Welcome to a new episode of Technoculture.
I'm your host, Federica Bressan, and my guest
today is Bibhushan Shakya, a research fellow
in theoretical particle physics at CERN, the
world-renown centre for fundamental research
and technological development based in Geneva,
Switzerland.
Welcome to Technoculture, Bibhushan, and thanks
for having me at CERN today!
Thank you! And welcome to CERN.
Techoculture is not only interested in technology
per se: technology is a sort of looking glass
through which we observe how humans are impacted
by our changing times. And what drew me to
CERN is that some big questions about the
nature of the universe that you and your colleagues
investigate at CERN seem to resonate with
fundamental questions about the human condition,
like: where do we come from? Will the universe
come to an end? And how does this influence
how we think about the meaning of life?
Before we dive into how the big questions
of physics beautifully inform philosophical
conversations about us and life... would you
like to give an overview of the kind of research
that is done, and currently done at CERN?
Ok, I'll try. So CERN is the European organization
of nuclear research. And of course people
fixate on the word nuclear. But CERN actually
has no military obligations or research in
military applications. The mission of CERN
is to, like you said, discover the fundamental
nature of the universe, and understand what
the fundamental building blocks of nature
are made up of, and what their properties
are. And so that's what drives research at
CERN.
So, the flagship research at CERN is what
you know as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
And this is the most powerful collider in
the world right now. And recently, in 2012,
it discovered the Higgs boson, which was in
the news all over. So, people usually associate
CERN with research like that. But CERN actually
does a lot of other kinds of things that span
technology as well as fundamental science.
And what are some of the big open questions
in physics today? What is the frontier?
So, we know a lot about our universe today,
right. So, we have a lot of different measurements
about a lot of different things. And we have-
Wait, wait! Do we? You wrote on the blackboard
that the stuff we understand about the universe
is 5%!
Exactly. And a lot is just 5%, right. So,
that is the incredible thing: that we know
so much about the universe. We can pretty
much explain everything we see around us and
yet our knowledge is so incomplete in the
large scheme of things, because if you look
at, indeed, the total content of the universe,
we understand less than 5% of it. And that
is one of the biggest questions, open questions
that we at CERN work towards understanding,
that this universe that we see seems to be
made up of some kind of dark energy - that's
70% of the universe. There's 25% of the universe
that is matter in a form that we don't understand.
And we call it dark matter, and it's only
the remaining 5% that makes up everything
we understand.
So, all the stars, the galaxies, the gas,
we see, right, the Earth, everything on it,
all the planets, all the stars: those only
make up less than 5% of the universe. And
that is one of the big questions: what is
other 95% that we know exists but we have
no idea what it is?
How do we know that there is supposed to be
more stuff?
So, there are many different ways that we
know there is stuff out there that we don't
understand. So, dark energy is this energy
form that is everywhere in the universe. And
it's actually pushing the universe farther
apart at a faster and faster rate. So the
universe is expanding, and it's expanding
at an accelerating rate. And that's because
there is this energy form, this dark energy,
that's making it do that. Dark matter, we
know because it is a form of matter as in,
right, we understand it in the same way that
we understand what matter is: that it's out
there in space, it has some gravitational
interactions, so it affects the motion of
things around it. So, if we look at stars
and galaxies, for example, and look at how
they move, then all the other stars and all
the other visible things we see around them
are not enough to explain their motion. So
you need this dark matter that's out there,
and it's affecting how stars move and how
galaxies evolve.
So what you do at CERN, is to find ways and
try to implement ways to get to see, to detect
this dark matter in order to justify all of
these things?
So, this effort comes in two forms. So, there
is the theory side of things, where people
come up with ideas of what these things might
be and how they can explain the things we
see around us. And there is the experimental
side, where we actually try to detect these
particles at the collider. And that sounds
a little weird, right? Because this is just
a collider, here on Earth, and we are just
colliding particles, and these questions I
told you are about things that are out there
in the universe, and they've been there since
the beginning of time, and they affect everything
that we see around them. So, that sounds a
little weird, but what we really do when we
collide particles at the LHC is that we recreate
the conditions that were there in the early
universe, because when you collide things
at high energy, you produce this area of the
universe that is at high temperatures and
it mimics the conditions that were there right
after the Big Bang. So, anything that happened
back then will again happen at these high
energies, and we can hopefully see dark matter
being produced, and maybe detect them in the
collider, and understand how dark matter came
to be in the early universe.
