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(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Thank you all. This is the 13th annual Isaac Asimov panel debate.
I’m your host and moderator this evening, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I’m the Frederick P.
Rose director of the Hayden Planetarium, where I also serve as an astrophysicist with the
American Museum of Natural History. Thank you all for coming this evening. For the first
time, this event this evening will be live streamed on the Internet. See, so you could
have stayed home. You see? We waited until now to tell you that. Sorry about that. Isaac
Asimov is—the name is no stranger to any of us, certainly no stranger to anyone seated
here tonight. He was a polymath. Perhaps one of the last of his kind. Maybe Gardner was
another one, who just was really great at a lot of things, and bringing it to the public.
And he was smart and ambitious. Isaac Asimov was a native New Yorker, did much of his research
for his 500-plus books that he’s written, sourced from the research libraries here at
the American Museum of Natural History. And when he died in the 1990s, we wanted to find
a fitting tribute to him. There are a lot of ways you could possible raise funds and
commit them, but one we figured to have his name live on would be to celebrate his life
and his science advocacy with this panel debate. Like I said, it’s in its 13th year. And
I just want to publicly thank Isaac Asimov’s family and friends, who started the original
fund to make this possible. If you join me in thanking them. These debates are designed
not in the traditional sense of a point/counterpoint, three-minute, two-minute reply. That’s what
politicians do. We try to do it a little differently here. The panel debate is really a conversation
that we will have. We have six physicists here—sorry, five physicists and an engineer.
And it’s as though you are eavesdropping on our conversation at the bar. And in that
way, you get to sample some of the spontaneous thinking that goes on when people grapple
the bleeding edge of scientific discovery. And so in that sense, it’s a debate because
there’s typically not enough data to resolve the conflict. And that’s where things get
interesting. The format of tonight is I’ll introduce the six panelists, one of whom will
be sent in via Skype. And they’ll each give two minutes opening remarks, and we just go
straight into it. We’ll do that for about an hour, and then we go to Q&A, represented
by you in the audience. There are microphones up front. We will also be soliciting questions
from the Twitterverse. That is a parallel Universe to our own. It’s there whether
you want to believe it or not. Let me just give some brief introductions. The full profile
of each panelist is in your program. Oh, by the way, I didn’t even tell you the topic
of tonight. It started out where we would explore faster than light particles based
on the announcement at the European Center for Nuclear Research that they may have discovered
just such objects. And some later results—later like a few weeks ago—came out that maybe
there was a mistake in the measurements. We don’t know. We said, well, let’s broaden
this. We have tremendous brain power coming to the stage. We will not simply talk about
whether you can travel faster than light, but we will explore all ways modern physicists
are testing the fundamental laws of nature. That is this evening’s topic. Joining me
on stage now is David Cline. He’s professor of physics at UCLA, with a specialty in neutrinos.
David, come on out. Where you’d go? There you go, David. Thank you. We have coming over
Skype we have Gian Giudice, if I pronounce his name correctly. He should be sliding on
to our monitor. There he goes. Gian Giudice. He’s a theoretical particle physicist at
the Center for European Nuclear Research. And we will be chatting with him about the
experiments being conducted there. Next is Sheldon Glashow. Shelly, come on out. Professor
of theoretical physics, Boston University. Shelly. Oh, did I say he has the Nobel Prize in physics? I forgot
to mention that. I’m sorry. But that’s not even the most impressive part of Shelly’s
resume. He’s a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. One of seven Nobel laureates
from that school. All seven are in physics, by the way. Next, Christopher Hegarty is an
engineer with the MITRE Corporation, specializing in everything GPS. GPS, the system we’re
all familiar with that prevents you from getting lost, is also—you might not know—a remarkable
test of general relativity. Christopher, come on out. Next we have a senior researcher at
the Italian Nuclear Physics Institute, and is a member of the OPERA Collaboration at
the—where are we here—Gran Sasso Laboratory. Please join me in a warm welcome of Laura
Patrizii. Laura. I keep trying to get the name right, Laura. She was in Italy when the
neutrinos arrived. So, we have to get some—did I leave someone out? Who’d I leave out?
Oh, there she goes. Thank you. And last among our five here, and certainly not least, is
Gabriela Gonzalez. She’s professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University,
which is the academic home of one of the most advanced observatories of gravitational waves
ever conceived. Let’s give a warm welcome to Gabriela. Gabriela. So, let’s get my
stuff together here. So, I’d like to know a little bit more about each one of you, so
why don’t we start at the far end. David, just tell us what drives you in the day. Spend
a couple of minutes doing that, and then we’ll get into our beer talk. (David Cline) My microphone’s
on? Okay. So, I study neutrino physics. Actually, there was a picture up here of the detector
I use, but it’s gone now. And neutrinos were thought at one point never to be detectable.
There were invented in 1933 by Wolfgang Pauli. It was discovered in 1956 by Professor Reines.
So, I’ve devoted much of my life in the study of high-energy neutrinos, low-energy
neutrinos. In particular, tonight I’ll be talking later about looking for neutrinos
with faster than the speed of light with a counter detector to OPERA. But, anyway, neutrinos
fascinate me and I hope they will fascinate you. Thank you. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Thank
you. Gian Giudice, welcome to New York. At least your avatar is here in New York. If
you can tell us just how you plug into the world of physics. (Gian Giudice) Sure. I apologize
for my last-minute problem and not for being able to be physically there. But I’m very
glad to be at least virtually there. After all, I am a theoretical physicist, so I don’t
care too much about actual reality. It’s an interesting experience because it’s the
first time in my life that I wear a jacket, tie, together with pajama pants and slippers.
I’m a theoretical particle physicist— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, you’re in your
underwear now is what you’re telling us. (Gian Giudice) Well, pajama pants. I’m very
glad that theoretical physics exist and is supported by society because I’m not a very
practical person. I’m probably—there’s not much else I could have done in life. I
was educated in Italy. Then I had the privilege to do research in your country. I worked at
Fermilab near Chicago and at the University of Texas at Austin. These were fundamental
years for my research because they really shaped my vision of particle physics. And
then finally I moved to European laboratory of CERN. And how can I describe CERN? I think
that if God were a particle physicist and if he had to create Heaven, then he would
build something very similar to CERN. So, very privileged to work in such an intellectually
stimulating environment. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, excellent. Well, thank you for those
opening remarks. Shelly, what do you got—it’s your third time, I think, on this stage here.
(Sheldon Glashow) Third time here, yes. Look, I agree with the previous speakers. And neutrinos
are my favorite particles, too. But we’re here, I think, to talk a little bit about
relativity as well. And we all know that the special theory of relativity was introduced
back in 1905, and there have been doubters ever since. And one of the great fascinations
that I’ve enjoyed is looking at tests of the special theory of relativity. And let
me just recall that. Fifteen years ago or so, in the late 1990s, my dear-departed friend
Sidney Coleman and I got into the game as theoretical physicists to see what we could
say about tests of the special theory. There had already been all sorts of experimental
tests. There was an atomic physics experiment that was sensitive to 21 or 22 decimal places
done by some experimenters at the University of Washington, as I recall. Could we as theorists
do better? It seemed an absurd question, but we did. Because we realized that if, for example,
particles traveled faster than the speed of light then there would be consequences; processes
that would ordinarily be forbidden become allowed and processes that are ordinarily
allowed can become forbidden. And on that basis, we were very proud of ourselves. We
did an experiment. We said people have seen protons—cosmic ray protons of such large
energies that they couldn’t have had these energies if relativity were violated. And
we put a limit on the passable superluminality of protons of 10 to the minus 23. I mean,
that’s an absurdly small number. And, yes, even theorists can do experiments. Thank you.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. And that’s not even what you got the Nobel Prize for. (Sheldon
Glashow) Well, no. To be honest, that had to do with something I did as a mere infant
back in 1961. A long time ago, one of my first papers written after I graduated—got my
PhD from Harvard University. By the way, I also taught there for 35 years. Gave up because
35 years is enough to teach it anyplace. Yeah, so I got my PhD, and then ran off to Copenhagen.
That’s a story in itself, but we’ll skip that for the while. And that’s where I wrote
the paper that won the Nobel Prize. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Excellent. Christopher, what
does it mean—well, this is your opening remarks, but you’re not from an academic
setting. You’re in a MITRE Corporation. In your comments, opening remarks, can you
just tell us what that is? Because I think many of us might be unfamiliar. (Christopher
Hegarty) Yeah. MITRE Corporation is a private company that manages five Federally-funded
research and development centers. I am an electrical engineer. I am live here in New
York because I like things that are real. I absolutely hated my modern physics class
in college, and never wanted anything to do with that voodoo stuff. Although, I have to
say I’ve been working for the past 20 years on GPS, and I’ve grown to like modern physics
a lot more because it is used. Both general and special relativity are very important
to the operation of GPS today. And you can see it with your own eyes. If you don’t
apply the corrections that Einstein derived for us, it doesn’t work anymore. And I like
that much better than seeing cubes from the side, or whatever my textbook talked about.
So, that’s why I’m here. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, thank you. Laura? (Laura Patrizii)
Well, first of all, I would like to say that I’m very happy to be here and honored for
being here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m from Italy, as you can easily guess
from my accent. And I started my career—professional career as a physicist in the so-called astro-particle
physics, which is a quite new field. I mean, it dates back to the 1985, something like
this. And it’s a field in connection between particle physics and astrophysics because
there is strong connection. And neutrinos are a link between those two. But now I didn’t
start with the neutrinos. Actually, I started with magnetic monopoles, with an experiment
with the Gran Sasso—you will hear about the Gran Sasso later on a lot, I think—which
was looking for those magnetic monopoles in cosmic race, which the existence of magnetic
monopoles would prove the unification of three fundamental forces. And then I shifted [unintelligible
15:50] to neutrinos. And I am one of the guilty person tonight because I am member of the
OPERA Collaboration, which has claimed that the neutrino can fly faster than light. But,
okay, you will hear more about this later on. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yes, we will for
sure. Okay. Yes, Gabby? (Gabriela Gonzalez)I’m Gabriela Gonzalez, and I live in Louisiana,
but you hear an accent from much farther south. I was born in Argentina. Came to do my PhD
in the U.S. in Syracuse, New York and loved what I did and stayed there. I started working,
even at that time in the early ‘90s, on a beautiful project called the LIGO Project,
which is testing a prediction—but I think it’s a most striking prediction—of Einstein’s
theory of relativity that says that space time itself can vibrate, can produce gravitational
wave. We all produce gravitational waves that travel. We’re out to measure these tiny
waves that come from black holes. And I’ve been working on that ever since. I’m the
spokesperson for a big collaboration of hundreds of scientists that are working on this. And
I hope I tell you more about that later on. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You certainly will.
