’t happened yet.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) And you’re after a
part in— (Gabriela Gonzalez) Ten thousand.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Ten thousand.
Okay, factor of 10.
Okay.
We’ll get back to you on that.
MITRE dude?
(Christopher Hegarty) Yes.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Chris.
(Christopher Hegarty) Neil, dude.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Someone should tally
how many people are not dead because they
didn’t have to read a map while driving
the car.
An unfolded map across the windshield because
they were guided by GPS.
(Christopher Hegarty) You’ll have to offset
that from those that are dead from looking
at the GPS or programming their GPS.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, it’s all balances.
(Christopher Hegarty) Yes.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You’re a big GPS guy.
We all love—who doesn’t love GPS?
Of course, it started as a military project.
And I’m guessing the military wasn’t thinking
what a great test for Einstein relativity.
They probably weren’t thinking this, isn’t
that correct?
(Christopher Hegarty) Probably not, but they
knew a lot more than we think going back through
some of the old papers that were written,
even right around 1970 or so.
They knew a whole lot of things that we rediscover
now and then.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) It seems to me they’re
going at orbital speed.
That’s fast, but it’s not speed of light
speed.
Right?
(Christopher Hegarty) Yeah, the— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Couple of tens of thousands of miles
an hour.
(Christopher Hegarty) The satellites are going
about 4,000 meters a second, which is a little
over 8,000 miles an hour.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Eight-thousand miles
an hour?
(Christopher Hegarty) Yeah.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) That’s pretty high
up then.
(Christopher Hegarty) About a New York taxi
driver’s speed at a yellow light.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) New York taxi driver
speed at a yellow light.
This was the analogy.
That’s a new unit of speed.
(Christopher Hegarty) Yeah.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, I remember my relativity
equations and you have to get pretty close
to the speed of light for it to really matter.
And so I don’t think of GPS as being any
kind of test of relativity at all.
So, how does this surface as a benchmark for
it?
(Christopher Hegarty) Well, what’s interesting
is you’re mentioning the effects of special
relativity that says if you have a clock up
in space, it’s whizzing around.
You’ll actually see it from the ground,
is running too slow.
But the effects of general relativity are
actually bigger for GPS.
The fact that it is 20,000 kilometers above
the surface of the Earth makes that clock
appear to actually run fast.
And the clocks that are put on the satellites
are actually intentionally set slow by about
five parts in 10 to the 10th, so that they’ll
appear to run correctly as see here on Earth.
And that’s something that’s done in GPS—
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Whoa, you just blew
my mind.
Wait.
Did you just say that the clocks on the GPS
are intentionally designed to run at a general
relativistically slower rate just so that
when we observe them from Earth in a deeper
gravitational setting, it will look accurate
to us?
(Christopher Hegarty) Not just general.
It’s actually the combined effects of general
and special.
But general relativity has about six times
greater effect than special relativity.
Special would make them appear to run slow.
General would make them appear to run fast.
And general is bigger, and the net effect
is needed to be compensated within the system.
And not only that— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Okay, just to remind people—okay, yeah.
My mind is blown.
I’m done.
Good night, everyone.
(Christopher Hegarty) Let’s go for an explosion
here then.
But the interesting part is the satellites
aren’t perfectly in a circular orbit, so
that there are imperfections there where they
are slowly going up higher sometimes and going
lower sometimes, which means the speed isn’t
constant and the gravitational effects aren’t
constant.
And the user equipment actually compensates
for that, taking the ellipticity, the non-circular
nature of the orbit into account in every
piece of equipment that’s out there, including
probably the stuff in your phones.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, it’s one thing
to be high in a lesser part of Earth’s gravitational
field.
So, now that means they’ll run a little
slower—faster because as you’re deeper
in a gravitational well, you’re time slows
down from general relativity.
(Christopher Hegarty) [Unintelligible 32:44].
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, now these orbits
are not in perfect circles.
When you’re not in a perfect circle, sometimes
you’re close.
Sometimes you’re far.
And that difference is measured.
(Christopher Hegarty) That difference is compensated
in virtually every GPS receiver that’s out
there.
If you didn’t, you wouldn’t get the several
meters accuracy you get.
You’d get about 10, 20 meters accuracy.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, that’s because—what
you’re saying is—not to put words in your
mouth, but just so I understand it—that
the time precision translates into location
precision on Earth.
(Christopher Hegarty) Correct.
Yeah, the GPS is an arranging system.
It’s measuring the transit time of signals
from the satellite down to the user on the
ground.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) All right.
So, if you did not correct for general relativity,
and I’m here, where’s the satellite going
to tell me I’m standing?
(Christopher Hegarty) If you let the clock
run on the satellite for one day without compensating
it, the close could be in error by 38 microseconds
or so, which would be about 11 kilometer ranging
error after— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Eleven
kilometers?
(Christopher Hegarty) Of one range measurement,
and your position would be off by something
commensurate within— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
I can’t even continue.
(Sheldon Glashow) Hey, Neil, can I translate
the previous discussion into English?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, go ahead.
Go ahead.
So, now we can find another way to blow my
mind.
Okay, go ahead, Shelly.(Sheldon Glashow) No,
not at all.
If we did not have Einstein’s general theory
of relativity—well, it could have been somebody
else’s general theory of relativity, but
if we didn’t have the theory of general
relativity, we would not have GPS.
It’s as simple as that.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
All right.
So, can you— (Laura Patrizii) Can I add
one thing to this?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yes.
(Laura Patrizii) If one wonders what’s the
use, again, of studying so academic like or
relativity like Einstein was doing, what’s
the practical use of this, then you may discover
later on very long time after.
So, the point is— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
In 1916, surely no one was saying this is
some practical stuff, Albert.
Right, that probably not what he was hearing
in the coffee lounge.
(Laura Patrizii) Yeah, in fact.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) My favorite equation
of Einstein’s, just while we’re on the
subject, is when he derived the stimulated
emission of radiation; his famous Einstein
A and B coefficients, is what they’re called.
We study that in astrophysics.
And that’s the equation that enables the
construction of lasers.
And so Einstein, at the time he wrote that,
was not saying, “Barcodes, yes, this is
how I will—this is where this will land.”
I’m thinking—it’s an appeal for basic
research is what you have here.
So, can you flip this question around and
ask: Rather than pre-compensate the satellites
for general relativity, can we use GPS to
test the limits of relativity?
Or are you so within the zone that Shelly
just described that you’re not going to
land—you’re not good for that?
(Christopher Hegarty) Yeah, in some ways you
can use it to measure relativity.
In fact, before the first GPS satellite was
launched, there was a series of experimental
satellites—navigation technology satellites
they were called, NTS 1 and NTS 2.
And the engineers at the time weren’t all
believers the relativistic corrections would
need to be applied.
So, they actually had a switch on the satellite
where they could turn it on or off.
But they actually ran it with the clock running
at the right rate factory set on ground, and
they ran it and measured the offset, and then
it was consistent with what you’d predict
using special and general relativity.
And that sold the engineers anyhow.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, the engineers didn’t
believe Einstein?
(Christopher Hegarty) Not all of them.
In fact, I believed Einstein until tonight—until
we went up into your reading room upstairs
and I saw Einstein in a light I had never
seen him before.
What is Einstein wearing in your office up
there?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Oh, in our research
library up in astrophysics?
There’s a bust of Einstein, and he’s wearing
a New York Yankees hat.
(Christopher Hegarty) So, I don’t know about
him—he’s from Boston, too, but I’m a
Red Sox fan, so I don’t know.
I’m starting to doubt this all.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Red Sox fan.
Wrong place to say that, let me tell you.
(Christopher Hegarty) We do get to leave through
a different exit, don’t we?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) I’m just saying.
Where’s all my stuff here?
So, I’m impressed by this.
And so this continues.
So, it’s a few months ago we learned of—how
many months ago—that there’s the possibility—
(Gabriela Gonzalez) Six.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Six months ago, thank
you.
How’d you know what I was coming here?
Six months ago we learned of the possibility—no,
it was longer ago where we learned that maybe
the neutrino, one of the fundamental particles
of nature, may have been misbehaving.
