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0:00:42 On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival
0:00:43 will gather thousands of people
0:00:46 who took action to end extreme poverty.
0:00:49 Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa,
0:00:51 Jelly Roll, and Rao Alejandro,
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0:00:56 to defeat poverty, defend the planet,
0:00:58 and demand equity.
0:01:00 Download the Global Citizen app today
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0:01:12 – What if everything in the universe,
0:01:15 the stars, the planets, the galaxies, the people?
0:01:19 What if all of it is the result of pressure waves,
0:01:22 patterns of vibrations from the beginning of everything?
0:01:27 And what if those vibrations, those changes in pressure,
0:01:29 are actually sound waves?
0:01:31 Wouldn’t that mean that everything in the universe
0:01:33 begins and ends with music?
0:01:45 Maybe that’s a silly question,
0:01:48 a bit of bad poetry that’s not worth reciting.
0:01:51 But what if it’s not?
0:01:56 String theory, the multiverse, quantum mechanics,
0:01:59 all of these ideas come from scientists
0:02:02 who are trying to understand the origins of the universe
0:02:03 in the nature of reality.
0:02:09 It’s all mathy and heady in a way that I don’t understand.
0:02:12 And sure, I don’t have a STEM PhD,
0:02:15 but it seems to me that somewhere
0:02:18 at the frontier of theoretical physics,
0:02:21 all the equations and observations and proofs,
0:02:27 it all kind of collapses into poetry and metaphor and art,
0:02:29 into philosophy.
0:02:34 I’m Sean Elling and this is The Gray Area.
0:02:49 Today’s guest is Stefan Alexander.
0:02:52 He’s a professor of physics at Brown University
0:02:55 and the author of two terrific books,
0:02:58 The Jazz of Physics and Fear of a Black Universe.
0:03:01 I have always loved the scientists
0:03:05 who go out of their way to engage the public,
0:03:10 people like Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan and Jane Goodall.
0:03:13 They don’t just talk to the public,
0:03:16 they translate the science into stories.
0:03:18 They use colorful analogies.
0:03:21 They find the poetry in the data.
0:03:26 Alexander is this type of scientist.
0:03:30 One big reason for that, I suspect,
0:03:32 is that he’s a theoretical physicist
0:03:36 who’s also a world-class jazz musician.
0:03:39 (upbeat jazz music)
0:03:57 And his musical sensibilities influence both his research
0:04:00 and the sort of language he uses to communicate it.
0:04:04 But on top of that, for a person whose head lives
0:04:06 in a world of abstractions,
0:04:09 Alexander is a pragmatist who’s up front
0:04:12 about how hard it is for physicists like him
0:04:15 to really explore their wildest ideas,
0:04:18 especially when the research is dependent on grants
0:04:19 and the whims of funders.
0:04:22 So I was excited to invite him on the show
0:04:26 to talk about music and physics
0:04:28 and how he’s trying to make sense of the universe.
0:04:31 (upbeat jazz music)
0:04:42 – Stefan Alexander, welcome to the show.
0:04:46 – It’s a real honor and pleasure to be here.
0:04:47 – I appreciate that.
0:04:49 I’m really excited to have you.
0:04:53 Something I have heard people say,
0:04:56 people who are either in physics or adjacent to physics,
0:04:58 certainly people who know more about physics
0:05:02 than I do, which is anyone who knows anything about physics.
0:05:07 But I have heard them say that physics is stuck
0:05:09 right now as a science.
0:05:10 Is that true?
0:05:14 What are those people seeing and maybe just as importantly,
0:05:17 what are they not seeing?
0:05:19 – I think what people are seeing is that
0:05:22 there’s been a great tradition and pathway
0:05:24 that has been successful.
0:05:27 You had quantum mechanics and you had a relativity,
0:05:29 in this case, special relativity,
0:05:31 and there was an attempt to unite them
0:05:34 because there were physical regimes
0:05:36 where you needed to describe, say,
0:05:37 a quantum mechanical particle
0:05:39 moving at relative at six speeds.
0:05:42 And so that unification was successful.
0:05:44 That became the bedrock of particle physics,
0:05:48 like what we call a standard model, that theory.
0:05:52 So that logical progression has been successful.
0:05:57 And I think that physicists have been very successful
0:06:00 over the last century.
0:06:05 And there’s no reason to expect that direction to stop.
0:06:09 And I think that we must continue moving in that direction.
0:06:13 And when I talk about fear in my book,
0:06:14 Fear of a Black Universe,
0:06:19 we’re talking about how do we confront the legacy
0:06:23 and the contributions that has been made
0:06:26 and what’s the strategy for getting to a new ground
0:06:28 or maybe making new breakthroughs.
0:06:32 I myself, I’m a researcher in theoretical physics
0:06:34 and honestly, there are days when I’m like,
0:06:36 I have no idea what direction to go in.
0:06:39 – Tell me more.
0:06:42 – Well, a lot of what we do in physics,
0:06:44 especially in the profession itself,
0:06:47 we have to go through peer review, we write papers,
0:06:50 we submit our results to journals,
0:06:54 it gets reviewed anonymously by our colleagues.
0:06:56 And we also have to apply for grants.
0:06:59 We have to apply for money to support our research,
0:07:01 to support our students.
0:07:05 And if you deviate from what’s expected,
0:07:08 deviate from the judgments that’s made about
0:07:11 what the right directions are and what the trends are
0:07:13 and what it means to do good physics.
0:07:14 So there are judgments about,
0:07:17 well, if you work in this field,
0:07:19 then you actually know what you’re talking about.
0:07:21 And if you don’t work in, you work in a different field,
0:07:23 you don’t really understand what we’re doing.
0:07:27 Therefore, we should not take you seriously.
0:07:30 Maybe if you work in a different field,
0:07:34 you try new things out that deviates from the status quo,
0:07:36 there might be penalties waiting for you.
0:07:39 The same way penalties can await if you deviate
0:07:42 from a social order, right?
0:07:45 So part of the fear is that if you’re a young person
0:07:47 and you’re trying to break new ground,
0:07:50 there’s a warning which is wait till after you get tenure
0:07:51 to work on those kinds of problems
0:07:53 and think about things in that new way.
0:07:56 – Part of what makes you unique
0:08:00 is your musical background.
0:08:02 (upbeat music)
0:08:13 To an outsider, it might seem like
0:08:15 there’s some kind of tension,
0:08:18 between being a scientist and a jazz musician,
0:08:22 or at least that these are very unrelated activities.
0:08:24 But the point of your book is to say
0:08:26 that that’s not the case, right?
0:08:30 That actually this kind of bounded thinking
0:08:32 is part of what’s holding science back.
0:08:34 – Yeah, I would definitely be of a different physicist
0:08:36 without my music and a different musician
0:08:37 without my physics.
0:08:41 And some examples of that would be
0:08:44 when I’m working on any kind of theory
0:08:46 or calculation or idea that I have an idea
0:08:47 and I’m pursuing it.
0:08:52 There are times where you might get so enamored
0:08:55 about your idea, you might fall in love with the idea,
0:08:57 get attached to it.
0:08:58 And months would go by,
0:09:03 but you just don’t want to give up on the idea.
0:09:06 It’s important to know when to pivot
0:09:07 and when to give up.
0:09:11 And I find that being a jazz musician,
0:09:15 it’s all about embracing in real time, pivoting.
0:09:17 If you might play a wrong note
0:09:19 and you have to make something of that,
0:09:22 or you might find a phrase that you think
0:09:24 sounds very good in the middle of an improvisation,
0:09:27 but you have to move in a new direction now.
0:09:37 And I think that this idea of like,
0:09:40 that as a jazz musician, the improvisational side
0:09:45 teaches you how to just move on to new ideas
0:09:47 and not get too attached to ideas,
0:09:49 but also how to commit to something.
0:09:52 I mean, in my jazz practice,
0:09:56 my practice as a musician has been a lifelong process
0:09:59 of refining my technique and refining my theory
0:10:03 and put myself out there and playing with other people
0:10:05 and learning how to play in a band and all that stuff.
0:10:08 And that discipline, that practice,
0:10:13 it plays a big role also in my practice as a physicist.
0:10:14 So they go back and forth here.
0:10:23 – Your day job is physics,
0:10:26 but I mean, how serious is your music career?
0:10:29 I mean, do you tour, are you in a band?
0:10:32 Do you just sort of play on the side at clubs
0:10:32 when you get a chance?
0:10:36 I mean, how big a role does it play in your life?
0:10:37 – At different times of my life,
0:10:39 it’s played anywhere from very,
0:10:43 like every other night I’m playing out at some club
0:10:48 with a quartet to maybe once a semester I’ll play.
0:10:49 So it depends.
0:10:51 But these days here, I do have a band.
0:10:55 I’m very fortunate to be playing with Will Calhoun,
0:10:59 who’s a drummer for the band Living Color.
0:11:01 And Melvin Gibbs, the bassist,
0:11:06 played with the Rollins band and others, Harry Tubman.
0:11:09 So I’ve been very fortunate to play with those fellows.
0:11:12 We have a band called God Particle.
0:11:15 – I love it.
0:11:16 I love it.
0:11:19 – So, and we’ll play a few concerts,
0:11:22 larger scale concerts a few times a year.
0:11:24 So yeah, it differs from time to time.
0:11:29 I’ll jump in a session and sit in for a few songs.
0:11:31 And a lot of what I do these days
0:11:36 is I’m just happy to go home and work on some new material
0:11:38 and shed some new scales.
0:11:42 – Didn’t Einstein say that his best ideas came to him
0:11:45 while playing his violin?
0:11:48 Or am I just making that up?
0:11:52 – I do recall reading Einstein saying something like that.
0:11:57 Yeah, I mean, one thing for sure that I have confirmed
0:11:59 about his relationship with music and the science
0:12:02 is that there have been times where I,
0:12:05 if I get stuck on something or my brain is just overload
0:12:07 and I just pick up my horn
0:12:09 and I’ll just start playing through some things.
0:12:12 And I find it to be very helpful.
0:12:16 I find that things like it or not happening offline
0:12:18 in terms of how I’m doing my physics,
0:12:23 like the art of physics and exploring those connections.
0:12:28 – There is a question you ask in your previous book,
0:12:32 The Jazz of Physics, that I wanna put to you now.
0:12:34 And I’m just gonna quote,
0:12:37 “If the structure of the universe is a result
0:12:42 “of a pattern of vibration, what causes the vibration?”
0:12:46 Now, let’s give everyone a second to hit their bongs.
0:12:48 And then you gotta answer that for me.
0:12:51 I don’t know what it means, but I love the question
0:12:52 and I’m dying to know the answer.
0:12:59 – I think our most direct experience of this
0:13:01 is music and sound.
0:13:04 (upbeat music)
0:13:17 A musical tone is basically a vibrational pattern
0:13:19 of airwaves that comes out of our ears
0:13:22 and our body responds to that.
0:13:25 Obviously, there’s a whole mechanism of how that happens.
0:13:29 But a sound wave, like for example,
0:13:31 notice that you can hear a sound in a swimming pool.
0:13:40 So you can actually hear a sound in water, right?
0:13:42 You can hear a sound, obviously, in air.
0:13:46 And that’s because the medium is vibrating, right?
0:13:49 The medium can vibrate, well, what is vibrating?
0:13:52 What is vibrating, actually, is the fact that
0:13:54 any type of medium, like water,
0:13:57 can actually undergo a change in pressure.
0:14:02 If you push against the wall, you’re exerting pressure,
0:14:05 which is a force that distributes itself
0:14:08 over a region of space, right?
0:14:11 So it turns out that sound is nothing more
0:14:12 than a pressure wave.
0:14:16 Basically, our direct experience of vibrations
0:14:18 and the way that I talk about it is through music.
0:14:21 And it turns out that in the early universe,
0:14:24 the metaphor here goes pretty close to sound.
0:14:26 So we have this picture of a universe
0:14:29 that’s been expanding for billions of years,
0:14:33 which meant that if you ran the clock backwards,
0:14:36 the universe, you can imagine it contracting
0:14:39 and being very small, hot and dense.
