24 | Kip Thorne on Gravitational Waves, Time Travel, and Interstellar

24 | Kip Thorne on Gravitational Waves, Time Travel, and Interstellar

I remember vividly hosting a colloquium speaker, about fifteen years ago, who talked about the LIGO gravitational-wave observatory, which had just started taking data. Comparing where they were to where they needed to get to in terms of sensitivity, the mumblings in the audience after the talk were clear: "They'll never make it." Of course we now know that they did, and the 2016 announcement of the detection of gravitational waves led to a 2017 Nobel Prize for Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish. So it's a great pleasure to have Kip Thorne himself as a guest on the podcast. Kip tells us a bit about he LIGO story, and offers some strong opinions about the Nobel Prize. But he's had a long and colorful career, so we also talk about whether it's possible to travel backward in time through a wormhole, and what his future movie plans are in the wake of the success of Interstellar. Kip Thorne received his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University, and is now the Richard Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics (Emeritus) at Caltech. Recognized as one of the world's leading researchers in general relativity, he has done important work on gravitational waves, black holes, wormholes, and relativistic stars. His role in helping found and guide the LIGO experiment was recognized with the Nobel Prize in 2017. He is the author or co-author of numerous books, including a famously weighty textbook, Gravitation. He was executive producer of the 2014 film Interstellar, which was based on an initial concept by him and Lynda Obst. He's been awarded too many prizes to list here, and has also been involved in a number of famous bets. Caltech page Wikipedia page Nobel Prize citation Nobel Lecture Amazon.com author page Internet Movie Database page

Jaksot(416)

AMA | September 2023

AMA | September 2023

Welcome to the September 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by P...

4 Syys 20234h 3min

248 | Yejin Choi on AI and Common Sense

248 | Yejin Choi on AI and Common Sense

Over the last year, AI large-language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have demonstrated a remarkable ability to carry on human-like conversations in a variety of different concepts. But the way these LLMs ...

28 Elo 20231h 12min

247 | Samuel Bowles on Economics, Cooperation, and Inequality

247 | Samuel Bowles on Economics, Cooperation, and Inequality

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/08/21/247-samuel-bowles-on-economics-cooperation-and-inequality/ Economics, much like thermodynamics, is a story of collect...

21 Elo 20231h 20min

246 | David Stuart on Time and Science in Maya Civilization

246 | David Stuart on Time and Science in Maya Civilization

You might remember the somewhat bizarre worries that swept through certain circles back in 2012, based on the end of the world being predicted by the Maya calendar. The world didn't end, which is unsu...

14 Elo 20231h 9min

AMA | August 2023

AMA | August 2023

Welcome to the August 2023 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patr...

7 Elo 20233h 38min

245 | Solo: The Crisis in Physics

245 | Solo: The Crisis in Physics

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just...

31 Heinä 20234h 22min

244 | Katie Elliott on Metaphysics, Chance, and Explanation

244 | Katie Elliott on Metaphysics, Chance, and Explanation

Is metaphysics like physics, but cooler? Or is it a relic of an outdated, pre-empirical way of thinking about the world? Closer to the former than the latter. Rather than building specific quantitativ...

24 Heinä 20231h 36min

243 | Joseph Silk on Science on the Moon

243 | Joseph Silk on Science on the Moon

The Earth's atmosphere is good for some things, like providing something to breathe. But it does get in the way of astronomers, who have been successful at launching orbiting telescopes into space. Bu...

17 Heinä 20231h 11min

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