So, thank you all for your opening remarks. I want to spend a couple of minutes before
we put on the boxing gloves. I’d like to just—I want to explore just the way physics
gets done today. We have a couple of you who are part of the CERN collaboration. So, CERN
is how you pronounce the word, which I think in French that’s the sequence of word, but
in English it’s the European Center for Nuclear Research. You swap some letters back
and forth and you get CERN. And that’s where you have the Large Hadron Collider. And so,
David, just to go back to you, this is—can you tell me just something about this Large
Hadron Collider relative to previous colliders? Just what is it and what is it doing for us?
(David Cline) Okay. Is it still on? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) No, it’s not. Can we get
the mic there? Is it going? Try again. (David Cline) Can you hear me now? (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) No, take that. (David Cline) Okay. I work—(Neil deGrasse Tyson) I can’t interrupt
you. (David Cline) Okay, good. I can speak for a long time. I worked at CERN for a long
time, and we tried here in America to develop our own— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You’re
on now. (David Cline) —very large machine called the Super Conducting Super Collider,
which was going to be in Texas. A series of a very unfortunate events led this machine
to be canceled, so CERN, which was then directed by my colleague— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Wait,
just to clarify, you’re describing a particle accelerator that was proposed in the United
States that got cancelled. (David Cline) Right. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) And so stranding an
entire generation of particle physicists here in America. (David Cline) Now, we understand
that that may have been a tragic mistake because at the Large Hadron Collider, which is 27
kilometers in circumference, we are hoping to see some particles, which are called super
symmetric—you may have heard of those before—they seem to be at this moment outside the range
of the energy. Now, we do think we’ve seen the Higgs boson. Maybe we can say more about
that later. But the energy range of the SSC might have been ideal, but now many scientists
in the world—even people from Iran, Vietnam—it’s just an incredible array of scientists who
work on this Large Hadron Collider. I, in particular, work on the Compact Muon Solenoid.
There’s six professors at UCLA that I work with, and we have our own duties for the hardware.
So, basically the Large Hadron Collider has now been—come now the world machine, but
we’re still hoping in the future we’re going to be able to build something comparable
to that in the United States. So, for the time being, we’re hoping there’ll be major
discoveries there. The only one on the horizon at this moment is the Higgs boson. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Gian, at CERN how many different countries are involved there just to get a sense of
this? (Gian Giudice) Right. So, the [unintelligible 20:03], but in the LHC experiments, a lot
more countries are represented. Essentially, I would almost all countries in the world
of all continents—I mean, hundreds of countries. It is really truly international endeavor.
And that’s a nice thing. When I was saying that CERN is Heaven, there’s much more physics
involved. It is really the idea that science brings people together, joins nations. CERN
was funded soon after the war, and as you can imagine— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Wait,
this is America, so you have to be specific about which war you’re talking about. Funded
after the war, please specify. (Gian Giudice) It’s the only one that is in my view as
an Italian— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) That’s the Second World War (Gian Giudice) —so,
that’s the Second World War. And as you can imagine, Europe was divided and also did
not—was destroyed and did not have the resources to fund the fundamental research. So, that
point was a special political endeavor to bring together nations that were just fighting
a few years earlier. And science [unintelligible 21:26] to bring people together and also to
start something new. To bring back from United States many of the scientists that had to
leave and starting in the ashes of a destroyed Europe something new. And I think that mission
was really a success. And now we see that CERN is expanding even beyond the borders
of Europe. And it’s truly the biggest and most international center for science at the
moment. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Excellent. So, it’d be fair to say then that CERN in Switzerland
and the International Space Station are two examples of extraordinary international collaborations.
Perhaps the greatest international collaborations outside of the waging of war. Would you agree?
(Gian Giudice) Yes. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yeah, okay. (Gian Giudice) I wasn’t sure
you were referring to me because you’re looking at David, at least from my point of
view. But that’s what I said, so I certainly agree with what I said. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
All right. I want to spend a little time just starting off thinking about what it is to
test what we call fundamental physics. Shelly, let me ask you: Are people still testing thermodynamics?
Or Maxwell’s equations; these classics physics from the 19th century, or is that just in
the books and we’re on to other things? And if we are on to other things, why ignore
19th century physics and only test 20th century physics? (Sheldon Glashow) Well, yes. Let’s
pick— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) My question was not a yes/no answer. Just so you know,
I’m on to you here. Go on. (Sheldon Glashow) You mentioned many things. Let’s think of
classical mechanics. Think of the mechanics that was that apple fell on the head of Newton
and he created classical mechanics: F equals MA and all that stuff. That’s a great theory.
It is a true theory. Now, what the hell could I mean by that? Because it’s not true for
things that move too fast. When things move too fast, you have to invoke the special theory
of relativity. It’s not true for things that are too small because you have to invoke
quantum mechanics. It’s not true for things that are too big and fat like the sun because
general relativity begins to play a role. So, why do I say classical mechanics has proven
to be true? Because we have mapped out its envelope of validity. We know exactly where
it applies and where it doesn’t apply. And I think this is, in a sense, the modern definition
of truth in physics. We have quantum mechanics. We know, to a certain extent, its boundaries.
We know Maxwell’s equations. We know that it falls apart under certain circumstances
where light behaves as particles. We know the boundaries of classical physics. (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Okay, that’s an important distinction. So, when you conduct experiments
to test these theories, you’re not testing them within the realm where you’re pretty
sure it falls within the boundaries. You’re designing tests at the boundaries. (Sheldon
Glashow) At and beyond. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) At and beyond. (Sheldon Glashow) Exactly.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) At and beyond the boundaries. Gabby, you are at and beyond the boundary
of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. A reminder—and correct me if I’m wrong,
allow me to make this generalization that special relativity of Einstein—1905—was
his extension of Newtonian mechanics; motion essentially. And then general relativity was
Einstein’s extension of Newtonian gravity. Is that a fair way to think about it? (Sheldon
Glashow) Definitely. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, good. That was a very grumpy yes, but
I’ll take it. Okay. But, yeah, all right. If you’ve got to say that. So, Einstein
is looking pretty good every time I’ve ever looked at it. Yet, somehow you have some doubt,
apparently, because you’re involved in a very expensive experiment to test it. So,
let me ask you: Are you testing it because you think he could be wrong? Or are you testing
it because you’re trying to show him to be right? (Gabriela Gonzalez) I’m very convinced
that Einstein was right. We are testing it because we are measuring this prediction that
has never been measured before. Einstein’s theory in one of the most straightforward
predictions is that masses, they attract each other not because there is a force like Newton
said, but because they distort space time, and then they fall into each other’s space
warps. And it is those space time ripples that we are trying to measure, which are very,
very tiny. And that’s why they haven’t been measured before. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Okay, so what’s an example of what will ripple space time on a level that you’ll
be able to measure? (Gabriela Gonzalez) We are measuring— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Wait.
We’re all rippling space time here, aren’t we? (Gabriela Gonzalez) We are, yes. We are
all waving space time around. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. But you’re not measuring that.
(Gabriela Gonzalez) No, because it’s too tiny to measure. And that was Einstein’s
prediction. Einstein said that these things would never be measured because they were
too small. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, but what did Einstein know? (Gabriela Gonzalez)
What did he know? He didn’t even know what technology we could have. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
All right, so— (Gabriela Gonzalez) We use his theory to calculate how big this was.
And what his theory says is that these gravitational waves are coming to Earth maybe once every
year or so, changing the distance between the Earth and the sun by an atomic diameter.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Whoa. Wait, wait. Okay. So, wait, wait. Back up. So, these ripples
you’re trying to measure is like a wave through the fabric of space and time. And
when you have a wave, it distorts just like the fabric shrinking or expanding. (Gabriela
Gonzalez) That’s right. Exactly. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, in the 93 million mile—this is
America, so it’s miles. Sorry. Okay, 150 million kilometers, yes. (Gabriela Gonzalez)
[Unintelligible 27:39]. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, that distance from Earth to the sun changes
by the diameter of an atom from that wave, and you’re going to measure that. (Gabriela
Gonzalez) We’re actually going to measure on a much, much smaller scale, which is still
very big. It’s two-and-a-half mile scale, so we have these huge observatories. (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Two and a half miles is much smaller than 93 million miles. (Gabriela Gonzalez)
It is a lot smaller. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, you’re looking for a shift— (Gabriela
Gonzalez) And it’s still very expensive. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You’re looking for
shifts much smaller than the diameter of an atom. (Gabriela Gonzalez) That’s right.
We are looking for shifts that are smaller than a proton—a [unintelligible] 10,000
of a proton diameter. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, then you woke up, and then you said,
okay— (Gabriela Gonzalez)The most exciting thing is that we have measured already a part
in 1,000 of a proton diameter. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You mean if a wave came at a part in
1,000, you would have seen it? (Gabriela Gonzalez) Yes. And it didn’t come yet. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Okay. But that hasn’t happened. (Gabriela Gonzalez) It hasn’t happened yet. (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) And you’re after a part in— (Gabriela Gonzalez) Ten thousand. (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Ten thousand. Okay, factor of 10. Okay. We’ll get back to you on that.
MITRE dude? (Christopher Hegarty) Yes. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Chris. (Christopher Hegarty)
Neil, dude. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Someone should tally how many people are not dead
because they didn’t have to read a map while driving the car. An unfolded map across the
windshield because they were guided by GPS. (Christopher Hegarty) You’ll have to offset
that from those that are dead from looking at the GPS or programming their GPS. (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) So, it’s all balances. (Christopher Hegarty) Yes. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You’re
a big GPS guy. We all love—who doesn’t love GPS? Of course, it started as a military
project. And I’m guessing the military wasn’t thinking what a great test for Einstein relativity.
