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

Episoder(416)

46 | Kate Darling on Our Connections with Robots

46 | Kate Darling on Our Connections with Robots

Most of us have no trouble telling the difference between a robot and a living, feeling organism. Nevertheless, our brains often treat robots as if they were alive. We give them names, imagine that th...

13 Mai 20191h 6min

45 | Leonard Susskind on Quantum Information, Quantum Gravity, and Holography

45 | Leonard Susskind on Quantum Information, Quantum Gravity, and Holography

For decades now physicists have been struggling to reconcile two great ideas from a century ago: general relativity and quantum mechanics. We don't yet know the final answer, but the journey has taken...

6 Mai 20191h 13min

44 | Antonio Damasio on Feelings, Thoughts, and the Evolution of Humanity

44 | Antonio Damasio on Feelings, Thoughts, and the Evolution of Humanity

When we talk about the mind, we are constantly talking about consciousness and cognition. Antonio Damasio wants us to talk about our feelings. But it's not in an effort to be more touchy-feely; Damasi...

29 Apr 20191h 12min

43 | Matthew Luczy on the Pleasures of Wine

43 | Matthew Luczy on the Pleasures of Wine

Some people never drink wine; for others, it's an indispensable part of an enjoyable meal. Whatever your personal feelings might be, wine seems to exhibit a degree of complexity and nuance that can be...

22 Apr 20191h 46min

42 | Natalya Bailey on Navigating Earth Orbit and Beyond

42 | Natalya Bailey on Navigating Earth Orbit and Beyond

The space age officially began in 1957 with the launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite. But recent years have seen the beginning of a boom in the number of objects orbiting Earth, as satellite tracking and...

15 Apr 201959min

41 | Steven Strogatz on Synchronization, Networks, and the Emergence of Complex Behavior

41 | Steven Strogatz on Synchronization, Networks, and the Emergence of Complex Behavior

One of the most important insights in the history of science is the fact that complex behavior can arise from the undirected movements of small, simple systems. Despite the fact that we know this, we'...

8 Apr 20191h 14min

40 | Adrienne Mayor on Gods and Robots in Ancient Mythology

40 | Adrienne Mayor on Gods and Robots in Ancient Mythology

The modern world is full of technology, and also with anxiety about technology. We worry about robot uprisings and artificial intelligence taking over, and we contemplate what it would mean for a comp...

1 Apr 20191h 3min

39 | Malcolm MacIver on Sensing, Consciousness, and Imagination

39 | Malcolm MacIver on Sensing, Consciousness, and Imagination

Consciousness has many aspects, from experience to wakefulness to self-awareness. One aspect is imagination: our minds can conjure up multiple hypothetical futures to help us decide which choices we s...

25 Mar 20191h 19min

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