0:14:44 So in the early universe, you have a hot, dense soup of energy.
0:14:49 And that past universe is devoid of structures,
0:14:51 devoid of galaxies and stars, planets and people.
0:14:54 It’s just all energy.
0:14:56 So the question that we ask in physics
0:14:59 is how is that past universe,
0:15:00 how does that evolve in the universe,
0:15:04 come to create the structure that we see today,
0:15:07 the stars, the galaxies, the planet, the people?
0:15:12 And what we know from observations from satellites
0:15:14 is that in the early universe,
0:15:19 we see vibrational patterns of this soup of energy.
0:15:23 The soup of energy is basically, we call it radiation.
0:15:27 The universe is filled in a hot quantum soup
0:15:31 of radiation and fundamental particles.
0:15:35 And the wave-like motion actually set up sound wave.
0:15:37 So the physics of the early universe,
0:15:40 those vibrations are actually sound waves,
0:15:42 very similar to the sound waves
0:15:45 that are passing through in air.
0:15:47 And those sound waves that are vibrating
0:15:49 in the early universe carry energy.
0:15:52 And that is the onset, basically.
0:15:55 Those energetic waves are the onset
0:15:57 of the formation of the first structures in the universe,
0:16:01 such as stars, which eventually all cluster together,
0:16:02 become galaxies.
0:16:05 So it’s in that sense that, you know,
0:16:08 that metaphor with sound is, you know,
0:16:11 I would say pretty exact in the early universe.
0:16:21 Well, what does it mean to say, as you do,
0:16:26 that the universe is like an instrument that plays itself?
0:16:28 Well, the metaphor is that, you know,
0:16:29 if you think about like an instrument,
0:16:31 for example, like a drum.
0:16:40 The surface of the drum undergoes vibration.
0:16:44 And, you know, obviously the vibration in the drum
0:16:47 basically sends out, you know, sound waves.
0:16:50 Similarly, the universe in its past,
0:16:52 which is very small,
0:16:55 has some type of vibrating system.
0:16:57 Then the question is, what is the hand
0:17:00 that hits the universe if you want to use this analogy?
0:17:11 But since our definition of the universe
0:17:14 is that there’s nothing outside of the universe,
0:17:16 whatever sets off that vibration,
0:17:20 it’s some entity that’s of the universe that’s doing that.
0:17:23 And the status quo right now in our field,
0:17:25 the field of cosmology,
0:17:29 is that there’s something called the inflaton field, right?
0:17:32 The inflaton is the name of a field.
0:17:35 And so for the listeners out there,
0:17:36 what is a field?
0:17:39 We need to understand them, what a field is.
0:17:41 And we are in direct contact with fields
0:17:43 anytime you play with a magnet.
0:17:45 So if you take two magnets,
0:17:49 notice that a magnet can exert a force in another magnet
0:17:52 without the magnets actually touching each other.
0:17:55 And so the thing that’s actually transmitting
0:17:57 the force between two magnets
0:18:01 in between at the empty space is a magnetic field.
0:18:06 It seems to be invisible, but it acts over space, right?
0:18:08 And so the idea is that in the early universe,
0:18:10 there’s a similar type of field.
0:18:13 It’s not a magnetic field, it’s an inflaton field.
0:18:16 And this field is playing two roles actually.
0:18:19 One role is to make the universe expand very rapidly, right?
0:18:21 Which is the thing that’s igniting
0:18:23 the expansion of the universe.
0:18:27 But the inflaton field is actually known as a quantum field.
0:18:30 So there’s something quantum about this inflaton field.
0:18:32 And guess what’s quantum about it?
0:18:36 The field can vibrate in a discrete fashion.
0:18:39 So, you know, when you think about vibrations, right?
0:18:42 You think about like a wave that’s going up and down,
0:18:44 it’s an ocean wave going up and down.
0:18:46 And you can imagine seeing all different types
0:18:49 of wave patterns, right?
0:18:51 But these wave patterns are more like notes.
0:18:54 Like if I play A, B, C, D, G,
0:18:57 these are discrete notes, right?
0:19:00 They only occur in steps.
0:19:14 And so the analogy now is that you can think about
0:19:17 the quantum fluctuation of the inflaton field
0:19:20 as basically discrete notes of this inflaton field.
0:19:22 This is a metaphor, but actually the metaphor
0:19:27 goes very, very almost in a one-to-one correspondence.
0:19:29 So that’s the idea.
0:19:31 Now, I mean, again, that’s a paradigm.
0:19:32 Then you can say, well, okay,
0:19:34 where does the inflaton field come from?
0:19:35 Well, it’s its nature, right?
0:19:39 And these are all good questions that we’re asking.
0:19:41 But the real answer is that we don’t know yet.
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0:22:05 On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival
0:22:07 will gather thousands of people
0:22:09 who took action to end extreme poverty.
0:22:13 Watch Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll,
0:22:16 and Raul Alejandro, as they take the stage
0:22:19 with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty,
0:22:21 defend the planet, and demand equity.
0:22:24 Download the Global Citizen app to watch live.
0:22:28 Learn more at globalcitizen.org/box.
0:22:30 (upbeat music)
0:22:45 – It’s interesting to me to think about this
0:22:50 in the context of the so-called fine-tuning argument,
0:22:56 this idea that the fundamental laws of our universe
0:22:58 are perfectly arranged.
0:22:59 So as to make life possible.
0:23:02 And if they were tuned like a guitar,
0:23:06 even slightly differently, life wouldn’t exist.
0:23:09 Or to put it differently, the instrument
0:23:12 that is the universe wouldn’t play.
0:23:14 First of all, is that true?
0:23:17 And if it is, what does that tell us
0:23:20 about the nature of the universe
0:23:24 that it’s held together so precariously?
0:23:27 – Yeah, it might tell us one of a few things.
0:23:31 I mean, first of all, when we use the word fine-tune,
0:23:32 the way I like to think about this is,
0:23:35 imagine when you listen to a nice stereo system
0:23:37 and you have, well, back in the days
0:23:40 where we had equalizers
0:23:42 that we can manually shift up and down.
0:23:44 They said, “Well, I want a little bit more treble.
0:23:48 And I want a little bit more bass.”
0:23:55 Think about now the universe as an equalizer,
0:24:00 meaning that how much treble, how much bass controls now
0:24:02 some of the fundamental properties
0:24:06 of subatomic particles or the forces, right?
0:24:09 That’s needed to make a star burn, right?
0:24:11 Which we know, to have life,
0:24:13 the star has to burn at a given rate.
0:24:16 We don’t want our sun to burn out too quick, right?
0:24:20 If our sun will just burn its fuel in one second,
0:24:23 then good luck with any seasons here under it, right?
0:24:26 So the sun has to burn at the right rate
0:24:29 for billions of years to sustain life on earth.
0:24:32 But it turns out that actually the rate in which the sun
0:24:35 actually does thermonuclear conversion
0:24:38 depends very sensitively on these equalizers,
0:24:42 these parameters that take how strong the force may be
0:24:43 or how weak it may be.
0:24:46 And it does appear that when we look at our theories
0:24:48 that describe those forces,
0:24:51 that those knobs that dictate
0:24:53 how the various forces are controlled
0:24:56 are very finely tuned to certain values
0:25:00 that don’t seem to be explained very nicely
0:25:01 by the theories themselves.
0:25:04 So it seems that the theories themselves
0:25:06 cannot explain the determination
0:25:09 of those finely tuned parameters.
0:25:12 And as a result, we’re seeking new ideas out there.
0:25:13 And there has been new ideas.
0:25:16 One idea is called the anthropic principle,
0:25:18 which is basically saying that the universe
0:25:21 actually is finely tuned,
0:25:24 such that we can be around to observe it.
0:25:26 So the anthropic principle is a statement
0:25:30 that the laws of physics
0:25:33 are such that if they were any different
0:25:35 than the form that they currently have,
0:25:37 there would be no life.
0:25:40 And therefore there would be no universe
0:25:42 for life to actually observe.
0:25:45 It’s almost circular in the sense that
0:25:50 the universe exists such that it can create life.
0:25:53 And if there were no life, the universe would not exist.
0:25:56 – Yeah, I recall that Steven Weinberg quote,
0:25:58 where else could we be except on a planet
0:25:59 that can sustain life?
0:26:03 – Right, there’s something circular about it.
0:26:07 Then you can say, well, how does the universe do that?
0:26:09 And so ideas out there could be
0:26:11 that maybe there are many, many universes.
0:26:14 We live in one of such many universes
0:26:16 where the universe, as it replicates itself,
0:26:20 it gets to try out like a jazz improvisation, maybe.
0:26:23 Think about in a jazz improvisation,
0:26:26 you get to try out a new solo every time
0:26:28 the form of the song repeats itself.
0:26:32 The idea is that the universe gets to try out new parameters
0:26:34 until it hits the jackpot.
0:26:36 – So is this- – And the jackpot is us.
0:26:37 – Just to jump in there a little bit,
0:26:38 is what you’re describing there
0:26:40 what people call the multiverse theory?
0:26:43 – Yes, that’s what people call the multiverse theory.
0:26:44 – Do you buy that?
0:26:46 And if you do, you’re gonna have to explain it
0:26:48 in terms of lowly country podcaster
0:26:51 like me can understand, ’cause I don’t get it.
0:26:54 I mean, I guess I get it conceptually,
0:26:56 but it’s a little mind blowing to Ponder.
0:27:00 – Yeah, so 24 years ago when people in my field
0:27:02 were talking about the multiverse,
0:27:05 I was a research scientist trying to build my career
0:27:07 and they eventually try to get a job.
0:27:10 And when I wanted the leaders in the field,
0:27:13 I went to him and said, how do we do physics now?
0:27:15 I mean, because the idea of the multiverse
0:27:20 is that you have to not rely on doing calculations
0:27:24 in your theory to make a prediction.
0:27:29 You posit that there are just many universes out there
0:27:32 and there’s some random chance.
0:27:35 You know, let me just use that word very loosely,
0:27:39 a random chance that the universe replicates itself.
0:27:41 So to have a multiverse, you need a mechanism
0:27:44 for the universe to basically replicate
0:27:47 to produce new so-called baby universes.
0:27:49 And one picture you might wanna have
0:27:51 in terms of an analogy is like blown bubbles.
0:27:53 So if you have a bubble maker or whatever
0:27:56 and you blown bubbles, you can create many bubbles.
0:27:59 And if you think about every universe as some bubble
0:28:02 that basically nucleates and gets created,
0:28:05 and inside of every bubble is an environment
0:28:08 that you can call a universe.
0:28:12 But in different bubbles, bubbly baby universes,
0:28:14 the universe actually takes on different values
0:28:16 for the forces.
0:28:20 And when those values happen to be the right values
0:28:22 to produce life, to produce stars,
0:28:24 to produce all the things that we see,
0:28:26 that’s the idea of how the multiverse
0:28:28 can actually maybe create our universe.
0:28:32 But when I went to the senior person, he said,
0:28:36 well, you know, I mean, basically it was like tough luck,
0:28:37 you know, this is where the field is at.
0:28:41 And it was very difficult at that time
0:28:45 to see how I can make a life for myself
0:28:47 as a physicist, as a theorist.
0:28:51 And I think that back then I was not a fan of the multiverse
0:28:55 because I found it very difficult to do research
0:28:56 in that field.
0:28:58 – But why weren’t you a fan back then?
0:29:01 – Yeah, but truthfully speaking,
0:29:04 because it was aesthetically not pleasing to me.
0:29:06 And it just goes to show you how aesthetics,
0:29:11 like affect what types of research you choose to pursue.
0:29:14 Simply put, it was aesthetically not pleasing to me.
0:29:16 – Well, what’s not aesthetically appealing to you?
0:29:20 Is it because it’s not elegant and simplistic?
0:29:24 Is it because it almost seems like it takes
0:29:27 a picture of the universe we don’t quite understand
0:29:30 and then smuggles in like a new concept
0:29:32 to sort of explain it all away.