They probably weren’t thinking this, isn’t that correct? (Christopher Hegarty) Probably
not, but they knew a lot more than we think going back through some of the old papers
that were written, even right around 1970 or so. They knew a whole lot of things that
we rediscover now and then. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) It seems to me they’re going at orbital
speed. That’s fast, but it’s not speed of light speed. Right? (Christopher Hegarty)
Yeah, the— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Couple of tens of thousands of miles an hour. (Christopher
Hegarty) The satellites are going about 4,000 meters a second, which is a little over 8,000
miles an hour. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Eight-thousand miles an hour? (Christopher Hegarty) Yeah.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) That’s pretty high up then. (Christopher Hegarty) About a New
York taxi driver’s speed at a yellow light. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) New York taxi driver
speed at a yellow light. This was the analogy. That’s a new unit of speed. (Christopher
Hegarty) Yeah. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, I remember my relativity equations and you have
to get pretty close to the speed of light for it to really matter. And so I don’t
think of GPS as being any kind of test of relativity at all. So, how does this surface
as a benchmark for it? (Christopher Hegarty) Well, what’s interesting is you’re mentioning
the effects of special relativity that says if you have a clock up in space, it’s whizzing
around. You’ll actually see it from the ground, is running too slow. But the effects
of general relativity are actually bigger for GPS. The fact that it is 20,000 kilometers
above the surface of the Earth makes that clock appear to actually run fast. And the
clocks that are put on the satellites are actually intentionally set slow by about five
parts in 10 to the 10th, so that they’ll appear to run correctly as see here on Earth.
And that’s something that’s done in GPS— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Whoa, you just blew
my mind. Wait. Did you just say that the clocks on the GPS are intentionally designed to run
at a general relativistically slower rate just so that when we observe them from Earth
in a deeper gravitational setting, it will look accurate to us? (Christopher Hegarty)
Not just general. It’s actually the combined effects of general and special. But general
relativity has about six times greater effect than special relativity. Special would make
them appear to run slow. General would make them appear to run fast. And general is bigger,
and the net effect is needed to be compensated within the system. And not only that— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Okay, just to remind people—okay, yeah. My mind is blown. I’m done. Good night,
everyone. (Christopher Hegarty) Let’s go for an explosion here then. But the interesting
part is the satellites aren’t perfectly in a circular orbit, so that there are imperfections
there where they are slowly going up higher sometimes and going lower sometimes, which
means the speed isn’t constant and the gravitational effects aren’t constant. And the user equipment
actually compensates for that, taking the ellipticity, the non-circular nature of the
orbit into account in every piece of equipment that’s out there, including probably the
stuff in your phones. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, it’s one thing to be high in a lesser
part of Earth’s gravitational field. So, now that means they’ll run a little slower—faster
because as you’re deeper in a gravitational well, you’re time slows down from general
relativity. (Christopher Hegarty) [Unintelligible 32:44]. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, now these
orbits are not in perfect circles. When you’re not in a perfect circle, sometimes you’re
close. Sometimes you’re far. And that difference is measured. (Christopher Hegarty) That difference
is compensated in virtually every GPS receiver that’s out there. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t
get the several meters accuracy you get. You’d get about 10, 20 meters accuracy. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) So, that’s because—what you’re saying is—not to put words in your mouth,
but just so I understand it—that the time precision translates into location precision
on Earth. (Christopher Hegarty) Correct. Yeah, the GPS is an arranging system. It’s measuring
the transit time of signals from the satellite down to the user on the ground. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) All right. So, if you did not correct for general relativity, and I’m here, where’s
the satellite going to tell me I’m standing? (Christopher Hegarty) If you let the clock
run on the satellite for one day without compensating it, the close could be in error by 38 microseconds
or so, which would be about 11 kilometer ranging error after— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Eleven
kilometers? (Christopher Hegarty) Of one range measurement, and your position would be off
by something commensurate within— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) I can’t even continue. (Sheldon
Glashow) Hey, Neil, can I translate the previous discussion into English? (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. So, now we can find another way to blow my mind. Okay, go ahead,
Shelly.(Sheldon Glashow) No, not at all. If we did not have Einstein’s general theory
of relativity—well, it could have been somebody else’s general theory of relativity, but
if we didn’t have the theory of general relativity, we would not have GPS. It’s
as simple as that. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. All right. So, can you— (Laura Patrizii)
Can I add one thing to this? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yes. (Laura Patrizii) If one wonders
what’s the use, again, of studying so academic like or relativity like Einstein was doing,
what’s the practical use of this, then you may discover later on very long time after.
So, the point is— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) In 1916, surely no one was saying this is
some practical stuff, Albert. Right, that probably not what he was hearing in the coffee
lounge. (Laura Patrizii) Yeah, in fact. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) My favorite equation of Einstein’s,
just while we’re on the subject, is when he derived the stimulated emission of radiation;
his famous Einstein A and B coefficients, is what they’re called. We study that in
astrophysics. And that’s the equation that enables the construction of lasers. And so
Einstein, at the time he wrote that, was not saying, “Barcodes, yes, this is how I will—this
is where this will land.” I’m thinking—it’s an appeal for basic research is what you have
here. So, can you flip this question around and ask: Rather than pre-compensate the satellites
for general relativity, can we use GPS to test the limits of relativity? Or are you
so within the zone that Shelly just described that you’re not going to land—you’re
not good for that? (Christopher Hegarty) Yeah, in some ways you can use it to measure relativity.
In fact, before the first GPS satellite was launched, there was a series of experimental
satellites—navigation technology satellites they were called, NTS 1 and NTS 2. And the
engineers at the time weren’t all believers the relativistic corrections would need to
be applied. So, they actually had a switch on the satellite where they could turn it
on or off. But they actually ran it with the clock running at the right rate factory set
on ground, and they ran it and measured the offset, and then it was consistent with what
you’d predict using special and general relativity. And that sold the engineers anyhow.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, the engineers didn’t believe Einstein? (Christopher Hegarty) Not
all of them. In fact, I believed Einstein until tonight—until we went up into your
reading room upstairs and I saw Einstein in a light I had never seen him before. What
is Einstein wearing in your office up there? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Oh, in our research
library up in astrophysics? There’s a bust of Einstein, and he’s wearing a New York
Yankees hat. (Christopher Hegarty) So, I don’t know about him—he’s from Boston, too,
but I’m a Red Sox fan, so I don’t know. I’m starting to doubt this all. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Red Sox fan. Wrong place to say that, let me tell you. (Christopher Hegarty) We
do get to leave through a different exit, don’t we? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) I’m just
saying. Where’s all my stuff here? So, I’m impressed by this. And so this continues.
So, it’s a few months ago we learned of—how many months ago—that there’s the possibility—
(Gabriela Gonzalez) Six. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Six months ago, thank you. How’d you know
what I was coming here? Six months ago we learned of the possibility—no, it was longer
ago where we learned that maybe the neutrino, one of the fundamental particles of nature,
may have been misbehaving. That it’s not following what we’d expect it to do. In
particular, there was a claim that it was traveling faster than light. Gian, could you
just update us on the original papers that led to that? (Gian Giudice) Yes. So, on the
23rd of September there was this big announcement from the OPERA Collaboration— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) And OPERA is an acronym. And please tell me what each of those letters stand for.
(Gian Giudice) I think Laura can tell you. (Laura Patrizii) Yeah. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Yeah, actually we’re going to get back to her, so I’ll save it for her. Please continue.
(Gian Giudice) All right. I know what OPERA means in Italian, and I think most of the
people know, but actually don’t know what the acronym means. So, on the 23rd of September
there was this result. And, of course, at that point many theoretical physicists were
startled as soon as they heard about this result. And immediately they tried to make
sense of it. So, for several months many physicists work very hard to understand if it is possible
to modify the properties of neutrinos or the properties of space time to be constantly—to
reconcile the OPERA results with our knowledge of special relativity. Because the OPERA measurement,
all the neutrinos, as they traveled from CERN to Gran Sasso in central Italy, they arrived
at 60 nanoseconds [unintelligible 39:19] to light. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Sixty nanoseconds?
(Gian Giudice) Sixty nanoseconds may seem not a lot, but— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) It’s
60 billionths of a second. (Gian Giudice) That’s right. But that’s a lot. For a
particle physicist, that’s an enormous quantity. So, that’s why people really jumped on that
[chair] and immediately— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Just to clarify, you send these particles
from Switzerland, through the Earth in a cord, through the spherical Earth, landing in her
lab. (Gian Giudice) That’s right. Seven-hundred-thirty-two kilometers. And we take advantage of the curvature
of the Earth because neutrinos are very [unintelligible] particles. They essentially see the Earth
as a perfectly transparent medium. So, they can cross the Earth with no problem. Although,
as you may know, the Italian Minister of Science claimed that Italy had built a tunnel going
from CERN to Gran Sasso in order to allow the neutrinos to go through. That was the
Italian contribution to the [unintelligible 40:22]. (Laura Patrizii) Gian, it’s not
fair to say. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) We’re coming to you in like three minutes. (Gian
Giudice) Never said anything bad about [unintelligible]. Sorry about that. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yes.
So, 60 nanoseconds—if we do that in English units, the light moves one foot per nanosecond.
The light got there 60 feet ahead of when a light beam—the neutrino got there—would
have beaten a beam of light by 60 feet. I think that’s— (Gian Giudice) That’s
right. And it looks a lot longer. Indeed, it’s something that in units of particle
physics, it’s an enormous effect. Billions of times bigger than anybody could have guessed
from the fact that maybe relativity when it enters the quantum regime should be modified.
So, immediately many of us try to make sense of this result and see what was the meaning
because that’s part of our job as theorists. But, at the end, I would say after a few months
there was a general consensus that this reconciliation seemed really nearly impossible. I would say
that there was only one plausible, theoretical explanation that I heard about this result.
And, as you know, neutrinos travel from CERN in Switzerland to the Gran Sasso Laboratory
in central Italy. And the explanation goes as follows: when the neutrinos are produced
in Switzerland, they travel at the speed of light. But then as soon as it pass the border
and enter Italy, it no longer respect rules and speed limits. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.(Gian
Giudice) That should tell you it really was a status of theory. That point, there really
the general consensus among theorists. But it is an inexplicability of the OPERA result.
