ILOILO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY MODULE 2

GE 7 SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY LESSON 3

THE UNIVERSE IN A NUTSHELL (21st Centrury science and Beyond)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NbBjNiw4tk&list=PLddFkjZR6ayTl5-
PUQVf05t80wEAAc7aM&index=104

My name is Professor Michio Kaku. I'm a professor of theoretical physics at the City
University of New York and I specialize in something called string theory. I'm a
physicist. Some people ask me the question, "What has physics done for me lately?
I mean, do I get better color television, do I get better internet reception with
physics?" And the answer is yes.

You see, physics is at the very foundation of matter and energy. We physicists
invented the laser beam, we invented the transistor. We helped to create the first
computer. We helped to construct the internet. We wrote the World Wide Web. In
addition, we also helped to invent television, radio, radar, microwaves, not to
mention MRI scans, PET scans, x-rays. In other words, almost everything you see
in your living room, almost everything you see in a modern hospital, at some point or
other, can be traced to a physicist.

Now, I got interested in physics when I was a child. When I was eight, a great
scientist had just died. I still remember my elementary school teacher coming into
the room and announcing that the greatest scientist of our era has just passed away.
And that day, every newspaper published a picture of his desk. The desk of Albert
Einstein. And the caption said, I'll never forget, "The unfinished manuscript of the
greatest work of the greatest scientist of our time." And I said to myself, "Why
couldn't he finish it? I mean, what's so hard? It's a homework problem, right? Why
didn't he ask his mother? Why can't he finish this problem?" So as a child of eight, I
decided to find out what was this problem.

Years later, I began to realize that it was the theory of everything, the Unified Field
Theory.An equation that would summarize all the physical forces in the universe. An
equation like E=mc². That equation is half an inch long and that equation unlocks
the secret of the stars. Why do the stars shine? Why does the galaxy light up?
Why do we have energy on the earth?

But then there was another thing that happened to me when I was around eight
years old. I got hooked on the Saturday morning TV shows. In particular, Flash

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Gordon. And I was hooked. I mean, every Saturday morning watching programs
about alien from outer space, starships, ray guns, invisibility shields, cities in the sky,
that was for me. But after a few years, I began to notice something. First of all, I
began to notice that well, I didn't have blond hair and blue eyes, I didn't have
muscles like Flash Gordon, but it was a scientist who made the series work. In
particular, a physicist. He was the one who discovered the ray gun, the star
ships. He was the one who created the invisibility shield. And then I realized
something else. If you want to understand the future, you have to understand
physics. Physics is at the foundation of all the gadgetry, the wizardry, all the marvels
of the technological age, all of it can be traced to the work of a physicist.

Physics and the Impossible

Most of science fiction is in fact well within the laws of physics, but possible within
maybe 100 years. And then we have impossibilities that may take 1,000 years
or more. That includes time travel, warp drive, higher dimensions, portals through
space and time, star gates, worm holes.

You know, if you were to meet your grandparents at the year 1900, they were dirt
farmers back then. They didn't live much beyond the age of 40, on average. Long
distance communication in the year 1900 was yelling at your neighbor. And yet, if
they could see you now, with iPads and iPods and satellites and GPS and laser
beams, how would they view you?

They would view you as a wizard or sorcerer. However, if we can now meet our
grandkids of the year 2100, how would we view them?

We would view them as gods, like in Greek mythology. Zeus could control objects
around him by pure thought. Materialize objects just by thinking. And there're perks
to being a Greek god, Venus had a perfect body, a timeless body. And we are
beginning now to unravel the genetics at the molecular level, of the aging process.
And then Apollo, he had a chariot that he could ride across the heavens. We will
finally have that flying car that we've always wanted to have in our garage.

By the year 2100, we will have the power of the gods.To paraphrase Arthur C. Clark,
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from from divinity." So let's
now begin our story.

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The History of Physics

The history of physics is the history of modern civilization. Before Isaac Newton,
before Galileo, we were shrouded with the mysteries of superstition. People
believed in all sorts of different kinds of spirits and demons. What made the planets
move? Why do things things interact with other things? It was a mystery.

