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7:30 pm, Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Fairmont Social Lounge, St. John's College
Not Your Grandfather's Universe
Lenny Susskind
Stanford University
The physical universe is nothing like we thought, even as little as ten
years ago. The prevailing paradigm of a small universe a mere ten
billion light years in size--a universe with the same "knowable" laws of
physics everywhere--is giving way to a much grander vision of a
tremendously large "multiverse," similar in many ways to the diversity
of the biological world. And the DNA of each local pocket is the
enormously variable microscopic structures of String Theory.
At the same time, the solid world of experience, filled with matter,
energy, and information, is being replaced by the remarkable notion that
three dimensional space is an illusion, much like the ghostly image
created by a hologram.
These "stranger than fiction" ideas are not idle fantasies, but are
becoming a useful part of mainstream physics, having application from
cosmology to mundane nuclear physics.
Find out more
by visiting his website.
Additional resources for this talk: video, slides.
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