0:29:35 – The aesthetic side of this is coming from
0:29:39 that when we, usually what we see in physics
0:29:43 is some unity, some ways in which one problem
0:29:45 you may be trying to solve would be connected
0:29:47 to something else.
0:29:49 And by not considering that something else
0:29:51 or not seeing that other thing,
0:29:53 you would not be able to solve the problem.
0:29:54 So the idea here would be like, well,
0:29:58 maybe the fact that the laws that we see
0:30:01 seem to be fine too, and it’s telling us something
0:30:03 very deep, and it’s so deep
0:30:07 that it just simply just can’t be this multi-verse idea.
0:30:10 The same way the advent of quantum mechanics
0:30:13 had something profoundly deep about the world.
0:30:15 And so it’s more about this ambition
0:30:18 that we’re looking for something profound
0:30:21 and so deep that we have not been
0:30:22 clever enough to figure it out.
0:30:24 – I think part of the reason I was asking it,
0:30:26 it sort of surprised me to hear you say
0:30:29 it wasn’t aesthetically appealing to you,
0:30:32 because I guess my intuition with that,
0:30:34 the multi-verse would be the kind of theory
0:30:38 a jazz musician in particular would find appealing.
0:30:41 If the universe plays jazz, then it does kind of seem
0:30:44 like the multi-verse is the kind of world we might get.
0:30:46 It feels very improvisational.
0:30:48 (upbeat music)
0:31:05 – You know, jazz for me plays a couple of different roles.
0:31:07 One of the metaphors that I have developed
0:31:10 and that’s even turned into a little music collaboration
0:31:13 with my friend and collaborator, Donald Harrison,
0:31:15 who’s an NEA jazz master,
0:31:18 one of the great jazz musicians of our time,
0:31:21 is that it’s the metaphor of applying
0:31:24 a more improvisational logic
0:31:27 to interpreting some aspects of quantum mechanics,
0:31:29 so that the idea that a quantum particle
0:31:33 is not doing some probabilistic dance,
0:31:34 but it’s improvising.
0:31:36 (upbeat music)
0:31:43 – See, that’s really interesting to me.
0:31:47 I mean, I’ve heard you talk about Donald Harrison before.
0:31:51 He’s a very well-known jazz musician from New Orleans,
0:31:54 actually, really close to my home.
0:31:57 And you talk about how he wrote to you
0:31:59 about his quantum theory of music,
0:32:01 and he said, “Yeah, I don’t play the chord changes.
0:32:03 “It’s like quantum mechanics.
0:32:05 “I don’t play in the changes.
0:32:08 “I play through the changes.”
0:32:11 I don’t know what that means, but it sounds extremely cool.
0:32:12 So what does that mean?
0:32:14 And is it as cool as it sounds?
0:32:16 – It is cooler than it sounds.
0:32:20 In traditional jazz repertoire,
0:32:23 we are given a structure of a jazz song,
0:32:26 meaning that as a song unfolds in time,
0:32:28 there’s a structure, there’s a form.
0:32:29 What I mean by that is that
0:32:31 there’s some type of rhythmic structure,
0:32:34 and that rhythmic structure repeats itself,
0:32:37 and then there’s a harmonic structure as well.
0:32:40 So there’s melody, there’s harmony, and there’s rhythm.
0:32:45 And the improviser should improvise some line,
0:32:48 musical line, musically meaningful line,
0:32:50 as that structure unfolds.
0:32:53 And so one thing that we’re challenged to do
0:32:55 is what we call play within the chord changes.
0:33:00 As the chords change, we’re supposed to weave a melody
0:33:04 through those chord changes, and that’s the name of the game,
0:33:06 how one does that and the practice of doing that,
0:33:08 and there are all these different strategies,
0:33:09 maybe, of how to do that.
0:33:17 And what Donnie Harrison, who is a master in like,
0:33:19 he knows all the traditional ways
0:33:22 of playing through those changes,
0:33:24 but the beautiful thing about a person like Donald
0:33:26 is that that’s not enough.
0:33:30 He is engaged in his own research,
0:33:33 just like a scientist is, to figure out new ways,
0:33:38 new strategies of playing a jazz solo over those changes.
0:33:44 And he, in his own self-study of quantum mechanics,
0:33:47 and then, of course, in our follow-up conversations,
0:33:50 he found a lot of interesting ideas
0:33:53 in terms of how quantum mechanical things
0:33:57 like a quantum particle may actually occupy
0:33:59 a certain energy level over time
0:34:03 and how a jazz pattern could be improvised.
0:34:06 And so this idea of getting from point A to point B
0:34:07 in a musical improvisation,
0:34:12 Donald Harrison intuited that the way a quantum particle
0:34:15 actually moves through space to get from point A to point B
0:34:17 according to say Richard Feynman,
0:34:21 which is that the particle must consider all possible paths
0:34:24 as it goes from point A to point B.
0:34:27 That an improvised line, I’m now quoting Donald,
0:34:30 there’s just infinite possibilities presented,
0:34:32 and that an improvised line, basically,
0:34:35 is a consideration of all those, you know,
0:34:37 it’s closer to quantum physics
0:34:40 than the way jazz may be traditionally taught,
0:34:42 and these strategies are traditionally taught.
0:34:46 Another interesting insight into that is Sonny Rollins.
0:34:49 When I interviewed Sonny Rollins in my first book,
0:34:53 you know, the legendary sax player,
0:34:56 he said to me, you know, I practice,
0:35:00 I practice a lot, I’ve practiced a lot throughout my life,
0:35:02 but it’s very important that when I’m playing
0:35:04 that I’m not thinking at all.
0:35:07 (upbeat jazz music)
0:35:26 Yeah, look, it’s worth saying,
0:35:31 the universe isn’t exactly a jazz composition,
0:35:34 but the idea that it has some kind of
0:35:37 like functionally musical quality,
0:35:40 that’s a pretty old idea.
0:35:43 I mean, the Pythagoreans thought the universe
0:35:45 was fundamentally musical, right?
0:35:49 I mean, even Kepler borrowed this idea from them.
0:35:52 And I wish that when I was a younger person growing up,
0:35:55 that was something I was taught at the outset,
0:35:58 like when we think about our science and art curriculum
0:36:01 and say high school or even before that,
0:36:03 I wish that my science teachers
0:36:05 or my music teachers were aware,
0:36:07 I’m sure about whether they were aware of it or not,
0:36:08 that’s why I wrote this book,
0:36:09 to make people aware of it,
0:36:14 that the birth of Western science started simultaneously
0:36:19 with music and physics in this case.
0:36:21 When I say physics, I mean astronomy,
0:36:26 but when the Pythagoreans and Pythagoras as a legend has,
0:36:29 came up with this idea that the cosmos,
0:36:31 and I believe that that word was created
0:36:36 to actually deal with that which has order in the universe,
0:36:39 which in this case had to do with the planetary motions,
0:36:43 that the reason why the planets were moving
0:36:46 in the way they were had to do with music of the spheres.
0:36:51 And moving 2000s, years or so into the future,
0:36:57 that Kepler relied on this Pythagorean idea
0:37:00 of musical spheres to actually figure out
0:37:01 the elliptical orbits of the planets.
0:37:04 And in fact, he wrote down musical notes first
0:37:07 for these planets before writing those equations down,
0:37:12 that those equations came in part from a musical analogy.
0:37:15 So that there’s always been historically,
0:37:19 this intimate connection between music and the universe,
0:37:21 music and astrophysics and physics.
0:37:24 (upbeat music)
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0:38:01 – Hey Deb, what is going on with that McMuffin?
0:38:02 – Oh, it’s a mighty McMuffin.
0:38:05 Sausage and double the bacon on one McMuffin,
0:38:07 so you don’t have to choose.
0:38:08 You should get one, it’s perfect for you.
0:38:09 – How so?
0:38:11 – You’re not the decision-making type.
0:38:14 – Oh, I can make decisions.
0:38:18 Now should I get it with a iced coffee or a hot one?
0:38:19 – Oh, maybe both.
0:38:21 Should I order in the app or in person?
0:38:23 Should I get one hash brown?
0:38:24 – Oh boy.
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0:39:01 (gentle music)
0:39:15 – I’m curious if you have a favorite philosopher.
0:39:18 It seems to me that if you’re doing theoretical physics,
0:39:21 and you’re trying to understand
0:39:24 the origins of the universe,
0:39:29 you reach a certain point at the frontier
0:39:32 where it almost, just out of necessity,
0:39:37 collapses into poetry and metaphor.
0:39:39 Because we just don’t know,
0:39:43 and we can’t empirically wrap our arms around it.
0:39:46 So I guess what I’m really asking is,
0:39:48 where’s the boundary here
0:39:50 when you’re doing big grand theoretical physics
0:39:54 between science and philosophy?
0:39:59 – Well, I think the connecting link to that is mathematics.
0:40:01 And like, because as you know,
0:40:04 there’s a very deep connection
0:40:06 between mathematics and philosophy,
0:40:10 like mathematical logic and very abstract things,
0:40:13 category theory, and there’s a lot of set theory.
0:40:16 There’s all this way in which math
0:40:18 and philosophy and physicists,
0:40:21 the language you speak and the tool we use,
0:40:24 a big part of our tool kit is mathematics.
0:40:26 But of course, physics is not just mathematics.
0:40:31 Physics is physics and it deals with the physical world.
0:40:35 So physics is also the ideas.
0:40:38 And physics is created by humans.
0:40:41 And we’d love to think that maybe the creations
0:40:45 and physical laws are independent of us creating them.
0:40:47 But that’s another philosophical discussion.
0:40:49 But one philosopher, it’s really funny.
0:40:51 I did a lot, I almost majored in philosophy,
0:40:53 and I did over the years.
0:40:55 I tried to do a lot of reading and philosophy.
0:40:59 And one philosopher that I was influenced by
0:41:00 was Schopenhauer.
0:41:02 – Yeah, he was also obsessed with music.
0:41:05 – Oh, that I didn’t even know, I didn’t know that.
0:41:07 It turns out Schopenhauer was influential
0:41:10 on one of the founders of quantum mechanics,
0:41:12 Irwin Schrodinger.
0:41:15 But it’s funny, as I was thinking about this,
0:41:16 I read a lot of philosophers,
0:41:19 and I can’t remember anything that I read.
0:41:23 But I just remember that those things were influential.
0:41:24 I’ve also read a lot of, I mean,
0:41:27 definitely a lot of Vedic philosophy
0:41:31 and Eastern philosophy as well.
0:41:34 I found that, and again, that’s nothing new.
0:41:39 I mean, Max Planck and Niels Bohr and Heisenberg,
0:41:43 I mean, a lot of the founders of Albert Einstein
0:41:45 were very much influenced
0:41:48 by both Western and Eastern philosophy.
0:41:49 – Yeah, it’s just so interesting to me,
0:41:53 this semi-permeable border between philosophy and science.
0:41:55 I mean, even in your, I have your book in front of me
0:41:59 right now, I was reading some of it this morning.
0:42:01 And, you know, in the 14th chapter,
0:42:03 I mean, you ask a question like, now I’m quoting,
0:42:07 “For many years, I tried to get my mind around the question.
0:42:10 What can exist if time ceases to exist?”
0:42:14 That feels like a philosophy question,
0:42:17 as much or even more than a scientific question.
0:42:19 But maybe I’m just seeing that as a philosopher
0:42:22 and not as a scientist.
0:42:25 – It is a philosophy question.
0:42:29 And I think that it’s useful for physicists
0:42:31 to see what philosophers have come up with
0:42:33 in terms of that question, because I do find it,
0:42:37 like at the end of the day, like a good physicist for me
0:42:40 is you have your skillset, you have your chops,
0:42:41 whatever they may be.
0:42:43 I mean, obviously the more the merrier.
0:42:45 And then of course, you’re trying to come up with ideas
0:42:48 for yourself and part of why you have students
0:42:50 or, you know, younger people to talk to
0:42:52 is that you hope in those conversations
0:42:54 that something may come out where it might lead
0:42:55 to a new idea.