So, back in the Middle Ages, for example, people read the works of Aristotle. And
Aristotle asked the question, "Why do objects move toward the earth? And that's
because," he said, "objects yearn, yearn to be united with the earth. And why do
objects slow down when you put them in motion? Objects in motion slow down
because they get tired."

These are the works of Aristotle, which held sway for almost 2,000 years until the
beginning of modern physics with Galileo and Isaac Newton.

When the ancients looked at the sky, the sky was full of mystery and wonder, and in
the year 1066, the most important date on the British calendar, there was a comet, a
comet which sailed over the battlefield of Hastings. It frightened the troops of King
Harold, and a young man from Normandy, swept into England and defeated King
Harold at the Battle of Hastings, creating the modern British monarchy.

But the question is, where did the comet come from? What was this comet that
mysteriously paved the way for the coming of the British monarchy? Well, believe it
or not, that same comet, the very same comet that initiated the British
monarchy, sailed over London once again in 1682. This time, everyone was asking
the question, "Where do comets come from? Do they signal the death of the king?
Why do we have messengers from heavens in the sky?" Well, one man dared to
penetrate the secrets of comets, and that was Isaac Newton.

In fact, when Isaac Newton was only 23 years old, he stumbled upon the universal
force of gravitation. According to one story, he was walking on his estate in
Woolsthorpe, and he saw an apple fall. And then Isaac Newton saw the moon, and
then he asked the key question which helped to unlock the heavens. If apples falls,
does the moon also fall? And the answer was, "Yes." And answer overturned
thousands of years of mystery and speculation about the motions of the heavens.

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The moon is in freefall, just like an apple. The moon is constantly falling toward the
earth.

It doesn't hit the earth, because it spins around the earth, and the earth is round, but
it's acting under a force, a force of gravity.

So Newton immediately tried to work out the mathematics and he realized that the
mathematics of the 1600's was not sufficient to work out the motion of a falling moon.
So what did Isaac Newton do? When he was 23 years old, not only did he stumble
upon the force of gravity, but he also created calculus. In fact, he created calculus at
the rate at which you learn it, when you are a freshman in college. And why did he
create calculus? To calculate the motion of a falling moon.

The mathematics of his age was incapable of calculating the trajectories of objects
moving under an inverse square force field, and that's what Isaac Newton did. He
worked out the motion of the moon. And then he realized that if he understands the
moon, he also understands the motion of the planets in the solar system.

And Isaac Newton invented a new telescope. It was the reflecting telescope and he
was tracking the motion of this comet.

Well, it turns out that everyone was talking about the comet, including a rather
wealthy Englishman by the name of Edmund Haley. So Edmund Haley, being a
wealthy merchant, decided to make a trip to Cambridge to talk to England's
illustrious scientist, Sir Isaac Newton. Well, Edmund Haley asked Newton, "What do
you make of this comet? No one understands comets, they're a mystery. They've
been fascinating people for centuries, for millennia, what are your thoughts?" And
then, I paraphrase, but Isaac Newton said something like this, he said, "Oh, that's
easy.

That comet is moving at a perfect ellipse. It's moving in an inverse square force
field. I've been tracking it every day with my reflecting telescope and the path of that
comet conforms to my mathematics exactly." And of course, we don't know what
Edmund Haley's reaction was, but I paraphrase, he must have said something like
this, he said, "For God's sake, man, why don't you publish the greatest work in all of

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scientific history? If correct, you have decoded the secret of the stars, the secret of
the heavens. Nobody understands where comets come from."

And then Newton responded and said, "Oh, well, it costs too much. I mean, I'm not
a wealthy man, it would cost too much to summarize this calculus that I've invented
and to work out all the motion of the stars." And then Haley must have said this, he
must have said, "Mr. Newton, I am a wealthy man. I have made my fortune in
commerce. I will pay for the publication of the greatest scientific work in any
language." And it was Principia. The principals, the mathematical principals that
guide the heavens.

Believe it or not, this is perhaps one of the most important works ever written by a
human being in the 100,000 years since we evolved from Africa. Realize that this
book sets into motion a physics of the universe. Forces that control the motion of the
planets, forces which can be calculated, forces which govern the motion of
cannonballs, rockets, pebbles, everything that moves, moves according to the laws
of motion and the calculus of Sir Isaac Newton.