That it’s not following what we’d expect
it to do.
In particular, there was a claim that it was
traveling faster than light.
Gian, could you just update us on the original
papers that led to that?
(Gian Giudice) Yes.
So, on the 23rd of September there was this
big announcement from the OPERA Collaboration—
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) And OPERA is an acronym.
And please tell me what each of those letters
stand for.
(Gian Giudice) I think Laura can tell you.
(Laura Patrizii) Yeah.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yeah, actually we’re
going to get back to her, so I’ll save it
for her.
Please continue.
(Gian Giudice) All right.
I know what OPERA means in Italian, and I
think most of the people know, but actually
don’t know what the acronym means.
So, on the 23rd of September there was this
result.
And, of course, at that point many theoretical
physicists were startled as soon as they heard
about this result.
And immediately they tried to make sense of
it.
So, for several months many physicists work
very hard to understand if it is possible
to modify the properties of neutrinos or the
properties of space time to be constantly—to
reconcile the OPERA results with our knowledge
of special relativity.
Because the OPERA measurement, all the neutrinos,
as they traveled from CERN to Gran Sasso in
central Italy, they arrived at 60 nanoseconds
[unintelligible 39:19] to light.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Sixty nanoseconds?
(Gian Giudice) Sixty nanoseconds may seem
not a lot, but— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) It’s
60 billionths of a second.
(Gian Giudice) That’s right.
But that’s a lot.
For a particle physicist, that’s an enormous
quantity.
So, that’s why people really jumped on that
[chair] and immediately— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Just to clarify, you send these particles
from Switzerland, through the Earth in a cord,
through the spherical Earth, landing in her
lab.
(Gian Giudice) That’s right.
Seven-hundred-thirty-two kilometers.
And we take advantage of the curvature of
the Earth because neutrinos are very [unintelligible]
particles.
They essentially see the Earth as a perfectly
transparent medium.
So, they can cross the Earth with no problem.
Although, as you may know, the Italian Minister
of Science claimed that Italy had built a
tunnel going from CERN to Gran Sasso in order
to allow the neutrinos to go through.
That was the Italian contribution to the [unintelligible
40:22].
(Laura Patrizii) Gian, it’s not fair to
say.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) We’re coming to you
in like three minutes.
(Gian Giudice) Never said anything bad about
[unintelligible].
Sorry about that.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yes.
So, 60 nanoseconds—if we do that in English
units, the light moves one foot per nanosecond.
The light got there 60 feet ahead of when
a light beam—the neutrino got there—would
have beaten a beam of light by 60 feet.
I think that’s— (Gian Giudice) That’s
right.
And it looks a lot longer.
Indeed, it’s something that in units of
particle physics, it’s an enormous effect.
Billions of times bigger than anybody could
have guessed from the fact that maybe relativity
when it enters the quantum regime should be
modified.
So, immediately many of us try to make sense
of this result and see what was the meaning
because that’s part of our job as theorists.
But, at the end, I would say after a few months
there was a general consensus that this reconciliation
seemed really nearly impossible.
I would say that there was only one plausible,
theoretical explanation that I heard about
this result.
And, as you know, neutrinos travel from CERN
in Switzerland to the Gran Sasso Laboratory
in central Italy.
And the explanation goes as follows: when
the neutrinos are produced in Switzerland,
they travel at the speed of light.
But then as soon as it pass the border and
enter Italy, it no longer respect rules and
speed limits.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.(Gian Giudice)
That should tell you it really was a status
of theory.
That point, there really the general consensus
among theorists.
But it is an inexplicability of the OPERA
result.
And this came earlier then this statement
that—on the 22nd of February by OPERA announcing
the experimental problems.
So, I think this story has a good moral for
theoretical physics because, yes, we are eager
to chew on every bone that experimentalists
throw at us, but we don’t swallow anything.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Especially not the chicken
bones.
You don’t want to swallow—so, Laura, he
sends the signal from CERN.
You receive the signal in Italy.
And now these are misbehaved neutrinos.
So, either Einstein is wrong, they did something—
(Laura Patrizii) It’s not correct to say
misbehavior.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Misbehavior.
(Laura Patrizii) I mean— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Surprising behavior.
(Laura Patrizii) Okay.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, either Einstein
is wrong, they messed up on their end, or
you messed up on your end, or all of the above.
So, where do you— (Laura Patrizii) And Gian
already anticipated that the result has been
corrected.
That we found false in our equipment.
It was quite a surprise because we have tested
and retested many times all the different
parts.
It is a quite complicated experiment that
measuring the neutrino velocity.
So, it had been checked, but eventually we
discovered that there was something very,
let’s say, stupid that apparently was not
put in the proper way.
It was a, so-called, faulty connection.
It’s not so simple as this.
Somewhat more complicated, but we can summarize
like this: a faulty connection.
But it’s not so simple as this.
And while I cannot say which is the—we found
two different effects.
One, which goes into the direction of making
neutrinos slower than they appeared at the
first time.
And another effect, which makes the velocity
to increase.
So, the combination—this [unintelligible
44:33] effect—very likely will [conceal]
the anticipation that had been measured.
And so, in any case, but can I comment concerning
all the interest?
I mean, Gian, concerning all that you theorists
have been doing, there was a lot of steering.
Even now very likely we know that the result
is not what seemed.
It’s still a lot of interest, a lot of discussion,
a lot of reconsideration of so-called effects.
And this is, perhaps, the gift—the unwanted
gift that at the end eventually OPERA has
done to the community.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) And tell me what the
OPERA stands for.
(Laura Patrizii) Oscillation Project with
Tracking Apparatus.
And then you have to ask me why.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Why?
(Laura Patrizii) Because the main aim of this
experiment was not to measure and is not to
measure a neutrino velocity.
It is look to prove—to give the final proof
of an effect that a neutrino can undergo.
That is the so-called neutrino oscillation.
Neutrino, which exist in three families, which
we call electron neutrino, muon neutrino and
tau neutrino.
As they travel, they can change their nature
from electron neutrino to, for example, muon
neutrino.
It’s a peculiar property of those particles,
which prove that they have mass.
They have a mass—the neutrinos was thought
before to be mass-less.
Anyhow, this was discovered in 1998, but it
was discovered somehow in an indirect way
and OPERA was aim at proving in a direct way
by so-called appearance experiments: experiment
that this is what really happens.
But then you have to give me some more time
if you want me to explain it better.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Well, I’ll come back
to that.
Let me just come over to David.
I’ve got a research paper, pub date 15th
of March 2012.
That’s five days ago.
“Measurement of the neutrino velocity with
the Icarus Detector at the CNGS beam.”
Okay, so you’re a co-author on this paper.
What does it say?
(David Cline) Okay.
Let me say two things first.
Let me go back to Shelly’s comment and say
one thing about relativity.
Every time a machine like the Large Hadron
Collider works, it tests relativity.
Now, these—in some way.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Now, is this a picture
of LIGO here?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) Yes.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yes, in Louisiana.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) That is LIGO Livingston.
LIGO Louisiana.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Oh, Louisiana.
And has three— (Gabriela Gonzalez) No, this
is the road.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Oh, that’s the road?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) We have to get there.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
That’s the road, and then we have two beams
at right angles.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) That’s right.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
And how long are those?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) Two and a half miles.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Each?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) Each.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
Good, since we have the photo.
Sorry to interrupt.
(David Cline) Okay.
So, let me just say—more or less finish
up what Shelly said.
We tested these fundamental principles, like
Newton’s Law of Gravity, all the way from
millimeters to thousands of—or millions
of light years.
We don’t make these things sit quietly.
I mean, there was—when something has been
tested that well, we start believing it’s
real.
Now, in terms of the neutrino faster than
light, already there was a measurement of
this.
When the Supernova 1987A went off, and neutrinos
traveled 150,000 light years to the Earth
and arrived here within 20 seconds.
That resulted in a limit on the neutrino—this
time electron neutrino—velocity being less
than about one part of 10 to the ninth the
velocity of light.
