two years ago, documented it and filled it and experienced it firsthand and the nightmares and that is great, great grandfather experienced. and through doing this was able to make us understand that that trip rarely was hellish as it seems to be in tr's own personal account. that river by the way it's a river longer than the rhine, and tr took great pride in having put it on the map. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] >> that event part of the 2011 national book festival here in washington, d.c. to find out more visit loc.gov/book fast.

>> when i got into, start some ago, every person i worked with i had a rejection letter from. which was kind of cool to go to a thing the antibiotic with a dystopic and i was like what about this? in his nonfiction, ben mezrich questioned the motivation, ethics and morality of brilliant people. his account of mark zuckerberg, the greater facebook was adapted for the screen as "the social network," and bringing down household a group of mit students who won millions in las vegas. and his latest, transport tracks a possible as a candidate as he steals a nasa save that is filled with moon rocks. and now it is your chance to ask the question. called e-mail or tweed ben mezrich live on in depth sunday on c-span2. spent now on booktv, lisa randall looks at the contributions that physics and scientific thinking have made to our understanding of the

universe. this is a little over an hour. >> good evening. we will get started. if you're just coming in there are seats appear to my left. our you can stand off to the corners or find an open seat towards the back. welcome to politics and prose. thank you all for being here. i want to start just by welcoming you and saying thanks for being here on half of our new owners. and the staff here, just a collective thanks for supporting the bookstore and supporting events here tonight, being here for lisa randall and her second book, "knocking on heaven's door." so we are excited to have her here and talk about this book. so before we begin, if you're new here, i'll commit out quickly go over the format.

what's going to happen, lisa is going to present your book. she will talk about her book using some visuals as well. what we are going to do is leave the lights out because we are recording, so if you do want to kind of get to the corners you will have a pretty good view of it. but the topical about 45 minutes or so. we will have a little time for q&a from you. we look forward to your input. we will take questions from audience, a microphone here in the middle out. so if you can get to that, that would be a help and we will field questions from there. afterwards will have a book signing up here. lisa will sign books of both of her books, "knocking on heaven's door." so that's how we will go. it is a good time to silence cell phones, too. and that's how we will go. so again, really above all, just want to say thanks. it's a nice turnout and a great crowd. so welcome to politics and prose. and welcome to lisa randall.

as i said, her new book is "knocking on heaven's door: how physics and scientific thinking illuminate the universe and the modern world." lisa is a professor of theoretical physics at harvard university, and is a leading theoretical physicist and expert on particle physics and cosmology. she is one of the most highly cited and influential theoretical physicists. she has appeared in discover, the economist, among many others, many other publications. she has been one of "time" magazine 100 most influential people. as i said, "knocking on heaven's door" is her second book. her first book, "warped passages" is about the mistress of the universe and dimensions. "knocking on heaven's door" is about scientific research today, specifically at the large glider, and the author's own investigation into elementary particles, string theory and cosmology into modern physics. from the core knowledge to the outer boundaries, the larger

outer threshold of the universe. this is perfect to be sent, and we are happy she is here to do that. and again, thanks to you for being here. please help me welcome to politics and prose lisa randall. [applause] >> thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be here. so, first of all i want to make clear that i don't necessarily see this book is just a book about the large collider. i think it's a book about the nature of science. i mean, the collider and this idea is an example of the kind of sides that want to talk about. but really what i'm trying to do is explain all the more, what are the elements of thinking that go into science? that such as echo spent a lot of time talking to the collider in a concise going on there as well as was going on in cosmology and dark matter searches. but there's a lot of more

general elements. and it's funny because i actually haven't been to politics before the thought am i supposed give a political talk? [laughter] i mean, i do speak in prose. that part i ago. even in that sense i just think it's important for people quite generally to start thinking a little bit more scientifically and to understand really what it means in terms of what the role uncertainty place in terms of what it means to be right and wrong, in terms of the role creativity plays in what we do but in terms of a lot of things that we don't often associate with science but we think of it as something with plugs in in into the answer. there's a lot more going on the net. when science is happening, there's a lot more back and forth that is going on. and understand the role of uncertainty is really important, as are many other aspects of what i'm going to talk about. but because it's only a short talk and we don't have time, i have two different talks i'm

going to be giving. one is more about the collider in the physics happening there. but another is about what a concept that's important to physics and that the concept of scale. and so i'm going to begin to talk my.net skills and in the process will see some of the exciting physics along the way but keep in mind that no one want to get across is why think in terms of scale is important, not just for physics but for all of science and really going to more gender. so with that i will actually begin the actual talk. again, thank you for having me here. so, the title is "knocking on heaven's door." nine out of 10 people like the title. some of these people think i'm passionate really what i want to get across is the title. it's really what we are doing but i wanted to convey the fact that we sort of have this very established base of those but we're trying to go beyond. we're trying to probe the edges. we're trying to get beyond that

and that's what size is doing is always trying to get a little bit beyond. that's what i had in mind. what i say when physics and scientific thinking of the way, i had in mind it's both physics that's relevant of course to understand the nature of our universe but scientific thinking has much more broader application and its worth people understanding. so i'm just going to begin with a quote from a song. was so small to you is a large to me. last thing i will do a remake to see. i guess that's the goal of my talk. part of what i'm talking about is why these very small objects that we will see get study and kind of physics i do on particle physicist primarily, why these objects are relevant to understand the nature of the world, but also by focusing on small issues can sometimes eliminate some bigger things and how to separate them out.