In fact, even today, when we launch our space probes, we don't use Einstein's
equations, they only apply when you get near the speed of light or near a black hole.

We use Newton's laws of gravity. They are so precise that when we shoot a space
probe right past the rings of Saturn, we use exactly the same equations that Isaac
Newton unraveled in the 1600's. That's why we have glorious photographs of the
rings of Saturn. That's why we have fly-by's right past Neptune. That's why we've
been able to unravel the secrets of the solar system, compliments of the laws of
motion of Isaac Newton.

So what Newton did was not only did he set into motion the ability to calculate
planets, he also set into motion a mechanics. Machines now operated upon well-
defined laws: Newton's three laws of motion. The first law of motion says that
objects in motion stay in motion forever, unless acted on by an outside force. You
see that in an ice skating rink. You should a puck and it goes all the way down
forever, unless acted upon by an outside force. That's different from Aristotle's law of
motion.

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Aristotle said, "Objects in motion eventually stop, because they get tired."

The second law of motion says, force is mass times acceleration. And that equation
made possible the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines, locomotives, factories,
machines, all of it due to the mechanics set into motion by Isaac Newton's second
law of motion, force is equal to mass times acceleration.

And then Newton had a third law of motion. For every action, there's an equal and
opposite reaction, that's the law of rockets. That's why we have rockets that can sail
into outer space which could have been calculated by Isaac Newton himself.

So the lesson here is, when scientists unravel the first force of the universe, gravity,
that number, 25,000 miles per hour, that's the escape velocity of the earth, a number
that set into motion the Industrial Revolution. A revolution which toppled the kings
and queens of Europe, which displaced feudalism, ushering in the modern age. All
because a 23-year-old gentleman looked up and asked the question, "Does the
moon also fall?"

You know, when I was a kid growing up in California, I would see pictures of the
Empire State Building. And I said to myself, "How could that possibly build such a big
building and not know that it's going to fall? I mean, why doesn't it fall? They didn't
build scale models of the thing, you couldn't have an Empire State Building that big
to test whether it's going to fall or not. How did they know ahead of time that that
building wouldn't fall? And the answer is: Newton's laws of motion.

In fact, today, I teach Newton's laws of motion, and you can actually calculate the
forces on every single brick of the empire state building, using Newton's second law
of motion, force is mass times acceleration. When Newton unraveled the force of
gravity, that was the first force.

Now, let's take a look at the second force, an even greater force which has touched
all of our lives, and that is the electromagnetic force. Ever since humans saw
lightning bolts light up the sky, ever since they were terrified by the sound of thunder,
they've been asking, "Do the gods propel lightning bolts and create thunder? Are
they angry at us?"

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Scientists began to realize that the lightning bolts and the thunder can be duplicated
on the earth. That we can actually create mini lightning bolts using electricity.
But it wasn't until the 1800's that finally we begin to unlock the second great force
which rules the universe, the electromagnetic force. Michael Faraday would give
Christmas lectures in London, fascinating everyone from adults to children. And he
would demonstrate the incredible properties of electricity.

Some people, for example, ask a simple question. If you're in a car or an airplane,
you get hit by a lightening bolt, why don't you all get electrocuted? Why don't you all
die?

Well, Faraday answered the question. He would create a cage. He would

walk into this steel cage, electrify it, and he wouldn't get electrocuted at all. That's
called a Faraday cage and every time you walk into metal structure, you get
shielded by this metal object.

Well, what Michael Faraday did was, he helped to unleash the second great
revolution with something calls Faraday's Law. A moving wire in a magnetic field,
has this electrons pushed, creating an electrical current.
That simple idea unleashed the electric revolution. And that's why we have
hydroelectric generators, dams that produce enormous amounts of power, That's
why people build nuclear power plants. That's why we have electricity in this room
right now!

On a very small scale, you use that in your bicycle. When you put a bicycle lamp on
your bicycle, the turning of the wheel spins a magnet. The magnet then pushes
electrons in a wire and that's why electricity lights up in your bicycle lamp.

