times" was phenomenal if they were as good with their job is coming up with nicknames they did a great job. [laughter] right away he started to cut things and cutting staff in therefore he got the name but when did tritium bought it they did not know it was being bought. he was not even looking it was the backstabbing drama that played out and because they tried to do the deal in a secret a lot of things we should have known about that we didn't came back to haunt us later. . .

>> dr. steven weinberg is a professor of science at the university of texas. he is a nobel prize winner in physics, the national medal of science winner, and he is also the author of this book, "lake views: the world and the universe." first of all, dr. weinberg, what is this picture on the front of your book?

>> that's a picture of lake austin as seen from our boat dock. i do most of my work at home in an office overlooking the lake. and so i have a certain feeling of connection with lake austin. >> why would a nobel prize-winning physicist of science put a lake on the front of his book? >> well, it is what i look at while i'm working, but also, you know, being a scientist, especially a few theoretical physicist, it's a little unworldly. and the sounds of the lake, especially in summer, the boats going up and down the lake playing music brings me back a little bit to the real world, the world of human affairs, which is i think healthy. >> well -- >> that's what i was trying to do in this book, in many of the

essays, to peek out of the ivory tower of debt, something to say about the real world. >> let's peek back into the ivory tower. what's the purpose of studying physics? >> well, there are many reasons for doing it. it has enormous practical value, of course. not the kind of physics i do. that may at some future date bring some technological advances, but that's not what i do it and i can't imagine now why what they might be. there's also, in addition to that kind of practical reason, there is a grand historical program of trying to uncover the laws of nature. that is, we think that there are fundamental principles that govern everything, which are at the root of all chains of explanation. so that if you ask why is the

grass green, you can trace the answer back through a chain of explanation to some fundamental mathematical principles. we don't have them yet. we've gone pretty far towards them. we have a very satisfying theory of all the particles that make up ordinary matter and all the forces that act on those particles called the standard model. it's an amazingly comprehensive. it covers almost everything we know, aside from gravitation. but it's not the final answer. so we try to take the next step. >> is it important to know the final answer of? >> all, it is to me. to some of us that have a transcendental importance we you could ask us to write symphonies

or to preserve our environment, i think these things are important in themselves. the importance of learning the laws of nature is a little bit in vichy aided by the fact that they were probably be expressed in mathematical terms that most people won't have the language to understand. that changes with time also. when newton's theory of gravity and motion was first developed, their only a handful of people in the world who are able to understand it. now it's commonplace, everyone who goes into engineering or science learns quite early in their educated kashmir education. so these things do spread out into society in general. and i think also apart from knowing the details there's a

great guide to knowing what kind of role this is, that it's a world governed by him personal laws in which human beings play little, in fact, no essential role. i think that gives us a better understanding of our place in the scheme of things. and it helps to free us of some of the superstitions that have bedeviled the human race. >> such as? >> well, i don't want to insult anyone, but the historian trevor broke for has said that it was the scientific revolution of the 17th century that led to a sharp decline of burning witches in the 18th century. i think today, large parts of the world are obsessed with religious fanaticism. and i think the example of

scientific knowledge, which is so difficult to win, about which we are always tentative is good counter example to the certainty that people feel about their religious beliefs. >> but you also use the word transcendental in describing your research or your work. you see a something that's transcendental. doesn't that have religious implications of? >> i don't think so. by transcendental i just mean something, i think i mean something similar to what emerson meant by transcendental. that is, something that affects us deeply that goes to the roots of our feelings that is not directed at getting and spendi spending. >> professor weinberg, one of the essays you have been "lake

views" is what einstein was wrong about. what was einstein wrong about? >> all, a number of things. one of the reasons i wrote that essay was to show the spirit of science that even we recognize that even the greatest of us, einstein was certainly the greatest scientist of the 20 century, one of the greatest of all times, could be wrong about things and that we are capable of pointing that out. it's not -- einstein's work is not a sacred text from which we are forbidden to depart from. he was wrong i think and understand -- in rejecting one of his own ideas. he has introduced modification in his equations that govern gravitation, the general theory of relativity. it's a modification that is equivalent to saying that space

is filled with an energy that affects the gravitational field everywhere in the universe, and affects the way the universe is expanding, or not expanding. and he introduced it actually as a means of preventing the collapse of matter under its own gravitation. he wanted to have a static universe. that's what astronomers thought we had at that time. this was 1917. he then learned from astronomers that the universe, in fact, is expanding. there's no need for that modification of general relativity, and he decided it was the biggest mistake of his life. well, his mistake was to think it was a mistake because, in fact, there is such an energy in space, so called dark energy, one of the articles in the book is about the dark energy.

and it was discovered in 1998. and einstein would have been better to make his modification and wait for events. >> what is dark energy? >> i wish we knew. dark energy we know about because it is something that produces a gravitational field that's unusual because it causes distant objects to rush apart from each other, rather than the usual attraction force of gravitation. it's an energy inherent in space itself, that so much energy per quart of space, whether there's anything in that space or not, it's very tiny. if you count it by the court. the amount of dark energy in the volume of the earth is about enough to fill the gas tank. it's the energy in the gasoline that would fill a gas tank.