And this came earlier then this statement that—on the 22nd of February by OPERA announcing
the experimental problems. So, I think this story has a good moral for theoretical physics
because, yes, we are eager to chew on every bone that experimentalists throw at us, but
we don’t swallow anything. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Especially not the chicken bones. You
don’t want to swallow—so, Laura, he sends the signal from CERN. You receive the signal
in Italy. And now these are misbehaved neutrinos. So, either Einstein is wrong, they did something—
(Laura Patrizii) It’s not correct to say misbehavior. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Misbehavior.
(Laura Patrizii) I mean— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Surprising behavior. (Laura Patrizii)
Okay. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, either Einstein is wrong, they messed up on their end, or
you messed up on your end, or all of the above. So, where do you— (Laura Patrizii) And Gian
already anticipated that the result has been corrected. That we found false in our equipment.
It was quite a surprise because we have tested and retested many times all the different
parts. It is a quite complicated experiment that measuring the neutrino velocity. So,
it had been checked, but eventually we discovered that there was something very, let’s say,
stupid that apparently was not put in the proper way. It was a, so-called, faulty connection.
It’s not so simple as this. Somewhat more complicated, but we can summarize like this:
a faulty connection. But it’s not so simple as this. And while I cannot say which is the—we
found two different effects. One, which goes into the direction of making neutrinos slower
than they appeared at the first time. And another effect, which makes the velocity to
increase. So, the combination—this [unintelligible 44:33] effect—very likely will [conceal]
the anticipation that had been measured. And so, in any case, but can I comment concerning
all the interest? I mean, Gian, concerning all that you theorists have been doing, there
was a lot of steering. Even now very likely we know that the result is not what seemed.
It’s still a lot of interest, a lot of discussion, a lot of reconsideration of so-called effects.
And this is, perhaps, the gift—the unwanted gift that at the end eventually OPERA has
done to the community. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) And tell me what the OPERA stands for. (Laura
Patrizii) Oscillation Project with Tracking Apparatus. And then you have to ask me why.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Why? (Laura Patrizii) Because the main aim of this experiment was
not to measure and is not to measure a neutrino velocity. It is look to prove—to give the
final proof of an effect that a neutrino can undergo. That is the so-called neutrino oscillation.
Neutrino, which exist in three families, which we call electron neutrino, muon neutrino and
tau neutrino. As they travel, they can change their nature from electron neutrino to, for
example, muon neutrino. It’s a peculiar property of those particles, which prove that
they have mass. They have a mass—the neutrinos was thought before to be mass-less. Anyhow,
this was discovered in 1998, but it was discovered somehow in an indirect way and OPERA was aim
at proving in a direct way by so-called appearance experiments: experiment that this is what
really happens. But then you have to give me some more time if you want me to explain
it better. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Well, I’ll come back to that. Let me just come over to
David. I’ve got a research paper, pub date 15th of March 2012. That’s five days ago.
“Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the Icarus Detector at the CNGS beam.” Okay,
so you’re a co-author on this paper. What does it say? (David Cline) Okay. Let me say
two things first. Let me go back to Shelly’s comment and say one thing about relativity.
Every time a machine like the Large Hadron Collider works, it tests relativity. Now,
these—in some way. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Now, is this a picture of LIGO here? (Gabriela
Gonzalez) Yes. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yes, in Louisiana. (Gabriela Gonzalez) That is
LIGO Livingston. LIGO Louisiana. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Oh, Louisiana. And has three— (Gabriela
Gonzalez) No, this is the road. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Oh, that’s the road? (Gabriela Gonzalez)
We have to get there. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. That’s the road, and then we have
two beams at right angles. (Gabriela Gonzalez) That’s right. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
And how long are those? (Gabriela Gonzalez) Two and a half miles. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Each? (Gabriela Gonzalez) Each. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. Good, since we have the photo.
Sorry to interrupt. (David Cline) Okay. So, let me just say—more or less finish up what
Shelly said. We tested these fundamental principles, like Newton’s Law of Gravity, all the way
from millimeters to thousands of—or millions of light years. We don’t make these things
sit quietly. I mean, there was—when something has been tested that well, we start believing
it’s real. Now, in terms of the neutrino faster than light, already there was a measurement
of this. When the Supernova 1987A went off, and neutrinos traveled 150,000 light years
to the Earth and arrived here within 20 seconds. That resulted in a limit on the neutrino—this
time electron neutrino—velocity being less than about one part of 10 to the ninth the
velocity of light. Now, in this Icarus experiment—which you had pictures up here before—it’s a
very large vat of liquid argon, about 600 tons. It’s actually non-trivial device.
We believe it will be now followed by a huge detector in South Dakota that will actually
be 40,000 tons. This is one of the futures of science in our country.(Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Just a quick second just to clarify, you mentioned Supernova 1987A. This is a supernova—the
first supernova observed in the year 1987, and it was observed to go off in a nearby
galaxy to our own—a dwarf galaxy. (David Cline) Large Magellanic Cloud. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Yeah. And it’s visible from the Southern Hemisphere, and we can see the exploding star.
So, that’s when the light gets to us, and then we had a detector that measured the arrival
of neutrinos. (David Cline) Two detectors. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Two detectors. And they
came in behind the light, not ahead of it. (David Cline) Right. About 20 seconds of time
the pulses lasted, even though it traveled 150,000 years to get here. So, it showed conclusively
that the velocity of light was extremely close—the velocity of the neutrinos were extremely close
to the velocity of light. (Sheldon Glashow) Those neutrinos. (David Cline) Those. Let
me finish now. I’m going to get to the other neutrinos now.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Those
weren’t CERN neutrinos. Those were supernova neutrinos, duh. (David Cline) I don’t buy
the argument that neutrinos change when they go to Italy. So, what we have done, in this
big liquid argon detector, which is I think going to be a marvel of technology in this
country someday, we have looked for neutrinos coming from CERN 731 kilometers. And this
paper that we were just talking about a moment ago, which we’re publishing shows that the
neutrinos arrive exactly with the speed of light. And a second experiment, which we did
earlier using one of Shelly’s theories—we follow him very closely. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Isn’t it great just to have theories people just select from and— (David Cline) No,
we know his theories are right, so we usually [unintelligible 50:39]. Anyway, in one of
his theory contributions, which have been very important, if there were such high energy
neutrinos with faster-than-light particles, they would emit a large number of electron
positron [unintelligible]. Positron being an anti-electron. In that same 600-ton liquid
argon detector in the Gran Sasso, we’ve observed no pairs. Now, there was a plot up
here before, which has been taken down now, which showed our conclusions, which were very
similar to the Supernova 1987A. So, we have shown in two ways that the muon neutrinos
have exactly the speed of light or possibly slightly less because of the mass. And we
entirely disagree with OPERA. (Laura Patrizii) Can I comment? (Gian Giudice) I can— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) He disagrees with you, Laura. But let me ask—before I come back to you,
David, you just cited two different neutrino experiments. So, the fact that you’re now
saying they’re wrong has to assert that all neutrinos behave the same way in all situations.
So, I’m echoing Shelly’s point here. (David Cline) We basically have seen now thousands
or even millions of neutrino interactions in different venues and different process
and different countries, different continents, and we’ve seen they all behave the same
in their interaction. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. (David Cline) So, why would they change
now because they’re coming from CERN to Italy? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. So, Laura,
I understand—we spoke earlier—that there’s still a collaboration and a published paper
being prepared. And you can’t really talk about that, but what does your gut tell you
about these neutrinos that were measured by OPERA? (Laura Patrizii) They already told
us. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) He already knows the answer. (Laura Patrizii) Yeah. So, at
least for— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) What you really meant by that is he thinks he knows
the answer. That’s really, I think, what you meant. (Laura Patrizii) What I mean is
that we found those problems that I was mentioning. And when you put all them together, likely
the result will be in agreement with what Icarus found. I want to point out one thing
concerning Icarus. Icarus is, they said, another experiment located in Gran Sasso. But what
they measured is not completed independent. It is not exactly another experiment. It’s
another experiment only for the last part of the experiment itself.I mean, they took
our—I mean, OPERA’s—data, OPERA measurements, concerning the baseline, concerning the synchronization
of the timing the same that OPERA had established, that it had set. And then they simply used
their timestamp for their events. So, down to Gran Sasso from CERN down to Gran Sasso,
the elements of computation are exactly those that OPERA had set. And then they—not simply—were
able to provide a more accurate measurement of the last part. So, if there is anything
wrong in the OPERA part of the experiment, they have the same error. Am I correct?(David
Cline) I don’t agree. We can talk about it later. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) No, talk about
it now. (David Cline) We have the right answer. That’s the key thing. And we have certified
it. We’ve measured it actually twice. Assuming Professor Glashow’s theory is correct, of
course. If his theories— (Sheldon Glashow) It’s not a theory. It’s physics. (David
Cline) Therefore, it must be right. It must be right. Therefore, we have checked ourselves,
so to speak. So, I think we would be willing to probably make a wager. Although, scientists
are not supposed to bet on things like this. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You can bet a bottle
of Italian wine.(David Cline)No, a bottle of Chianti. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) No, Barolo.
Not Chianti. (Laura Patrizii) [Italian 54:53]. (David Cline) I will bet that Icarus is correct
and OPERA is wrong. It will pay off [unintelligible]. (Laura Patrizii) Again, as you know, you know
better than me what the systematic error is, so you have the same systematic error as we
have from CERN down to Gran Sasso because you use exactly the same data. The baseline
was what we had measured. The synchronization— (David Cline) Then why did we get different
results? (Laura Patrizii) Oh, this is physics. You have to test even this. No? Isn’t it?