0:42:57 So we’re kind of always, I think,
0:42:59 a good physicist should fish for ideas
0:43:02 and that you should like cast a wide net
0:43:04 and then consider ideas.
0:43:06 And then obviously you get to try it
0:43:08 like a landscape of different ideas
0:43:10 and hopefully something works.
0:43:11 That’s one strategy.
0:43:14 I mean, you know, some people are good enough
0:43:16 where they can just hit the jackpot
0:43:18 and find the idea and it works.
0:43:20 Or some people may just maybe find the answer
0:43:23 by calculating their way to the answer.
0:43:25 These are all different strategies.
0:43:28 And I don’t wanna leave too many stones on turn
0:43:31 in terms of finding new sources of ideas.
0:43:35 And I think like philosophy, music, you know,
0:43:38 I love, I mean, I love talking to late people
0:43:40 about my physics and my research
0:43:42 because I sometimes find that they might say something
0:43:45 that may knock me out of the way my pattern of thought
0:43:47 and that could be useful.
0:43:48 – I will say this, you know,
0:43:53 the just talking about ideas on the frontiers, you know,
0:43:57 the physics of consciousness is a fascinating one for me.
0:44:02 I mean, we seem to have no idea how this immaterial thing
0:44:08 we call consciousness emerges from physical matter
0:44:09 from our brain.
0:44:12 Hell, we still don’t even have a good definition
0:44:13 of consciousness.
0:44:16 I mean, is this even a fruitful space for physics
0:44:17 at the moment?
0:44:21 Or is this just forever the domain of metaphysicians
0:44:25 and theologians and philosophers?
0:44:28 – I think it definitely is a deep,
0:44:33 okay, you know, thinking about that you have different fields,
0:44:35 you have different categories of fields
0:44:39 and with those things come academic and intellectual silos
0:44:42 that you have to figure out how to,
0:44:43 if you’re serious about working
0:44:45 in something like that, you know,
0:44:46 how to collaborate with people
0:44:49 and how to break through given those silos.
0:44:53 I mean, that’s those things, those realities are there.
0:44:54 So for me, writing a book
0:44:56 where I’m just, I did talk a little bit
0:44:58 about consciousness and the fear of a black universe
0:45:01 at the end, I gave myself permission
0:45:05 and I was honest about that this is pure speculation and,
0:45:08 and I was, but I would say yes.
0:45:12 I mean, I think at the heart of it, for me,
0:45:16 since our experience of consciousness is that we, you know,
0:45:20 we are housed in a physical body and we have a brain
0:45:22 and somehow we know that different states
0:45:26 of consciousness seems to be influenced by this,
0:45:28 but this piece of matter between our head
0:45:32 and our nervous system that clearly there is some link
0:45:35 between this internal experience we call consciousness
0:45:38 and the matter, but the question of course is,
0:45:41 what is the interplay between matter
0:45:43 and the organization of say,
0:45:46 and the complexity of neurons
0:45:48 and the emergence of consciousness?
0:45:50 I think for me, where the rubber hits the road
0:45:53 is that one way into this is,
0:45:56 well, the mystery of consciousness, right?
0:45:59 Could be also connected to the mystery of matter.
0:46:03 So in other words, at the level where we understand
0:46:05 how neurons fire and neural networks and all that stuff,
0:46:08 it could be that where consciousness is happening
0:46:11 is not only, it’s not to say it’s either or,
0:46:15 in the epiphenomenon of the complexity of neurons, right?
0:46:18 Consciousness seems to be running on a hardware
0:46:20 and the hardware is not just neurons, but matter,
0:46:22 but there are things about matter
0:46:24 that we still don’t understand.
0:46:26 And so the question of,
0:46:29 I think where physics could come in and may be useful
0:46:32 is to maybe find that way of connecting
0:46:34 the mystery of consciousness
0:46:36 to actually the mystery of matter itself.
0:46:40 I mean, the stuff about, you know,
0:46:44 applying quantum physics to the world at our scale,
0:46:47 you know, the world beyond just, you know,
0:46:50 subatomic particles, that’s where you get a lot of woo-woo.
0:46:53 And the impression I’ve always received
0:46:56 from serious scientists is that there’s,
0:46:58 down that road is a lot of bullshit.
0:47:00 You know, you have a lot of new agey type people
0:47:04 will look at some of the spookiness of quantum physics,
0:47:07 you know, something like, you know, superposition
0:47:09 that particles can be in different positions
0:47:12 in space and time simultaneously.
0:47:14 And somehow if that were true,
0:47:17 then I guess human beings could also be
0:47:20 in multiple places at multiple times simultaneously,
0:47:25 which seems to cut against our experience of reality.
0:47:27 But I don’t know.
0:47:30 I mean, am I being too dismissive
0:47:32 by calling all of that woo-woo?
0:47:34 Or do you think there’s some there, there?
0:47:37 – Look, there’s definitely woo-woo out there.
0:47:40 And usually when I hear that term,
0:47:43 it means usually the same way, like, you know,
0:47:46 if some people say you’re not playing jazz the right way,
0:47:49 you’re not playing within our tradition,
0:47:51 you haven’t done the work,
0:47:55 or you have an idea,
0:47:58 but you didn’t even realize that this has been considered
0:48:00 before and it’s wrong for these other reasons.
0:48:04 So maybe it speaks to a certain naivety.
0:48:07 And all of that is fine to criticize.
0:48:10 Our job is to poke holes in things.
0:48:12 So that’s part of it.
0:48:15 And you know, I tell my students and myself
0:48:16 that we have to embrace that.
0:48:18 Now, having said that,
0:48:23 I think that when I say the wave functioning universe
0:48:26 and quantum mechanics, I’m talking about new things.
0:48:29 I’m not talking about quantum mechanics as we know it now.
0:48:32 But again, quantum mechanics itself
0:48:36 and research at the foundations of quantum mechanics
0:48:39 will require us to understand something new
0:48:40 about quantum mechanics.
0:48:44 And it’s in that place that trying to ask
0:48:47 whether or not there’s something quantum mechanical
0:48:51 about our entire universe is a research question.
0:48:53 So I like to summarize it with a quote from Albert Einstein,
0:48:56 which is, if we knew what we were talking about,
0:48:57 we wouldn’t call it research.
0:49:02 But again, just like we talk about jazz and physics,
0:49:05 like the name of the game is, you know,
0:49:08 is that we try to get our chops together.
0:49:12 We’re always in a continual path to refining our skillset
0:49:15 and mastering what’s currently understood.
0:49:17 And we try our best to keep an open mind
0:49:19 to break new ground.
0:49:25 – So would you say you feel good about the future of physics
0:49:28 and where the science is going?
0:49:31 – Well, you know, I do feel good about it
0:49:34 because there’s some, I think extraordinary young people
0:49:35 that are coming on the scene
0:49:38 that I have gotten to work with and know.
0:49:42 And I think that they’re able to do things
0:49:45 and, you know, their minds are much faster
0:49:47 and sharper than mine now.
0:49:49 And I think that I’m, you know,
0:49:51 I feel optimistic about their ability
0:49:53 to take the baton and move forward.
0:49:58 There is just so much that we don’t understand.
0:50:03 And I think that this thing that’s all surprising me
0:50:06 is that just when we think something is impossible to solve,
0:50:09 for some weird reason,
0:50:13 we’ve been able to make advances in physics.
0:50:18 So I expect that to happen, even though,
0:50:20 as I’m saying all this and I look at, you know,
0:50:21 when I’m done talking with you,
0:50:25 I’m gonna go back to my work with my resource group.
0:50:30 I have no clue how to move forward on some days.
0:50:32 I am definitely at a stage right now
0:50:36 where I’m finding that I feel,
0:50:39 I myself feel very stuck in my physics.
0:50:46 And in terms of breaking new ground in my own research.
0:50:50 – Boy, that’s a, do you have a few more minutes
0:50:51 ’cause I would really love to know what…
0:50:53 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have time.
0:50:55 I would just love to know why you feel stuck
0:50:57 and what that means.
0:50:59 I mean, I mean, you do theoretical physics, obviously.
0:51:03 Cosmology, I mean, these are big, big, big questions
0:51:07 you’re wrestling with, but why do you feel stuck?
0:51:08 What does that even mean?
0:51:11 – You know, when I first started from physics,
0:51:15 I think I had this idea that maybe I will, you know,
0:51:19 find some breakthrough in the field or something like that.
0:51:22 And now I’m like, I’m just happy to publish a paper
0:51:25 and make a tiny little contribution
0:51:27 to a tiny little problem.
0:51:29 But you know, one of my mentors, Leon Cooper,
0:51:33 always encouraged me, I mean, Leon won a Nobel Prize.
0:51:34 He always encouraged me to think big
0:51:38 and to never be afraid of asking the biggest questions.
0:51:40 And you know, I have tried to do that.
0:51:43 So there’s, you know, I think that ambition
0:51:44 of trying to ask the biggest questions
0:51:47 is sometimes I don’t even know what question to ask.
0:51:48 – Yeah.
0:51:50 – But that’s part of the process.
0:51:52 And that’s where I’m at now.
0:51:57 And also, I think part of it is to find jobs for your students
0:52:00 and find ways where they themselves can have careers.
0:52:02 And there’s sometimes I put a lot of pressure on myself
0:52:05 of like, I need to find things that they can work on
0:52:09 or where they can actually, you know, have a career,
0:52:11 get a job or get a postdoc, right?
0:52:14 So those things come into play as well.
0:52:17 And also, if I actually shake things up too much,
0:52:22 or I do things that go too much against the grain,
0:52:25 then that could actually jeopardize my students
0:52:27 from actually getting a job.
0:52:30 Because they’ll say, oh, he’s a student of this guy
0:52:32 who is like doing all these things
0:52:34 that we don’t think should be done.
0:52:37 So there’s some of that going on as well too.
0:52:41 – Well, whatever you do, don’t stop playing jazz.
0:52:41 Keep doing that.
0:52:43 Keep making music.
0:52:46 – Well, of course, you know, the big fantasy
0:52:50 is that in the middle of a jazz solo, the idea comes to me.
0:52:51 But that’s more of a pipe dream, you know,
0:52:54 because I’ll get to write a third book.
0:52:57 (laughing)
0:52:57 – I love it.
0:52:58 You know what?
0:52:59 I’m gonna moonwalk out of here on that note.
0:53:00 There’s just so much here
0:53:03 and I could barely scratch the surface.
0:53:07 So I will say, once again, the title of the book
0:53:09 is “Fear of a Black Universe,”
0:53:12 an outsider’s guide to the future of physics.
0:53:14 Stefan Alexander, this was a genuine pleasure.
0:53:15 Thank you.
0:53:17 – Thanks for having me.
0:53:19 (soft music)
0:53:33 (upbeat music)
0:53:41 – All right, that was fun.
0:53:43 A little jazz, a little physics.
0:53:44 What else could you ask for?
0:53:47 (upbeat music)
0:53:50 We don’t usually use so much music in our episodes,
0:53:52 but it felt right this time.
0:53:55 Every song, but one came from Stefan’s most recent album,
0:53:57 “Spontaneous Fruit.”
0:54:00 There’s also one track from his EP, “True to Sell.”
0:54:02 We’ll put those links in our show notes.
0:54:07 As always, we wanna know what you think of the episode.
0:54:11 You can drop us a line at the gray area at box.com.
0:54:13 I read those emails, keep ’em coming.
0:54:16 And if you can’t do that, rate, review, subscribe.
0:54:18 All that stuff really helps.
0:54:21 This episode was produced by Travis Larchuck,
0:54:24 edited by Jorge Just, engineer by Christian Ayala,
0:54:26 fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch,
0:54:28 and Alex O’Brington wrote our theme music.
0:54:32 And a special thanks to Patrick Boyd and Rob Byers.
0:54:34 (upbeat music)
0:54:37 , (upbeat music)
0:54:39 (upbeat music)
0:54:42 (upbeat music)
0:54:45 (upbeat music)
0:54:47 (upbeat music)
0:54:50 (upbeat music)
0:54:52 (upbeat music)
0:54:55 (upbeat music)
0:55:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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0:01:12 – What if everything in the universe,
0:01:15 the stars, the planets, the galaxies, the people?
