Skip to main content

Paul Halpern - Five Way Interview

Paul Halpern is a professor of physics at Saint Joseph's University and the author of 18 popular science books, including Collider, Flashes of Creation, The Quantum Labyrinth, Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat, and Synchronicity. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. He lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His latest title is The Allure of the Multiverse.

Why science?

Science embodies humanity’s longstanding passion to understand its world and to probe its frontiers.  Ancient peoples looked to the stars and strived to decipher celestial patterns, with the aim of not only predicting astral occurrences, but also trying to comprehend the fundaments of nature and how it affects human lives.  As science developed, humankind’s knowledge of the world and its vital laws grew, along with a greater sense of its barriers and limitations. Interest in multiverse ideas bears on the question of whether or not science is willing to intuit what lies beyond those frontiers, without the prospect of direct observation, with the goal of potentially obtaining a more complete theory of the measurable, observable universe.

Why this book?

Noting the increased mention of the term “multiverse” in the media, I set out to learn everything I could about the history of the topic, and current controversies surrounding it.  In my research, involving numerous interviews and looks at oral histories, I was struck by the stark contradictions in physicists’ views of what is genuine science and what is simply too wild to be discussed.  For example, some researchers dismiss eternal inflation, but advocate instead for the collision of membranes in a higher dimension. Such judgements often seem to be a matter of taste, rather than strict rules about direct measurability.

You present a balanced view in the book: what is your own position on the MWI, a multiverse driven by eternal inflation and the string theory landscape?

My personal view on multiverse theories is that we must strive to exhaust all testable possibilities before reluctantly taking steps that involve elements that are not directly detectable.  Therefore, regarding quantum measurement, it would be wonderfully if scientists developed a complete portrait of spontaneous localization of observables that explain measurements of parameters as distinct as spin and position, yet we are not there yet.  In lieu of that, the MWI has value as a potential alternative.  Similarly, if cosmologists proved that inflation occurs only once, for our own universe, there would be no need for a bubble multiverse.  However, on the contrary, as Andrei Linde showed, inflation seems to be relatively simple to trigger.  Finally, while I think we should remain open-minded to string theory, we must also continue to explore models of quantum gravity that don’t necessitate such a mind-boggling large landscape of possibilities.

What’s next?

I am currently preparing a talk about J. Robert Oppenheimer, John Wheeler, and the golden age of general relativity for the April Meeting of the American Physical Society.  The talk will be in a session honouring the work of the accomplished astrophysicist and historian of science Virginia Trimble, who recently won the Pais Prize for the History of Physics.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

I am thrilled that the history of science and culture has been honoured by recent films such as Oppenheimer and Maestro, both of which I enjoyed very much.  I would very much like to see an increased emphasis in society on scientific and cultural achievements, including greater recognition of new artists and musicians who are blazing novel trails in their fields. 

Photograph © St Joseph's University


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more