You need big theories, like... narratives,
and I don't know if these narratives are found
in the data, but how does a typical day look
like here at CERN? How do you balance theory
and practice? Is it a lot of data collection
and data analysis, or you also just sit and
think and... you know, "receive" these stories,
in a way? How does a typical day look like?
So, that's a great question because it really
depends on what kind of physicists you talk
to, and it really depends on what kind of
day you talk to that physicist on. So, first
of all, there is a division of labor between
physicists. So, some people concern themselves
more with the theory. These are the theoretical
people. Some people concern themselves more
with making sure the experiment runs, and
designing it and building it. These are the
experimentalists, and you need both of those.
And depending on what your expertise is, your
work day is very different.
So, I'm a theoretical physicist. So I don't
build anything. My job is to calculate and
to think. But even for me a normal day just
changes every day. So, some days I am talking
to people, trying to understand what their
research is, what their new ideas are. I read
a lot of papers. Some days I just sit alone
and try to calculate something. Or try to
understand how something that is seen in the
data can make sense.
So, I explain this to people like playing
a chess game with nature. So, you said physics
is driven by big ideas and that's true. But
these big ideas are very rare. So, you don't
come up with a big idea every single day or
every single week. But when you have a big
idea, it's enough to drive your research for
many many years, even. And so in that sense
it's like a chess game, because when you play
chess most of the time you're studying what
the game setup is, and how your opponent has
set up its pieces, and sometimes you come
up with a brilliant move but then you spend
all this time calculating what the implications
of that move are. And chess and physics are
similar in that sense, that you come up with
a big idea, but most of your time is actually
spent on trying to understand how that big
idea fits in the bigger scheme of things where
there are all these different measurements.
So, for example you might come up with a theory
about how dark matter was produced in the
early universe, but then maybe someone has
gone and measured the luminosity of some stars
in some galaxy. And that measurement might
be enough to disprove your theory. So you
need to understand how your theory affects
everything that we've measured and that's
what actually takes up most of our time.
And what is your personal challenge? What
you are working on at the moment? The question
then takes your sleep away.
So, it's difficult to pick a challenge and
stay with it, because theoretical physics
is such a broad discipline, and we're thinking
about things that are all interconnected.
So, some day I might be thinking more about
dark matter. But the question of what dark
matter is might feed into some other fundamental
question like, what is the energy scale of
the Higgs boson, and why is the energy scale
at that? And these questions are not separate
questions. They are all interconnected. So
I might start off thinking about dark matter,
but I might end up thinking more about the
Higgs boson. And so it varies every day, depending
on what interesting papers I see, where my
ideas lead me to, or if there's any new measurement,
and that looks interesting, new data, that
can drive my research ideas.
In such quest, that obviously involves a large
number of people, how do you actually plan
the research? I start from the assumption
that it's not true that the more data you
have the easier it is to find a solution.
So how do you plan your experiments? How much
data you collect? What data? And when is that
tipping point when you say, "ok, now we have
enough data to stop for a moment, somehow,
and dig into it, and start thinking, and see
what we can do with it." Or the big idea comes
whenever it wants to come?
The big idea does come whenever it wants to
come. And most of the time you're just waiting
for that big idea, and setting the stage for
when that big idea arrives. So, just trying
to catalogue, if you will, all of these different
measurements, and how they can be expressed
in a coherent form, so that when you have
some big idea, you can match them against
data and see what comes out of it.
Let me ask you something from the other side
of all of these research questions. Say that
we've found the answers to all of these questions.
Then what? You know, it doesn't mean to diminish
the research in any sort of way, but can you
imagine us on the other side of these questions?
Then, what happens? Do we have an application
in mind for some of the principles involved?
Or we don't really know, research is pretty
much curiosity driven at the moment?