0:01:19 What if all of it is the result of pressure waves,
0:01:22 patterns of vibrations from the beginning of everything?
0:01:27 And what if those vibrations, those changes in pressure,
0:01:29 are actually sound waves?
0:01:31 Wouldn’t that mean that everything in the universe
0:01:33 begins and ends with music?
0:01:45 Maybe that’s a silly question,
0:01:48 a bit of bad poetry that’s not worth reciting.
0:01:51 But what if it’s not?
0:01:56 String theory, the multiverse, quantum mechanics,
0:01:59 all of these ideas come from scientists
0:02:02 who are trying to understand the origins of the universe
0:02:03 in the nature of reality.
0:02:09 It’s all mathy and heady in a way that I don’t understand.
0:02:12 And sure, I don’t have a STEM PhD,
0:02:15 but it seems to me that somewhere
0:02:18 at the frontier of theoretical physics,
0:02:21 all the equations and observations and proofs,
0:02:27 it all kind of collapses into poetry and metaphor and art,
0:02:29 into philosophy.
0:02:34 I’m Sean Elling and this is The Gray Area.
0:02:49 Today’s guest is Stefan Alexander.
0:02:52 He’s a professor of physics at Brown University
0:02:55 and the author of two terrific books,
0:02:58 The Jazz of Physics and Fear of a Black Universe.
0:03:01 I have always loved the scientists
0:03:05 who go out of their way to engage the public,
0:03:10 people like Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan and Jane Goodall.
0:03:13 They don’t just talk to the public,
0:03:16 they translate the science into stories.
0:03:18 They use colorful analogies.
0:03:21 They find the poetry in the data.
0:03:26 Alexander is this type of scientist.
0:03:30 One big reason for that, I suspect,
0:03:32 is that he’s a theoretical physicist
0:03:36 who’s also a world-class jazz musician.
0:03:39 (upbeat jazz music)
0:03:57 And his musical sensibilities influence both his research
0:04:00 and the sort of language he uses to communicate it.
0:04:04 But on top of that, for a person whose head lives
0:04:06 in a world of abstractions,
0:04:09 Alexander is a pragmatist who’s up front
0:04:12 about how hard it is for physicists like him
0:04:15 to really explore their wildest ideas,
0:04:18 especially when the research is dependent on grants
0:04:19 and the whims of funders.
0:04:22 So I was excited to invite him on the show
0:04:26 to talk about music and physics
0:04:28 and how he’s trying to make sense of the universe.
0:04:31 (upbeat jazz music)
0:04:42 – Stefan Alexander, welcome to the show.
0:04:46 – It’s a real honor and pleasure to be here.
0:04:47 – I appreciate that.
0:04:49 I’m really excited to have you.
0:04:53 Something I have heard people say,
0:04:56 people who are either in physics or adjacent to physics,
0:04:58 certainly people who know more about physics
0:05:02 than I do, which is anyone who knows anything about physics.
0:05:07 But I have heard them say that physics is stuck
0:05:09 right now as a science.
0:05:10 Is that true?
0:05:14 What are those people seeing and maybe just as importantly,
0:05:17 what are they not seeing?
0:05:19 – I think what people are seeing is that
0:05:22 there’s been a great tradition and pathway
0:05:24 that has been successful.
0:05:27 You had quantum mechanics and you had a relativity,
0:05:29 in this case, special relativity,
0:05:31 and there was an attempt to unite them
0:05:34 because there were physical regimes
0:05:36 where you needed to describe, say,
0:05:37 a quantum mechanical particle
0:05:39 moving at relative at six speeds.
0:05:42 And so that unification was successful.
0:05:44 That became the bedrock of particle physics,
0:05:48 like what we call a standard model, that theory.
0:05:52 So that logical progression has been successful.
0:05:57 And I think that physicists have been very successful
0:06:00 over the last century.
0:06:05 And there’s no reason to expect that direction to stop.
0:06:09 And I think that we must continue moving in that direction.
0:06:13 And when I talk about fear in my book,
0:06:14 Fear of a Black Universe,
0:06:19 we’re talking about how do we confront the legacy
0:06:23 and the contributions that has been made
0:06:26 and what’s the strategy for getting to a new ground
0:06:28 or maybe making new breakthroughs.
0:06:32 I myself, I’m a researcher in theoretical physics
0:06:34 and honestly, there are days when I’m like,
0:06:36 I have no idea what direction to go in.
0:06:39 – Tell me more.
0:06:42 – Well, a lot of what we do in physics,
0:06:44 especially in the profession itself,
0:06:47 we have to go through peer review, we write papers,
0:06:50 we submit our results to journals,
0:06:54 it gets reviewed anonymously by our colleagues.
0:06:56 And we also have to apply for grants.
0:06:59 We have to apply for money to support our research,
0:07:01 to support our students.
0:07:05 And if you deviate from what’s expected,
0:07:08 deviate from the judgments that’s made about
0:07:11 what the right directions are and what the trends are
0:07:13 and what it means to do good physics.
0:07:14 So there are judgments about,
0:07:17 well, if you work in this field,
0:07:19 then you actually know what you’re talking about.
0:07:21 And if you don’t work in, you work in a different field,
0:07:23 you don’t really understand what we’re doing.
0:07:27 Therefore, we should not take you seriously.
0:07:30 Maybe if you work in a different field,
0:07:34 you try new things out that deviates from the status quo,
0:07:36 there might be penalties waiting for you.
0:07:39 The same way penalties can await if you deviate
0:07:42 from a social order, right?
0:07:45 So part of the fear is that if you’re a young person
0:07:47 and you’re trying to break new ground,
0:07:50 there’s a warning which is wait till after you get tenure
0:07:51 to work on those kinds of problems
0:07:53 and think about things in that new way.
0:07:56 – Part of what makes you unique
0:08:00 is your musical background.
0:08:02 (upbeat music)
0:08:13 To an outsider, it might seem like
0:08:15 there’s some kind of tension,
0:08:18 between being a scientist and a jazz musician,
0:08:22 or at least that these are very unrelated activities.
0:08:24 But the point of your book is to say
0:08:26 that that’s not the case, right?
0:08:30 That actually this kind of bounded thinking
0:08:32 is part of what’s holding science back.
0:08:34 – Yeah, I would definitely be of a different physicist
0:08:36 without my music and a different musician
0:08:37 without my physics.
0:08:41 And some examples of that would be
0:08:44 when I’m working on any kind of theory
0:08:46 or calculation or idea that I have an idea
0:08:47 and I’m pursuing it.
0:08:52 There are times where you might get so enamored
0:08:55 about your idea, you might fall in love with the idea,
0:08:57 get attached to it.
0:08:58 And months would go by,
0:09:03 but you just don’t want to give up on the idea.
0:09:06 It’s important to know when to pivot
0:09:07 and when to give up.
0:09:11 And I find that being a jazz musician,
0:09:15 it’s all about embracing in real time, pivoting.
0:09:17 If you might play a wrong note
0:09:19 and you have to make something of that,
0:09:22 or you might find a phrase that you think
0:09:24 sounds very good in the middle of an improvisation,
0:09:27 but you have to move in a new direction now.
0:09:37 And I think that this idea of like,
0:09:40 that as a jazz musician, the improvisational side
0:09:45 teaches you how to just move on to new ideas
0:09:47 and not get too attached to ideas,
0:09:49 but also how to commit to something.
0:09:52 I mean, in my jazz practice,
0:09:56 my practice as a musician has been a lifelong process
0:09:59 of refining my technique and refining my theory
0:10:03 and put myself out there and playing with other people
0:10:05 and learning how to play in a band and all that stuff.
0:10:08 And that discipline, that practice,
0:10:13 it plays a big role also in my practice as a physicist.
0:10:14 So they go back and forth here.
0:10:23 – Your day job is physics,
0:10:26 but I mean, how serious is your music career?
0:10:29 I mean, do you tour, are you in a band?
0:10:32 Do you just sort of play on the side at clubs
0:10:32 when you get a chance?
0:10:36 I mean, how big a role does it play in your life?
0:10:37 – At different times of my life,
0:10:39 it’s played anywhere from very,
0:10:43 like every other night I’m playing out at some club
0:10:48 with a quartet to maybe once a semester I’ll play.
0:10:49 So it depends.
0:10:51 But these days here, I do have a band.
0:10:55 I’m very fortunate to be playing with Will Calhoun,
0:10:59 who’s a drummer for the band Living Color.
0:11:01 And Melvin Gibbs, the bassist,
0:11:06 played with the Rollins band and others, Harry Tubman.
0:11:09 So I’ve been very fortunate to play with those fellows.
0:11:12 We have a band called God Particle.
0:11:15 – I love it.
0:11:16 I love it.
0:11:19 – So, and we’ll play a few concerts,
0:11:22 larger scale concerts a few times a year.
0:11:24 So yeah, it differs from time to time.
0:11:29 I’ll jump in a session and sit in for a few songs.
0:11:31 And a lot of what I do these days
0:11:36 is I’m just happy to go home and work on some new material
0:11:38 and shed some new scales.
0:11:42 – Didn’t Einstein say that his best ideas came to him
0:11:45 while playing his violin?
0:11:48 Or am I just making that up?
0:11:52 – I do recall reading Einstein saying something like that.
0:11:57 Yeah, I mean, one thing for sure that I have confirmed
0:11:59 about his relationship with music and the science
0:12:02 is that there have been times where I,
0:12:05 if I get stuck on something or my brain is just overload
0:12:07 and I just pick up my horn
0:12:09 and I’ll just start playing through some things.
0:12:12 And I find it to be very helpful.
0:12:16 I find that things like it or not happening offline
0:12:18 in terms of how I’m doing my physics,
0:12:23 like the art of physics and exploring those connections.
0:12:28 – There is a question you ask in your previous book,
0:12:32 The Jazz of Physics, that I wanna put to you now.
0:12:34 And I’m just gonna quote,
0:12:37 “If the structure of the universe is a result
0:12:42 “of a pattern of vibration, what causes the vibration?”
0:12:46 Now, let’s give everyone a second to hit their bongs.
0:12:48 And then you gotta answer that for me.
0:12:51 I don’t know what it means, but I love the question
0:12:52 and I’m dying to know the answer.
0:12:59 – I think our most direct experience of this
0:13:01 is music and sound.
0:13:04 (upbeat music)
0:13:17 A musical tone is basically a vibrational pattern
0:13:19 of airwaves that comes out of our ears
0:13:22 and our body responds to that.
0:13:25 Obviously, there’s a whole mechanism of how that happens.
0:13:29 But a sound wave, like for example,
0:13:31 notice that you can hear a sound in a swimming pool.
0:13:40 So you can actually hear a sound in water, right?
0:13:42 You can hear a sound, obviously, in air.
0:13:46 And that’s because the medium is vibrating, right?
0:13:49 The medium can vibrate, well, what is vibrating?
0:13:52 What is vibrating, actually, is the fact that
0:13:54 any type of medium, like water,
0:13:57 can actually undergo a change in pressure.
0:14:02 If you push against the wall, you’re exerting pressure,
0:14:05 which is a force that distributes itself
0:14:08 over a region of space, right?
0:14:11 So it turns out that sound is nothing more
0:14:12 than a pressure wave.
0:14:16 Basically, our direct experience of vibrations
0:14:18 and the way that I talk about it is through music.
0:14:21 And it turns out that in the early universe,
0:14:24 the metaphor here goes pretty close to sound.
0:14:26 So we have this picture of a universe
0:14:29 that’s been expanding for billions of years,
0:14:33 which meant that if you ran the clock backwards,
0:14:36 the universe, you can imagine it contracting
0:14:39 and being very small, hot and dense.
0:14:44 So in the early universe, you have a hot, dense soup of energy.
0:14:49 And that past universe is devoid of structures,
0:14:51 devoid of galaxies and stars, planets and people.
0:14:54 It’s just all energy.