Now, in this Icarus experiment—which you
had pictures up here before—it’s a very
large vat of liquid argon, about 600 tons.
It’s actually non-trivial device.
We believe it will be now followed by a huge
detector in South Dakota that will actually
be 40,000 tons.
This is one of the futures of science in our
country.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Just a quick
second just to clarify, you mentioned Supernova
1987A.
This is a supernova—the first supernova
observed in the year 1987, and it was observed
to go off in a nearby galaxy to our own—a
dwarf galaxy.
(David Cline) Large Magellanic Cloud.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yeah.
And it’s visible from the Southern Hemisphere,
and we can see the exploding star.
So, that’s when the light gets to us, and
then we had a detector that measured the arrival
of neutrinos.
(David Cline) Two detectors.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Two detectors.
And they came in behind the light, not ahead
of it.
(David Cline) Right.
About 20 seconds of time the pulses lasted,
even though it traveled 150,000 years to get
here.
So, it showed conclusively that the velocity
of light was extremely close—the velocity
of the neutrinos were extremely close to the
velocity of light.
(Sheldon Glashow) Those neutrinos.
(David Cline) Those.
Let me finish now.
I’m going to get to the other neutrinos
now.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Those weren’t
CERN neutrinos.
Those were supernova neutrinos, duh.
(David Cline) I don’t buy the argument that
neutrinos change when they go to Italy.
So, what we have done, in this big liquid
argon detector, which is I think going to
be a marvel of technology in this country
someday, we have looked for neutrinos coming
from CERN 731 kilometers.
And this paper that we were just talking about
a moment ago, which we’re publishing shows
that the neutrinos arrive exactly with the
speed of light.
And a second experiment, which we did earlier
using one of Shelly’s theories—we follow
him very closely.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Isn’t it great just
to have theories people just select from and—
(David Cline) No, we know his theories are
right, so we usually [unintelligible 50:39].
Anyway, in one of his theory contributions,
which have been very important, if there were
such high energy neutrinos with faster-than-light
particles, they would emit a large number
of electron positron [unintelligible].
Positron being an anti-electron.
In that same 600-ton liquid argon detector
in the Gran Sasso, we’ve observed no pairs.
Now, there was a plot up here before, which
has been taken down now, which showed our
conclusions, which were very similar to the
Supernova 1987A.
So, we have shown in two ways that the muon
neutrinos have exactly the speed of light
or possibly slightly less because of the mass.
And we entirely disagree with OPERA.
(Laura Patrizii) Can I comment?
(Gian Giudice) I can— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
He disagrees with you, Laura.
But let me ask—before I come back to you,
David, you just cited two different neutrino
experiments.
So, the fact that you’re now saying they’re
wrong has to assert that all neutrinos behave
the same way in all situations.
So, I’m echoing Shelly’s point here.
(David Cline) We basically have seen now thousands
or even millions of neutrino interactions
in different venues and different process
and different countries, different continents,
and we’ve seen they all behave the same
in their interaction.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
(David Cline) So, why would they change now
because they’re coming from CERN to Italy?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
So, Laura, I understand—we spoke earlier—that
there’s still a collaboration and a published
paper being prepared.
And you can’t really talk about that, but
what does your gut tell you about these neutrinos
that were measured by OPERA?
(Laura Patrizii) They already told us.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) He already knows the
answer.
(Laura Patrizii) Yeah.
So, at least for— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
What you really meant by that is he thinks
he knows the answer.
That’s really, I think, what you meant.
(Laura Patrizii) What I mean is that we found
those problems that I was mentioning.
And when you put all them together, likely
the result will be in agreement with what
Icarus found.
I want to point out one thing concerning Icarus.
Icarus is, they said, another experiment located
in Gran Sasso.
But what they measured is not completed independent.
It is not exactly another experiment.
It’s another experiment only for the last
part of the experiment itself.I mean, they
took our—I mean, OPERA’s—data, OPERA
measurements, concerning the baseline, concerning
the synchronization of the timing the same
that OPERA had established, that it had set.
And then they simply used their timestamp
for their events.
So, down to Gran Sasso from CERN down to Gran
Sasso, the elements of computation are exactly
those that OPERA had set.
And then they—not simply—were able to
provide a more accurate measurement of the
last part.
So, if there is anything wrong in the OPERA
part of the experiment, they have the same
error.
Am I correct?(David Cline) I don’t agree.
We can talk about it later.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) No, talk about it now.
(David Cline) We have the right answer.
That’s the key thing.
And we have certified it.
We’ve measured it actually twice.
Assuming Professor Glashow’s theory is correct,
of course.
If his theories— (Sheldon Glashow) It’s
not a theory.
It’s physics.
(David Cline) Therefore, it must be right.
It must be right.
Therefore, we have checked ourselves, so to
speak.
So, I think we would be willing to probably
make a wager.
Although, scientists are not supposed to bet
on things like this.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You can bet a bottle
of Italian wine.(David Cline)No, a bottle
of Chianti.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) No, Barolo.
Not Chianti.
(Laura Patrizii) [Italian 54:53].
(David Cline) I will bet that Icarus is correct
and OPERA is wrong.
It will pay off [unintelligible].
(Laura Patrizii) Again, as you know, you know
better than me what the systematic error is,
so you have the same systematic error as we
have from CERN down to Gran Sasso because
you use exactly the same data.
The baseline was what we had measured.
The synchronization— (David Cline) Then
why did we get different results?
(Laura Patrizii) Oh, this is physics.
You have to test even this.
No?
Isn’t it?
(David Cline) Okay.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, if I understand
correctly, the timings that were invoked here
to assert that we had these neutrinos behaving
differently were measured by GPS satellites.
Is that correct?
(Laura Patrizii) Yeah.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, it’s his fault.
(Laura Patrizii) No, no.
In fact, when we got this anomaly, for sure
it didn’t represent any—I mean, it was
not that Einstein was wrong exactly because
we were using Einstein or [anyhow 55:57] relativity
to do the experiment itself.
If it was true—if the result was true, it
simply means that you had to, as Gian Giudice
said, to invent a way to reconciliate—to
put those things together.
It was not that you were disproving Einstein.
Also, in the newspaper it was put like this,
that OPERA was disproving—it’s not like
that.
And we didn’t say it like that.
We didn’t say this.
(David Cline) Can I make a comment?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) It’s the press.
(Gian Giudice) Can I say something?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yeah.
Yeah, Gian.
Yes.
(Gian Giudice ) Because now it looks like
maybe to people that this was just the point
was measuring some properties on neutrinos.
And I think at stake here there was much more.
that’s why theoretical physicists were so
interested, because Einstein’s revolutions
was showing that space and time are two conceptually
identical aspects of a single physical entity,
which is space time.
And that the zipper that keeps together space
and time is a principle of an absolute velocity—the
speed of light, or the speed of any mass-less
particle.
So, if neutrinos were faster than light, neutrinos
would see space and time differently.
So, OPERA, in a sense, would have unzipped
space time, would have broken the symmetry
that links space and time.
So, not only special relativity would be in
danger, but our vision of space time.
In other words, the entire stage in which
we build our theories.
So, at stake here, there was much more than
just measuring the property of a neutrino.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Would it be in danger
only at the limits of relativity, or would
it be a problem fundamental to the corral
that relativity had established?
(Gian Giudice) See, the problem is that we
believe that there is—as Shelly was saying—every
theory has a range of validity.
So, also relativity will have a range of validity
and a stage in which it reaches the quantum
world.
Because quantum mechanics and special and
the general relativity—in the way they are—they’re
not compatible in the way we know them.
So, we expect at a certain level that symmetry
between space and time may be broken.
The problem is the fact claimed by OPERA was
so huge that it was putting at the level which
was well within the range in which we have
tested special relativity.
And that was a shock, and that’s why it
was so difficult to reconcile their claim
made by OPERA with our previous knowledge
and test of special relativity.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You should know that
because of that result I got like thousands
of tweets at me saying, “What do you think
of this?
What do you think of this?
Is it the end of physics?”
