Kind: captions
Language: en
some of the fascinating work you've done
is in the space of supersymmetry
symmetry in general can you describe
first of all what is supersymmetry ah
yes so you remember the two buckets I
told you about
perhaps earlier said there are two
buckets in our universe so now I want
you to think about drawing a a pie that
has four quadrants so I want you to cut
the piece of pie in fourths so when
quadrant I'm going to put all the
buckets that we talked about like that
are like the electronic corks in a
different quadrant I am going to put all
the force carriers the other two
quadrants are empty now if you I showed
you a picture of that you'd see a circle
there would be a bunch of stuff in one
upper quadrant and stuff in others and
then I would ask you a question does
that look symmetrical to you no no and
that's exactly right because we humans
actually have a very deeply programmed
sense of symmetry it's something that is
part of that mystery of the universe so
how would you make it symmetrical one
way you could is by saying those two
empty quadrants had things in them no so
and if you do that that's supersymmetry
so that's what I understood when I was a
graduate student here in at MIT in 1975
when the idea when the mathematics of
this was first being born supersymmetry
was actually born in the Ukraine in the
late 60s but we have this thing called
the iron curtain so we Westerners didn't
know about it but by the early 70s
independently there were scientists in
the West who had rediscovered
supersymmetry Bruno Cimino and Julius
vests were their names so this was
around 71 or 72 when this happened I
started graduate school in 73
so around 74 75 I was trying to figure
out how to write a thesis so that I
could have become a physicist the rest
of my life I did a had a great advisor
professor James Young who had taught me
a number of things about electrons and
weak forces and those sorts of things
but I decided that if I was going to
have a really opportunity
summize my chances of being successful I
should strike it out in a direction that
other people were not studying and so as
a consequence I survey ideas that were
going that were being developed and I
came across the idea of supersymmetry
and it was so the mathematics was so
remarkable that I just it bowled me over
I actually have two undergraduate
degrees my first undergraduate degree is
actually mathematics and my second is
physics even though I always wanted to
be a physicist plan a which involved
getting good grades was mathematics I
was a mathematics major thinking about
graduate school but my heart was in
physics if we could take a small
digression what's to you the most
beautiful idea in mathematics that
you've encountered in this interplay
between math and physics it's the idea
of symmetry the fact that our innate
sense of symmetry want wines of aligning
with just incredible mathematics to me
is the most beautiful thing it's very
strange but true that if symmetries were
perfect we would not exist so even
though we have these very powerful ideas
about balance in the university of some
sense it's only when you break those
balances that you get creatures like
humans and objects like planets and
stars so although they are a scaffold
for reality they cannot be the entirety
of reality so I I'm kind of naturally
attracted to parts of Science and
Technology where symmetry plays on a
dominant role and not just I guess
symmetry as you said but the the magic
happens when you break the symmetry the
magic happens when you break the
symmetry okay so diving right back in
you mentioned four quadrants yes - - or
filled with stuff we can do buckets yeah
and then there's crazy mathematical
thing ideas for filling the other two
what are those things so earlier the way
I described these two buckets is I gave
you a story that started out by putting
us in a dust
was to flashlights and I said turn on
your flashlight I'll turn on mine the
beans will go through each other and the
beams are composed of force carriers
called photons they carry the
electromagnetic force and they pass
right through each other so imagine
looking at the mathematics of such an
object which you don't imagine people
like me do that so you take that
mathematics and then you ask yourself a
question
you see mathematics is a palette it's
just like a musical composer is able to
construct to construct variations on a
theme well a piece of mathematics in the
hand of a physicist something that we
can construct variations on so even
though the mathematics that Maxwell gave
us about light we know how to construct
very issues on that and one of the very
issues you can construct is to say
suppose you have a force carrier for
electromagnetism that behaves like an
electron that in that it would bounce
off of another one it's that's changing
a mathematical term in equation so if
you did that you would have a force
carrier so you would say first it
belongs in this force carrying bucket
but it's got this property of bouncing