some going to just start with a nice photograph someone gave me. at a photograph in pairs, as you might guess. and you can tell because has a lot of iconic pairs future. it has the eiffel tower in the background. it has a kiosk, advertising performance. and it has midnight in pairs. which is very typical. so it's kind of a typical peers seem. so what you want to get across here? the thing i want to get across is what you see depends on how you look at things. what resolution you have, what scale you choose to focus on. so if you think about the eiffel tower you can look at it from very far away, in which case if you just had a map of france he would hardly notice it was there. that would not be awakened at about the eiffel tower. you would know of its existence

in same way many aspects of physics we don't know about into we really zoom into that scale. and, of course, i could look very close and then i would see nothing that conveys the sort of beauty and elegance of the entire tower. i could see the grid of the anbar, i could study the detail of the structure but if i want to stay the eiffel tower, there's an appropriate scale of that. i don't necessary want to take into account all the little details but, of course, i could zoom in even closer into the iron and look at athens and molecules at that's not what i think of one of think of the eiffel tower. i think of a particular skill. but what i really wanted you to see in a slide which is of course much more important is if you send in you would see my name on it. so what i'm going to spend a talk doing is getting to the point of understanding how my name ended up there. if you look right here, there's

my name, lisa randall. okay. so we'll come back to that at the end of the talk. for now let's just think about skill. i think it's an important concept. one of the reasons i want to focus on this, when i talked about war passages, i think a lot of people in those who are extreme interest in that kind of science i do, it's kind of a misconception about how does this relate to the kind of things we see, exotic ideas of extra dimensions, but how can there be a continuous transition from these very exotic ideas that apply to very tidy scales and what was he on human scales? our intuition is guided by what we see on human skills. when we think of other types of physics, and people think it's magical or it's not real. it's not what they see in their daily life. anyone has seen an optical

illusion knows that you can't always trust your eyes. in fact, what you can trust the things you can measure and record and make many measurements and to consistently and get the same answer. it might not be what's intuitive in the sense it isn't what you see every day, when you walk down the street but that doesn't mean it's not there. it just means it's not obvious to us as human beings. i think that's important to get across that the physics describing the world whether or not we as humans being can't interpret. and so what i'm saying in this light is that our vision, there's a visible light spectrum, it's relatively narrow and, of course, if you go to scale that are smaller than the few hundred and nanometers were talking about, you're not going to be able to literally see something. visible light is not going to have sensitivity to see things. that means when we see things

from we're not seeing in the way we traditionally do. it has to be something we would consider. the history of measurement going from direct to indirect measurement is really interesting to even at a time of galileo when he had his telescope, microscope, this is the first time people were using lenses as an enemy decide -- intermediate devices. since then we've had more and more distant in some sense from what we see. but there's nonetheless a very rigid connection between what these devices are measuring and what we see. the physical universe evolved in an enormous range of scales far greater than the mounted to the kilometer that we can wrap her head threat. many different scales. so first before i go on i just want to take a very brief tour of the scale because so we can set the landscape. know what we're talking about. so of course we could start as very large-scale.

principle, skills could be infinitely large but we have no idea how big it is but we consider, talk about the size of the known universe instead of visible universe to the universe that we can see given the speed of light and given the length of time the universe has existed. and up at the top, it's as intense and. when you talk about the universe just be careful because it's two ways things can be smaller. you can be looking back into the earlier universe, and so i have on the slide the universe, when radiation was intended but, of course, we have many objects in the sky and those objects are very sizes. we could talk about galaxies, the solar system, talk about the earth orbit, the sun. as many different sizes and its spending a huge range of skill. one thing that's interesting to about all these scales is that it's the same laws of physics that are applying over the skills. we are not find we need to adjust the laws of physics as we

go to different scales. if we go to high density we might need to use relatively but basically we're using the laws of gravity, that we're all familiar with. it's a little bit different in principle if you look at smaller scale. because we think of going out big but you can also go inside. now, of course, a lot of that is much, much harder to actually visit allies. it's harder to visualize the small scales. that is a challenge to me as a writer to try to convey what's going on on these small scales. ..

that picture is representing a large hydrant collector. there's a frontier scale in terms of what we can look out with experiments. that is the frontier energy scale for experiments and that is 10 tonight t. meters, 10 to 17 centimeters come a far smaller than anything we can see. allies, we are about to see the distant skills and experiments being performed there. in this chair, i also talk about other skills. skills are even smaller than the skills of large hydrant collector can explore. many skills you can think about. these are not being experimentally explored in fact,

there's probably a limit to the scale we can talk about and i'll come back to that later. there is this enormous range, even below. so we are probing this incredibly small scale right now. but that is not even near the end of the scales they might explore. one question we want to keep in mind is that we talk about things about design notes? a few things are striking they appeared on this that is a lot of information. we are covering 62 orders of magnitude scale. how do we keep track of everything going on? furthermore, different physical description center. we say appears in classical mechanics first time scales,

quantum mechanics further scales, we might be to have something called quantum gravity, which can guide quantum mechanics and gravity in a way that would work over the entire range of scales. so what is going on? we want a theoretical tool for organizing information that is what businesses do. we were told for organizing information known as the effective theory. i want to get across to you what they mean by this that theory. so what do you mean? the solution sounds obvious and then sent. there's other stuff out there, but let's just keep track of what we need to keep track of. but keep track of the effective quantities relative to observations. that is to say if i can't measure something, maybe i don't have use that in my description. maybe i can just absorb it and bundle it up into the quantities that i can measure them that turns it into a tactical problem where you don't get caught with the necessary details.