0:14:56 So the question that we ask in physics
0:14:59 is how is that past universe,
0:15:00 how does that evolve in the universe,
0:15:04 come to create the structure that we see today,
0:15:07 the stars, the galaxies, the planet, the people?
0:15:12 And what we know from observations from satellites
0:15:14 is that in the early universe,
0:15:19 we see vibrational patterns of this soup of energy.
0:15:23 The soup of energy is basically, we call it radiation.
0:15:27 The universe is filled in a hot quantum soup
0:15:31 of radiation and fundamental particles.
0:15:35 And the wave-like motion actually set up sound wave.
0:15:37 So the physics of the early universe,
0:15:40 those vibrations are actually sound waves,
0:15:42 very similar to the sound waves
0:15:45 that are passing through in air.
0:15:47 And those sound waves that are vibrating
0:15:49 in the early universe carry energy.
0:15:52 And that is the onset, basically.
0:15:55 Those energetic waves are the onset
0:15:57 of the formation of the first structures in the universe,
0:16:01 such as stars, which eventually all cluster together,
0:16:02 become galaxies.
0:16:05 So it’s in that sense that, you know,
0:16:08 that metaphor with sound is, you know,
0:16:11 I would say pretty exact in the early universe.
0:16:21 Well, what does it mean to say, as you do,
0:16:26 that the universe is like an instrument that plays itself?
0:16:28 Well, the metaphor is that, you know,
0:16:29 if you think about like an instrument,
0:16:31 for example, like a drum.
0:16:40 The surface of the drum undergoes vibration.
0:16:44 And, you know, obviously the vibration in the drum
0:16:47 basically sends out, you know, sound waves.
0:16:50 Similarly, the universe in its past,
0:16:52 which is very small,
0:16:55 has some type of vibrating system.
0:16:57 Then the question is, what is the hand
0:17:00 that hits the universe if you want to use this analogy?
0:17:11 But since our definition of the universe
0:17:14 is that there’s nothing outside of the universe,
0:17:16 whatever sets off that vibration,
0:17:20 it’s some entity that’s of the universe that’s doing that.
0:17:23 And the status quo right now in our field,
0:17:25 the field of cosmology,
0:17:29 is that there’s something called the inflaton field, right?
0:17:32 The inflaton is the name of a field.
0:17:35 And so for the listeners out there,
0:17:36 what is a field?
0:17:39 We need to understand them, what a field is.
0:17:41 And we are in direct contact with fields
0:17:43 anytime you play with a magnet.
0:17:45 So if you take two magnets,
0:17:49 notice that a magnet can exert a force in another magnet
0:17:52 without the magnets actually touching each other.
0:17:55 And so the thing that’s actually transmitting
0:17:57 the force between two magnets
0:18:01 in between at the empty space is a magnetic field.
0:18:06 It seems to be invisible, but it acts over space, right?
0:18:08 And so the idea is that in the early universe,
0:18:10 there’s a similar type of field.
0:18:13 It’s not a magnetic field, it’s an inflaton field.
0:18:16 And this field is playing two roles actually.
0:18:19 One role is to make the universe expand very rapidly, right?
0:18:21 Which is the thing that’s igniting
0:18:23 the expansion of the universe.
0:18:27 But the inflaton field is actually known as a quantum field.
0:18:30 So there’s something quantum about this inflaton field.
0:18:32 And guess what’s quantum about it?
0:18:36 The field can vibrate in a discrete fashion.
0:18:39 So, you know, when you think about vibrations, right?
0:18:42 You think about like a wave that’s going up and down,
0:18:44 it’s an ocean wave going up and down.
0:18:46 And you can imagine seeing all different types
0:18:49 of wave patterns, right?
0:18:51 But these wave patterns are more like notes.
0:18:54 Like if I play A, B, C, D, G,
0:18:57 these are discrete notes, right?
0:19:00 They only occur in steps.
0:19:14 And so the analogy now is that you can think about
0:19:17 the quantum fluctuation of the inflaton field
0:19:20 as basically discrete notes of this inflaton field.
0:19:22 This is a metaphor, but actually the metaphor
0:19:27 goes very, very almost in a one-to-one correspondence.
0:19:29 So that’s the idea.
0:19:31 Now, I mean, again, that’s a paradigm.
0:19:32 Then you can say, well, okay,
0:19:34 where does the inflaton field come from?
0:19:35 Well, it’s its nature, right?
0:19:39 And these are all good questions that we’re asking.
0:19:41 But the real answer is that we don’t know yet.
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0:22:05 On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival
0:22:07 will gather thousands of people
0:22:09 who took action to end extreme poverty.
0:22:13 Watch Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll,
0:22:16 and Raul Alejandro, as they take the stage
0:22:19 with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty,
0:22:21 defend the planet, and demand equity.
0:22:24 Download the Global Citizen app to watch live.
0:22:28 Learn more at globalcitizen.org/box.
0:22:30 (upbeat music)
0:22:45 – It’s interesting to me to think about this
0:22:50 in the context of the so-called fine-tuning argument,
0:22:56 this idea that the fundamental laws of our universe
0:22:58 are perfectly arranged.
0:22:59 So as to make life possible.
0:23:02 And if they were tuned like a guitar,
0:23:06 even slightly differently, life wouldn’t exist.
0:23:09 Or to put it differently, the instrument
0:23:12 that is the universe wouldn’t play.
0:23:14 First of all, is that true?
0:23:17 And if it is, what does that tell us
0:23:20 about the nature of the universe
0:23:24 that it’s held together so precariously?
0:23:27 – Yeah, it might tell us one of a few things.
0:23:31 I mean, first of all, when we use the word fine-tune,
0:23:32 the way I like to think about this is,
0:23:35 imagine when you listen to a nice stereo system
0:23:37 and you have, well, back in the days
0:23:40 where we had equalizers
0:23:42 that we can manually shift up and down.
0:23:44 They said, “Well, I want a little bit more treble.
0:23:48 And I want a little bit more bass.”
0:23:55 Think about now the universe as an equalizer,
0:24:00 meaning that how much treble, how much bass controls now
0:24:02 some of the fundamental properties
0:24:06 of subatomic particles or the forces, right?
0:24:09 That’s needed to make a star burn, right?
0:24:11 Which we know, to have life,
0:24:13 the star has to burn at a given rate.
0:24:16 We don’t want our sun to burn out too quick, right?
0:24:20 If our sun will just burn its fuel in one second,
0:24:23 then good luck with any seasons here under it, right?
0:24:26 So the sun has to burn at the right rate
0:24:29 for billions of years to sustain life on earth.
0:24:32 But it turns out that actually the rate in which the sun
0:24:35 actually does thermonuclear conversion
0:24:38 depends very sensitively on these equalizers,
0:24:42 these parameters that take how strong the force may be
0:24:43 or how weak it may be.
0:24:46 And it does appear that when we look at our theories
0:24:48 that describe those forces,
0:24:51 that those knobs that dictate
0:24:53 how the various forces are controlled
0:24:56 are very finely tuned to certain values
0:25:00 that don’t seem to be explained very nicely
0:25:01 by the theories themselves.
0:25:04 So it seems that the theories themselves
0:25:06 cannot explain the determination
0:25:09 of those finely tuned parameters.
0:25:12 And as a result, we’re seeking new ideas out there.
0:25:13 And there has been new ideas.
0:25:16 One idea is called the anthropic principle,
0:25:18 which is basically saying that the universe
0:25:21 actually is finely tuned,
0:25:24 such that we can be around to observe it.
0:25:26 So the anthropic principle is a statement
0:25:30 that the laws of physics
0:25:33 are such that if they were any different
0:25:35 than the form that they currently have,
0:25:37 there would be no life.
0:25:40 And therefore there would be no universe
0:25:42 for life to actually observe.
0:25:45 It’s almost circular in the sense that
0:25:50 the universe exists such that it can create life.
0:25:53 And if there were no life, the universe would not exist.
0:25:56 – Yeah, I recall that Steven Weinberg quote,
0:25:58 where else could we be except on a planet
0:25:59 that can sustain life?
0:26:03 – Right, there’s something circular about it.
0:26:07 Then you can say, well, how does the universe do that?
0:26:09 And so ideas out there could be
0:26:11 that maybe there are many, many universes.
0:26:14 We live in one of such many universes
0:26:16 where the universe, as it replicates itself,
0:26:20 it gets to try out like a jazz improvisation, maybe.
0:26:23 Think about in a jazz improvisation,
0:26:26 you get to try out a new solo every time
0:26:28 the form of the song repeats itself.
0:26:32 The idea is that the universe gets to try out new parameters
0:26:34 until it hits the jackpot.
0:26:36 – So is this- – And the jackpot is us.
0:26:37 – Just to jump in there a little bit,
0:26:38 is what you’re describing there
0:26:40 what people call the multiverse theory?
0:26:43 – Yes, that’s what people call the multiverse theory.
0:26:44 – Do you buy that?
0:26:46 And if you do, you’re gonna have to explain it
0:26:48 in terms of lowly country podcaster
0:26:51 like me can understand, ’cause I don’t get it.
0:26:54 I mean, I guess I get it conceptually,
0:26:56 but it’s a little mind blowing to Ponder.
0:27:00 – Yeah, so 24 years ago when people in my field
0:27:02 were talking about the multiverse,
0:27:05 I was a research scientist trying to build my career
0:27:07 and they eventually try to get a job.
0:27:10 And when I wanted the leaders in the field,
0:27:13 I went to him and said, how do we do physics now?
0:27:15 I mean, because the idea of the multiverse
0:27:20 is that you have to not rely on doing calculations
0:27:24 in your theory to make a prediction.
0:27:29 You posit that there are just many universes out there
0:27:32 and there’s some random chance.
0:27:35 You know, let me just use that word very loosely,
0:27:39 a random chance that the universe replicates itself.
0:27:41 So to have a multiverse, you need a mechanism
0:27:44 for the universe to basically replicate
0:27:47 to produce new so-called baby universes.
0:27:49 And one picture you might wanna have
0:27:51 in terms of an analogy is like blown bubbles.
0:27:53 So if you have a bubble maker or whatever
0:27:56 and you blown bubbles, you can create many bubbles.
0:27:59 And if you think about every universe as some bubble
0:28:02 that basically nucleates and gets created,
0:28:05 and inside of every bubble is an environment
0:28:08 that you can call a universe.
0:28:12 But in different bubbles, bubbly baby universes,
0:28:14 the universe actually takes on different values
0:28:16 for the forces.
0:28:20 And when those values happen to be the right values
0:28:22 to produce life, to produce stars,
0:28:24 to produce all the things that we see,
0:28:26 that’s the idea of how the multiverse
0:28:28 can actually maybe create our universe.
0:28:32 But when I went to the senior person, he said,
0:28:36 well, you know, I mean, basically it was like tough luck,
0:28:37 you know, this is where the field is at.
0:28:41 And it was very difficult at that time
0:28:45 to see how I can make a life for myself
0:28:47 as a physicist, as a theorist.
0:28:51 And I think that back then I was not a fan of the multiverse
0:28:55 because I found it very difficult to do research
0:28:56 in that field.
0:28:58 – But why weren’t you a fan back then?
0:29:01 – Yeah, but truthfully speaking,
0:29:04 because it was aesthetically not pleasing to me.
0:29:06 And it just goes to show you how aesthetics,
0:29:11 like affect what types of research you choose to pursue.
0:29:14 Simply put, it was aesthetically not pleasing to me.
0:29:16 – Well, what’s not aesthetically appealing to you?
0:29:20 Is it because it’s not elegant and simplistic?
0:29:24 Is it because it almost seems like it takes
0:29:27 a picture of the universe we don’t quite understand
0:29:30 and then smuggles in like a new concept
0:29:32 to sort of explain it all away.
0:29:35 – The aesthetic side of this is coming from
0:29:39 that when we, usually what we see in physics
0:29:43 is some unity, some ways in which one problem
0:29:45 you may be trying to solve would be connected
0:29:47 to something else.
0:29:49 And by not considering that something else
0:29:51 or not seeing that other thing,
0:29:53 you would not be able to solve the problem.