but there's a lot of space in the universe, and it adds up and it was discovered in 1998, which was, this was discovered this honored this year with a nobel prize to three astronomers, was discovered to be driving and accelerate the expansion of the universe. that is, the universe is not only expanding, which we have known for a long time, the expansion is not slowing down as you would think because gravity pulling this together, but it is speeding up. this we think can only be because of this dark energy. >> you won the nobel prize in physics in 1979 for what? >> a theory that unified two of the basic forces of nature. we know in broad terms of for basic fortunes -- forces.

electromagnetism, gravitation, known about that for a long time. and then to forces that only act inside the nucleus of the atom, the strong nuclear force that holds the particles together, and the weak nuclear force that causes them to change their nature. the theory that was honored, and i share the prize with two other people, and was a theory that unified two of the sources, the electromagnetic force in the weak nuclear force. and the prize would not have been awarded at all except that it made some new predictions which were then verified by experiment. >> you say you do most of your work from your home on lake austin. >> yes. >> do you teach, actively teaching?

>> yes. this term i'm teaching freshman a course on the history of science, which i think will turn into another book. and in the next time i will be teaching an advanced graduate course on advanced topics in quantum field theory. so i go back and forth. >> as a longtime professor, what's it like to be with freshman? is this a general science course or is this for science majors? >> no, of course we have a, we have a delete program here called plan to the students i think largely self-selected into but it's more demanding. this is one of the courses of plan ii that is supposed to give students who are not usually science students some feeling for the way science is done and the kind of reasoning that goes into science. and so i do a little elementary algebraic calculations on the board, but it's mostly history. the history of the development

of science from the early greeks to the scientific revolution of the 17th century, and then a little bit about what happened after that. >> was one of your biggest frustrations of teaching freshman? and biggest joy spent i don't feel too much frustration. every morning i teach from 9:30 at 10:45. every morning on tuesdays and thursdays, and every morning, every tuesday and thursday morning i have an adrenaline rush that i'm going to be on stage talking to these bright kids. i think it's all pleasure. i don't like marking. that's the thing i don't like. i wish that education could somehow be divorced from having to grade, give exams that are graded.

but i remember myself as an undergraduate, i don't know how much work i would've done if i wasn't going to work for a grade. so i think that's probably impossible. >> what is one of the most common questions that your students ask you in a history of science? >> it varies so much but i can't think of anything that -- well, they are very good at trying to put themselves in the frame of mind of the scientists of the past, which is difficult because scientists of the past didn't know what we know. and even worse than that, they didn't think about what science is, the way we think about it. for example, the role of mathematics, exploring the world was not understood. mathematics was regarded as something separate from physics, for example. very often you find discussions whether you should look at

questions in the form of physics on mathematics. so students ask me what were they thinking of? how could they think that way? and it's hard to answer. it's very hard to put yourself in the frame of mind of an aristotle, for example. whose thought is so different from us speak one of your earliest books, we're talking with steven weinberg about his book "lake views," published by harvard, but one of your first books was "the first three minutes." what is that about? >> "the first three minutes" is about the first three minutes. that is the first three minutes of the universe. now, of course, when you say that it implies that the universe had a beginning, and at that time when the book was written we thought that there probably was a moment when the universe had an infinite density and infinite temperature,

something that marked the very beginning of time. that's what we found when we traced the history of the universe backward in time using our equation's to work, like a movie running backward, to work out what happened in earlier and earlier times. these days we think that there was a time very, very early when the temperature of the universe was enormously high, the density was enormously high, and my book was written about the three minutes that followed that moment. but that moment may not have been -- there may have been an earlier period. in fact, that we think we have some evidence that there was an earlier period, a period when the universe was expanding extraordinarily rapidly, and which at the end produced a hot big bang with which i started my

book, "the first three minutes." >> so, if somebody says to you, or do you ever say in the beginning as when the universe began have? >> i try to avoid the question, because we really have pretty good confidence in our theories, good enough confidence to trace the history of the universe back to a time when the temperature was so high that even a atomic nuclei couldn't hold together. and we can work out together what happened when the universe cooled, and what we find is what we see in the universe today. so we know our theories are working. but if you go back to earlier, much earlier, then our theories are no longer applicable. in particular, you get to a time when the temperature was so high that einstein's theory of general relativity breaks down. it just can't make sense.

then we just don't know. we don't know if there was a beginning. i have no, i have no confidence in talking about the beginning of the universe. but i have a lot of confidence, and not just to me, but astrophysicist in general have a lot of confidence, and talking about the theory that in that old book i call "the first three minutes," even if it wasn't the first three minutes. >> professor weinberg, if a student were to ask you if god exists, what would you enter? and have even asked that question? >> i have been asked that question but other people, not usually by students. i think students regarded as, well, it's not going to be on the exam. but people have asked me. i have had interviews about it. i think the idea well, it depends on what you mean by god, of course. einstein meant something like the laws of nature, which i do