So, this is a very complicated question that
we get a lot. And the answer to that really
is, we have no idea. And we have no idea not
because there aren't any applications. We
just have no idea because that question is
really really premature at this point, because
these are big questions that span many many
lifetimes. So it's not something that even
a human could comprehend, that you'll see
the implications out of all of these ideas
within his lifetime. And there are many examples
that I could give you about these things.
So, for example: electricity. So, we see it
everywhere around us, and we understand its
value, and how it affects our lives. But when
electricity was first discovered or understood
it was in a very fundamental form. So this
is back in ancient Greece, when people were
rubbing together fur with some amber, and
they saw that these things attracted each
other. And so this was the beginning of their
understanding of electricity. And later on
magnetism. But if you would ask them at that
point what the point of that research is,
or what its application is, they would have
no idea. And they would have no idea not because
that thing doesn't have any applications,
it's just because their technology or their
understanding of the world was at such a rudimentary
stage at that point that they couldn't comprehend
using what they saw to one day power machines
or computers or vehicles.
Yeah, this was a hard question because it
was direct and, you know, by no means I meant
to imply that if the practical application,
the utility of this research can't be proven,
that it shouldn't be funded. I'm not from
that school at all. I'm actually really curious
to know the answer! What if... we have the
answer to these questions! Then what, you
know?
Yeah. And these recent research ideas are
never driven by some desire to find an application.
These are always driven by curiosity, in an
attempt to understand better what the universe
is and how things work. And many many hundreds
of years later, years later, someone might
find an application. And that's great, but
that's not what drives these research ideas.
I could give you some more examples, if you'd
like.
So, my favorite example of these things is
actually Einstein's theory of general relativity.
And this is something we all are in awe, right,
because Einstein was such a genius, and he
came up with this deep deep understanding
of space and time and how they morph into
each other, and an understanding of how gravity
is actually an effect of space and time. When
he was thinking about these ideas, he wasn't
trying to come up with some application. He
was just trying to formulate a mathematically
consistent framework of space and time, and
when it was formulated, and people understood
it, it wasn't like people immediately came
up with new applications. And people in fact
even said, this is really nice for understanding
things, but the way we understand gravity,
Newton's laws - you never need to go beyond
that for practical life. And that was true
at that time, but much much later, when technology
became more advanced, understanding Einstein's
theory and the improvement it offered over
Newton's Laws was actually very crucial, and
it was crucial for things like GPS. And that's
because - so, one of the things that Einstein's
theory says, is that time can actually pass
at a different rate in different places, especially
in places that have different gravitational
fields. So, the rate of time passage here
on Earth is actually not the same as the rate
of time passage up in space. So when we set
up our satellites, those actually experience
time flow at a different rate. And if we didn't
know Einstein's theory of relativity, and
if we didn't correct for that time difference,
then all of our GPS functions would be completely
thrown off in a matter of seconds. And so,
applications did emerge, but they emerged
much much much later than the theory itself.
Well, by application I don't necessarily mean
a tool or a technology, like the GPS. If we
could know something that we don't know today,
for example our date of death... what would
that change? That's what I had in mind. So,
to have new knowledge about us would replace
us in the universe, would make a difference
in our awareness, of where we stand, about
life, about our own nature in the universe.
Of course, and most of the great advances
in science come with this conundrum, these
philosophical questions. It's not just scientific
questions, but philosophical questions, right?
And I mentioned Einstein's theory of relativity:
there is also quantum mechanics, which was
a huge improvement in our understanding of
the universe, but it also led to very deep
existential questions, because what it basically
said is that the fundamental laws of nature
are not definite, they are probabilistic,
which means that even if I told you everything
about a system, and I told you I was going
to do this experiment, even if I knew all
the physics, I could not predict what the
outcome of that experiment would be. So, if
I were doing an experiment, there is a 50%
chance that this object that emerges would
go right, 50% chance that it would go left.
And that is not a shortcoming of our knowledge
of the system. That is just how nature works.
It is probabilistic, it is not deterministic.