so i think this is kind of a generally obvious concept issues all the time without realizing it. if you want to thank politics & prose -- if you start from sufficiently far away you might want to first in the. so you have a map where politics & prose does not show up on the map on the left. there's a very different scale you are looking at their head when you look on the right-hand side would you point to do with to do the military road. so which do see focusing. cases you keep track of each individual street, but in that you just keep track of the larger workable structure. and that is how we can do it. if we try to find her way across the country is in a street map, that would be kind of impractical. nonetheless we all know we can get there using the map on the left and when we need to penicillin in on the map on the rate. and i'm sure many of you come from different backgrounds.

and it's a very general way of thinking. you identify the scale for the problem at hand. if each et cetera share company might do close reading where you focus on individual words or you might just focus on the big picture is a story. in biology, we now see that some people will do molecular biology, but then you integrate the information into some sort of lurcher bigger picture. you might have some system in psychology and every kind of notice. he may focusing on individual elements or you might try to put it together in the big picture. and it wouldn't hurt to think about what's going on in the world today. so let's just take the simple physics example. i want to figure out where the ball lands. i am not going to think of the ball in terms of its atomic structure. and certainly not going to work about the quirks and that runs inside. i will think of it as a ball and

that worked fine. actually, that's the way physic works. i'm going to be clever in it nor the quantum structures inside. he just figured out what happened. the measurements made at the time would never be able to distinguish the fact that he was involved in the fact that its atomic structure. it would be completely irrelevant. even now when we know if the underlying structure from which don't use it when we calculate the structure of the ball. we are not going to be using it for calculating the ball. it just doesn't make a difference. in some sense, both theories are correct. you can say quantum mechanics is the more fundamental theory. that is what's really going on. in fact, in principle, physics is an approximation of quantum physics, but in some sense it is entirely correct for the uses you would want to do.

you can send a mansion in use in in classical physics. soap works. it's effective. if you don't measure anything that tells you the difference, then you're not going to need to use it. but of course, the history of physics is making progress. what happens is you finally come to a point where it breaks down and you need to do something different. so what happens when you do that is feel. it's absorbed into the new theory. it's not necessarily wrong, but it won't apply over the entire machine parameters you can think about it that's really how it works. and that's what is important misstating when you you make a measurement, what is the accuracy with which i've made the measurement? it's the little uncertainty that is left over where there is room for something new. if you don't have the measuring tools, if you're not looking at scales you might not care, but at some point you get there and find out something new going on

in that early physics progressives. but once you think of the physics are doing today in that context. so this is what i just said, the distance in this case, distance scale is essential as an organizing tool. it really make calculations. again, you would never want to estimate the trajectory of a bond quantum physics. you'd never get the answer. so, as i said, the effective theory idea is the key to progress and that's what we always have in the background. everyone is using effect if there is all the time. this is the businesses give it a name. and for face-to-face, it's a systematic thing. we can say exactly what the uncertainty of mass with a finite number of parameters that we can make addictions within the effect it. we can also tell when it's going to break down. it's a very systematic way of doing what we all do intuitively. sometimes the.

the smaller scale is known, in which case he might derive what is in your effective theory for more fundamental physics and sometimes it and you can just work in terms of those quantities themselves. so you always want to keep the old ideas as long as they are correct. sometimes things could turn out to be wrong. if you have ideas established over time that makes many successful predictions, they are right in a sense. and then you advance when find some new or when they cease to apply. in this case, if only distance scale. so, we say atoms inside the ball, but even within the atom and this is also an excuse to make sure everyone knows what is inside an atom, you find a smaller structure. when you probe inside an atom, despite its name in itself is not fundamental. of course you know it's made of nuclei with electrons going

around and those nuclei are not fundamentally there. they are protons and neutrons. the protons in neutrons are not fundamental. there are checks out quirks, which are inside the protons and neutrons. the quarks are held together through a forest known as a strong force and that is what we have agree of a proton or neutron. i want to point out when i wrote my first book i realized i didn't read many of these books, i thought i should leave series you. say let's have one book and it was funny because it was written in 1947. a very good at, but there's a fantastic quote in it. i'll let you think about it for a minute to see why it's so fantastic. in spite of the rather large number of indivisible that an classical physics, we are left with three essentially different entities, protons, collect from andy johns. that is, it seems we have actually had the bottom in our search for the basic elements of which matters for.

so i hope some of you see the irony in this quote. i mean, they just discovered this new element.okay, we have the answer. somehow we found a smaller scale. and it's very unlike you would say any of us are living at the time when the really got the answers. as we develop tools to look inside, we find there's new structure that keeps happening. it would be rather incredible if we had found the bottom. and so, i do find it ironic in a time when we are so excited about having found this new structure he could dismiss the idea that could be further structure we just didn't have the tools it defined. of course i say no, not only are their neutrons, but there's also quarks inside as we just discussed. they're kind of interesting because they are theoretical motivations, but they were verified by experiment. but the other important thing that gets lost because the

physics things is to know. even though it sounds so abstract, we believe the connection between it erie and the experiment and we have a unifying framework for which we can make many predictions that were. that's what the standard molecule particles does. just about quarks, particles called leptons and forces to which they had tracked and there's many ways it's been tested ahead of the proficient. and we're looking now to go beyond it. so how do we go beyond the? this is where we're looking at something called the large hydride collider, lhc. large means large. hi john is a general name for objects interact via the strong force but protons and it's colliding together bundles the protons at very high energies and it is colliding and that's why it is a collider. it's not a very pretty name, but it's a name and it's a large hydride collider.