So in other words, electricity and magnetism were unified into a single force. We
once thought that electricity and magnetism were separate. Now we know they are
in fact the same force.

So if a moving magnet can create an electric field, this means that a moving electric
field can create a magnetic field. But if they can create each other, why can't they
oscillate and create a wave? So that moving electric fields create magnetic fields,
create electric fields, create magnetic fields, infinitum to create a wave?

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Well, around the time of the American Civil War, a mathematical physicist, James
Clerk Maxwell, calculated, using the work of Faraday, the velocity of this wave.
And in one of the greatest breakthroughs of all time, James Clerk Maxwell calculated
the velocity of this wave and found out it was the velocity of light. And then he made
this incredible discovery: this is light. That's what light is. It doesn't by accident
travel at the speed of electricity, it is light itself. wave, and that wave is called light.

And the equations were written down by James Clerk Maxwell. Unfortunately,
Michael Faraday himself did not have a formal education. He could not put into
mathematical form his own work. James Clerk Maxwell was a theoretical physicist,
just like myself. He wrote down the mathematical physics of oscillating electric fields
and magnetic fields and they are called Maxwell's equations. These equations have
to be memorized by every physicist in grad school. You cannot get your PhD without
memorizing these equations. Every engineer deals with radar and radio has to
memorize these equations. And so, if you go to Berkley, where I got my PhD, you
can buy a t-shirt which says, "In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional
divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the equation for light, we physicists today want to have
a one inch equation that summarize all physical reality.

Well, Michael Faraday in his own lifetime was heralded as a great scientist, and how
many scientists do you know appear on money? Well, there he is, on the British 20-
pound note. So it's very rare that a scientist appears on a nation's currency, but so
great was a contribution of Michael Faraday that there he is on the 20-pound note.

The Electromagnetic Revolution and The Nuclear Age

The consequences of the electromagnetic revolution touch all of us. This is a picture
of the earth from outer space. Look at this picture. Europe electrified, you can
actually see the fruits of all of our efforts to create electricity, to energize our lives, in
one picture, seeing the earth from outer space.

So let's now talk about how Faraday and Maxwell's work touches your life as well.

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This is the internet. The internet is a simple by product of the electromagnetic force.
And you can see that where there is the internet, there is prosperity. There is
science, there's entertainment, there's economic activity.

Where there's no internet, there's poverty. And in the future, the internet will be
miniaturized and it will be placed in your glasses.

Your glasses will recognize people's faces and display their biography next to the
image as you talk to them, and then when they speak Chinese to you, your glasses
will translate Chinese into English and print out subtitles right beneath their image.
So in the future, you will know exactly who you are talking to without even talking to
them, and this means that at a cocktail party, if you're looking for a job, but you don't
know who the heavy hitters are, in the future you will know exactly who to suck up to.

In the future, chips will only cost a penny, because we can manufacture tinier and
tinier transistors You will have Faraday's electromagnetic force inside your body.
This is a pill. It has a chip in it. The chip is smaller than an aspirin pill. It also has a
TV camera and a magnet. When you swallow it, the magnet guides the camera,
taking pictures of your stomach, your intestines, because we all know what middle-
aged men fear the most: colonoscopies. And, this gives new meaning for the
expression "intel inside."

Now, let's talk about the next great forces which rule the universe. We talked about
gravity, which allows us to calculate the motion of the planets. The mechanics
created by Newton helped to unleash the Industrial Revolution. Michael Faraday
worked out the electromagnetic force, which gave us the wonders of the electric age.

And now, let's talk about the nuclear age, the stars and the sun. People have been
fascinated by the sun, Apollo was the god that strode across the heavens in his fiery
chariot. But hey, when you calculate how long coal or oil will burn like the sun, you
realize that in just a few hundred years, the sun would burn to a crisp. So what could
possibly last for billions of years? There must be a new force, a nuclear force.

Einstein and others helped to unravel the secret of the stars. The nuclear force
comes in two types, weak and strong. The weak nuclear force governs radioactive
decay. The strong nuclear force is one of the strongest forces in the entire universe.