(David Cline) Okay. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, if I understand correctly, the timings
that were invoked here to assert that we had these neutrinos behaving differently were
measured by GPS satellites. Is that correct? (Laura Patrizii) Yeah. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
So, it’s his fault. (Laura Patrizii) No, no. In fact, when we got this anomaly, for
sure it didn’t represent any—I mean, it was not that Einstein was wrong exactly because
we were using Einstein or [anyhow 55:57] relativity to do the experiment itself. If it was true—if
the result was true, it simply means that you had to, as Gian Giudice said, to invent
a way to reconciliate—to put those things together. It was not that you were disproving
Einstein. Also, in the newspaper it was put like this, that OPERA was disproving—it’s
not like that. And we didn’t say it like that. We didn’t say this. (David Cline)
Can I make a comment? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) It’s the press. (Gian Giudice) Can I say
something? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yeah. Yeah, Gian. Yes. (Gian Giudice ) Because now it
looks like maybe to people that this was just the point was measuring some properties on
neutrinos. And I think at stake here there was much more. that’s why theoretical physicists
were so interested, because Einstein’s revolutions was showing that space and time are two conceptually
identical aspects of a single physical entity, which is space time. And that the zipper that
keeps together space and time is a principle of an absolute velocity—the speed of light,
or the speed of any mass-less particle. So, if neutrinos were faster than light, neutrinos
would see space and time differently. So, OPERA, in a sense, would have unzipped space
time, would have broken the symmetry that links space and time. So, not only special
relativity would be in danger, but our vision of space time. In other words, the entire
stage in which we build our theories. So, at stake here, there was much more than just
measuring the property of a neutrino. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Would it be in danger only
at the limits of relativity, or would it be a problem fundamental to the corral that relativity
had established? (Gian Giudice) See, the problem is that we believe that there is—as Shelly
was saying—every theory has a range of validity. So, also relativity will have a range of validity
and a stage in which it reaches the quantum world. Because quantum mechanics and special
and the general relativity—in the way they are—they’re not compatible in the way
we know them. So, we expect at a certain level that symmetry between space and time may be
broken. The problem is the fact claimed by OPERA was so huge that it was putting at the
level which was well within the range in which we have tested special relativity. And that
was a shock, and that’s why it was so difficult to reconcile their claim made by OPERA with
our previous knowledge and test of special relativity. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You should
know that because of that result I got like thousands of tweets at me saying, “What
do you think of this? What do you think of this? Is it the end of physics?” And I said
given how long relativity has been tested and our understanding of particle physics,
it’s probably wrong. That’s the first, most likely explanation. Second, Shelly, haven’t
we talked—we physicists—spoken of faster-than-light particles before? What’s so violating about
that? Tachyons, for example, are faster-than-light particles. Hypothetical, but they’re consistent
with relativity. Nobody complained about them. (Sheldon Glashow) Yes. It’s hard to complain
about particles that don’t exist. But let me say a word about Bronx science at this
point because one of my buddies at Bronx Science was Gary Feinberg. And he coined the word
tachyon. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Is that right? (Sheldon Glashow) Yes. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Excellent invention. Tachyon, from the Greek root tachyos, meaning fast. (Sheldon Glashow)
Fast. Like tachycardia. Your heart beats too fast. Well, I want to attack that man. (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) You want to—sorry. Here you go. (Sheldon Glashow) Can I just say very
briefly— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Gian, Shelly wants at you here. Okay, go, Shelly. (Gian
Giudice) I’m very glad that I’m not there so he cannot physically attack me. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Okay, Shelly, what do you got? (Sheldon Glashow) Well, I was going to say give me
the microphone. I didn’t realize I had one here. No, look, that man, Gian, is being far
too modest because he made a very important point immediately after the “discovery”
of superluminal neutrinos. He points out that—as he said, this was a very large effect compared
to what was already known that it would spread. There would be metastasis of violations of
relativity all over the place. And I believe you wrote a paper that argued you could not
confine the violation of relativity to neutrinos. It would spread all over the place. [Unintelligible
60:52]. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You’d have neutrinos cavorting with protons and— (Sheldon
Glashow) Yeah. And we know at 10 decimal places, 15 decimal places, 20 decimal places, 25 decimal
places, and now someone is saying there’s a violation at the 5th decimal place. Not
possible. And I think that was a very important observation. Neil deGrasse Tyson) You know
what I think was the best statement ever for knowing that the measurement was wrong? I
heard this. I didn’t come up with this. It was neutrinos arrive in Italy before the
speed of light, so the argument was it can’t be true because nothing ever arrives early
in Italy. That was the—I heard that. Did you hear that, Laura? (Sheldon Glashow) That’s
a convincing argument. (Laura Patrizii) I don’t like it. (Christopher Hegarty) They’re
the ones that were sent yesterday.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You said what, Laura?(Laura Patrizii)
I don’t like it. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You don’t like that one? I want to shift topic
just a little bit and go back to Gian. Gian, we spoke of relativity. We speak—there’s
something else out there: the standard model of particle physics. It’s this organization
of particles and forces. Do you feel like you’re testing the standard model? Is that
another zone where we’re trying to find the corral where everything that works fits
in the corral and you’re testing the edge? (Gian Giudice) Yes. That is certainly the
primary goal of the LHC. We have this beautiful theory, which is the standard model, but we
want to go beyond. Theoretical physicists are very curious, inquisitive, ambitious animal
species. So, they are not satisfied just by opening the toy of nature, inspecting the
clockwork and identifying all the springs and gears. They always want to go one level
deeper, and they want to understand the inner workings. They want to understand why the
mechanism works. So, the standard model gives an excellent description of the particle work.
And there’s nothing wrong with it. So, most of the questions that we are addressing today
in theoretical physics are not about a consistency of the standard model. But about the reasons
why the standard model is the way it is. So, superficially it may seem that many of these
questions are about the beauty of a theory rather than the basic structural problems,
but history of science has shown that following principles of beauty sometimes can bring you
very far. Remember that general relativity was not invented to explain some observing
consistency of Newtonian gravity. The calculation of the mercury [unintelligible 63:51] came
later. The problem—in that case, the problem was understanding force acting at a distance,
which was unacceptable in the case of special relativity.So, now we have many questions
that we want to address. And the major open question regarding the standard model is the
explanation of why the weak force—the force responsible for certain radioactive decays
and for the thermal nuclear reactions that make the sun shine— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
This is one of the four major forces. (Gian Giudice) That’s right. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
You have gravity, strong— (Gian Giudice) There’s two major forces. No, the standard
model describes weak force, intellect from magnetism conceptually as a single force.
So, then the question is: Why can we send electromagnetic waves like, for instance,
radio waves a long distance while we can’t do the same thing for the weak force? And
we think we know the answer to this question, and the answer is the Higgs boson, which is
the particle that is actively searched for at the LHC. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) The Higgs
boson. That’s what we’ve seen some news reports on that maybe it was detected. Is
that correct? (Gian Giudice) That’s right. That’s a scientific statement: maybe. Particle
physics is— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Quantify the maybe for me. (Gian Giudice) That’s
why—I mean, every measurement in physics you have to give a level of accuracy. And
there is a statistical properties that we are measuring. We are dealing with quantum
mechanics, so we can—in quantum mechanics, you can make a perfect prediction about probabilities
of seeing certain particles or [unintelligible 65:43] particles decay, but not of one single
event. So, we’re always dealing with probabilities and with statistical errors. At the moment,
we have—well, most important result was that the possible region of the Higgs boson
has been narrowed down to a very small range of masses. And also within this small range
of masses, there is some excess; an indication that the Higgs boson is there. However, the
statistical reliability of the result is not high enough to claim discovery. We’ll have
to wait. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. So, that’s the four-minute explanation of the word maybe.
That’s what you have there. (Gian Giudice) That’s right. Sorry. I also should say that
the LHC is working very well, and we expect that by the summer that maybe will disappear
and we’ll have a yes or no. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. Gabby—and we have to start
winding down because I want to go to question and answer from the audience. We were speaking
earlier. Apparently LIGO is the only experiment that touches all the force regimes of nature.
Could you just briefly tell me how that’s so? (Gabriela Gonzalez) Well, after gravitational
effects— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, the standard model doesn’t include gravity, right? There’s
no gravity in the standard model of particle physics. Okay, so go. There’s just blank
stares over there. It means no to them. That the physicist no. (Gabriela Gonzalez) That’s
right. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yeah, it’s not there. Sorry. (David Cline) It’s not
there. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Can’t help you. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Go on. Wait, wait.
No, it’s a good—I mean, particles interact with force that vastly exceed that of gravity
between the same particles. So, it’s just kind of irrelevant. (Sheldon Glashow) Gravity
is not irrelevant because it kind of keeps our feet to the ground. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Well, it’s irrelevant to your standard model. (Sheldon Glashow) It’s irrelevant to particles
as far as we can see, but string theorists would disagree. But fortunately there are
none here. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. So, tell me—it’s gravity, right? (Gabriela
Gonzalez) So, gravity— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) That’s a force. (Gabriela Gonzalez) —is
one of the four forces. It’s the weakest of all forces, and that’s why particle physicist
think it’s irrelevant because it is irrelevant for most purposes. But it’s very strong
near very compact objects like neutron stars and black holes. And that’s the gravity
we’ll be measuring. So, we’ll be measuring these effects of gravity that have never been
seen before of black holes about to collide, colliding and forming a larger black hole,
neutron stars in which there’s a lot of particle physics and standard model being
used, colliding and forming a singularity of space time in a black hole. That's what
we are measuring, and that’s what I think will give us a clue of not just about gravity,
but about nature. All of nature. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, fluency in physics matters here
in all these regimes. (Gabriela Gonzalez) Oh, it does. Certainly, yes. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) And, Laura, just before we go to questions from the audience let me ask you: What’s
in the future of the OPERA experiment? (Laura Patrizii) Well, as I said before, our goal
is to prove neutrino oscillations [unintelligible 69:21]— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, the three
species of neutrinos, and thy just switch back and forth among themselves for mysterious
reasons. (Laura Patrizii) Okay, not mysterious reasons. It’s quantum mechanics. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Mysterious to me. I heard it once described someone throws you a basketball, and then
you catch a football. That would be a ball changing species midway. (Sheldon Glashow)
Football to her is soccer. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)Soccer ball. (Laura Patrizii)Yes. If
you like. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, so continue please. (Laura Patrizi)i So, we are planning
to complete it. We already detected one event—one so-called tau event. We expect to find a few
more before the end of experiment something like five, six particles. And the final run
will be this year, so it’s about to start again in March. Okay, no, this week. Am I
right, Gian? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Wait, should you be there now? (Laura Patrizii) Yeah. The
neutrino beam is starting again from CERN to Gran Sasso, and then we shall have 200
days of run, and then we collect the data, and then we analyze it. And it will be done
with this, but at the same time we will repeat again—and not only OPERA. There are at least
three experiments at the Gran Sasso beside OPERA and Icarus. There are also [LDD] and
[unintelligible 70:59], which have a new set up to test again to measure in a really completely
dependent way to retest this velocity business—velocity run. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) To do it the right—to
do it— (Laura Patrizii) Yeah. I mean— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, you think that’s
even necessary because your papers are so right? (Sheldon Glashow) No, I think you have
to think of Occam’s razor in a situation like this. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Occam’s
razor? (Sheldon Glashow) In the sense it tells us you take the most likely scenario, which
has been proven in the past—we’ve never, of course, looked at muon neutrinos—(Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Occam’s razor is the simplest explanation. (Sheldon Glashow) The simplest
explanation here is the velocity of muon neutrinos is the speed of light. We found that for electron
neutrinos. We never found any difference between electron neutrinos and muon neutrinos. That
doesn’t prove it, but if some experiments start showing that you get the right velocity
of light, there’s an overwhelming likelihood they’re probably right because they’re
going according to the established tradition. Whereas, OPERA is going against the established
tradition and has found an error in their experiment. So, not wanting to pile on to
OPERA too much here, I’m just saying this has already been the consensus all along.