And of course people took it to their daily
lives too, right, that they are actually not
fundamentally destined to do something. Everything
is probabilities, everything is unsure. There
is some room maybe for free will, maybe not,
right? So, these scientific advancements actually
inform our understanding of the nature of
the world we live in, and of our strategy
for dealing with this world, if you will.
Well, we've been asking this philosophical
questions for millennia. So, it seems like
science is now joining the conversation.
Right. So, I would in fact say that science
has always been part of the conversation,
because back in the days there was no distinction,
really, between philosophy and physics. This
was all a quest to understand truth, and truth
could come in many different forms, and it
could be truth that is within you - which
is where philosophy and religion were more
geared towards - or it could be the truth
about the universe that you see around you.
And these are not two different questions,
right? What is within you and what is outside
you are two necessary components of the big
question. And you really need to understand
both of them equally to make an informed understanding,
an informed decision about what to do.
Right. May I ask you to articulate even further
this concept of why we value fundamental research,
fundamental science so much? I think it's
something that we all feel, but that oftentimes
is not highlighted in the big narratives that
we circulate today about science, because
it's all application driven, and of course
taxpayers money must be well spent, but that
normally is synonym of short-term return,
practical return. And yet, we all feel that
it's important to investigate the universe.
So, can you elaborate a bit more on why we
value fundamental research so much?
That is difficult to put into words, except
we all understand that it somehow means something
to us to understand these questions. And it
captures the essence of being human to be
able to ask these questions, and understand
what they are, right? And so, if you asked,
are these kinds of questions really valuable
to us? Do they offer something to humanity
as a whole? It's difficult to answer those
questions, but I'll tell you something that
is perhaps somewhat puzzling to me, and then
maybe you can tell me why that makes sense,
right.
So, if you asked a question, for example,
of who was the most important person on earth
in the last 100 years, and you would wonder
about that, and you would go ask people about
that, and Time magazine did that - they did
this poll where they asked a lot of people,
who do you think is the most important person
to live on Earth in the last 100 years? And
the answer was not some great political figure
who made great strides in a country or even
internationally. The answer was Albert Einstein.
It wasn't Mahatma Gandhi or Roosevelt. It
was Albert Einstein and that is very puzzling
to me. But it also makes sense to me, that
people would identify with Einstein's efforts
to understand the nature of existence. And
even though he didn't come up with anything
that was practically useful to humanity, his
ideas meant so much that he was perhaps the
most important person to live on Earth in
the last century. And this is not just one
example right. If you ask the same question
about the last 300 years of human existence,
or the last 500 years, the answer would perhaps
be Galileo or Isaac Newton. And these people
are valued not because something they did
was very practical, but they provided this
very profound understanding of something very
fundamental about our universe. So why- why-
why do we care about these things so much?
I would not be able to answer, except we do
because somehow... somehow it seems to capture
the essence of what it means to be human.
And somehow, it gives us something that doesn't
go away: this stands over the course of time.
Once we have these things, we have them forever.
And that in some sense seems to matter to
us.
Speaking of questions that matter to us: I
have a sense that the questions "what is consciousness?"
or "why are we alive?" are two very different
questions. And yet they go together. So I'm
confused now as to which of these questions
science can inform. Now science is looking
into what consciousness is, for example. I
also had a neuroscientist, Steven Laureys,
on my podcast, on episode number 15, talking
about how science can start looking into what
consciousness is and how it works through
recent technology, right, like brain scans,
MRI machines... but science will never tell
us why I should wake up in the morning, why
I should want to live, and probably even not
how I should live - and all of these questions.
And yet both are fundamental questions for
us human beings: who we are, and what we do,
why do we do what we do. So, which type of
question does science inform?
Yeah. So, you said some very big words there.
And the big words were "what" and "why." Right?
There is a fundamental difference between
the kind of answers those two questions are
seeking. "What" is an effort to understand
things as they are, and "why" is an effort
to understand how it came about. Which is
perhaps at a more deeper level. And it's really
interesting that you bring those two words
up because our understanding of fundamental
physics right now is actually hinging on the
boundary between what and why.