And I said given how long relativity has been
tested and our understanding of particle physics,
it’s probably wrong.
That’s the first, most likely explanation.
Second, Shelly, haven’t we talked—we physicists—spoken
of faster-than-light particles before?
What’s so violating about that?
Tachyons, for example, are faster-than-light
particles.
Hypothetical, but they’re consistent with
relativity.
Nobody complained about them.
(Sheldon Glashow) Yes.
It’s hard to complain about particles that
don’t exist.
But let me say a word about Bronx science
at this point because one of my buddies at
Bronx Science was Gary Feinberg.
And he coined the word tachyon.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Is that right?
(Sheldon Glashow) Yes.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Excellent invention.
Tachyon, from the Greek root tachyos, meaning
fast.
(Sheldon Glashow) Fast.
Like tachycardia.
Your heart beats too fast.
Well, I want to attack that man.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You want to—sorry.
Here you go.
(Sheldon Glashow) Can I just say very briefly—
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Gian, Shelly wants at
you here.
Okay, go, Shelly.
(Gian Giudice) I’m very glad that I’m
not there so he cannot physically attack me.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, Shelly, what do
you got?
(Sheldon Glashow) Well, I was going to say
give me the microphone.
I didn’t realize I had one here.
No, look, that man, Gian, is being far too
modest because he made a very important point
immediately after the “discovery” of superluminal
neutrinos.
He points out that—as he said, this was
a very large effect compared to what was already
known that it would spread.
There would be metastasis of violations of
relativity all over the place.
And I believe you wrote a paper that argued
you could not confine the violation of relativity
to neutrinos.
It would spread all over the place.
[Unintelligible 60:52].
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You’d have neutrinos
cavorting with protons and— (Sheldon Glashow)
Yeah.
And we know at 10 decimal places, 15 decimal
places, 20 decimal places, 25 decimal places,
and now someone is saying there’s a violation
at the 5th decimal place.
Not possible.
And I think that was a very important observation.
Neil deGrasse Tyson) You know what I think
was the best statement ever for knowing that
the measurement was wrong?
I heard this.
I didn’t come up with this.
It was neutrinos arrive in Italy before the
speed of light, so the argument was it can’t
be true because nothing ever arrives early
in Italy.
That was the—I heard that.
Did you hear that, Laura?
(Sheldon Glashow) That’s a convincing argument.
(Laura Patrizii) I don’t like it.
(Christopher Hegarty) They’re the ones that
were sent yesterday.(Neil deGrasse Tyson)
You said what, Laura?(Laura Patrizii) I don’t
like it.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You don’t like that
one?
I want to shift topic just a little bit and
go back to Gian.
Gian, we spoke of relativity.
We speak—there’s something else out there:
the standard model of particle physics.
It’s this organization of particles and
forces.
Do you feel like you’re testing the standard
model?
Is that another zone where we’re trying
to find the corral where everything that works
fits in the corral and you’re testing the
edge?
(Gian Giudice) Yes.
That is certainly the primary goal of the
LHC.
We have this beautiful theory, which is the
standard model, but we want to go beyond.
Theoretical physicists are very curious, inquisitive,
ambitious animal species.
So, they are not satisfied just by opening
the toy of nature, inspecting the clockwork
and identifying all the springs and gears.
They always want to go one level deeper, and
they want to understand the inner workings.
They want to understand why the mechanism
works.
So, the standard model gives an excellent
description of the particle work.
And there’s nothing wrong with it.
So, most of the questions that we are addressing
today in theoretical physics are not about
a consistency of the standard model.
But about the reasons why the standard model
is the way it is.
So, superficially it may seem that many of
these questions are about the beauty of a
theory rather than the basic structural problems,
but history of science has shown that following
principles of beauty sometimes can bring you
very far.
Remember that general relativity was not invented
to explain some observing consistency of Newtonian
gravity.
The calculation of the mercury [unintelligible
63:51] came later.
The problem—in that case, the problem was
understanding force acting at a distance,
which was unacceptable in the case of special
relativity.So, now we have many questions
that we want to address.
And the major open question regarding the
standard model is the explanation of why the
weak force—the force responsible for certain
radioactive decays and for the thermal nuclear
reactions that make the sun shine— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) This is one of the four major
forces.
(Gian Giudice) That’s right.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You have gravity, strong—
(Gian Giudice) There’s two major forces.
No, the standard model describes weak force,
intellect from magnetism conceptually as a
single force.
So, then the question is: Why can we send
electromagnetic waves like, for instance,
radio waves a long distance while we can’t
do the same thing for the weak force?
And we think we know the answer to this question,
and the answer is the Higgs boson, which is
the particle that is actively searched for
at the LHC.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) The Higgs boson.
That’s what we’ve seen some news reports
on that maybe it was detected.
Is that correct?
(Gian Giudice) That’s right.
That’s a scientific statement: maybe.
Particle physics is— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Quantify the maybe for me.
(Gian Giudice) That’s why—I mean, every
measurement in physics you have to give a
level of accuracy.
And there is a statistical properties that
we are measuring.
We are dealing with quantum mechanics, so
we can—in quantum mechanics, you can make
a perfect prediction about probabilities of
seeing certain particles or [unintelligible
65:43] particles decay, but not of one single
event.
So, we’re always dealing with probabilities
and with statistical errors.
At the moment, we have—well, most important
result was that the possible region of the
Higgs boson has been narrowed down to a very
small range of masses.
And also within this small range of masses,
there is some excess; an indication that the
Higgs boson is there.
However, the statistical reliability of the
result is not high enough to claim discovery.
We’ll have to wait.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
So, that’s the four-minute explanation of
the word maybe.
That’s what you have there.
(Gian Giudice) That’s right.
Sorry.
I also should say that the LHC is working
very well, and we expect that by the summer
that maybe will disappear and we’ll have
a yes or no.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
Gabby—and we have to start winding down
because I want to go to question and answer
from the audience.
We were speaking earlier.
Apparently LIGO is the only experiment that
touches all the force regimes of nature.
Could you just briefly tell me how that’s
so?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) Well, after gravitational
effects— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, the standard
model doesn’t include gravity, right?
There’s no gravity in the standard model
of particle physics.
Okay, so go.
There’s just blank stares over there.
It means no to them.
That the physicist no.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) That’s right.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yeah, it’s not there.
Sorry.
(David Cline) It’s not there.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Can’t help you.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Go on.
Wait, wait.
No, it’s a good—I mean, particles interact
with force that vastly exceed that of gravity
between the same particles.
So, it’s just kind of irrelevant.
(Sheldon Glashow) Gravity is not irrelevant
because it kind of keeps our feet to the ground.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Well, it’s irrelevant
to your standard model.
(Sheldon Glashow) It’s irrelevant to particles
as far as we can see, but string theorists
would disagree.
But fortunately there are none here.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
So, tell me—it’s gravity, right?
(Gabriela Gonzalez) So, gravity— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) That’s a force.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) —is one of the four
forces.
It’s the weakest of all forces, and that’s
why particle physicist think it’s irrelevant
because it is irrelevant for most purposes.
But it’s very strong near very compact objects
like neutron stars and black holes.
And that’s the gravity we’ll be measuring.
So, we’ll be measuring these effects of
gravity that have never been seen before of
black holes about to collide, colliding and
forming a larger black hole, neutron stars
in which there’s a lot of particle physics
and standard model being used, colliding and
forming a singularity of space time in a black
hole.
That's what we are measuring, and that’s
what I think will give us a clue of not just
about gravity, but about nature.
All of nature.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, fluency in physics
matters here in all these regimes.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) Oh, it does.
Certainly, yes.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) And, Laura, just before
we go to questions from the audience let me
ask you: What’s in the future of the OPERA
experiment?
(Laura Patrizii) Well, as I said before, our
goal is to prove neutrino oscillations [unintelligible
69:21]— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, the three
species of neutrinos, and thy just switch
back and forth among themselves for mysterious
reasons.
(Laura Patrizii) Okay, not mysterious reasons.
It’s quantum mechanics.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Mysterious to me.