so what you have is this huge underground tunnel. actually, 27 kilometers in circumference. there's actually a few things that protons get accelerated when they finally collide together at really high energies in the collider. in my book i joke that i don't like to use superlatives, but you're forced to use superlatives because it really is the highest energy machine, highest intensity machine. everything that went into it is the coldest place on earth that is the amazing vacuum. everything about it is reaching extremes to try to get to his high energy and his high intensity as we can do with the available to allergy. on an industrial scale. i'm just going to show you a little bit about what happened. it goes around some of the rings the money goes around the lhc ring. the protons and go down this tunnel. in this tunnel you could walk

around. i have walked around it. here the protons center in a collision region and around the collision region, they have experiments. when the protons collide they go outward through the experiment. so the various layers as you go out transversely or measuring various aspects. not only is the lhc and amazing machine, but within our amazing tech shares. the ones i am most interested in are what are called general-purpose detect uris. the idea is that there is something you will find it, or what it is. they have different players to measure charge, momentum, energy, measure whether it's an interactive strong worse and that's what detectors do. we're excited about what's going on there. we know about the standard model. were trying to answer questions that go beyond the standard model. but of those questions? what do we think we might learn

their? well, one of the things we're pretty sure we will learn is how to particles acquired mass, fundamental mass? that sounds at the strange thing, but it turns out that in the new radical description of these particles, if he didn't have this extra mechanism which you might've heard of called the higgs mechanism made after the physicist peter higgs, if you just wrote down the tier of massive particles would make nonsensical predictions at higher energies. it just wouldn't make sense. the theory can't be that possible. there has to be something more interesting going on in the more interesting thing is called the higgs mechanism which not explain in detail but i have a whole chapter where he really explain what it means in terms of particles of acquiring mass. in addition to that, there's another puzzle, which is particles get their mass, but why are the masses but they are? what sets the scale for the

masses? in fact, it is a real puzzle if you just use quantum field eerie, which is what we use that combines together quantum mechanics to be particles of physics. it's what we do and we believe it's ray. if you calculate how have you think these should be, you would find there is a discrepancy of 16 orders of magnitude. so to make the theory work, looks like you have to do an enormous statue what we call fine-tuning. now, i'm glad you're laughing because we think it's laughable, too. we don't think it's what's really going on. there has to be more interesting structure they are. the more interesting structures unsanitized about in my previous book that could be an extension of base types in the train as supersymmetry or could be something as exotic as extra dimension of space. we could be finding evidence that bad if it does answer this question of why masses are what they are it should have testable

as is a large hydride collider. these are the two things we think it's going to do. one is understand the higgs mechanism, what it is that implement it. and also, what is it against particles as mass? it seems very likely if something rather interesting and the consistence theories we have but i've certainly had these very interesting aspects that can tell us more about the nature of space-time. the other thing we might do with the large hydride collider is going about the nature of dark matter. that's not necessarily true, but it does turn out. what a start matter? dark matter is fast like we have. it aggregates. it calms, but it doesn't interact with plates. it may interact gravitationally, but not light which makes rdc. recall that dark matter, but it's really transparent matter because we do see dark things.

it doesn't interact with light at all. nonetheless, maybe it has a little bit of interaction with the stuff we see. a compelling reason to see that if it has a mass that were talking about the lhc is exploring rep articles require masses not like you have the right amount of dark matter in right now experiments out there looking that kind of thing that has been mass being explored at the large hydride collider. it has the potential to tell us quite a bit about the nature of what's out there. also it's not just looking for particles. it's really looking for forces and descriptions. what are the fundamental interactions that govern the operation of our universe? but of course, many of you have also heard about other questions. i want to emphasize questions that won't necessarily be explored into experiments. in fact we don't know how to

explore those cases, but some people nonetheless are studying to theory and one of the questions is what would be a consistent series to come by quantum mechanics to come by quantum mechanics to come by quantum mechanics to come by quantum mechanics to do without answering this question. again, go back to the affected filter idea. it is not having any impact on any experiments were doing because it's this fundamental underlying structure that we not get measuring. that means we can use quantum mechanics and relativity to predict things depending on whether we look at large or small scales. it is only when we get to these very, very tiny scales, 33 centimeters which is far beyond the 10 to minus 17 centimeters or we get to enormously high energies that she would need to really know the answer to these questions if you are should do an experiment. nonetheless the fact we don't know how to make addictions

tells us that there is a theory that underlies what we see. so there's definitely a question. it's not a question that will necessarily have a set at the experiments were doing, which is in fact it's very invisibility which makes it hard to see. the theory can't tell the difference of its fundamental screen for fundamental particles that are hard to measure, but it's also why we do experiments and interpret them in terms of our effective theory, which you understand. and i'm just going to mention for the fun of it that it even seems like there could be final short distance frontier since his explored all the distances. it looks like at this point there's a distance scale known as the plane scale. it's also in the scale assisted with quantum gravity, but it's also we don't even know what

principle if i were to do, how can i make a measurement out of scale. how would i do it? when i talk about small distant scales, we think about high energies. why do we do that? if you think of a high-energy rays, it isolates a lot. a very short wavelength if you have a high energy wave of these many oscillations. a short wavelength you can probe small structures because he needs a variation on a scale in order to be able to probe that structure. if you have low energies in a big wavelength do a deal to measure anything within it. but generally we think they got too high energies we can prove short distance structure. but the planck scale that breaks down for very interesting reasons. if you were to go to a high enough energy to build to probe smaller than the scale can you party for some much energy inside such a small scale do you have a black hole.