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It's so strong it holds our protons together, ever since Genesis, the beginning of time.
The equation which allows for the liberation of energy is Einstein's famous equation
E=mc². What Einstein showed was that the faster you move, the heavier you get.
So your weight is not a constant. When you move very rapidly you get heavier,
something which we measure every day in the laboratory.

Now, this means that the energy of motion transformed into mass, because you get
heavier. Now, listen carefully. The faster you move, the heavier you get. Which
means that the energy of motion, "E" turns into "m", your mass. And the relationship
between E and m is very simple, it takes one second to write it down on a sheet of
paper, it is exactly E=mc².

So the nuclear force helped to explain the secret of the sun. But it also created a
Pandora's box, because inside the nucleus of the atom, are particles. And when you
smash these particles, what do you get? More particles. And when you smash
them, what more particles. In fact, we are drowning in subatomic particles.
Hundreds, thousands of subatomic particles every time we smash atoms.

Now, we smash atoms using something called atom smashers, or particle

accelerators. I built my own particle accelerator when I was in high school. When I
was in high school, I went to my mom one day and I said, "Can I have permission to
build a 2.3 million electron volt betatron particle accelerator in the garage?" And my
mom said, "Sure, why not? And don't forget to take out the garbage!"

And as a high school kid I asked for 400 pounds of transformer steel. I asked for 22
miles of cooper wire. Because I wanted to create a six kilowatter, 10,000 gauss
magnetic field, to energize my atom smasher. With 22 miles of copper wire, how
could you wind it? We did it on the high school football field. With 22 miles of copper
wire on the goalpost, gave it to my mother, she ran to the 50 yard line unraveling the
spool of wire, she gave it to my father who then ran to the goalpost and we wound 22
miles of copper wire on the high school football field.

Well, finally my atom smasher was ready. It consumed six kilowatts of power, that's
every single ounce of power my house could deliver.I plugged my ears, I closed my
eyes, I turned on the power, and I heard this huge crackling sound as six kilowatts of
power surged through my capacitor bank and then I heard a "pop pop pop" sound as
I blew out every single circuit breaker in the house. The whole house was plunged in

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darkness.My poor mom, every time she'd come home she'd see the lights flicker and
die. And she must've wondered "why couldn't I have a son who plays baseball?"
Why can't he learn basket ball? And for god's sake why can't he find a nice
Japanese girl?" I mean, why does he have to build these machines in the garage?

Well, these machines that I built in my garage earned the attention of a physicist
Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. And he arranged for me to get a
scholarship to Harvard. And my career got a head start! He knew exactly what I was
doing. I didn't have to explain to him that I was experimenting with antimatter.I was
creating anti-electrons in my mom's garage, and using atom smashers to eventually
create beams of antimatter. Antimatter is the opposite of matter. It has an opposite
charge. So an electron has negative charge. The positron, or anti-electron, has
positive charge. This means that you can now create anti-molecules and anti-atoms.
Anti-hydrogen was made at CERN, outside Geneva, Switzerland. And also at
Fermilab outside Chicago.

Where you have anti-electrons circulating around anti-protons. And in Brookhaven

National Laboratory on Long Island just recently they detected anti-helium! We have
two anti-protons with two anti-neutrons to create anti-helium. For every piece of
matter there is a counterpart made out of anti-matter. And when the two collide, by
the way, it releases the greatest energy source in the universe. It is 100 percent
conversion of matter to energy by Einstein's equations E=mc squared. Inside the
nucleus of the atom we have particles upon particles when you smash them apart.

In the 1950's we were drowning in subatomic particles. In fact, J. Robert

Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, once made a statement. He declared
that "the Nobel Prize in physics should go to the physicist who does not discover a
new particle this year." That how many particles were being discovered.

So, let's talk about the Particle Zoo. Right now, we physicists have unlocked
hundreds, thousands of subatomic particles. And we've been able to piece them
together into a jigsaw puzzle. It's called the "standard model." It has 36 quarks, 19
free parameters, 3 generations of quarks no rhyme, no reason, but this is the most
fundamental basis of reality that we physicists have been able to construct. Billions
of dollars. 20 Nobel prizes have gone into the creation of the standard model and it is
the ugliest theory known to science, but it works. There's one piece missing, and that
one piece missing is called the Higgs-Boson. We expect to find it. We want to create
a higher version of this theory and that theory, we think, is string theory.

