WGBH broadcast this ThoughtCast interview on Arts and Ideas, and also features it on their “Science Luminaries” series, as part of “WGBH Science City.”
Lisa Randall
Professor Randall is a theoretical particle physicist who sees past the rest of us to a world of extra dimensions and parallel universes. Hers is a world of warped geometry, sink-holes and branes — a world that fills glaring gaps in current thinking, and can finally explain why gravity is so ‘weak’!
Now while this might sound like so much Greek — just wait. Randall’s latest book, written for the layman, is called “Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions” — so she’s had plenty of practice explaining these high-flying ideas to English majors.
Click here to listen to Lisa Randall’s lecture at IDEAS Boston on the WGBH Forum Network.
April 12th, 2006 at 6:13 am
Thank you very much, the podcast was very enjoyable.
Especially where you asked Dr Randall about her belief in extra dimensions, and she replied:
“But I’m still skeptical … I’m willing to be proven wrong.”
This is a very exciting subject, and I hope you will visit it again.
Nigel
September 15th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Lisa Randall reminds us that ideas come from “warped passages.” It is not always that we come to understand by following someone else’s line of reasoning. We can come across ideas accidentally; it is a lot of ideas flowing in and across from different directions, and how someone reaches a particular point can be very different. Secondly, we can honor Adonis and Aphrodite, and be pleaseantly surprised that Prof. Randall reflects Aphrodite, and is not another non-Adonis male professor. For both of these reasons, how refreshing her appearance is!
Paul
November 12th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
If Lisa Randall is not a super-symmetric twin of mine then i guess no one is. ed.
December 13th, 2006 at 2:04 am
Communication has its own multitude of branes here in this puny three dimensional pocket. Sometimes I can’t believe how many branes I feel exist; When this one is so bleepin’ ignorant and hard to cope with, it makes the Universe(s) so grand. You go girl, uh-um I mean Dr. Randall.
~ NMR
(not Nuclear Magnetic Resonation)
~ Nicholas Michael Roach
January 7th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Mercy me!
Although I have seen this woman expounding some of her theories several times on various cable networks I have not had so much information from her all at once. That has made me inquire further into her ideas regarding gravity (or the lack therof), string and brane possibilities. Amazing!
Kind of like backward engineering applied to hypothetical inversities.
Although her preponderences are certainly boggling to me, she strikes a wonderful chord. Strings resonating?
March 18th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
If gravity is stronger in other dimensions, life would be very different. Humans would have to be more strong to support the pressure of it…
March 19th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Have heard lisa on a couple of interviews and i do think she’s a genius!
if gravitons really do exist and escape to other dimensions then maybe there’s a way of trapping some just before they do escape and using them to communicate with anyone that might be in there!
mind blowing.
July 6th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
I think Dr Randall is a great physicist. I now have a whole new world opened up to me, thanks to her. Unfortunately my Husband does’nt have a clue what I’m talking about, quite honestly nobody does! I’m really hooked on her theories.
Kind Regards
Amelia.
January 15th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Lisa Randall is a leading expert in extra-dimensionality. Having read her book, she has surpassed everyones expectations, and what charisma. It is very pleasing listening to her.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:20 am
All the good stuff happening in particle physics and cosmology makes me wish I could rewind the clock about 30 years. I’m sure if I could I’d wind up in particle physics or cosmology. Very exciting times. While I don’t have the advanced mathematics, I do have the interest. Keep up the good work!!!
February 19th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
This is the first book like it I have bought. I avoided hard stuff like this when I was in school, and over the years my work kept me too busy to just read things for fun. What is really hard for me is reading about things where there is no answer to why something is doing what it’s doing. Dr. Randall’s book seems to be saying that all she can do is describe how things do what they do, and while that is very cool, I’m left with kind of an empty feeling afterwards–like I’m missing the end of a story.
February 24th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I cannot wait to read what the LHC will present when they collide protons. It would be great if they detect the Higgs particle as well as the graviton. They may also find out if gravitons spend most of their time in other dimensions.
Regards, Amelia.