if you look: add more energy it just gets bigger and bigger. so even in principle, we don't know how to really study the short distances. it's not relevant to anything going on today, but it's a very juicy games that seems there's a limit or could be a limit to where we would actually talk about space and dimensional terms. i figure completing the stars gala should tell you that little nugget. but let's come back to what we're doing today. we expect is why the lies beyond this question so we don't have answers to necessarily have to require the massive where the masses with there are? so we hope by studying a higher energies, a new regime we have not yet explored in greater precision reducing uncertainty will be able to see the telltale sign that tell us what lies beyond the standard model? so we use effective theory says what is known as the tv scale, the large hydrant collector is exploring.

tv have to do with the lack trying voles. and maybe will find more fundamental description. maybe we'll find substructure we haven't yet explored. so the challenge is to measure precisely enough that we see the effect these theories fail. that's what i understand the theory, when we understand what it's true that misfired and revealed the more fundamental description or evidence for that. so i'm going to just say one theory that i've were time. in order to do that i want to tell your little more about scale. i'm not going to go into detail, but i want to get a picture of the exciting thing we might hope to learn with a large hydrant collector. now go back and tell you. okay, the first question since were talking about scale. to me it's an absolute distance scale. and it eerie agenda reductively

tells us how that works. in fact, we tested the energy differences. that's probably what you learned in high school. the absolute value tells you about the nature of space-time that tells you about the nature of space-time they telling you about the magics. let's think about what a metric days. that check is meaning for scales. so basically we have a ruler. if i say some to a park, that would mean anything. two miles, two kilometers, what do i need? if i ever worried establishes unit that i can tell you. the metrics tell you what that number means in terms of an actual distance. but there's something else going on a miniature tells you about the curvature of space, which has to do with angles between the. is it like a sphere? is it like a saddle on a horse? is it just flat like the tabletop? that's also important information.

of course it's very hard to picture the curvature of three-dimensional space, so i don't recommend she do that necessarily, but we can do about what curvature means because we can abet them in three-dimensional space and see what it looks like so you can positively, negatively and five service on these pictures. in that way we would have curvature is important because it tells us about nature. we think about particles going to recur safe in allowing the path within the space and that mimics the effects of gravity. for example, if i had to use tunneling here, say something coming and it would be attracted to the center so they can understand attraction for us in terms of warping of space-time around the planet, for example. so basically energy warps a spacer is curvature to the space and the curvature tells how gravity will affect some a moving through that time.

and that's what this is showing. so if you've had some and that's what this is showing. so if you've had some course again it's a is showing. so if you've had some course again it's a two dimensional analyses. it gives you a flavor for what's going on but you can imagine if something were to come through it be that towards the center. on how attractive it is depends on how heavy. if you have a high mass neutron, it will be curved much more and have much stronger gravitational attraction. the black hole could be more. so the thing i'm going to tell you about briefly and probably will be a little confusing because i had to write an entire book to explain them, but i just want to give you a flavor. but we considered is the idea that there could be not just the three dimensions we know about, but actually an additional dimension space we don't see. why we don't see it could be many different reasons, but probably the most intuitive as it could be very tiny.

in this space could be so warped we don't see that dimension. nonetheless it could have physical release and could tell us about gravity. it could be that space-time itself is warped or curt in such a way that how you measure things depends on where you are and that's what i want to about what scale is. so it could be that things very heavy use of gravity would have a big influence among what is called the gravity being here. as they move through the extra dimension, it could be that the scale changes. that is actually what rob sondermann and i found. we saw in this context of having an extra dimension beyond what we see an three-dimensional world at the end of it. so the brand stands for membrane. it's a lower dimensional service and higher dimensional space. they could be found in an extra

dimension and it could be that we live just on the weak brain so it looks three-dimensional to us. the gravity could extend to the other dimension. that fact could explain why masses are what they are because it could be we are living in the portion of extra dimensional space, or masses and ip what they are and not this much bigger value that we think we calculated when we use quantum field theory. it should be confusing, so don't feel badly if it's confusing. it's a very exciting possibility aloud when this see the gravity of dimensions. the thing i want to emphasize here is as exotic and crazy as this idea might sound because it is answering the question about mass at the large hydrant collector is exploring, we really have a chance of knowing whether this is right by doing measurements at the large hydrant collector, even something as exotic as this worked dimensional theory. and this is just to say, why do

we even bother considering extra dimensions? way we've got their? one reason is the spirit of inquiry. if you have a baby in a cryptic scorcher dimensions, but then my older sister would always try to climb out of her crib. they want to explore the third dimension. they want to explore the other dimensions. that when it's obvious it's there, but there could be other dimensions we don't see it we are only going to know about them if we explore them. we don't know for sure they don't exist. we could only find it if they do by entertaining the possibility they exist in saying what happened if they did. einstein's theory of gravity works for any number of dimensions. he doesn't only work for three dimensions space. it doesn't tell us the answer to how many dimensions there are. another reason is actually string theory. string theory combines quantum mechanics and gravity, but it is only consistent if there's extra dimensions of space.

so if you're a string theorists come you're forced to consider the possibility there could be extra dimensions. the other reason is the one i just gave you. i've possibility of explaining connections among physical parameters of our universe and that makes it worth exploring. maybe it's hard to find the answer. people have been looking for the answer to this question and smart physicists have been looking for a few decades now. there is no theory obviously so simple and beautiful. so it was worth considering is slightly more exotic possibility and then telling the experimenters had to look for it. that is one of the rules we as theorists play. we can say this with the answer, this is what you should find that the experiments of a large hydrant collector is tough, so it's good to have targets and see what it is they went to look for. and this is again the idea that gravity could be very strong on the gravity brain and very weak on the week grain where we live and you know that because my cousin is there, so this is

where we lived in gravity could be much weaker than it is on the gravity brain. and here is the experimental signal, just to tell you i'm not treating you. there could be particles that travel the extra dimension. we don't see an extra dimensions, so what would we see? we the particles are the properties of ones we know about. but they would seem to have bigger mass because we would interpret this momentum as the extra dimension nice because we don't see that dimension. what the experiments are looking for are particles that are properties that once we know about, but they are heavier. looking for heavier. if you ask a heavy they should beat him again this is the right asked for the large hydrant collector to explore because it is answering questions about particle masses we know about. so in this particular scenario, if it is answering this question comes a large hydrant collator should find kk particles.

