String Theory for Dummies

Speaking in this Big Think video, Harvard prof. and theoretical physicist, Lisa Randall, describes string theory as the attempt to "reconcile quantum mechanics and gravity."

Lisa Randall will speak at IdeaFestival 2012.

Einstein’s relativistic theories describe gravity, and those theories have been tested and confirmed on astronomical scales. Other tests have confirmed that matter on the atomic level behaves in unintuitive ways by maintaining, for instance, an information cohesion, even when separated by wide distances. In another example of quantum wierdness, physicists can determine a particle's position, but never its momentum. They can determine a particle's momentum, but never its position. This indeterminacy is known as the uncertainty principle.

There are scales, however, at which theory can't be tested. The mathematics of string theory suggests that at those vanishingly small scales, all matter consists of vibrating strings that lend form to light and gravity, to fern and stone, to cell and symphony - and to you and me. Nonetheless, the empirically confirmed theories of the colossally large and the quantum small do not fit well together. String theory is one attempt to reconcile the two.

So when Leonard Mlodinow say's he's interested in quantum gravity, what he is really saying that he is interested in a united theory that can explain nature at all scales. Progress!

A dozen or more IdeaFestivals and I might understand the rest of what he and prof. Randall are saying.

Wayne

For innovators, surprise is the name of the game

From finding customers using your product in the "wrong" way, to listening to market misperception, to the role of ego in decision making, Fast Company's "How to Turn That Nasty Surprise into the Next Disruptive Idea" describes why surprises can be an innovator's best friend.

Most companies view surprises as things to be avoided... The underlying assumption is that predictability and control are good, and uncertainty is bad. No wonder every management book on Amazon with the word 'surprise' in its title is about how to prevent the phenomenon. But here’s the counterintuitive catch: If you want a breakthrough, something that really changes the game, surprise is actually the name of the game.

Read the entire piece. And stay curious.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by Orin Zebest

We need more uncommon sense

Why is the Flynn effect, a generation-by-generation increase in human intelligence, not matched by similar measures of human creativity? Is there a creativity crisis? 

Described at ThinkJar as "the purposeful generation and implementation of a novel idea," creativity and innovation do not just flow from novelty, but depend on divergent thinking to have any chance at all. Before she became Tiger Mother, Amy Chua argued that diversity, a willingness by any host culture to permit its new entrants a chance at an upwardly mobile future, was a common feature of the hyper-powers in world history.

The same goes for ideas. The vast majority of ideas will never succeed because they're either bad or never successfully implemented. But the point is that it is impossible to know in advance what ideas will prove out. The ideaFestival celebrates all manner of thinking not because every idea is equally good, but because a humble recognition of our own limits argues for intellectual modesty when faced with the new and novel, an openness of mind that can simultaneously accept what one knows and the idea that it might need editing. Progress has never occurred any other way.

The recent history of science is instructive. Philosophers and scientists from the Enlightenment until the first part of the 20th century worked with the idea that the universe could be described in purely Newtonian terms, that each physical action could be mathematically enumerated and the whole of nature, in theory, calculated. That is until Max Planck and Einstein revolutionized our ideas about the vanishingly small and the very nature of time itself.

The British biologist and geneticist J. B. S. Haldane once said that any future reality will not only "be queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." That excites me. I'm excited by that because the future has always belonged to the restless, the unsettled, the westward movers. Pioneers have always had uncommon sense.

And thank goodness. If you are a pioneer, come to IdeaFestival 2012 and meet your peers.

Wayne

Success hinges on many little bets

Many ideas will fail. Some will succeed. Speaking in this TechCrunch video, "Little Bets" author Peter Sims talks about why a comfort level with experimentation is necessary for success. It doesn't mean that failed experiments are desirable, just that the creative act requires a willingness to get it wrong before getting it right.

In his experience, most successful entrepreneurs don't begin with the perfect idea. They discover it.

Morover, by adopting the mindset that "little bets" will often fail, entrepreneurs will be changed for the better - more resilient and undeterred by momentary setbacks.

Peter will speak at IdeaFestival 2012.

Wayne

Image on prior page: Some rights reserved by Blyzz

Physicists find elusive "God particle"

Lisa Randall, who will speak at the IdeaFestival, takes a turn in this piece from New York Times writer Dennis Overbye on the pop culture references to the Higgs Boson, nicknamed the "God particle."

Yesterday, physicists announced that they had found its signature in the data produced by the Large Hadron Collider. First proposed by Edinburgh University physicist Peter Higgs in 1964, the elusive boson is the final particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics, and is what provides matter with mass.

While the model describes the action of the electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces and their role as traffic cop to the known subatomic particles, which now includes the Higgs, a theory of physical universe will only be complete by accounting for gravity. String theory, for example, proposes one unified description of the universe.

Using some sand, foam and white board, Guardian science correspondent Ian Sample explains what the particle is and why it's important in this video.

PHD Comics also does a nice job in the video embedded here.

You, of course, can get a first hand explanation at IdeaFestival 2012 from Lisa Randall. Make plans to be there!

Wayne