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String theory is based on the simple idea that all the four forces of the universe.
Gravity, electromagnetic force, and the two nuclear forces, can be viewed as music.
Music of tiny little rubber bands. So if I had a super microscope, and I could look
right into the heart of an electron.What would I see? I would see a vibrating rubber
band. And if I "twang" it, it turns into a neutrino. I "twang" it again and it turns into a
quark. I "twang" it again and it turns into a Yang-Mills particle

In fact, if I "twang" it enough times, I get thousands of subatomic particles that have
been catalogued patiently by physicists. String theory, we think, is a theory of
everything.

Now, string theory, in turn, can be summarized in an equation about an inch long
That's my equation! This is called string field theory. And how will we test it?
We are building a machine. The biggest machine of science ever built in the history
of the human race. Outside Geneva, Switzerland. It is the Large Hadron Collider.
So the Higgs-Boson, we think, will be created by the Large Hadron Collider.
A tube 17 miles in circumference with two beams of protons circulating in opposite
directions. Then slamming together creating a shower of particles, and among these
particles we hope to find the Higgs-Boson, but not only that. We hope to find
particles even beyond the Higgs-Boson.

The next set of particles beyond the Higgs-Boson are "sparticles" The next layer of
the jigsaw puzzle are called sparticles—super particles. Nothing but higher
vibrations, higher musical notes of a vibrating string. And what else can we do? We
can also unlock secrets of the big bang.

You see, Einstein's equations break down and the instant of the big band and the
center of a black hole. The two most interesting places in the universe are beyond
our reach using Einstein's equations. We need a higher theory, and that's where
string theory comes in.

String theory takes you before the Big Bang, before Genesis itself.
And what does string theory say? It says that there is a multiverse of universes.
Where did the Big Bang come from? Well, Einstein's equations give us this
compelling picture that we are like insects on a soap bubble. A gigantic soap bubble

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which is expanding and we are trapped like flies on fly paper, we can't escape the
soap bubble and that's called the Big Bang Theory.

String theory says there should be other bubbles out there in a multiverse of
bubbles. When two universes collide it can form another universe. When a universe
splits in half it can create two universes, and that, we think, is the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is caused by either the collision of universes or by the fissioning of
universes. If there are other dimensions, if there are other universes, can we go
between universes? Well that, of course, is very hard, but Alice in Wonderland gives
us a possibility that maybe one day we might create a wormhole between universes.
This is a wormhole. Think of taking a sheet of paper and putting two dots on it. The
shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But if I can fold, if I can fold
that sheet of paper. Then perhaps I can create a shortcut. A shortcut through space
and time, called a wormhole.

This is a genuine solution of Einstein's equations. We can actually see this in string
theory. The question is: how practical is it to go through one of these things?
We don't know. In fact there's a debate among physicists today, Stephen Hawking,
many physicists are jumping into the game of trying to figure out whether it's
physically possible to go all the way through a wormhole. Because if you could, then
you might be able to use this as a time machine.

Since string theory is a theory of everything, it's also a theory of time. And time
machines are allowed in Einstein's equations, but to build one is extremely difficult.
Far more energy is required than a simple Delorean with plutonium.

You know, trillions of years from now the universe is going to get awfully cold. We
think the universe is headed for a big freeze. Stars will blink out, stars will cease to
twinkle, and the universe will be so big it'll be very cold. At that point all intelligent life
in the universe must die.

The laws of physics are a death warrant for all intelligent life. There is only one way
to escape the death of the universe, and that is leave the universe. We are now
entering the realm of science fiction, but at least now we have equations of string
theory which will now allow us to calculate if it is possible to go through a wormhole,
to go to another universe where it's warmer, and perhaps we can start all over again.