so these are a lot of ideas. that's a lot of stuff. but i think for me it was important to say how the surge of our conceptual ideas about scale, right and wrong, combined together with what all the time and were actually doing science. i think it's really important. maybe we'll even show it to be real and it certainly is created endures. i thought it would end the top by talking of other applications of these ideas in our projects because it was a lot of fun. i actually think it is a good time to be thinking about the intersection of art and science and i don't think all of it is great. some of it is really interesting because it circumvents words the culture of the time and it's always interesting scientific ideas and it's interesting to do that. so we're going to briefly mention a gallery show i co-curated and also i'm going to come back to what i mentioned at the beginning.

so the show we did was called measure for measure. here is the idea we had. a lot of the time we enter site is the take apart and try to make some science to look artistic retakes on scientistic idea can say is there any scientific? what if you took something they could both look at an skillet is one of them. it's central to the artists are thinking is essential to the way scientists are thinking. so we work with the los angeles art association put out a call and ask them to try to incorporate some of the ideas, but also a scientist to think about. one of the really important ideas is the idea we thought earlier that if you look at small scales, things could look different than they do in large scales. when i look at this table i don't see items, i see a table. attacks are able to probe inside of the see something very different.

so i'll give you a couple of samples briefly about people came up with. one is looking at the tree itself. if you look at the bar, right, of course it doesn't really give you the feel of the large sequoia tree like the eiffel tower when i started off. i just like showing this because i think it is fantastic. she is alice in wonderland. she took books that have something and she's actually carving the pictures so they become one big thing. so you have this thing that's an integrated union about the pictures. so you have individual pictures that turns into something very different when it's all put together. it looks like just some pop art thing. it's actually pictures of her face that looks xmi staring at staring at you when you're that close. so it's all integrated for various features. you see something different if

you look at the tiny scale if you're standing right next to it. a few of the resolution to see that or look on larger scales. there's a number of other pieces which were fantastic. but the other thing i want to tell you about is what we call the project evaporated that we've had. so when i wrote my first book, war passages about extra dimension of space idea, i just briefly outlined. and he read it and he is a composer who works at eircom. he is wanted to do something about the intersection of art and science for my 2 cents as a motivation and he wanted to motivate expanded his repertoire. he liked the idea of working as a physical theory. i just finished writing this book, but i worked hard to work his ideas into linear fashion. as such illiterate to be able to say you could have many different voices. music, art, words and try to give an idea.

of course you're not teaching a lesson, but try to give an idea what the physics is about. but also as importantly is why are we doing this? why explore? what we think there's more out there? we end up breaking this opera, theater at the pompidou sunamerica which is why we have a speech that i was about this question at the difference between someone who thinks they have all the answers who lives in a three-dimensional world if somebody thinks there's more and went out into this higher dimensional world. i am just going to end in place some of it because it is kind of fun. ♪ so, it was actually a stage reading and they moved around a little bit. and she is able to explore the extra dimension and he is in the lower dimensional world. and her voice is very different than his and that is one of the things he wanted to explore, to be old to go in and ask for. so he is -- matthew ritchie has

this image he likes to use. so the baritone is really in this lower dimensional world and she goes out and explores and he doesn't understand why she would want to do that. why can't you just find the answers here? it's also about what experiments do is the difference between someone who could go explore something is someone who stays home and how can they eventually pieced together that same information? how can they believe it when they can't go in and explore? so oneworld was more black-and-white and she has this technique because it is at the pompidou center so there wasn't screens for the orchestra was behind us. and you can see her world is green mayor. might be hard for you to see in this world is a little more black-and-white. and so i am not going to go through the whole thing. so i have to say it was pretty

fun writing this thing has seen people think about it. it really was kind of beautiful to watch them put together the story. nuc issues physically explain this extra dimension he can get to and she's fascinated by. and they actually wanted equation. i was a little uncomfortable, so told the composer if you want to pick out equations, i will fit in there. so he went and figured out which ones he wanted. so actually one of the things that was kind of interesting is a lot of the time when you see it art or music about scientists, they very rarely show them doing science. so it was fun to have even an abstract way a little idea of what the science that is going

on. so i will just conclude. i'll let it play out by saying that i think it is pretty clear. why do we think there is more there? every time we have the, we find there is more there. we have these definite questions that we know there should be answers to. so it's really a very exciting time because the large hedgerow collector is working on exploring energies. they really are probing some of the things we think are there and were trying to fit it all together and that's what makes it so exciting. so this is just like the picture we happen to see when i was there. i like it because it conveys percentage of the lower dimensional world and its rich three-dimensional world.they are and the sort of rich world that was fair. i actually didn't know at the time, but it turns out the

picture is the château t-bond, which is near the large hedgerow collider so it seemed appropriate. so i'll just let this play out or maybe even stop it and say thank you. [applause] >> thank you, lisa. i think would take some questions -- [inaudible] >> thanks, lisa. in a recent new science, lisa grossman talks about the small unexplored range at the l.a. fee of between 1:15 and 1:45. if you could electron volts -- >> you're talking about cakes.

