Are we in the matrix?
Physicist James Gates reveals why string theory stretches our imaginations about the nature of reality. Also, how failure makes us more complete, and imagination makes us more knowledgeable.
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Transcript for Uncovering the Codes for Reality with S. James Gates
Krista Tippett, Host: S. James Gates is a physicist, a theorist on the exotically named frontiers of superstrings and supersymmetry. These are fields where science is trying to reconcile its own most baffling contradictions. And whether you can fully comprehend string theory or not, its basic assumptions stretch our imagination about the nature of the universe we inhabit. James Gates brings this home with ideas and questions we can all chew on and be enriched by. He lets us in to the playful, creative, even spiritual, act of naming in science. He's working to evolve the cosmic language of mathematics, much as poetry evolved alongside prose, to tell the whole story of what we're made of and where we came from. And he sees codes embedded in reality, something like the codes embedded in computer programs.
Dr. S. James Gates Jr.: I remember watching the movies, The Matrix, and so the thought occurred to me, suppose there were physicists in this movie. How would they figure out that they lived in the matrix? One way they might do that is to look for evidence of codes in the laws of their physics. But you see that's what had happened to me already.Ms. Tippett: "Uncovering the Codes for Reality." I'm Krista Tippett. This is On Being — from APM, American Public Media.Ms. Tippett: Isn't it interesting that space is the word we use? It doesn't even begin to convey what you know about [laugh] what we call space now.
Sylvester James Gates Jr. is a professor and director of the Center for String and Particle Theory at the University of Maryland, where he's a Regents Professor. He's also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. I interviewed him in 2012; I also spoke with him once before, years ago, for a program on Einstein's ethics.
We talked then about the inspiration James Gates drew from Einstein's little-remembered passion for racial equality. James Gates spent part of his own childhood attending segregated schools, but he went on to become the first African-American to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major U.S. research university. And his work on supersymmetry — a feature of the universe that might help illustrate string theory — is part of the greatest controversy in physics since Einstein.
How to explain the fact that the universe seems to follow different rules at its highest levels and its smallest levels? String theorists suggests that deeper than atoms, deeper than electrons, behind quarks, filaments or strings of vibrating energies animate all the richness and diversity of the cosmos. James Gates' own early interest in science was sparked by books about rocket ships by a writer named Willy Ley, and a movie called Space Waves.
Dr. Gates: I like to tell people that, from reading the books by Willy Ley, I had my own personal big bang between my ears because, around age eight or so, you know, I had an idea about how large the universe must be and it didn't come from any great deep insight. The point was that, as an eight-year-old child, I saw these tiny dots of light in the sky and when I realized that they were places, the question was, well, gee, how far could they be if they were that small? So I just had a sense of the enormity of the size of the universe, not by any scientific or mathematical skill, but just sort of in a personal relationship sort of way. That's when I kind of knew where I was in the universe. You know, it's a very strange thing for an eight-year-old kid to come upon, but that's what happened to me.
Ms. Tippett: And you also, I understand, were reading science fiction. You had a big science life and a big fantasy life and, in fact, both of those things worked well with going into physics [laugh].
Dr. Gates: Absolutely. That drive to learn to read actually caused an intersection with another very famous name of science fiction, namely Isaac Asimov.
Ms. Tippett: Oh, right, right.
Dr. Gates: Isaac Asimov had another pseudonym called Paul French, and he wrote a series of children's books of adventures on Mars.
Ms. Tippett: Oh, I didn't know that.
Dr. Gates: Yes. And the character's name was Lucky Starr, with two R's. And my mother died from cancer in 1963, and one of the ways that I avoided having to deal with that horribly painful situation was to escape into the world of science fiction and fantasy. So that was a very powerful force impelling me to exercise my imagination. Then on top of that, we have kind of what I call a math bug in our family. My grandfather could neither read nor write, but he could do simple arithmetic. And my dad never finished high school, but he was clearly interested in mathematics. I remember watching him studying trigonometry and even some calculus as he was a soldier, particularly when he was working with artillery in the U.S. Army.
Ms. Tippett: So I wonder, when you — is it right that you wrote the first-ever doctoral dissertation at MIT on supersymmetry?...MUCH, MUCH MOREOr, for those with an auditory bent:
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Are we in the matrix? Physicist James Gates reveals why string theory stretches
our imaginations about the nature of reality. Also, how failure makes us
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