I heard it once described someone throws you
a basketball, and then you catch a football.
That would be a ball changing species midway.
(Sheldon Glashow) Football to her is soccer.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson)Soccer ball.
(Laura Patrizii)Yes.
If you like.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, so continue please.
(Laura Patrizi)i So, we are planning to complete
it.
We already detected one event—one so-called
tau event.
We expect to find a few more before the end
of experiment something like five, six particles.
And the final run will be this year, so it’s
about to start again in March.
Okay, no, this week.
Am I right, Gian?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Wait, should you be
there now?
(Laura Patrizii) Yeah.
The neutrino beam is starting again from CERN
to Gran Sasso, and then we shall have 200
days of run, and then we collect the data,
and then we analyze it.
And it will be done with this, but at the
same time we will repeat again—and not only
OPERA.
There are at least three experiments at the
Gran Sasso beside OPERA and Icarus.
There are also [LDD] and [unintelligible 70:59],
which have a new set up to test again to measure
in a really completely dependent way to retest
this velocity business—velocity run.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) To do it the right—to
do it— (Laura Patrizii) Yeah.
I mean— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, you think
that’s even necessary because your papers
are so right?
(Sheldon Glashow) No, I think you have to
think of Occam’s razor in a situation like
this.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Occam’s razor?
(Sheldon Glashow) In the sense it tells us
you take the most likely scenario, which has
been proven in the past—we’ve never, of
course, looked at muon neutrinos—(Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Occam’s razor is the simplest explanation.
(Sheldon Glashow) The simplest explanation
here is the velocity of muon neutrinos is
the speed of light.
We found that for electron neutrinos.
We never found any difference between electron
neutrinos and muon neutrinos.
That doesn’t prove it, but if some experiments
start showing that you get the right velocity
of light, there’s an overwhelming likelihood
they’re probably right because they’re
going according to the established tradition.
Whereas, OPERA is going against the established
tradition and has found an error in their
experiment.
So, not wanting to pile on to OPERA too much
here, I’m just saying this has already been
the consensus all along.
And then we have tested this ourselves.
Hopefully, other experiments will do the same
thing.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
Let’s assume you’re completely right.
I would say if you are right, the approach
that you have about being right is not necessarily
good for physics because you—well, I’ve
read about cases in the past where people
were just, sure, you didn’t have to test
it any further because they’d already done
the measurement.
And someone with some skepticism kept at it,
and they kept trying to refine whatever was
the results that they had gotten before, leading
to then a new discovery.
Maybe that’s the rarer of the occasions—
(Sheldon Glashow) This happens, but it’s
very rare.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Rare.
(Sheldon Glashow) Because the collected wisdom
of the experimentalist and the theorists are
tremendous pieces of information that you
have going into an experiment.
And actually— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) But
it can actually bias you, can’t it?
(Sheldon Glashow) It’s a bias, but it’s
also how we decide which experiments to work
on.
An experiment can take a decade or two decades
of your life now.
So, you don’t want to go after some wild,
crazy idea where 20 years later you regret
you did it.
(David Cline) See, many years ago Cherenkov
invented the idea that if a particle travels
faster than light, which particles can do
if they’re traveling through air or water,
that they will radiate light.
And Cherenkov Effect was observed, and Mr.
Cherenkov got his Nobel Prize.
And the rather trivial thing that Andy [Cohen
73:45] and I did is to notice that if neutrinos
were superluminal, if they traveled faster
than light, then they, too, would emit radiation.
And that radiation has been looked for.
You’ve looked for it.
Other people have looked for it.
It ain’t there.
And this unambiguously, I believe, beyond
a shadow of a doubt tells me that this charming
young lady is absolutely wrong in her experiment.
It’s flaws.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
(David Cline) Neutrinos travel at the speed
of light.(Laura Patrizii) Can I comment a
little bit?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yes, please comment.
And then we must go to Q&A.
(Laura Patrizii) What I want to say— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) In fact, we’ll give you
the second to the last word.
(Laura Patrizii) I agree, but the point is
there is nothing wrong, I think, on being
wrong with experiments.
We are allowed to be wrong.
Because physicists— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
David, you lost the crowd.
(Laura Patrizii) Physicists, they can be wrong,
buy physics is not.
So, at the end, eventually, we will see what
is true, what is not.
And even what we know now, it will be perhaps
an approximation.
Perhaps in the future it will be discovered
there’s a wrong thing.
I mean, I’m not defending the OPERA result.
Actually, I was one, which among the most
skeptical inside the collaboration.
But we have to—I mean, there is nothing
so terrible.
The most important thing is to be honest and
keep on trying and proving whether or not
you are wrong or not.
(David Cline) I have a brief comment.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) No.
(David Cline) It’s one thing to be wrong.
I agree, we all have the right to be wrong.
I’ve been wrong myself.
But it’s another thing to have a big press
conference, a big press release, from a huge
laboratory, which we all depend on CERN—
(Laura Patrizii) This is not our fault.
(David Cline) It may not be your fault, but
it’s what happened.
So, being wrong is our right.
But having this sort of information go all
around the world, so a lot of young people
get the impression that neutrinos travel faster
than light, it might be very exciting, but
it’s probably not true.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You say that as though
it’ll mess up young people forever.
(David Cline) Well— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Young people heard this newscast.
(David Cline) I’m sorry.
I don’t think it’s good to give young
people—I teach them all the time—wrong
information.
Now, I don’t say they’ll never forget
it, or they’ll have a heart attack or something,
but as much as possible the veracity of science
is based on as much as possible getting things
right.
That’s all I’m saying.
Press release is hardly just a little bit
wrong.
It’s all over the world instantly.
The day it came in, my students sent me a
message immediately.
“You know the speed of light for neutrinos
is greater than the speed of light?”
No—I mean, everybody was saying this.
A lot of us never believed it at all.
No disrespect.
Shelly didn’t.
He said it already.
So, I agree you can be wrong, but I don’t
think it’s good to advertise it so heavily.(Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Except that your best evidence
that it’s wrong only came out in a paper
five days ago.
(David Cline)No, we had a previous paper,
which I told you about six months ago.(Neil
deGrasse Tyson)Just checking.
(Laura Patrizii) It’s true.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) What’s the future
of GPS?
I wanted to drive my car.
I just want to read in the front seat, so
can you do that?
How come we don’t have flying cars?
I’m going to blame you for all of this.
They promised flying cars in the 1960s.
They’re still not here.
(Christopher Hegarty) They have them in Italy.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) I got to stop it there.
But thank the panel for this.
You can come on up for questions.
We have two microphones up front.
We’ll take Q&A for about 15 minutes.
By the way, the entire panel and I after this
we’ll retire to the Hall of Northwest Coast
Indians.
That’s where all the totem poles are.
And you can bring your program, have them
sign it, ask follow-up questions.
There might even be a few books that they’ve
written for you to buy.
Okay, so—oh, by the way, we have 1,700 people
streaming this live.
And hello to all of them.
And we also have an overflow room, and so
let’s take our first question here.
Try to direct it to only one panelist.
Otherwise it takes forever to say can I have
all six of you comment on my question.
Just keep it tight.
Go.
[Question] All right.
For the gentlemen—I don’t remember the
name, but from Italy— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)Gian.
(Question) Gian.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) We’re on first-name
basis.
We’re at a bar remember?
[Question] Very good.
I guess I’m less interested in maybe the
results that came out from OPERA and more
interested in the physics community’s reaction
to it.
And by that I mean you said you were all curious,
but is there some sort of deep-seated insecurity
that theoretical physicists have where when
something like this comes out they say, a-ha,
that may be the missing piece of the puzzle
that will allow everything to click?
Of is this just an anomalous thing that was
60—I don’t remember the measurement you
used, but— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Got there
60 feet faster than the—[Question] Sixty
feet faster and you just wow that’s really
big.
We’re going to go analyze it.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Excellent question.
What do you got, Gian?
(Gian Giudice) So, no, when there is some
interesting announcement, of course, we have
to look at it.
We have to scrutinize it, and we have to see
if it makes sense.
That’s as I was saying before.