>> rate. if the higgs turns out not to be there does that affect your thoughts on a theory with an extra dimension for two? >> i try to separate out issues. one is what is the particle mass? and one is -- one thing that is interesting. let me focus. right now people are getting a little worried release they say we get worried because they are closing in on the mass range. that's at the large hydronic collator is designed to do. it has only one massive it is out there and it's supposed to find out what it is. if you asked people before they turn on the large hedgerow collector what they thought enough to be, most would've thought it was this value that is not yet been tested. without any additional data they would've said if you really believe that was right, you wouldn't be at all disturbed now. these are not the masses i thought it should be at and they haven't explored it yet. why is it still deserving? until we have experiments, no one really knows the answers.

you can say i think the mass might be 116 ged. but i could be wrong. so maybe you'll feel safer if there's a little bit of buffer room and that could more values. the fact is a lot of values are now not possible, so it is zoning in on the region we think his interest in. over the course of the next you remake of the the answer to whether the conventional come the simplest version is fair. one of the things they talk about is why we do this search. we don't actually know, even if the higgs mechanism is right, we don't know what it is that implements the hicks mechanism. it could be the simplest model that gives predictions that we can really know very well because they higgs interacts with massimino's interactions precisely what heavier particles more for example because they have more mass. but it could be something a little more settled that is underlined this higgs mechanism.

if that is the case, it is not clear that the experiment so far would be testing it. it could be the case of some different or it could be heavier that has a stronger interaction. so i view that we learned about the future. after all, right now we can say -- i can't pretend that we don't know what it is that consistently gets particles are passed to all of us cannot fathom no one has an answer to it. a lot of people really think they higgs mechanism is right. but the question is what it is precisely that isn't demented. >> if i can ask another one. in the future, as some point i guess the lhc will probably run out of things to look for it. but will it be the argument for building a larger accelerator? >> okay, so right now i myself would feel much more sanguine that we would be able to answer

all these questions about the higgs that you just ask, the extra dimensions if we had three times the energy. i mean, it's a very rough argument. we know the energy rating should appear, but we don't know precisely the energy where they should appear. rss theorists come a factor of two is sort of the same theory. from an experimenter's point of view uconn from a regime where you can definitely find it to a regime where you don't have any hope at all. for the large hydronic collateral to exploration, but it's not clear that it will explore everything because you need a lot of energy. so the large hydronic collator would start making that 25 years ago -- over 25 years ago. since then we've learned a lot that seems to point to things being heavier than people might have guessed that. that is the argument that the real answers might even be a little bit higher energy. i'm not just doing a copout. all of it is the same general shame is just technology as they talk about in the book.

it is the size of the tunnel existed that determine what the energy would be for the large hedgerow collider. consistent with magnets adzuki protons rotating around administering. they said what is the energy of a sound theory? what is the energy would really like to study? they said we are going to build a ring that is big enough that it existing to elegy we can get there. so here we were forced. as a compromise between what we want to do what we could do with technology. and so, there could actually very interesting experiment for this technology. >> i have a hard time conceptualizing anything as small or short as 10 to the minus 17th, so what does a physicist think she is lucky not when something is that small and dimensions? >> i guess the first thing is let's stop using the word look

because we are not looking i tried to emphasize that in the beginning. we are not seen with their eyes. we make indirect measurements to tell us properties of what is there so we can conceptualize and work it out mathematically. if that is different than seeing it. and so i think a lot of people tend to think that's the only way to understand something is if you see it. i'm very happy to just have everything be consistent and understand that through the fact that there are predictions that work. and even words to describe it. [inaudible] >> well, you are brain classes, so you're actually seeing someone indirectly. the question is where do you draw the line? so we are used to that we think. but it doesn't mean it is not real. it just means we have to be careful when we interpret it. as we know now, as we understand

biology better and better come astral ions are in some sense a deferment elegy, too. so when we think of it as some in happening, but coors the process fire burning is a lot of processing going on. some of it is deceptive in fact. so again, it is guided by what we see and that's what i try to get at the beginning. there's a lot of stuff out there that we just don't have are in tuition her. >> high, as the mother of my daughter as an engineer in the end mother of three daughters, one who astarte expressed an interest in being a scientist, could you speak to women in the field of science. are they going into that field in larger numbers? >> i think they are your family.

>> as president obama says, what do you think is going to be the outcome if we fail to do more investment in education and science as well as in just research in science as country? >> well, i think that's an easy question to answer. i think we all know that the failure is. we can figure it out scientifically because we can look around the globe in the would have been in the countries or they don't invest in science and education. most of us would not like those results. so i don't agree if and how to do. in many cases we can do the measurements and see what happens. so i think it's incredibly important we do that. i think there are more. in physics it still hasn't changed as much as in some other field. and i don't have a great answer to why that is. i didn't know i wasn't supposed to do it, so i think to the

extent people don't know they're not supposed to do that, that's very helpful advice are not properly socialized, you do really well. so i don't really have an answer. >> what would you say encouraged you? >> it was good and i liked it. as i said, i didn't know i was supposed to do it so i did it. >> thank you. >> i was just wondering, has there been anything that the lac has showed up? is there anything new that you know now since it started working? >> mostly what we know is a lot of things are wrong. this is important because when you do experiments, they really do have to rose. even galileo knew when he first started doing experiments that you can verify qa.