And then we have tested this ourselves. Hopefully, other experiments will do the same thing.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. Let’s assume you’re completely right. I would say if
you are right, the approach that you have about being right is not necessarily good
for physics because you—well, I’ve read about cases in the past where people were
just, sure, you didn’t have to test it any further because they’d already done the
measurement. And someone with some skepticism kept at it, and they kept trying to refine
whatever was the results that they had gotten before, leading to then a new discovery. Maybe
that’s the rarer of the occasions— (Sheldon Glashow) This happens, but it’s very rare.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Rare. (Sheldon Glashow) Because the collected wisdom of the experimentalist
and the theorists are tremendous pieces of information that you have going into an experiment.
And actually— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) But it can actually bias you, can’t it? (Sheldon
Glashow) It’s a bias, but it’s also how we decide which experiments to work on. An
experiment can take a decade or two decades of your life now. So, you don’t want to
go after some wild, crazy idea where 20 years later you regret you did it. (David Cline)
See, many years ago Cherenkov invented the idea that if a particle travels faster than
light, which particles can do if they’re traveling through air or water, that they
will radiate light. And Cherenkov Effect was observed, and Mr. Cherenkov got his Nobel
Prize. And the rather trivial thing that Andy [Cohen 73:45] and I did is to notice that
if neutrinos were superluminal, if they traveled faster than light, then they, too, would emit
radiation. And that radiation has been looked for. You’ve looked for it. Other people
have looked for it. It ain’t there. And this unambiguously, I believe, beyond a shadow
of a doubt tells me that this charming young lady is absolutely wrong in her experiment.
It’s flaws. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. (David Cline) Neutrinos travel at the speed
of light.(Laura Patrizii) Can I comment a little bit? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yes, please
comment. And then we must go to Q&A. (Laura Patrizii) What I want to say— (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) In fact, we’ll give you the second to the last word. (Laura Patrizii) I agree,
but the point is there is nothing wrong, I think, on being wrong with experiments. We
are allowed to be wrong. Because physicists— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) David, you lost the
crowd. (Laura Patrizii) Physicists, they can be wrong, buy physics is not. So, at the end,
eventually, we will see what is true, what is not. And even what we know now, it will
be perhaps an approximation. Perhaps in the future it will be discovered there’s a wrong
thing. I mean, I’m not defending the OPERA result. Actually, I was one, which among the
most skeptical inside the collaboration. But we have to—I mean, there is nothing so terrible.
The most important thing is to be honest and keep on trying and proving whether or not
you are wrong or not. (David Cline) I have a brief comment. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) No.
(David Cline) It’s one thing to be wrong. I agree, we all have the right to be wrong.
I’ve been wrong myself. But it’s another thing to have a big press conference, a big
press release, from a huge laboratory, which we all depend on CERN— (Laura Patrizii)
This is not our fault. (David Cline) It may not be your fault, but it’s what happened.
So, being wrong is our right. But having this sort of information go all around the world,
so a lot of young people get the impression that neutrinos travel faster than light, it
might be very exciting, but it’s probably not true. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You say that
as though it’ll mess up young people forever. (David Cline) Well— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Young people heard this newscast. (David Cline) I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s good to
give young people—I teach them all the time—wrong information. Now, I don’t say they’ll
never forget it, or they’ll have a heart attack or something, but as much as possible
the veracity of science is based on as much as possible getting things right. That’s
all I’m saying. Press release is hardly just a little bit wrong. It’s all over the
world instantly. The day it came in, my students sent me a message immediately. “You know
the speed of light for neutrinos is greater than the speed of light?” No—I mean, everybody
was saying this. A lot of us never believed it at all. No disrespect. Shelly didn’t.
He said it already. So, I agree you can be wrong, but I don’t think it’s good to
advertise it so heavily.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Except that your best evidence that it’s
wrong only came out in a paper five days ago. (David Cline)No, we had a previous paper,
which I told you about six months ago.(Neil deGrasse Tyson)Just checking. (Laura Patrizii)
It’s true. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) What’s the future of GPS? I wanted to drive my car.
I just want to read in the front seat, so can you do that? How come we don’t have
flying cars? I’m going to blame you for all of this. They promised flying cars in
the 1960s. They’re still not here. (Christopher Hegarty) They have them in Italy. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) I got to stop it there. But thank the panel for this. You can come on up for questions.
We have two microphones up front. We’ll take Q&A for about 15 minutes. By the way,
the entire panel and I after this we’ll retire to the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians.
That’s where all the totem poles are. And you can bring your program, have them sign
it, ask follow-up questions. There might even be a few books that they’ve written for
you to buy. Okay, so—oh, by the way, we have 1,700 people streaming this live. And
hello to all of them. And we also have an overflow room, and so let’s take our first
question here. Try to direct it to only one panelist. Otherwise it takes forever to say
can I have all six of you comment on my question. Just keep it tight. Go. [Question] All right.
For the gentlemen—I don’t remember the name, but from Italy— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)Gian.
(Question) Gian. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) We’re on first-name basis. We’re at a bar remember?
[Question] Very good. I guess I’m less interested in maybe the results that came out from OPERA
and more interested in the physics community’s reaction to it. And by that I mean you said
you were all curious, but is there some sort of deep-seated insecurity that theoretical
physicists have where when something like this comes out they say, a-ha, that may be
the missing piece of the puzzle that will allow everything to click? Of is this just
an anomalous thing that was 60—I don’t remember the measurement you used, but—
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Got there 60 feet faster than the—[Question] Sixty feet faster and
you just wow that’s really big. We’re going to go analyze it. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Excellent question. What do you got, Gian? (Gian Giudice) So, no, when there is some
interesting announcement, of course, we have to look at it. We have to scrutinize it, and
we have to see if it makes sense. That’s as I was saying before. That’s our job.
I don’t think we should be blamed for that. But I totally agree on what David said before.
The particle physics has a tradition of rigor, of scientific integrity, and this should be
maintained. And in the past, physics was just a—particle physics was a business for particle
physicists. They were getting great results. They were [unintelligible 80:04], but most
other people were ignoring—most people outside were ignoring what particle physicists were
doing. Now, there is a lot of media attention. And, as David said, we have to be very careful
of what kind of message we are giving. In the OPERA case, I don’t think it was a mistake
either of the experimentalists of going public with the result or of theorists who try to
make sense of this result, but rather the way it was dealt in the way CERN and the OPERA
experiment communicated with the outside world. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Gian—I’m going to
follow-up on that. Gian, of the theorists you knew, how many said it can’t be true,
I’m not going to work on the problem, go back and fix it? And how many said that is
true, I have a new theory to account for it? (Gian Giudice) Well, of course—no, the first
reaction is, wow, this is too great to be true. But in order to answer, you cannot just
reply with your first feeling. You have to study. You have to look at it. And Shelly
was so nice to mention my paper, but I would say that really the paper that changed the
opinion of the community was his paper. His paper gave a very strong, very clear, very
simple argument of why it was—the OPERA result was inexplicable. And at that point,
really people changed their opinion. So, people don’t—even theorists don’t form the
opinion just on their first impression, but they want to get some scientific understanding.
And I think after Shelly’s paper, the situation was very clear. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay.
Right here. Sir? (Sheldon Glashow) Thank you. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Thank you. [Question]
Yeah, I was actually up at the APS meeting in Boston— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) American
Physical Society? [Question] Yes. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Has nothing to do with your body. It’s
physics. In fact, they had—I got a phone call from their PR people. They said we have
an identity problem because people think we’re about physicians. And so it’s American Physical
Society. [Question] Yeah. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) It’s really American Physics Society, but,
yes, go on. [Question] They actually had tucked away way off on the side a talk where we were
talking about some of the results of the OPERA experiment and so forth. And so the thing
that was pointed out by the gentleman I remember the most—and I would like her take on this—is
this kind of science controversy is actually good. It’s not a bad thing to have publicized
wrong experiments, even if it’s a “simple mistake” or an experimental thing because
it does not treat science as a black box. And, therefore, the public can understand
it. And so it’s not necessarily, oh, here’s a result and don’t ask how we got it. You’re
not going to understand— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) I think that was Laura’s concluding
point. She agrees strongly with that, and both of those points disagree with David in
the sense that you go public with it if you think it’s true whether or not it’s consistent
with the experiments or the theoretical underpinnings that you’ve put forth. If you think it’s
true, you go to press with it. So, you’re agreeing? [Question] With her point. And I
wanted to know the broader panel’s, unfortunately, point of view on that, too. Is science controversy
good or bad in general? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Shelly, let’s go to you. You’ve been around
the block on this. Science controversy, would you say it’s good or bad or— (Sheldon
Glashow) Well, what is good or bad? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) If hanging your dirty laundry
out—right here. Check it out, right there. Dirty laundry. The scientists doing that,
and the dirty laundry would then take place via press conference, and then you see scientists
fighting. It’s kind of what this whole panel is all—the Asimov concept is all about.