0:29:54 So the idea here would be like, well,
0:29:58 maybe the fact that the laws that we see
0:30:01 seem to be fine too, and it’s telling us something
0:30:03 very deep, and it’s so deep
0:30:07 that it just simply just can’t be this multi-verse idea.
0:30:10 The same way the advent of quantum mechanics
0:30:13 had something profoundly deep about the world.
0:30:15 And so it’s more about this ambition
0:30:18 that we’re looking for something profound
0:30:21 and so deep that we have not been
0:30:22 clever enough to figure it out.
0:30:24 – I think part of the reason I was asking it,
0:30:26 it sort of surprised me to hear you say
0:30:29 it wasn’t aesthetically appealing to you,
0:30:32 because I guess my intuition with that,
0:30:34 the multi-verse would be the kind of theory
0:30:38 a jazz musician in particular would find appealing.
0:30:41 If the universe plays jazz, then it does kind of seem
0:30:44 like the multi-verse is the kind of world we might get.
0:30:46 It feels very improvisational.
0:30:48 (upbeat music)
0:31:05 – You know, jazz for me plays a couple of different roles.
0:31:07 One of the metaphors that I have developed
0:31:10 and that’s even turned into a little music collaboration
0:31:13 with my friend and collaborator, Donald Harrison,
0:31:15 who’s an NEA jazz master,
0:31:18 one of the great jazz musicians of our time,
0:31:21 is that it’s the metaphor of applying
0:31:24 a more improvisational logic
0:31:27 to interpreting some aspects of quantum mechanics,
0:31:29 so that the idea that a quantum particle
0:31:33 is not doing some probabilistic dance,
0:31:34 but it’s improvising.
0:31:36 (upbeat music)
0:31:43 – See, that’s really interesting to me.
0:31:47 I mean, I’ve heard you talk about Donald Harrison before.
0:31:51 He’s a very well-known jazz musician from New Orleans,
0:31:54 actually, really close to my home.
0:31:57 And you talk about how he wrote to you
0:31:59 about his quantum theory of music,
0:32:01 and he said, “Yeah, I don’t play the chord changes.
0:32:03 “It’s like quantum mechanics.
0:32:05 “I don’t play in the changes.
0:32:08 “I play through the changes.”
0:32:11 I don’t know what that means, but it sounds extremely cool.
0:32:12 So what does that mean?
0:32:14 And is it as cool as it sounds?
0:32:16 – It is cooler than it sounds.
0:32:20 In traditional jazz repertoire,
0:32:23 we are given a structure of a jazz song,
0:32:26 meaning that as a song unfolds in time,
0:32:28 there’s a structure, there’s a form.
0:32:29 What I mean by that is that
0:32:31 there’s some type of rhythmic structure,
0:32:34 and that rhythmic structure repeats itself,
0:32:37 and then there’s a harmonic structure as well.
0:32:40 So there’s melody, there’s harmony, and there’s rhythm.
0:32:45 And the improviser should improvise some line,
0:32:48 musical line, musically meaningful line,
0:32:50 as that structure unfolds.
0:32:53 And so one thing that we’re challenged to do
0:32:55 is what we call play within the chord changes.
0:33:00 As the chords change, we’re supposed to weave a melody
0:33:04 through those chord changes, and that’s the name of the game,
0:33:06 how one does that and the practice of doing that,
0:33:08 and there are all these different strategies,
0:33:09 maybe, of how to do that.
0:33:17 And what Donnie Harrison, who is a master in like,
0:33:19 he knows all the traditional ways
0:33:22 of playing through those changes,
0:33:24 but the beautiful thing about a person like Donald
0:33:26 is that that’s not enough.
0:33:30 He is engaged in his own research,
0:33:33 just like a scientist is, to figure out new ways,
0:33:38 new strategies of playing a jazz solo over those changes.
0:33:44 And he, in his own self-study of quantum mechanics,
0:33:47 and then, of course, in our follow-up conversations,
0:33:50 he found a lot of interesting ideas
0:33:53 in terms of how quantum mechanical things
0:33:57 like a quantum particle may actually occupy
0:33:59 a certain energy level over time
0:34:03 and how a jazz pattern could be improvised.
0:34:06 And so this idea of getting from point A to point B
0:34:07 in a musical improvisation,
0:34:12 Donald Harrison intuited that the way a quantum particle
0:34:15 actually moves through space to get from point A to point B
0:34:17 according to say Richard Feynman,
0:34:21 which is that the particle must consider all possible paths
0:34:24 as it goes from point A to point B.
0:34:27 That an improvised line, I’m now quoting Donald,
0:34:30 there’s just infinite possibilities presented,
0:34:32 and that an improvised line, basically,
0:34:35 is a consideration of all those, you know,
0:34:37 it’s closer to quantum physics
0:34:40 than the way jazz may be traditionally taught,
0:34:42 and these strategies are traditionally taught.
0:34:46 Another interesting insight into that is Sonny Rollins.
0:34:49 When I interviewed Sonny Rollins in my first book,
0:34:53 you know, the legendary sax player,
0:34:56 he said to me, you know, I practice,
0:35:00 I practice a lot, I’ve practiced a lot throughout my life,
0:35:02 but it’s very important that when I’m playing
0:35:04 that I’m not thinking at all.
0:35:07 (upbeat jazz music)
0:35:26 Yeah, look, it’s worth saying,
0:35:31 the universe isn’t exactly a jazz composition,
0:35:34 but the idea that it has some kind of
0:35:37 like functionally musical quality,
0:35:40 that’s a pretty old idea.
0:35:43 I mean, the Pythagoreans thought the universe
0:35:45 was fundamentally musical, right?
0:35:49 I mean, even Kepler borrowed this idea from them.
0:35:52 And I wish that when I was a younger person growing up,
0:35:55 that was something I was taught at the outset,
0:35:58 like when we think about our science and art curriculum
0:36:01 and say high school or even before that,
0:36:03 I wish that my science teachers
0:36:05 or my music teachers were aware,
0:36:07 I’m sure about whether they were aware of it or not,
0:36:08 that’s why I wrote this book,
0:36:09 to make people aware of it,
0:36:14 that the birth of Western science started simultaneously
0:36:19 with music and physics in this case.
0:36:21 When I say physics, I mean astronomy,
0:36:26 but when the Pythagoreans and Pythagoras as a legend has,
0:36:29 came up with this idea that the cosmos,
0:36:31 and I believe that that word was created
0:36:36 to actually deal with that which has order in the universe,
0:36:39 which in this case had to do with the planetary motions,
0:36:43 that the reason why the planets were moving
0:36:46 in the way they were had to do with music of the spheres.
0:36:51 And moving 2000s, years or so into the future,
0:36:57 that Kepler relied on this Pythagorean idea
0:37:00 of musical spheres to actually figure out
0:37:01 the elliptical orbits of the planets.
0:37:04 And in fact, he wrote down musical notes first
0:37:07 for these planets before writing those equations down,
0:37:12 that those equations came in part from a musical analogy.
0:37:15 So that there’s always been historically,
0:37:19 this intimate connection between music and the universe,
0:37:21 music and astrophysics and physics.
0:37:24 (upbeat music)
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0:38:01 – Hey Deb, what is going on with that McMuffin?
0:38:02 – Oh, it’s a mighty McMuffin.
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0:38:09 – How so?
0:38:11 – You’re not the decision-making type.
0:38:14 – Oh, I can make decisions.
0:38:18 Now should I get it with a iced coffee or a hot one?
0:38:19 – Oh, maybe both.
0:38:21 Should I order in the app or in person?
0:38:23 Should I get one hash brown?
0:38:24 – Oh boy.
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0:39:01 (gentle music)
0:39:15 – I’m curious if you have a favorite philosopher.
0:39:18 It seems to me that if you’re doing theoretical physics,
0:39:21 and you’re trying to understand
0:39:24 the origins of the universe,
0:39:29 you reach a certain point at the frontier
0:39:32 where it almost, just out of necessity,
0:39:37 collapses into poetry and metaphor.
0:39:39 Because we just don’t know,
0:39:43 and we can’t empirically wrap our arms around it.
0:39:46 So I guess what I’m really asking is,
0:39:48 where’s the boundary here
0:39:50 when you’re doing big grand theoretical physics
0:39:54 between science and philosophy?
0:39:59 – Well, I think the connecting link to that is mathematics.
0:40:01 And like, because as you know,
0:40:04 there’s a very deep connection
0:40:06 between mathematics and philosophy,
0:40:10 like mathematical logic and very abstract things,
0:40:13 category theory, and there’s a lot of set theory.
0:40:16 There’s all this way in which math
0:40:18 and philosophy and physicists,
0:40:21 the language you speak and the tool we use,
0:40:24 a big part of our tool kit is mathematics.
0:40:26 But of course, physics is not just mathematics.
0:40:31 Physics is physics and it deals with the physical world.
0:40:35 So physics is also the ideas.
0:40:38 And physics is created by humans.
0:40:41 And we’d love to think that maybe the creations
0:40:45 and physical laws are independent of us creating them.
0:40:47 But that’s another philosophical discussion.
0:40:49 But one philosopher, it’s really funny.
0:40:51 I did a lot, I almost majored in philosophy,
0:40:53 and I did over the years.
0:40:55 I tried to do a lot of reading and philosophy.
0:40:59 And one philosopher that I was influenced by
0:41:00 was Schopenhauer.
0:41:02 – Yeah, he was also obsessed with music.
0:41:05 – Oh, that I didn’t even know, I didn’t know that.
0:41:07 It turns out Schopenhauer was influential
0:41:10 on one of the founders of quantum mechanics,
0:41:12 Irwin Schrodinger.
0:41:15 But it’s funny, as I was thinking about this,
0:41:16 I read a lot of philosophers,
0:41:19 and I can’t remember anything that I read.
0:41:23 But I just remember that those things were influential.
0:41:24 I’ve also read a lot of, I mean,
0:41:27 definitely a lot of Vedic philosophy
0:41:31 and Eastern philosophy as well.
0:41:34 I found that, and again, that’s nothing new.
0:41:39 I mean, Max Planck and Niels Bohr and Heisenberg,
0:41:43 I mean, a lot of the founders of Albert Einstein
0:41:45 were very much influenced
0:41:48 by both Western and Eastern philosophy.
0:41:49 – Yeah, it’s just so interesting to me,
0:41:53 this semi-permeable border between philosophy and science.
0:41:55 I mean, even in your, I have your book in front of me
0:41:59 right now, I was reading some of it this morning.
0:42:01 And, you know, in the 14th chapter,
0:42:03 I mean, you ask a question like, now I’m quoting,
0:42:07 “For many years, I tried to get my mind around the question.
0:42:10 What can exist if time ceases to exist?”
0:42:14 That feels like a philosophy question,
0:42:17 as much or even more than a scientific question.
0:42:19 But maybe I’m just seeing that as a philosopher
0:42:22 and not as a scientist.
0:42:25 – It is a philosophy question.
0:42:29 And I think that it’s useful for physicists
0:42:31 to see what philosophers have come up with
0:42:33 in terms of that question, because I do find it,
0:42:37 like at the end of the day, like a good physicist for me
0:42:40 is you have your skillset, you have your chops,
0:42:41 whatever they may be.
0:42:43 I mean, obviously the more the merrier.
0:42:45 And then of course, you’re trying to come up with ideas
0:42:48 for yourself and part of why you have students
0:42:50 or, you know, younger people to talk to
0:42:52 is that you hope in those conversations
0:42:54 that something may come out where it might lead
0:42:55 to a new idea.
0:42:57 So we’re kind of always, I think,
0:42:59 a good physicist should fish for ideas
0:43:02 and that you should like cast a wide net
0:43:04 and then consider ideas.
0:43:06 And then obviously you get to try it
0:43:08 like a landscape of different ideas
0:43:10 and hopefully something works.
0:43:11 That’s one strategy.
0:43:14 I mean, you know, some people are good enough
0:43:16 where they can just hit the jackpot
0:43:18 and find the idea and it works.