off like electrons and so you say well
gee wait no that's not the right bucket
so you're forced to actually put it in
one of these empty quadrants so those
sorts of things we basically we give
them so the photon mathematically can be
accompanied by a photino it's the thing
that carries a force but has the rule of
bouncing off in a similar manner you
could start with an electron and you say
okay so right now the mathematical
electron I know how to do that a
physicist named Dirac first told us how
to do that back in the nineteen late 20s
early 30s so take that mathematics and
then you say let's let me look at that
mathematics and find out what in the
mathematics caused us two electrons to
bounce off of each other even if I turn
off the electrical charge so I could do
that and now let me change that
mathematical term so now I have
something it carries electrical charge
but if you take two of them I'm sorry if
you turn their charges off they'll pass
through each other so that puts things
in the other quadrant and those things
we till we tend to call
we put the s in front of their name so
in the lower quadrant here we have
electrons and this now newly filled
quadrant we have select ron's
and the quadrant over here we had corks
over here we have squirts so now we've
got this balance pie and that's
basically what I understood as a
graduate student in 1975 about this idea
of supersymmetry that it was going to
fill up these two quadrants of the pie
in a way that no one had ever thought
about before so I was amazed that no one
else at MIT found this an interesting
idea so that's it led to my becoming the
first person in MIT to really steady
supersymmetry
this is 1975 76 77 and in 77 I wrote the
first PhD thesis in the physics
department on this idea because I just I
was drawn to the balance drawn to the
symmetry so what boundary what does that
first of all is this fundamentally a
mathematical idea so how much
experimental and we'll have this theme
it's an really interesting one when you
explore the worlds of the small and in
your new book talking about approving is
that right right that will also talk
about there's this theme of kind of
starting and exploring crazy ideas first
in the mathematics and then seeking for
ways to experiment to validate where do
you put some supersymmetry and that's
it's closer than string theory it is not
yet been validated in some sense you
mentioned Einstein so let's go there for
a moment
in our book proofing Einstein right we
actually do talk about the fact that
Albert Einstein in 1915 wrote a set of
equations which were very different from
Newton's equations and describing
gravity these equations made some
predictions that were different from
Newton's predictions and it actually
made three different predictions one of
them was not actually a prediction but a
post diction because it was known that
mercury was not orbiting the Sun in the
way that Newton would have told you
and so I science Theory actually makes
describes mercury orbiting in the way
that was observed as opposed to what
Newton would have told you is that well
it's one prediction
the second prediction that came out of
the theory of general relativity which
Einstein wrote in 1915 was that if you
if so let me describe an experiment and
come back to it suppose that a glass of
water and I filled it up filled the
glass up and then I moved the glass
slowly back and forth between our two
faces it would appear to me like your
face was moving even though you weren't
moving I mean it's actually and what's
causing it is because the light gets
bent through the glass has it passes
from your face to my eye so Einstein in
his 1915 theory of general relativity
found out that gravity has the same
effect on light as that glass of water
it would cause beams of light tube in
now Newton also knew this but Einstein's
prediction was that light would Bend
twice as much and so here's a
mathematical idea now how do you
actually prove it well
you've got to watch yes just a quick
pause on that just the language you're
using he found out I can say he did a
calculation it's a really interesting
notion that the one of the most and one
of the beautiful things about this
universe is you can do a calculation and
and combined with some of that magical
intuition that physicists have actually
predict what would be what's possible to
experiment to validate that's correct so
he found out and in the sense that there
seems to be something here and
mathematically should bend gravity
should bend light this amount and so
therefore that's something that could be
potentially and then come up with an
experiment that could be validated right
and that's the way that actually modern
physics deeply fundamental modern
physics is how it works you earlier we
spoke about the Higgs boson so why did
we go looking for the answer is they had
back in the late 60s and early 70s some
people wrote some equations and the
equations predicted this so then we went
looking for
you