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GE 7 SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY LESSON 3

If you were to summarize the march of physics through the last 10,000 years it would
be the distillation of the laws of nature into four fundamental forces. Gravity,
electricity and magnetism, and the two nuclear forces. But then the question is "is
there a fifth force?" A force beyond the forces we can measure in the laboratory.
And believe it or not there are physicists who have looked very carefully for a fifth
force.

Some people think maybe it's psychic phenomena. Maybe it's telepathy. Maybe it's
something called psi power. Maybe it's the power of the mind. Maybe
consciousness! Well, I'm a physicist. We believe in testing theories to make sure
they are falsifiable and reproducible. We want to make sure that on demand your
theory works every single time without exception. And if your theory fails one time,
It's wrong.

In other words, Einstein's theory has to work every single time without exception.
One time Einstein's theory is proven to be wrong, the whole theory is wrong. Well, so
far we can reproduce these four physical theories, but a fifth theory cannot be
reproduced. We've looked for it. Some people think that maybe a fifth force may be
short range. Like, not over the nucleus of an atom, but ranging over several feet.
And we can't find any.
We physicists in the last ten years have discovered a new energy source larger than
the galaxy itself. Dark energy. Realized in our universe today 73 percent of our
universe, matter and energy, 73 percent is in the form of dark energy. The energy of
nothing! That's what's blowing the galaxies farther and farther apart. That's the
energy of the Big Bang itself. Kids ask the question, "If the universe banged, what
made it bang?" And the answer is dark energy. 73 percent of the universe's energy
is dark energy. 23 percent is dark matter. Dark matter is invisible matter. If I held it in
my hand it would go right through my hand. It holds the galaxy together. 23 percent
of the universe is dark matter. Stars made out of hydrogen and helium make up four
percent of the universe. And then what about us? We, the higher elements.
We made out of oxygen, carben, nitrogen, tungsten, iron. We make up .03 percent of
the universe.

In other words, we are the exception. The universe is mainly made out of dark
energy. The universe is mainly made out of dark matter. Overwhelming the stars,
overwhelming the galaxies in fact. Now what is dark matter, which makes up 23
percent of the universe? No one knows. String theory gives us a clue, but there's no
definitive answer.

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ILOILO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY MODULE 2
GE 7 SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY LESSON 3

So in other words, for you young aspiring physicists out there in the audience. You
may be saying to yourself right now, "Why should I go into physics? Because you
guys already have a candidate for the unified field theory, right? Just realize that
every single physics textbook is WRONG.

Every single physics textbook on the Earth says that the universe is mainly made out
of atoms Right? There it is! The universe is mainly made out of atoms. Wrong!

In the past ten years we have come to the realization that most of the universe is
dark. And there's a whole shelf full of Nobel Prizes for the young people who can
figure out the secret of dark matter and dark energy.

Let me give some advice to you if you are a young physicist, perhaps just getting out
of high school. You have dreams of being Einstein, you have dreams of working on
string theory and things like that and then you hit freshman physics. Let me be blunt:
We physicists flunk most student taking elementary physics. And we're more or less
encouraged to do so by the engineering department. We don't want to train
engineers who make bridges that fall down. We don't want to create engineers that
create skyscrapers that fall over. There's a bottom line: you have to know the laws of
mechanics. So before you can work with the laws of Einstein, you have to work with
the laws of friction, levers, pulleys and gears. As a consequence we have a very high
flunk-out rate in elementary physics.

So if you're a young physicist graduating from high school with stars in your eyes,
and you encounter freshman physics for the first time, watch out!
If you have a rough time, that's the way it is. I started out my life as an experimental
physicist. Then I went to Harvard and then I talked to my adviser, one of the world's
greatest experiment physicists, Professor Pound. And he told me maybe it's time to
give it a rest. He said to me, "Your skills are much better suited to what you love the
most, which is theory." "Mathematics. The world of higher dimensions."
And I realized that he was probably right. The thing about physics, or science that
really intrigues me the most is to find the most fundamental basis for everything
Rather than trying to massage a theory, or make a theory prettier, Why not find out
why it works? What makes it tick? And that's what I do for a living. I'm a theoretical
physicist.

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ILOILO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY MODULE 2
GE 7 SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY LESSON 3

Thank you very much!

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