0:43:20 Or some people may just maybe find the answer
0:43:23 by calculating their way to the answer.
0:43:25 These are all different strategies.
0:43:28 And I don’t wanna leave too many stones on turn
0:43:31 in terms of finding new sources of ideas.
0:43:35 And I think like philosophy, music, you know,
0:43:38 I love, I mean, I love talking to late people
0:43:40 about my physics and my research
0:43:42 because I sometimes find that they might say something
0:43:45 that may knock me out of the way my pattern of thought
0:43:47 and that could be useful.
0:43:48 – I will say this, you know,
0:43:53 the just talking about ideas on the frontiers, you know,
0:43:57 the physics of consciousness is a fascinating one for me.
0:44:02 I mean, we seem to have no idea how this immaterial thing
0:44:08 we call consciousness emerges from physical matter
0:44:09 from our brain.
0:44:12 Hell, we still don’t even have a good definition
0:44:13 of consciousness.
0:44:16 I mean, is this even a fruitful space for physics
0:44:17 at the moment?
0:44:21 Or is this just forever the domain of metaphysicians
0:44:25 and theologians and philosophers?
0:44:28 – I think it definitely is a deep,
0:44:33 okay, you know, thinking about that you have different fields,
0:44:35 you have different categories of fields
0:44:39 and with those things come academic and intellectual silos
0:44:42 that you have to figure out how to,
0:44:43 if you’re serious about working
0:44:45 in something like that, you know,
0:44:46 how to collaborate with people
0:44:49 and how to break through given those silos.
0:44:53 I mean, that’s those things, those realities are there.
0:44:54 So for me, writing a book
0:44:56 where I’m just, I did talk a little bit
0:44:58 about consciousness and the fear of a black universe
0:45:01 at the end, I gave myself permission
0:45:05 and I was honest about that this is pure speculation and,
0:45:08 and I was, but I would say yes.
0:45:12 I mean, I think at the heart of it, for me,
0:45:16 since our experience of consciousness is that we, you know,
0:45:20 we are housed in a physical body and we have a brain
0:45:22 and somehow we know that different states
0:45:26 of consciousness seems to be influenced by this,
0:45:28 but this piece of matter between our head
0:45:32 and our nervous system that clearly there is some link
0:45:35 between this internal experience we call consciousness
0:45:38 and the matter, but the question of course is,
0:45:41 what is the interplay between matter
0:45:43 and the organization of say,
0:45:46 and the complexity of neurons
0:45:48 and the emergence of consciousness?
0:45:50 I think for me, where the rubber hits the road
0:45:53 is that one way into this is,
0:45:56 well, the mystery of consciousness, right?
0:45:59 Could be also connected to the mystery of matter.
0:46:03 So in other words, at the level where we understand
0:46:05 how neurons fire and neural networks and all that stuff,
0:46:08 it could be that where consciousness is happening
0:46:11 is not only, it’s not to say it’s either or,
0:46:15 in the epiphenomenon of the complexity of neurons, right?
0:46:18 Consciousness seems to be running on a hardware
0:46:20 and the hardware is not just neurons, but matter,
0:46:22 but there are things about matter
0:46:24 that we still don’t understand.
0:46:26 And so the question of,
0:46:29 I think where physics could come in and may be useful
0:46:32 is to maybe find that way of connecting
0:46:34 the mystery of consciousness
0:46:36 to actually the mystery of matter itself.
0:46:40 I mean, the stuff about, you know,
0:46:44 applying quantum physics to the world at our scale,
0:46:47 you know, the world beyond just, you know,
0:46:50 subatomic particles, that’s where you get a lot of woo-woo.
0:46:53 And the impression I’ve always received
0:46:56 from serious scientists is that there’s,
0:46:58 down that road is a lot of bullshit.
0:47:00 You know, you have a lot of new agey type people
0:47:04 will look at some of the spookiness of quantum physics,
0:47:07 you know, something like, you know, superposition
0:47:09 that particles can be in different positions
0:47:12 in space and time simultaneously.
0:47:14 And somehow if that were true,
0:47:17 then I guess human beings could also be
0:47:20 in multiple places at multiple times simultaneously,
0:47:25 which seems to cut against our experience of reality.
0:47:27 But I don’t know.
0:47:30 I mean, am I being too dismissive
0:47:32 by calling all of that woo-woo?
0:47:34 Or do you think there’s some there, there?
0:47:37 – Look, there’s definitely woo-woo out there.
0:47:40 And usually when I hear that term,
0:47:43 it means usually the same way, like, you know,
0:47:46 if some people say you’re not playing jazz the right way,
0:47:49 you’re not playing within our tradition,
0:47:51 you haven’t done the work,
0:47:55 or you have an idea,
0:47:58 but you didn’t even realize that this has been considered
0:48:00 before and it’s wrong for these other reasons.
0:48:04 So maybe it speaks to a certain naivety.
0:48:07 And all of that is fine to criticize.
0:48:10 Our job is to poke holes in things.
0:48:12 So that’s part of it.
0:48:15 And you know, I tell my students and myself
0:48:16 that we have to embrace that.
0:48:18 Now, having said that,
0:48:23 I think that when I say the wave functioning universe
0:48:26 and quantum mechanics, I’m talking about new things.
0:48:29 I’m not talking about quantum mechanics as we know it now.
0:48:32 But again, quantum mechanics itself
0:48:36 and research at the foundations of quantum mechanics
0:48:39 will require us to understand something new
0:48:40 about quantum mechanics.
0:48:44 And it’s in that place that trying to ask
0:48:47 whether or not there’s something quantum mechanical
0:48:51 about our entire universe is a research question.
0:48:53 So I like to summarize it with a quote from Albert Einstein,
0:48:56 which is, if we knew what we were talking about,
0:48:57 we wouldn’t call it research.
0:49:02 But again, just like we talk about jazz and physics,
0:49:05 like the name of the game is, you know,
0:49:08 is that we try to get our chops together.
0:49:12 We’re always in a continual path to refining our skillset
0:49:15 and mastering what’s currently understood.
0:49:17 And we try our best to keep an open mind
0:49:19 to break new ground.
0:49:25 – So would you say you feel good about the future of physics
0:49:28 and where the science is going?
0:49:31 – Well, you know, I do feel good about it
0:49:34 because there’s some, I think extraordinary young people
0:49:35 that are coming on the scene
0:49:38 that I have gotten to work with and know.
0:49:42 And I think that they’re able to do things
0:49:45 and, you know, their minds are much faster
0:49:47 and sharper than mine now.
0:49:49 And I think that I’m, you know,
0:49:51 I feel optimistic about their ability
0:49:53 to take the baton and move forward.
0:49:58 There is just so much that we don’t understand.
0:50:03 And I think that this thing that’s all surprising me
0:50:06 is that just when we think something is impossible to solve,
0:50:09 for some weird reason,
0:50:13 we’ve been able to make advances in physics.
0:50:18 So I expect that to happen, even though,
0:50:20 as I’m saying all this and I look at, you know,
0:50:21 when I’m done talking with you,
0:50:25 I’m gonna go back to my work with my resource group.
0:50:30 I have no clue how to move forward on some days.
0:50:32 I am definitely at a stage right now
0:50:36 where I’m finding that I feel,
0:50:39 I myself feel very stuck in my physics.
0:50:46 And in terms of breaking new ground in my own research.
0:50:50 – Boy, that’s a, do you have a few more minutes
0:50:51 ’cause I would really love to know what…
0:50:53 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have time.
0:50:55 I would just love to know why you feel stuck
0:50:57 and what that means.
0:50:59 I mean, I mean, you do theoretical physics, obviously.
0:51:03 Cosmology, I mean, these are big, big, big questions
0:51:07 you’re wrestling with, but why do you feel stuck?
0:51:08 What does that even mean?
0:51:11 – You know, when I first started from physics,
0:51:15 I think I had this idea that maybe I will, you know,
0:51:19 find some breakthrough in the field or something like that.
0:51:22 And now I’m like, I’m just happy to publish a paper
0:51:25 and make a tiny little contribution
0:51:27 to a tiny little problem.
0:51:29 But you know, one of my mentors, Leon Cooper,
0:51:33 always encouraged me, I mean, Leon won a Nobel Prize.
0:51:34 He always encouraged me to think big
0:51:38 and to never be afraid of asking the biggest questions.
0:51:40 And you know, I have tried to do that.
0:51:43 So there’s, you know, I think that ambition
0:51:44 of trying to ask the biggest questions
0:51:47 is sometimes I don’t even know what question to ask.
0:51:48 – Yeah.
0:51:50 – But that’s part of the process.
0:51:52 And that’s where I’m at now.
0:51:57 And also, I think part of it is to find jobs for your students
0:52:00 and find ways where they themselves can have careers.
0:52:02 And there’s sometimes I put a lot of pressure on myself
0:52:05 of like, I need to find things that they can work on
0:52:09 or where they can actually, you know, have a career,
0:52:11 get a job or get a postdoc, right?
0:52:14 So those things come into play as well.
0:52:17 And also, if I actually shake things up too much,
0:52:22 or I do things that go too much against the grain,
0:52:25 then that could actually jeopardize my students
0:52:27 from actually getting a job.
0:52:30 Because they’ll say, oh, he’s a student of this guy
0:52:32 who is like doing all these things
0:52:34 that we don’t think should be done.
0:52:37 So there’s some of that going on as well too.
0:52:41 – Well, whatever you do, don’t stop playing jazz.
0:52:41 Keep doing that.
0:52:43 Keep making music.
0:52:46 – Well, of course, you know, the big fantasy
0:52:50 is that in the middle of a jazz solo, the idea comes to me.
0:52:51 But that’s more of a pipe dream, you know,
0:52:54 because I’ll get to write a third book.
0:52:57 (laughing)
0:52:57 – I love it.
0:52:58 You know what?
0:52:59 I’m gonna moonwalk out of here on that note.
0:53:00 There’s just so much here
0:53:03 and I could barely scratch the surface.
0:53:07 So I will say, once again, the title of the book
0:53:09 is “Fear of a Black Universe,”
0:53:12 an outsider’s guide to the future of physics.
0:53:14 Stefan Alexander, this was a genuine pleasure.
0:53:15 Thank you.
0:53:17 – Thanks for having me.
0:53:19 (soft music)
0:53:33 (upbeat music)
0:53:41 – All right, that was fun.
0:53:43 A little jazz, a little physics.
0:53:44 What else could you ask for?
0:53:47 (upbeat music)
0:53:50 We don’t usually use so much music in our episodes,
0:53:52 but it felt right this time.
0:53:55 Every song, but one came from Stefan’s most recent album,
0:53:57 “Spontaneous Fruit.”
0:54:00 There’s also one track from his EP, “True to Sell.”
0:54:02 We’ll put those links in our show notes.
0:54:07 As always, we wanna know what you think of the episode.
0:54:11 You can drop us a line at the gray area at box.com.
0:54:13 I read those emails, keep ’em coming.
0:54:16 And if you can’t do that, rate, review, subscribe.
0:54:18 All that stuff really helps.
0:54:21 This episode was produced by Travis Larchuck,
0:54:24 edited by Jorge Just, engineer by Christian Ayala,
0:54:26 fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch,
0:54:28 and Alex O’Brington wrote our theme music.
0:54:32 And a special thanks to Patrick Boyd and Rob Byers.
0:54:34 (upbeat music)
0:54:37 , (upbeat music)
0:54:39 (upbeat music)
0:54:42 (upbeat music)
0:54:45 (upbeat music)
0:54:47 (upbeat music)
0:54:50 (upbeat music)
0:54:52 (upbeat music)
0:54:55 (upbeat music)
0:55:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]
How is the origin of our universe like an improvised saxophone solo? This week, Sean Illing talks to Stephon Alexander, a theoretical physicist and world-class jazz musician. Alexander is the author of The Jazz of Physics and his most recent book, Fear of a Black Universe. This episode features music by Stephon Alexander throughout, from his latest 2024 album Spontaneous Fruit and his 2017 EP True to Self.
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: Stephon Alexander (@stephstem), theoretical physicist, Brown University
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