That’s our job.
I don’t think we should be blamed for that.
But I totally agree on what David said before.
The particle physics has a tradition of rigor,
of scientific integrity, and this should be
maintained.
And in the past, physics was just a—particle
physics was a business for particle physicists.
They were getting great results.
They were [unintelligible 80:04], but most
other people were ignoring—most people outside
were ignoring what particle physicists were
doing.
Now, there is a lot of media attention.
And, as David said, we have to be very careful
of what kind of message we are giving.
In the OPERA case, I don’t think it was
a mistake either of the experimentalists of
going public with the result or of theorists
who try to make sense of this result, but
rather the way it was dealt in the way CERN
and the OPERA experiment communicated with
the outside world.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Gian—I’m going to
follow-up on that.
Gian, of the theorists you knew, how many
said it can’t be true, I’m not going to
work on the problem, go back and fix it?
And how many said that is true, I have a new
theory to account for it?
(Gian Giudice) Well, of course—no, the first
reaction is, wow, this is too great to be
true.
But in order to answer, you cannot just reply
with your first feeling.
You have to study.
You have to look at it.
And Shelly was so nice to mention my paper,
but I would say that really the paper that
changed the opinion of the community was his
paper.
His paper gave a very strong, very clear,
very simple argument of why it was—the OPERA
result was inexplicable.
And at that point, really people changed their
opinion.
So, people don’t—even theorists don’t
form the opinion just on their first impression,
but they want to get some scientific understanding.
And I think after Shelly’s paper, the situation
was very clear.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
Right here.
Sir?
(Sheldon Glashow) Thank you.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Thank you.
[Question] Yeah, I was actually up at the
APS meeting in Boston— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
American Physical Society?
[Question] Yes.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Has nothing to do with
your body.
It’s physics.
In fact, they had—I got a phone call from
their PR people.
They said we have an identity problem because
people think we’re about physicians.
And so it’s American Physical Society.
[Question] Yeah.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) It’s really American
Physics Society, but, yes, go on.
[Question] They actually had tucked away way
off on the side a talk where we were talking
about some of the results of the OPERA experiment
and so forth.
And so the thing that was pointed out by the
gentleman I remember the most—and I would
like her take on this—is this kind of science
controversy is actually good.
It’s not a bad thing to have publicized
wrong experiments, even if it’s a “simple
mistake” or an experimental thing because
it does not treat science as a black box.
And, therefore, the public can understand
it.
And so it’s not necessarily, oh, here’s
a result and don’t ask how we got it.
You’re not going to understand— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) I think that was Laura’s
concluding point.
She agrees strongly with that, and both of
those points disagree with David in the sense
that you go public with it if you think it’s
true whether or not it’s consistent with
the experiments or the theoretical underpinnings
that you’ve put forth.
If you think it’s true, you go to press
with it.
So, you’re agreeing?
[Question] With her point.
And I wanted to know the broader panel’s,
unfortunately, point of view on that, too.
Is science controversy good or bad in general?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Shelly, let’s go to
you.
You’ve been around the block on this.
Science controversy, would you say it’s
good or bad or— (Sheldon Glashow) Well,
what is good or bad?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) If hanging your dirty
laundry out—right here.
Check it out, right there.
Dirty laundry.
The scientists doing that, and the dirty laundry
would then take place via press conference,
and then you see scientists fighting.
It’s kind of what this whole panel is all—the
Asimov concept is all about.
And we fill the house every time.
So, I have to say yes to that, but I just
want to get a second opinion.
And if it differs, it will be wrong.
So, go on.
Because we have empirical evidence.
(Sheldon Glashow ) We guys who do what we
call fundamental physics, particle physics,
we have a problem.
And the problem is called the standard model.
And the trouble is that they damn thing works
too well.
And since the old days when Carlo Rubbia was
in charge of CERN and—Carlo Rubbia once
gave a talk at Harvard arguing that he had
not only proven the standard theory right,
but he had also proven it wrong.
And that was shown to be not true.
And his punishment was to be the director
of CERN for some five years or so, and his—CERN
in those five years did nothing but confirm,
confirm and reconfirm the standard model.
It was truly a [suscipient 85:33] punishment.
(David Cline) He also started the LHC.
(Sheldon Glashow) But—he started the LHC.
And our hopes are that the LHC will discover
something beyond the standard model.
And I was so happy when I first heard of the
superluminal neutrinos because, boy, that
is beyond the standard model.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) I got a question from
the Twitterverse.
(Sheldon Glashow) But it doesn’t work.
It’s wrong.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) A question from the
Twitterverse, so the Twitterverse does exist.
I have evidence, no matter what you say about
it.
I’m sorry, I can’t read the Twitter handle.
[Unintelligible].
Are there currently unmeasured domains where
we can imagine faster than light particles?
Possibly highly warped space time.
(Sheldon Glashow) I can imagine micro-unicorns,
but— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) That would be
a no.
Okay.
Next question here.
[Question] Are there any insights from the
neutrinos on dark energy, string theory and
black holes?
Is there any connection from your research?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, you’re trying
to explain all the other unknowns with what
we might discover with— [Question] What
they do with neutrinos.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Neutrinos.
David, why don’t you take that?
(David Cline) I’m sorry.
I didn’t quite hear the question.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) He’s saying dark energy,
dark—he’s got these other unknowns.
Might neutrinos help us there?
(David Cline) Neutrinos have a small mass,
so it’s not nearly large enough, let’s
say, to make the dark matter of the Universe.
And they cannot in any way make the dark energy.
That’s been proven.
So, these are other phenomena, and we have
some idea of what the other two like dark
matter is probably some kind of new particle.
Dark energy may be, but Einstein invented
it in 1917, so probably there’s no connection
as far as I know.
[Question] What about string theory?
(David Cline) I don’t know anything about
string theory.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) We’ve established
string theory is off limits today.
We’ve already established that.
Another question from the Twitterverse.
This is from our development department apparently,
Will [Trammell 87:41], 13 years old.
Oh, sorry, from our live stream.
Will Trammell, 13 years old.
It’s past your bedtime, Will.
Past my bedtime.
Neutrinos can pass through almost anything,
but light cannot.
So, could neutrinos be faster than light because
of this lack of friction?
And could we measure this friction rather
than the speed of the particles?
So, in other words, neutrinos got to Italy,
but light didn’t.
So, clearly, that beam of neutrinos beat any
light beam you would have turned on with your
flashlight.
So, is the fact that neutrinos can penetrate
solid matter any kind of indication of anything?
(Sheldon Glashow)No.
(David Cline) No.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, fine.
What you got here?
I like these quick answers.
They’re great.
[Question] I’d like to actually answer a
question that I believe Sheldon and David
posed to us, which is: What is the effect
of experiments like the OPERA experiment to
young people and what message is that sending?
And from a moderately young person, I can
tell you that the message that it tends to
send is it invigorates us and inspires us
to investigate and see that maybe the plausibility
of the impossible can exist.
(Laura Patrizii) Yeah.
(David Cline) That was for me, I guess.
I wish that was true.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) He wasn’t talking
to you.
He was just—(David Cline) Let me tell you
something, most of my graduate students are
Chinese.
This is because very few Americans— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) That’s relevant why?
(David Cline) And, by the way, the Chinese
are paying some of these people to come to
our university, which is a very clever thing
for them to do.
Probably other places also.
So, I don’t think when people find out that
something they were told turns out to be wrong—my
own gut feeling is it just makes them wonder
whether these people can get their act together
or not.
Now, maybe for a while they’ll be stimulated.
The evidence right now is not nearly enough
Americans are going into science.
[Question] Yes, but that’s my exact point.
(David Cline) I don’t think they want more—
[Question] I’m sorry to interrupt you, but
isn’t that my exact point?
Sometimes it’s not just the science of proving,
but the science of disproving is just as educational.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Are you saying there
aren’t enough Americans in our science programs
today?
(David Cline) Yes.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Because of the OPERA
result?
(David Cline) No.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Just trying to get the
cause and effect here.
(David Cline) They don’t even know anything
about it.