think exists. but if by god, you mean the god of traditional religion, that is a god that cares, has something of person i, something of intelligence, a god that cares about what human beings do, to me the idea is so -- >> impersonal? the world is a personal? >> yes. i think the world is governed by impersonal laws, and we are just in that rare part of the world where life is possible. and, of course, where else would we be? what else could we have evolved? it's a beautiful day outside today here in austin, and you can easily convince yourself that there must be some kind of benevolence at work, producing this lovely world we live in. but, you know, most of the

universe is pretty awful and there aren't any people there for the good reason that they could not have evolved there. so, i see no signs of benevolence in the world. i think we are the creatures, chance of evolution. and it's probably a good thing for the human race to grow up and realize that. >> professor weinberg, you've written this book of essays for the non-science person, is that fair to say? >> yes. they were written over the course of a decade, have been published in various periodicals, many of them in the new york review of books. they are for nonscientist, they all are, and i hope that i succeeded in making them clear in the. i certainly tried. >> and then for another science guy question to you, is there life similar to what we have here on earth, in your view,

somewhere else in universe? >> the universe is pretty big. and i think the chances are very strong, but how -- i mean, it is a big unknown question, how likely is it that if you have a planet that is about the right distance from its star so that water can be liquid on the surface and it has a solid surface and has the right chemistry, how likely is it that life will get started there? nobody has the slightest idea. we know the answer isn't zero. i mean, there's some chance. and since the universe has so many planets, so many galaxies, each galaxy having so many stars, most stars having plans, i think the chances are overwhelming that there is life elsewhere in the universe. but whether there is life elsewhere in our galaxy, or in the immediate neighborhood of

our solar system, that's an entirely different question. and i can't make an educated guess. >> is the speed of light the ultimate speed? >> well, yes and no. much of our thinking in physics is based on einstein's special theory of relativity, which requires a maximum speed which is also the speed of light. it's not just the speed of light, but speed of gravitational waves and anything else that has, any other kind of particle or wave that has no mass. it is an experiment that was performed recently, announced in the press, that suggested that perhaps the kind of particle can go a little faster than light. and a lot of us are very skeptical. in fact, i think even the experimentalist who did the

experiment are probably skeptical that that result is going to hold up. if it does hold up, it's a tiny excess over the speed of light. they are observed to travel from one place to another place hundreds of miles away, faster than the speed of light would have been by something like 60 billionth of a second. it is a very tiny effect my guess is it's going to go away and that we're going to find that the speed of light really is the maximum. but it will be interesting. that would be quite a revolution. >> dr. weinberg, what is your background? how did you get interested in these topics? >> i had a cousin, an older cousin who, when i was quite, 10 or 12, i don't remember, got tired of his chemistry set.

it was a can craft number five the chemistry set. and i got it as a can be done. and i got fascinated by chemistry, and i started to read about chemistry. and i learned that chemicals behave the way they do because of the properties of the atoms that they are made up. and then i learned there was something called physics that you needed to study in order to understand adams. and i somehow or another, it was a slippery slope. i got sucked into a. and by the time i was in high school i was sure i wanted to be a theoretical physicist. there were wonderful books written in the '30s and '40s on signs for nonscientists by good working scientists like george, and chain genes. and i read those books and i can't say that i was excited because i edited and i think i was excited because i didn't

understand a lot of what i read, and it sounded so interesting, if only i could learn this stuff and understand it. so my fate was sealed from high school on. >> when it comes to public policy, which you do touch on inquiry to essays in "lake views," how has the u.s. done, in your view, when it comes to public policy, science funding, et cetera, science research? >> well, it did do very well for a long time. we were the world leaders in many areas in elementary particle physics and astronomy, both round face and space based astronomy. i think that it's all slipping away now, that the first sign of it was the cancellation of an elementary particle accelerator, the superconducting super collider was canceled in 1993. by a penny pinching congress,

after billions of dollars have been spent on it spent was this the location in illinois the thy were going? >> no, no. there is one in yellow. this was going to be built in texas, but my enthusiasm for it does not depend on that. i would have been enthusiastic where ever it would be built. now, and less powerful accelerator is coming into, online in europe. the large collider. that will reap some of the discoveries that would have already been made. but that's just one instance. now we find that nasa is cutting way back on science programs, and congress is making a very difficult for things to continue at all. a committee and the house of

representatives cut out all spending for the next big space telescope that will replace the hubble telescope, the james webb telescope. that may never be built. we may end this period of great american achievement. and i think it's because of a small government, anti-tax mania that has afflicted a large part of american people. and i think it is a tragedy. but, of course, it's not a tragedy that is limited to science. it affects things that too many people are more important, education and health, our infrastructure. i think our country is in the grips of an obsession of cutting taxes and limiting the size of government, which i hope we

outgrow. >> what about the end of the space shuttle program and president bush's call, former president bush's call to return to manned space exploration? >> well, one of the happy things that i see in recent years in the obama administration is cutting way back on me and spaceflight because of manned spaceflight masquerades as science and has nothing to do with size. but it is enormously expensive. and draws funds away from real science. one of the reasons that the superconducting super collider was canceled in 1993 was because it was competing with the international space station. the manned space flight program which has caused 10 times what the accelerator would have cost and has produced nothing of scientific value. i think nasa, i think the obama