but it's important to progress is ruling out theories. in this case -- in some cases it's rolled out ideas and in some cases it is ruled out various regimes and massive interaction strengths. zero that is progress because it's telling you you can't get away with anything at all. so we know a lot more. it should be borne in mind that people don't all seem to realize. the lhc is not running at full energy of intensity. it will cool down for a year or so. so right now, we are not yet at the energy is forever completely confident. it's actually remarkable how much it has done given the energy it hasn't given the way it's going. they are getting more marfan said the fact will be able to cover the entire hicks regime at least is a possibility is doing incredibly well. when it comes at higher energies and will start looking for discovery most like me. [applause]

>> can backweb, political women and american democracy. how did you decide what to include in this where? >> my coeditors and i organized on the annenberg foundation the project on american democracy at the university of notre dame that we would convene by our estimation the best scholars on women in politics in the u.s. not only in the u.s., but scholars who are working on u.s. women in politics. so we brought together a range of people because his research review well and convene for a two-day conference at notre dame come after which at that conference we discussed other manuscripts to constitute the chapters of this book and had

some commentary about it and discussion and put it together as an added collection, which cambridge university press purchased in 2008. >> described the rule of women in this book. >> are several emphases in the boat here at first about we are not looking at public-policy per se. we're not looking at women in the executive because even in 2008, there associate women and not yet a major thematic candidate for the nomination for president. so very few women at the executive level which meant the research wasn't there to really support a good discussion. finally, we didn't address women in the judiciary. we looked at behavior of feminist voters, behavior women for office does state and national office. behavior of women within political parties. behavior of women was selected to office. we also have huge factors and

the gendered nature of u.s. political institutions as well as u.s. politics for women in politics in the context of comparative politics. that is, what does the situation look like in the u.s. compared to the rest of the world? it's not so pleasant actually. we have one of the least propitious, least advantageous electoral systems at the national level for women, which is a simple member plurality system with some modifications that the state level. we also have only two major political parties, which are informal and their internal construction, have no clear formal instructions for becoming a candidate, offered very little clear structural means by which women can work the party so to speak to increase women's candidacies. there's lots of disadvantages women have. >> so in relation to the political party, as a woman

voter, what are the findings related to encouraging participation directly related to women? >> does interesting things about women in politics that make women a demographic category. there are more women than men in the u.s. citizenry about intellect. secondly, women are slightly higher for legislation rates than men and women turn out a slightly higher percentages than do men. the larger absolute number of women combined with finance heightened turnout makes for a big electoral impact. women also are disproportionately democratic. this is true across all age groups and is also true across all racial groups. so racial and ethnic groups. women still have a slight preference for the democratic party compared to men. so when we come into an election, things like turnout in the range of issues that attract women are very important. women are more likely than men to vote for the presidential

candidate and that's been the case since 1992. the gap has been between two percentage points to five percentage points depending on the polls you look at. nonetheless, there's a democratic advantage in the light nonetheless, there's a democratic advantage in the light nonetheless, there's a democratic advantage in the light nonetheless, there's a democratic advantage in the light the absolute numbers that turn out. not the issues that seemed to mobilize women and attract there both have to do with social welfare issues, have to do with foreign policy issues and also to a certain extent so-called morality issues. but these very for many different directions. on issues like same-sex marriage, women and much less opposed than men for example. not by huge margin, but nonetheless there's a difference there. women are more concerned with foreign policy security issues and that can have an impact on women so. finally, women are more

concerned about social welfare issues. exec health care, unemployment, state of the the economy, education. >> with a woman candidate for president coming into the campaign, d.c. those references changing in 2012? are based on your research, to think they will largely remain the same? >> first of all, i see no female candidate coming in 2012. there're only two on the list that i know what. michele bachmann who is doing very poorly right now and early returns were in the republican party debate and in the polling numbers for her. i don't see there being the ultimate candidate for the republican party. democratic side, the current president barack obama will be the party's candidate and that will foreclose any opportunity for a woman in the party to come forward. so i see no presents for women as presidential candidates in

2012. the need to say however that some polling data and the most recent nasty and has only been from 2008 coming in very early in 2008 presidential primaries. about 87% of americans are willing to say they would vote for a qualified woman regardless of sex, that they would be as light to vote for a moment as they would for a minute. americans are more likely, more willing to vote for someone who's african-american or someone who is jewish for president and they are for a woman. i think the numbers slightly lower than had been the previous result because in 2008 there was a clear potential female candidate and that was hillary clinton on the democratic side who ultimately fail to win the nomination. >> so what are recommendations for women in that position in the full position are running for office? did that matter, then your boat? is that something you catch on?

>> well, we don't try to present to essentials, but it looked to candidacies for lower office. so a couple of recommendations. and these are recommendations for women. let me make clear we only need about 4000 women nationwide to contest and win elections to have equitable representation in the senate and the house and in state houses. there aren't that many elective offices at the legislative level of the state requires we need a million qualified women. i think we can find 4000, 4500 qualified women to men. the problem is with local parties and the unavailability of access to candidacies, both three incumbency effect if we have, as we do, 83% of congress consisting of men and most of those men are incumbent, it will be difficult for new openings for new candidates whether or not the candidates are women.

so part of it has to do with political parties, willingness to persuade, seated members of congress to step down, willing to support women, challenging incumbents within the parties, went to recruit women to office. right now the so-called big money people and republicans say are trying to recruit governor christie to enter the presidential nomination race on the republican side, which he so far, at least this morning has received to do. there are women who might be recruited. they're very good female governors who might be recruited. so at this point, my argument it is not the problem of women. as the parties and specifically the republican party. women are represented in the republican party by a two to one to three to one margin everywhere. >> thank you. >> you're welcome.