And we fill the house every time. So, I have to say yes to that, but I just want to get
a second opinion. And if it differs, it will be wrong. So, go on. Because we have empirical
evidence. (Sheldon Glashow ) We guys who do what we call fundamental physics, particle
physics, we have a problem. And the problem is called the standard model. And the trouble
is that they damn thing works too well. And since the old days when Carlo Rubbia was in
charge of CERN and—Carlo Rubbia once gave a talk at Harvard arguing that he had not
only proven the standard theory right, but he had also proven it wrong. And that was
shown to be not true. And his punishment was to be the director of CERN for some five years
or so, and his—CERN in those five years did nothing but confirm, confirm and reconfirm
the standard model. It was truly a [suscipient 85:33] punishment. (David Cline) He also started
the LHC. (Sheldon Glashow) But—he started the LHC. And our hopes are that the LHC will
discover something beyond the standard model. And I was so happy when I first heard of the
superluminal neutrinos because, boy, that is beyond the standard model. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) I got a question from the Twitterverse. (Sheldon Glashow) But it doesn’t work. It’s
wrong. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) A question from the Twitterverse, so the Twitterverse does
exist. I have evidence, no matter what you say about it. I’m sorry, I can’t read
the Twitter handle. [Unintelligible]. Are there currently unmeasured domains where we
can imagine faster than light particles? Possibly highly warped space time. (Sheldon Glashow)
I can imagine micro-unicorns, but— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) That would be a no. Okay.
Next question here. [Question] Are there any insights from the neutrinos on dark energy,
string theory and black holes? Is there any connection from your research? (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) So, you’re trying to explain all the other unknowns with what we might discover
with— [Question] What they do with neutrinos. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Neutrinos. David, why
don’t you take that? (David Cline) I’m sorry. I didn’t quite hear the question.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) He’s saying dark energy, dark—he’s got these other unknowns. Might
neutrinos help us there? (David Cline) Neutrinos have a small mass, so it’s not nearly large
enough, let’s say, to make the dark matter of the Universe. And they cannot in any way
make the dark energy. That’s been proven. So, these are other phenomena, and we have
some idea of what the other two like dark matter is probably some kind of new particle.
Dark energy may be, but Einstein invented it in 1917, so probably there’s no connection
as far as I know. [Question] What about string theory? (David Cline) I don’t know anything
about string theory. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) We’ve established string theory is off limits
today. We’ve already established that. Another question from the Twitterverse. This is from
our development department apparently, Will [Trammell 87:41], 13 years old. Oh, sorry,
from our live stream. Will Trammell, 13 years old. It’s past your bedtime, Will. Past
my bedtime. Neutrinos can pass through almost anything, but light cannot. So, could neutrinos
be faster than light because of this lack of friction? And could we measure this friction
rather than the speed of the particles? So, in other words, neutrinos got to Italy, but
light didn’t. So, clearly, that beam of neutrinos beat any light beam you would have
turned on with your flashlight. So, is the fact that neutrinos can penetrate solid matter
any kind of indication of anything? (Sheldon Glashow)No. (David Cline) No. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Okay, fine. What you got here? I like these quick answers. They’re great. [Question]
I’d like to actually answer a question that I believe Sheldon and David posed to us, which
is: What is the effect of experiments like the OPERA experiment to young people and what
message is that sending? And from a moderately young person, I can tell you that the message
that it tends to send is it invigorates us and inspires us to investigate and see that
maybe the plausibility of the impossible can exist. (Laura Patrizii) Yeah. (David Cline)
That was for me, I guess. I wish that was true. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) He wasn’t talking
to you. He was just—(David Cline) Let me tell you something, most of my graduate students
are Chinese. This is because very few Americans— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) That’s relevant why?
(David Cline) And, by the way, the Chinese are paying some of these people to come to
our university, which is a very clever thing for them to do. Probably other places also.
So, I don’t think when people find out that something they were told turns out to be wrong—my
own gut feeling is it just makes them wonder whether these people can get their act together
or not. Now, maybe for a while they’ll be stimulated. The evidence right now is not
nearly enough Americans are going into science. [Question] Yes, but that’s my exact point.
(David Cline) I don’t think they want more— [Question] I’m sorry to interrupt you, but
isn’t that my exact point? Sometimes it’s not just the science of proving, but the science
of disproving is just as educational. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Are you saying there aren’t
enough Americans in our science programs today? (David Cline) Yes. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Because
of the OPERA result? (David Cline) No. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Just trying to get the cause
and effect here. (David Cline) They don’t even know anything about it. [Question] I
have to get to my question. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Oh, you have a question? Let’s get
to his question. [Question] So, anyway, the point is there are tangible experiments going
on OPERA, for example. But can you then instead of saying, okay, this is not possible because
we have too much that’s in our black box of comfort that does work, so I’m going
to disprove it? Why can’t people sit down, such as scientists yourself, as—even if
it dissembles the structure of physics? We know that physics violates its own rules all
the time, as we’ve seen from history. Right? So, can we, by the equations—not just by
the tangible experiments, but by the paper experiments go back to rudimentary tactics
and try to see what potential effects it would have on our box of comfort in science? (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) If it were true. [Question] If it were true. (David Cline) Let Shelly
answer that. (Sheldon Glashow) I don’t understand the question. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) No, I
think what he’s saying is you have this weird—I think I understand you—results.
You don’t know how to interpret them. Assume they’re true, and calculate the consequences.
[Question] Correct. (Sheldon Glashow) Well, that’s exactly what I did. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Okay, right. (Sheldon Glashow) That’s what we do. That’s our game. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) So, he did say—he said if that were true, you should have these other experimental
results that are not seen. (Laura Patrizii) Can I— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Laura, yes.
(Laura Patrizii) —add something to this? There are a lot of anomalies still in the
neutrino field of the results with neutrino oscillations, they do not fit together in
the same good box. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Black box of comfort, was the phrase. (Laura Patrizii)
And so you can take them as anomalies or errors, or you can take them as an indication hence
of something else. And then if you take them for true, then you may want to investigate
more. For example, there is a proposal to do—and this for as far as the neutrino concern,
it would mean, for example, the existence of another type of neutrino called so-called
[unintelligible] neutrinos, which are very exotic. And I don’t know if our guests here
like them or not. Maybe people do not. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) I bet he doesn’t like them,
is my bet. (Laura Patrizii) Yes, David, doesn’t like them. Anyhow, this is the way you proceed.
And then you test, and then maybe it’s a mistake or maybe you find a new particle.
And, again, you go to Stockholm. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Stockholm for the Nobel Prize. That’s
code for Nobel Prize in physics. [Question] Thank you. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Thank you
for that great question. Yes? We’ll take maybe five more minutes of questions, so maybe
make the question efficient and the answer short will be good. Go, sir. [Question] Well,
I came up for other reasons, but they’ve already been asked, I think. The neutrino
experiment was exciting because we got to watch you guys go through finding the problems
with the experiment. Everybody I know knows about the neutrino experiment, and they’re
not scientists. It’s been very engaging watching you not fail, but discover the problems,
is really interesting. I won’t [unintelligible 93:07]— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) It’s an
excellent point. Thank you for that. [Question] It’s been great. Thank you. Thank all of
you. This is actually for David. The United States had the collider on plan years ago.
Budgets got cancelled. Now, we’re over at CERN. Any plans coming up? (David Cline) Yes,
we had the Superconducting Super Collider, which actually was—believe it or not—approved
by Ronald Regan, which in some ways we don’t fully understand why we do better under Republicans
than Democrats. Maybe I shouldn’t be too political, but—[Question] In science funding,
that’s a fact. (David Cline) Then Bill Clinton cancelled it. So, you can figure it out. Anyway,
whatever the reason is we lost a tremendously wonderful scientific resource in this country,
which might have brought a lot more American scientists into the field. And then, of course,
we have the wonderful LHC, which was started by my friend Carlo Rubbia, I point out. He
was director general of CERN. And that is still a lot of Americans are working there,
so it’s still helping generate more interest and more excitement. But we have lost our
momentum in this country a little bit the way we have in NASA on science. And I think
young people are starting to notice. The number of young people have told me they themselves
were disappointed when they heard the Superconducting Super Collider was cancelled. So, they’re
looking for their future. So, I think we have to really worry in this country about the
future of our fields. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) I bet if you had called it the Super-duper
Collider, it would have been funded. (David Cline) It would have been funded. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Absence of adjectives there. You could have called me up. I would have helped you
out. Yes? [Question] This question is for Laura. I wonder if you could tell us briefly
the logistics of how the OPERA thing was set up because I’m a physician and very often
if we find a result which is out of what is expected, the first thing we do is repeat
it before we go and act upon it. and it sounds like—from our point of view as non-physicists—this
came out and it was a shocking thing this was found and you’re trying to explain how
could something so unexpected happen. Was this the kind of experiment which when you
got a result—I mean, maybe for you it was not unexpected, but, I mean, it sounds like
it’s an unexpected result. That this could have been repeated in a quick timeframe and
come up, say, with the same result twice. Then you start to think, well, maybe there’s
really something happening— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Well, that’s exactly what happened.
The experiment was done more than once, isn’t that correct? (Laura Patrizii) So— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Was the experiment done more than once? (Laura Patrizii) Yes. I mean, we
started in 2009, and that kept going on until 2011. So, we analyze it more than 16,000 events.
Neutrinos—16,000 neutrino events detected from CERN to Gran Sasso. It was not just one
or two neutrino. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Right. In fact, the anatomy of this is—in all of
science—if you get a weird result, you do it again just like you said, and then you
do it again and do it again. Then you get someone else to do it with a different apparatus.
And that way— [Question] Right. That’s the way it came across form the announcements
that it was done in one lab, and then other labs would then repeat it with their equipment
and see if the same thing came out. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) That’s the natural sequence.