So, I'll tell you a little bit more about
these things. So, two of the biggest mysteries
that we have in our understanding of the universe
right now are the nature of dark energy, which
I told you a little bit about, but also the
energy scale of the Higgs. So, the Higgs boson
is at an energy scale that makes absolutely
no sense. And for many many decades we've
been trying to understand why that energy
scale is the way it is. And there are many
many different theories proposed for why that
was. And you might have heard about them.
They go by the name of supersymmetry or the
existence of extra dimensions. And so we designed
experiments to look for these theories and
the results came up negative, as in we now
think that those ideas perhaps don't explain
why the energy scale of the Higgs is where
it is. And so, then the question turned from
"what is the energy scale of the Higgs?,"
which was driving research over the last 50
years, to "why is the energy scale of the
Higgs at that number?"
And we don't know. But the question has now
shifted perhaps from "what it is" to "why
it is." And the answer might actually be very
deeply disturbing to some people, or deeply
enlightening to some people, because some
people now suspect that the answer might be
driven by the existence of humans, of consciousness,
in the sense that it turns out perhaps that
the universe could have been a very different
universe where the energy scale of the Higgs
was very different, or where the energy of
dark energy was very different. But those
universes perhaps do not evolve in a way where
conscious life could form, where humans could
evolve, to a scale where they can ask these
questions. So, the reason why these energy
scales are at these really unnatural numbers
they are, might be because that is what is
needed for intelligent life to form and ask
those questions, in some sense, right? So,
our understanding of the universe right now
is at a point where we could perhaps take
seriously the fact that the universe began
in all possible configurations of the Higgs
energy scale and it evolved in all of those
universes separately. And so there are now
all these empty universes where the Higgs
is at some different energy scale and there
is no life there to ask the question of why
is the Higgs energy at that scale. But in
this one universe, where this Higgs energy
was at a completely ballistic number, no life
formed. And now we're here asking why is that
energy scale at this weird number.
Did I just hear you say that until we look
into the box the cat could be alive or dead,
so now that we tried to measure this attribute
of the Higgs boson we have determined it,
it could have been anything until we looked?
Is this like talking about multiple universes
existing in parallel, or about one universe
having infinite possibilities, but as it evolves,
as it becomes, as it determines itself, then
it only becomes one thing, and all the other
possibilities are lost?
It could go either way. So there are theories
of the universe where the universe begins
and then branches out into all of these different
possibilities, and they all evolve separately
in their own reality.
You have mentioned that in the ancient world
philosophy and physics were not separate.
And today they are, and precisely today we
are sitting here talking about how physics
can tie back into existential philosophical
questions. Can you tell us a bit more about
other questions that you think science and
frontier research in physics can inform in
the philosophical domain? I don't know, for
example why are we there, or why do we die?
What else can we learn?
I don't know if physics will provide the answers
to these questions, but it's certainly the
case that physics will provide you with the
tools or the understanding you might need
to answer these questions. Because a prerequisite
to answer these questions is to understand
what the nature of existence is, right? Because
you can only answer these questions after
you've found out what kind of universe you
live in, what is the fate of the universe
going to be. Are our actions constrained in
some form by the fundamental laws of nature?
While doing this type of research, I assume
it just shows you your place constantly: we
are just this, well, extraordinary but tiny
creature, trying to figure out the universe.
It's not human-centric. Do you get all the
time this feeling that it's... a humbling
feeling?
Yes, indeed. And it's a humbling feeling but
it's a wonderful feeling, right? That, uh,
we are such a small part of existence, and
yet we can comprehend so much of it. And whatever
we comprehend is in a sense very beautiful
and in a sense, uh, in a form that we can
understand and comprehend and enjoy.
From this perspective it seems like all of
these questions about us, e.g. why are we
alive, why do we die, what are we made of,
we we we we... you know, all of this becomes
less important. There is so much out there
to discover. What is the universe made of?
That's a much more interesting question. So,
even if you find out that we're not relevant
in the universe, it doesn't matter, because
it's still beautiful.
Of course, yeah.
And on this note, I would like to thank you
for your time, and thank you very much for
being on Technoculture.
Thank you. It was my pleasure.
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