[Question] I have to get to my question.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Oh, you have a question?
Let’s get to his question.
[Question] So, anyway, the point is there
are tangible experiments going on OPERA, for
example.
But can you then instead of saying, okay,
this is not possible because we have too much
that’s in our black box of comfort that
does work, so I’m going to disprove it?
Why can’t people sit down, such as scientists
yourself, as—even if it dissembles the structure
of physics?
We know that physics violates its own rules
all the time, as we’ve seen from history.
Right?
So, can we, by the equations—not just by
the tangible experiments, but by the paper
experiments go back to rudimentary tactics
and try to see what potential effects it would
have on our box of comfort in science?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) If it were true.
[Question] If it were true.
(David Cline) Let Shelly answer that.
(Sheldon Glashow) I don’t understand the
question.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) No, I think what he’s
saying is you have this weird—I think I
understand you—results.
You don’t know how to interpret them.
Assume they’re true, and calculate the consequences.
[Question] Correct.
(Sheldon Glashow) Well, that’s exactly what
I did.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, right.
(Sheldon Glashow) That’s what we do.
That’s our game.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, he did say—he
said if that were true, you should have these
other experimental results that are not seen.
(Laura Patrizii) Can I— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Laura, yes.
(Laura Patrizii) —add something to this?
There are a lot of anomalies still in the
neutrino field of the results with neutrino
oscillations, they do not fit together in
the same good box.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Black box of comfort,
was the phrase.
(Laura Patrizii) And so you can take them
as anomalies or errors, or you can take them
as an indication hence of something else.
And then if you take them for true, then you
may want to investigate more.
For example, there is a proposal to do—and
this for as far as the neutrino concern, it
would mean, for example, the existence of
another type of neutrino called so-called
[unintelligible] neutrinos, which are very
exotic.
And I don’t know if our guests here like
them or not.
Maybe people do not.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) I bet he doesn’t like
them, is my bet.
(Laura Patrizii) Yes, David, doesn’t like
them.
Anyhow, this is the way you proceed.
And then you test, and then maybe it’s a
mistake or maybe you find a new particle.
And, again, you go to Stockholm.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Stockholm for the Nobel
Prize.
That’s code for Nobel Prize in physics.
[Question] Thank you.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Thank you for that great
question.
Yes?
We’ll take maybe five more minutes of questions,
so maybe make the question efficient and the
answer short will be good.
Go, sir.
[Question] Well, I came up for other reasons,
but they’ve already been asked, I think.
The neutrino experiment was exciting because
we got to watch you guys go through finding
the problems with the experiment.
Everybody I know knows about the neutrino
experiment, and they’re not scientists.
It’s been very engaging watching you not
fail, but discover the problems, is really
interesting.
I won’t [unintelligible 93:07]— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) It’s an excellent point.
Thank you for that.
[Question] It’s been great.
Thank you.
Thank all of you.
This is actually for David.
The United States had the collider on plan
years ago.
Budgets got cancelled.
Now, we’re over at CERN.
Any plans coming up?
(David Cline) Yes, we had the Superconducting
Super Collider, which actually was—believe
it or not—approved by Ronald Regan, which
in some ways we don’t fully understand why
we do better under Republicans than Democrats.
Maybe I shouldn’t be too political, but—[Question]
In science funding, that’s a fact.
(David Cline) Then Bill Clinton cancelled
it.
So, you can figure it out.
Anyway, whatever the reason is we lost a tremendously
wonderful scientific resource in this country,
which might have brought a lot more American
scientists into the field.
And then, of course, we have the wonderful
LHC, which was started by my friend Carlo
Rubbia, I point out.
He was director general of CERN.
And that is still a lot of Americans are working
there, so it’s still helping generate more
interest and more excitement.
But we have lost our momentum in this country
a little bit the way we have in NASA on science.
And I think young people are starting to notice.
The number of young people have told me they
themselves were disappointed when they heard
the Superconducting Super Collider was cancelled.
So, they’re looking for their future.
So, I think we have to really worry in this
country about the future of our fields.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) I bet if you had called
it the Super-duper Collider, it would have
been funded.
(David Cline) It would have been funded.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Absence of adjectives
there.
You could have called me up.
I would have helped you out.
Yes?
[Question] This question is for Laura.
I wonder if you could tell us briefly the
logistics of how the OPERA thing was set up
because I’m a physician and very often if
we find a result which is out of what is expected,
the first thing we do is repeat it before
we go and act upon it. and it sounds like—from
our point of view as non-physicists—this
came out and it was a shocking thing this
was found and you’re trying to explain how
could something so unexpected happen.
Was this the kind of experiment which when
you got a result—I mean, maybe for you it
was not unexpected, but, I mean, it sounds
like it’s an unexpected result.
That this could have been repeated in a quick
timeframe and come up, say, with the same
result twice.
Then you start to think, well, maybe there’s
really something happening— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Well, that’s exactly what happened.
The experiment was done more than once, isn’t
that correct?
(Laura Patrizii) So— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Was the experiment done more than once?
(Laura Patrizii) Yes.
I mean, we started in 2009, and that kept
going on until 2011.
So, we analyze it more than 16,000 events.
Neutrinos—16,000 neutrino events detected
from CERN to Gran Sasso.
It was not just one or two neutrino.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Right.
In fact, the anatomy of this is—in all of
science—if you get a weird result, you do
it again just like you said, and then you
do it again and do it again.
Then you get someone else to do it with a
different apparatus.
And that way— [Question] Right.
That’s the way it came across form the announcements
that it was done in one lab, and then other
labs would then repeat it with their equipment
and see if the same thing came out.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) That’s the natural
sequence.
[Question] But it didn’t come out that it
was really multiple events at that time.
(Laura Patrizii) The point here is, as already
been mentioned, the difference with the past
is that it’s not unusual that something
which that you find it is corrected then you
have to say, no, I was wrong.
The point here was that it was known to everybody
in the world.
This is the main difference.
I mean, there are plenty of examples in the
sense of this type in which many experiments
then were corrected—eventually corrected
that eventually were wrong.
But, I mean—and nobody knows.
But in this case, everybody know.
But, I mean, this is the new society, no?
It’s the— [Question] Well, I think the
press distorts things sometimes.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You think?
The press distorts things.
(Laura Patrizii) There’s good and bad to
that.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson)We’re running really
short on time.
I wanted to end at 9:15.
Maybe just two more questions.
I’m sorry if I only take two.
But if you come to the table in the back,
I’m sure they’ll be happy to chat with
you.
It just won’t end up as a publically-announced
question.
You’re the last two here.
Yes, go.
[Question] Okay.
Concerning the speed of light, which is the
thing everyone’s measuring it against and
no one has asked a question about, which is
this: When Einstein was writing all this,
nobody knew about dark matter or dark energy.
We know that when light enters the atmosphere
it travels more slowly than an interplanetary
space.
And when it goes from the atmosphere to, say,
water it travels slower still.
We now know that interplanetary space and
indeed interstellar space has a lot more stuff
in it than we used to think.
And that it is less of a pure vacuum.
Is there any room there that light actually
moves a little faster than we thought?
And that this isn’t so much that they’re
moving faster than the speed of light, but
that the speed of light in a real vacuum is
actually faster than we thought it was.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yeah.
Shelly, so—I’ll paraphrase the question,
if I may.
(Sheldon Glashow) Please.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
We have this 10-digit precision definition
of the speed of light.
And that’s the speed of light in a vacuum.
But there is no vacuum.
We’ve never actually created a vacuum.
We’ve tried to approximate a perfect vacuum,
but there’s always some particles left over
in the space in which we’re measuring the
speed of light.
You go out to interplanetary space, there’s
stuff there.
Intergalactic space, there’s stuff.
Light is never traveling through a vacuum.
Is there some speed that it actually could
attain that’s higher than anything we’ve
measured it to be, if in fact we could send
it through a perfect vacuum?
(Sheldon Glashow) Yes.
The answer is yes.
It’s easy—the things that are out there
in space are mostly photons.
The Universe is not at absolute zero.