[Question] But it didn’t come out that it was really multiple events at that time. (Laura
Patrizii) The point here is, as already been mentioned, the difference with the past is
that it’s not unusual that something which that you find it is corrected then you have
to say, no, I was wrong. The point here was that it was known to everybody in the world.
This is the main difference. I mean, there are plenty of examples in the sense of this
type in which many experiments then were corrected—eventually corrected that eventually were wrong. But,
I mean—and nobody knows. But in this case, everybody know. But, I mean, this is the new
society, no? It’s the— [Question] Well, I think the press distorts things sometimes.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You think? The press distorts things. (Laura Patrizii) There’s
good and bad to that. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)We’re running really short on time. I wanted to
end at 9:15. Maybe just two more questions. I’m sorry if I only take two. But if you
come to the table in the back, I’m sure they’ll be happy to chat with you. It just
won’t end up as a publically-announced question. You’re the last two here. Yes, go. [Question]
Okay. Concerning the speed of light, which is the thing everyone’s measuring it against
and no one has asked a question about, which is this: When Einstein was writing all this,
nobody knew about dark matter or dark energy. We know that when light enters the atmosphere
it travels more slowly than an interplanetary space. And when it goes from the atmosphere
to, say, water it travels slower still. We now know that interplanetary space and indeed
interstellar space has a lot more stuff in it than we used to think. And that it is less
of a pure vacuum. Is there any room there that light actually moves a little faster
than we thought? And that this isn’t so much that they’re moving faster than the
speed of light, but that the speed of light in a real vacuum is actually faster than we
thought it was. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Yeah. Shelly, so—I’ll paraphrase the question,
if I may. (Sheldon Glashow) Please. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. We have this 10-digit
precision definition of the speed of light. And that’s the speed of light in a vacuum.
But there is no vacuum. We’ve never actually created a vacuum. We’ve tried to approximate
a perfect vacuum, but there’s always some particles left over in the space in which
we’re measuring the speed of light. You go out to interplanetary space, there’s
stuff there. Intergalactic space, there’s stuff. Light is never traveling through a
vacuum. Is there some speed that it actually could attain that’s higher than anything
we’ve measured it to be, if in fact we could send it through a perfect vacuum? (Sheldon
Glashow) Yes. The answer is yes. It’s easy—the things that are out there in space are mostly
photons. The Universe is not at absolute zero. It’s at three degrees Celsius. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Kelvin. (Sheldon Glashow) Lots of photons. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Kelvin. (Sheldon Glashow)
Huh? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Three degrees Kelvin. (David Cline) Two-point-seven-three. (Sheldon
Glashow) Two-point-seven. That— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) You said Celsius. I’m just saying
it’s the wrong temperature scale, Mr. Nobel Laureate from the Bronx High School of Science.
Three degrees Celsius, that’s like a chilly day outside. (Sheldon Glashow)Anyway— (Neil
deGrasse Tyson) Oh, anyway. All right. I have to gloat in this moment. Please. (Sheldon
Glashow)It’s not at absolute zero. And, therefore, light travels more slowly than
it would travel in a vacuum. And we can calculate that difference, and it’s in the 47th decimal
place. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Got you, okay. Good answer to that. The very last question,
so it better be an awesome question. [Question] This is for Laura. I’m a scientist, engineer.
You’ve made something that was so dramatic it shook up the world. It shook me up. It
shook up those two guys definitely. But what I don’t understand— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
And Elvis Presley. He’s all shook up. [Question] What I don’t understand is what happens
at OPERA, the management there? They had to realize that this thing was so dramatic, so
unbelievable. That’s why everybody’s here. It just happened recently that you ran another
test that said you were wrong. And then within just a couple of months, OPERA comes out and
says we’re wrong. Wouldn’t you—something bothers me that you should have gone back
and checked and checked and checked. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) For those two months? [Question.]
Yes.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Rather than even announce it.[ Question] What happened within
OPERA? Who makes that decision to go out— (Neil deGrasse Tyson)So, that’s the management
of science. At that level of the publicity and the publication—excellent question.
Excellent question. If they found the answer within two months, then why not wait another
two months and do all the same analysis and not have published the results at all? [Question.]
Yes. (Laura Patrizii) Can I answer like this, no comment? (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Should we
end on a no comment? Last point here, ladies and gentleman, does the future of physics—Gian,
is the future of physics bright? Is there new discovery just beyond your reach that’ll
transform all of our understanding? Or is it all about just adding a few decimal places
of precision? (Gian Giudice) During history, many times people have repeated that physics
is over because now we know everything. And the end of the 19th century, people thought
that’s it. We know everything because we have a perfect theory of thermal dynamics,
of optics, of mechanics and so on. And then just in the decades, relativity came, quantum
mechanics came, and the whole world was revolutionized. So, I think that there’ll never be an end
of science. I don’t think we are at the end of science. But there are moments in the
history of science where we are at the end of some paradigms. Certain ways of thinking
are finished, and we have to open new ones.I think now we are at the age of the standard
model, which was an extremely successful age where we have a beautiful understanding of
the particle world. And this understanding can be expanded to the complexity of the world.
Now, with the LHC, we are at a turning point. And we will see. And depending on the result,
we could be at the verge of a new revolution. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Excellent. (Gian Giudice)
I think you have to wait for the results in order to— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay, he
just wants to erase the results of—or are we also waiting for the birth of another Einstein?
(David Cline) No, I think the fundamental question in dark energy is whether we can
calculate the level of this or not. And that’s more of a theoretical question than experimental
question. The other question is: What is dark matter? There are very large number of very
interesting questions left. They may not just be done in the traditional way with colliders
and accelerators, but they’ll be done in other ways.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Are you smart
enough to figure out those answers, or are we waiting for the birth of another Einstein?
(David Cline) We need another Einstein to calculate this dark energy. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson)Okay. Shelly? (Sheldon Glashow)What we need are surprising, unanticipated discoveries.
When I first heard of the OPERA result, I was delighted because it is so inexplicable,
so wonderful.(Neil deGrasse Tyson)The truth comes out.(Sheldon Glashow) Unfortunately,
it went away.(Laura Patrizii)It was not true. (Sheldon Glashow)We need surprises. We are
the only science that depends on results that contradict our own theory. We want to be contradicted.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Where in fact fame derives from contradictions of established theory.(Sheldon
Glashow) Absolutely. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) Unlike so many other professions in our world.
You’re just happy with your GPS. (Christopher Hegarty) Yeah. Hold on. I just want—(Neil
deGrasse Tyson) The GPS is working.(Christopher Hegarty) Well, I just wanted to point out
one thing. That even physics is going slower. There’s still a tremendous amount of technical
work out there for engineering to catch up with the science. There’s all kinds of things
on the horizon.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You just look at these machines that they’re building.
(Christopher Hegarty) Well, quantum computing. There’s Fermilab put out a press release
that they actually could communicate by sending neutrinos. How exciting is that to have a
communication system that can actually go through rock? Aside from the fact that you
need a 27-kilometer transmitter to do it, maybe you can make that a little smaller and
we’ll get more—(Neil deGrasse Tyson) I’d rather just send a text. That’s much easier
than sending a neutrino. (Christopher Hegarty) But I think there is a great deal of work
to be done in bringing some of these very newfangled things that I’ve been learning
about before this thing into things that you find in your house more so. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Laura, is physics waiting for a new Einstein, or is everyone alive smart enough
today to solve all the problems? (Laura Patrizii) Well, no. I mean, I was thinking another thing.
Can I conclude you with another thing?(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Sure, okay. (Laura Patrizii)
Because now I was wondering which is the main important point for me as far as physics is
concerned. And I would like to be able—maybe my daughter—answer to the question: How
is it possible that we are tonight here? I mean, by this I mean what made possible at
the beginning that the asymmetry between matter and anti-matter. (Neil deGrasse Tyson)One
of the most profound questions that exist in all of physics. (Laura Patrizii) Yeah.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson)How there is matter-- (Laura Patrizii)And this is something which
is thrilling to me. I mean— (Neil deGrasse Tyson) So, you lose sleep over this?(Laura
Patrizii) Sorry?(Neil deGrasse Tyson) You lose sleep over this.(Laura Patrizii) Well,
I lose sleep because of the jetlag.(Neil deGrasse Tyson) Okay. So, there are other questions
that—I agree. The asymmetry of matter and anti-matter in the Universe is profound. Had
it been symmetric, all of our matter particles would have annihilated with their anti-matter
counterparts and we’d live in a Universe of just photons. At some point, that symmetry
was broken, putting one out of every 100 million of these interactions leaving a lone matter
particle without an anti-matter particle to annihilate with. And we are the manifests
of that result. I agree. Gabby? Are you the next Einstein?(Gabriela Gonzalez) No. I think
there are many, many Einsteins out there. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) I think they are like
investment bankers or something. We got to get them out of that field. (Gabriela Gonzalez)We
do, yeah. (Neil deGrasse Tyson) A whole lost generation that are billionaires now that
could have just solved physics (Gabriela Gonzalez) But I think this is a very exciting time,
especially for experimental physics because we have such high precision detectors. We
have such exquisite precision on space missions, looking at the Universe and particle detectors,
the colliders. Our detectors looking at the birth of black holes.(Neil deGrasse Tyson)
So, we’re data rich.(Gabriela Gonzalez) We are data rich. Very data rich.(Neil deGrasse
Tyson) And theory poor. (Gabriela Gonzalez) We just need people to look at it. (Neil deGrasse
Tyson) Data rich and theory poor. I’d like to end on a quote from Isaac Asimov himself
where he said—I’m paraphrasing. He said the most important revelation a scientist
can have is not eureka. No, it’s in reaction to an experiment where the scientist says
that’s funny. That’s who that begins. Great discoveries in physics happen because
just some one little result doesn’t match something else that you expected. And you
say that’s odd, that’s peculiar. Let me just look at that a little more closely. Let
me design an experiment just for that. Let me see if I have an understanding of it. Maybe
I need a new theory. Maybe I need a new experiment. And such is the life of this panel. And I
want to publicly, with all of us, join me in thanking them for coming. And thank [unintelligible
109:00]. I think physics [unintelligible], if they’re represented by who we have here
on stage. Thank you all for coming. We’re calling it a night. We’ll see you next year.