It’s at three degrees Celsius.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Kelvin.
(Sheldon Glashow) Lots of photons.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Kelvin.
(Sheldon Glashow) Huh?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Three degrees Kelvin.
(David Cline) Two-point-seven-three.
(Sheldon Glashow) Two-point-seven.
That— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You said Celsius.
I’m just saying it’s the wrong temperature
scale, Mr. Nobel Laureate from the Bronx High
School of Science.
Three degrees Celsius, that’s like a chilly
day outside.
(Sheldon Glashow)Anyway— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Oh, anyway.
All right.
I have to gloat in this moment.
Please.
(Sheldon Glashow)It’s not at absolute zero.
And, therefore, light travels more slowly
than it would travel in a vacuum.
And we can calculate that difference, and
it’s in the 47th decimal place.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Got you, okay.
Good answer to that.
The very last question, so it better be an
awesome question.
[Question] This is for Laura.
I’m a scientist, engineer.
You’ve made something that was so dramatic
it shook up the world.
It shook me up.
It shook up those two guys definitely.
But what I don’t understand— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) And Elvis Presley.
He’s all shook up.
[Question] What I don’t understand is what
happens at OPERA, the management there?
They had to realize that this thing was so
dramatic, so unbelievable.
That’s why everybody’s here.
It just happened recently that you ran another
test that said you were wrong.
And then within just a couple of months, OPERA
comes out and says we’re wrong.
Wouldn’t you—something bothers me that
you should have gone back and checked and
checked and checked.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) For those two months?
[Question.]
Yes.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Rather than even
announce it.[ Question] What happened within
OPERA?
Who makes that decision to go out— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson)So, that’s the management
of science.
At that level of the publicity and the publication—excellent
question.
Excellent question.
If they found the answer within two months,
then why not wait another two months and do
all the same analysis and not have published
the results at all?
[Question.]
Yes.
(Laura Patrizii) Can I answer like this, no
comment?
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Should we end on a no
comment?
Last point here, ladies and gentleman, does
the future of physics—Gian, is the future
of physics bright?
Is there new discovery just beyond your reach
that’ll transform all of our understanding?
Or is it all about just adding a few decimal
places of precision?
(Gian Giudice) During history, many times
people have repeated that physics is over
because now we know everything.
And the end of the 19th century, people thought
that’s it.
We know everything because we have a perfect
theory of thermal dynamics, of optics, of
mechanics and so on.
And then just in the decades, relativity came,
quantum mechanics came, and the whole world
was revolutionized.
So, I think that there’ll never be an end
of science.
I don’t think we are at the end of science.
But there are moments in the history of science
where we are at the end of some paradigms.
Certain ways of thinking are finished, and
we have to open new ones.I think now we are
at the age of the standard model, which was
an extremely successful age where we have
a beautiful understanding of the particle
world.
And this understanding can be expanded to
the complexity of the world.
Now, with the LHC, we are at a turning point.
And we will see.
And depending on the result, we could be at
the verge of a new revolution.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Excellent.
(Gian Giudice) I think you have to wait for
the results in order to— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Okay, he just wants to erase the results
of—or are we also waiting for the birth
of another Einstein?
(David Cline) No, I think the fundamental
question in dark energy is whether we can
calculate the level of this or not.
And that’s more of a theoretical question
than experimental question.
The other question is: What is dark matter?
There are very large number of very interesting
questions left.
They may not just be done in the traditional
way with colliders and accelerators, but they’ll
be done in other ways.(Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Are you smart enough to figure out those answers,
or are we waiting for the birth of another
Einstein?
(David Cline) We need another Einstein to
calculate this dark energy.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson)Okay.
Shelly?
(Sheldon Glashow)What we need are surprising,
unanticipated discoveries.
When I first heard of the OPERA result, I
was delighted because it is so inexplicable,
so wonderful.(Neil deGrasse Tyson)The truth
comes out.(Sheldon Glashow) Unfortunately,
it went away.(Laura Patrizii)It was not true.
(Sheldon Glashow)We need surprises.
We are the only science that depends on results
that contradict our own theory.
We want to be contradicted.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Where in fact fame derives
from contradictions of established theory.(Sheldon
Glashow) Absolutely.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Unlike so many other
professions in our world.
You’re just happy with your GPS.
(Christopher Hegarty) Yeah.
Hold on.
I just want—(Neil deGrasse Tyson) The GPS
is working.(Christopher Hegarty) Well, I just
wanted to point out one thing.
That even physics is going slower.
There’s still a tremendous amount of technical
work out there for engineering to catch up
with the science.
There’s all kinds of things on the horizon.(Neil
deGrasse Tyson) You just look at these machines
that they’re building.
(Christopher Hegarty) Well, quantum computing.
There’s Fermilab put out a press release
that they actually could communicate by sending
neutrinos.
How exciting is that to have a communication
system that can actually go through rock?
Aside from the fact that you need a 27-kilometer
transmitter to do it, maybe you can make that
a little smaller and we’ll get more—(Neil
deGrasse Tyson) I’d rather just send a text.
That’s much easier than sending a neutrino.
(Christopher Hegarty) But I think there is
a great deal of work to be done in bringing
some of these very newfangled things that
I’ve been learning about before this thing
into things that you find in your house more
so.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Laura, is physics waiting
for a new Einstein, or is everyone alive smart
enough today to solve all the problems?
(Laura Patrizii) Well, no.
I mean, I was thinking another thing.
Can I conclude you with another thing?(Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Sure, okay.
(Laura Patrizii) Because now I was wondering
which is the main important point for me as
far as physics is concerned.
And I would like to be able—maybe my daughter—answer
to the question: How is it possible that we
are tonight here?
I mean, by this I mean what made possible
at the beginning that the asymmetry between
matter and anti-matter.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson)One of the most profound
questions that exist in all of physics.
(Laura Patrizii) Yeah.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson)How there is matter--
(Laura Patrizii)And this is something which
is thrilling to me.
I mean— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, you lose
sleep over this?(Laura Patrizii) Sorry?(Neil
deGrasse Tyson) You lose sleep over this.(Laura
Patrizii) Well, I lose sleep because of the
jetlag.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
So, there are other questions that—I agree.
The asymmetry of matter and anti-matter in
the Universe is profound.
Had it been symmetric, all of our matter particles
would have annihilated with their anti-matter
counterparts and we’d live in a Universe
of just photons.
At some point, that symmetry was broken, putting
one out of every 100 million of these interactions
leaving a lone matter particle without an
anti-matter particle to annihilate with.
And we are the manifests of that result.
I agree.
Gabby?
Are you the next Einstein?(Gabriela Gonzalez)
No.
I think there are many, many Einsteins out
there.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) I think they are like
investment bankers or something.
We got to get them out of that field.
(Gabriela Gonzalez)We do, yeah.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) A whole lost generation
that are billionaires now that could have
just solved physics (Gabriela Gonzalez) But
I think this is a very exciting time, especially
for experimental physics because we have such
high precision detectors.
We have such exquisite precision on space
missions, looking at the Universe and particle
detectors, the colliders.
Our detectors looking at the birth of black
holes.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, we’re data
rich.(Gabriela Gonzalez) We are data rich.
Very data rich.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) And theory
poor.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) We just need people to
look at it.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Data rich and theory
poor.
I’d like to end on a quote from Isaac Asimov
himself where he said—I’m paraphrasing.
He said the most important revelation a scientist
can have is not eureka.
No, it’s in reaction to an experiment where
the scientist says that’s funny.
That’s who that begins.
Great discoveries in physics happen because
just some one little result doesn’t match
something else that you expected.
And you say that’s odd, that’s peculiar.
Let me just look at that a little more closely.
Let me design an experiment just for that.
Let me see if I have an understanding of it.
Maybe I need a new theory.
Maybe I need a new experiment.
And such is the life of this panel.
And I want to publicly, with all of us, join
me in thanking them for coming.
And thank [unintelligible 109:00].
I think physics [unintelligible], if they’re
represented by who we have here on stage.
Thank you all for coming.
We’re calling it a night.
We’ll see you next year.
