Lisa Randall is a friend and collaborator, as well as a science superstar. She is one of the most highly cited physicists of all time, for a variety of contributions to field theory and particle physics, especially her work with Raman Sundrum on warped extra dimensions. Her first book, Warped Passages, was a major success, which naturally raises the question of what one does next. (Besides writing papers, I mean.)
So we’re very happy to welcome Lisa aboard to guest blog about her new book, just out today: Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World. (Among other virtues, this book has the single most impressive collection of blurbers of any book ever written, from Bill Clinton to Carlton Cuse.) From personal experience I can verify that writing a book doesn’t just happen; it’s a tremendous commitment over an extended period of time, and once it’s done there’s not much chance to go back and change it. So deciding to write a book at all, and more importantly how exactly to target the writing, is a delicate and critical process.
While Lisa hasn’t yet become a regular blogger, she is active on Twitter, where you can follow her at @lirarandall.
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In conjunction with the publication of Knocking on Heaven’s Door, I thought I’d take advantage of Sean’s kind invitation to post on Cosmic Variance to explain my motivations in writing my book. I haven’t done a lot of blogging myself but I am impressed at the care and interest that go into science blogs. They are a way of sharing developments as they happen and an opportunity to have meaningful discussion of results.
I talk about a lot of science in my book. So I thought rather than summarizing it all—at least in this post—I’d focus on the question of why I wrote this particular book. I waited several years before even considering embarking on a second book project. I certainly didn’t want to simply repeat the content of my previous book, and my own personal goal is always to branch out into new arenas—in this case into new types of writing–while still remaining true to my physics roots. I didn’t know the exact book I was after but I did know some of the topics I considered important and timely.
These topics fell into several categories. First, I wanted to give an accurate picture of what is happening in particle physics and cosmology today—both with experiments and with theory. Particle physicists know this to be the era of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine that is colliding together protons at unprecedented energies to test the nature of matter and forces at smaller distances than ever explored. The interactions between theorists and experimenters is more intense than it has been during the time I’ve been actively pursuing physics. That is because everyone realizes this interactions are essential with these challenging experiments to get to the right answers. I wanted to convey the excitement and implications of the research taking place there, so when discoveries are made, anyone interested can understand what was found and what it could mean.
Cosmologists too find this is an important time and I wanted to share some of the interest in that major topic as well. One arena that both particle physicists and cosmologists are excited about are experimental studies of the nature of dark matter. Many find this topic perplexing, whereas even if difficult to tackle experimentally, the underlying idea really is not. I wanted to explain a bit how I think about dark matter and how experiments are searching for its feeble and elusive effects.
But I wanted to do more than just summarize the physics. The second important category of ideas I wanted to address has to do with the nature of science itself, and how active scientists go about advancing their field. After writing my first book, I was struck by how we take for granted the key underlying principles in our research, and don’t always remember to share these basic, sometimes subtle, and critical ideas.
Although perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, I had an even more ambitious agenda in mind. The ideas that underlie science are critical to rational thinking in general and should be widely known, even by those silly few who don’t care about any specific science research topic. These ideas are broad and deep, and it would make a difference in many of today’s debates if they were more widely understood and applied.
So interwoven with the physics story I wanted another story about the way science works. At this point, you might have surmised that the book I ended up writing included these topics, so rather than talk about what I wanted to write, I’ll just tell about a few of the topics I cover in the book I eventually settled on.
I begin with some key ideas–frequently introduced through anecdotes. One such concept that is essential to the way physicists in particular go about their work is an “effective theory,” which tells us to focus on what is measurable when making predictions. The underlying ideas here are the notions of “scale” such as energy or distance scales, and what it means to be right and wrong—both themes that resonate in other topics I’ll later address. I’ll later use scale to categorize what we know about matter— from the interior of an atom to the remote edges of the cosmos–and how the LHC and other particle accelerators, as well as various astrophysical probes, help us access successfully more remote scales.
The first section also expands on the nature of science, taking Galileo, whose work recently held its four hundredth birthday, as a departure point. Given my book’s title, I figured I also had to address the relation of religion and science (though that is not what the title really refers to). Aside from the obvious historical relevance, what I was really interested in were the questions of why we have this debate, as well as how thinking about scale as a way of categorizing what science really tells us helps us understand and clarify some of the confusions
There are many other ideas about science including risk and uncertainty that are woven into chapters with more detail than you might even want about the actual physics. General discussions of truth and beauty and how physicists suggest models of matter or the universe, as well as top-down versus bottom-up physics and how model building contrasts with string theory are used to frame discussions of how we theorists go about our business. The book also delves into the role of creativity in science and the relation between science and technology–both important topics I enjoy thinking about.
Yes Knocking on Heaven’s Door covers a lot of territory. But it’s a big story, and one well worth telling And in case you were wondering, the title refers to accessing the edges of knowledge—a worthy goal for all of us.
I would not have brought it up myself, but having been raised by an English major (i.e., someone who majored in English in college, not a member of the British military) and relentlessly corrected, seeing bad grammar can be painful to me also, like listening to music which is out of tune.
However, I would certainly trade my grammar abilities for Dr. Randall’s scientific abilities, with as much cash as I could muster thrown in also, as well as perhaps my left arm (if that would tip the scales).
Wow, when did Sean’s place get so infested? Aside from the grammar whiners, we also have “Roger” who is either Roger Schlafly (of Conservapaedia infamy) or a fan of his.
Dr. Randall, I’m another who has read Warped Passages and appreciated it. I’m looking forward to Knocking.
If you have the time to look back to the first book, I’m very curious which, if any, of the ideas explored there have been strengthened or weakened by results from more recent experiments?
Perhaps the science superstar that Ms. Randall is , and I do not dispute that the word is has several meanings depending on which version of string theory is indisputably correct or is it verifiable ? But I digress. I think Ms. Randall who is a superstar should team up with Brian Cox who also is a science superstar and the duo that they are and always will be can star in a remake of Moonlighting in which she plays the part played by Cybill Shepperd and Brian who is a superstar of science can star as the character played by Bruce Willis. In the first episode the two superstars of science can infiltrate the LHC site and working feverishly and in secret find the Higgs Boson hiding in plain sight in all the background noise down in the 115 to 144 GEV level. They will undoubtedly win the Emmy award in the US for best science superstar couple . That is all.
*Yawn*
Until testable predictions are verified with copious amounts of data taken from plenty of reproducible experiments, I’m not going to give string theory, extra dimensions, et al., any consideration.
Mama take this badge off of me
I cant use it any more
its getting dark, to dark to see
I feel Im accessing the edges of knowledge …
accessing the edges of knowledge
accessing the edges of knowledge …
Can you productive leading physicists — I have people like Lisa Randall, Sean Carroll, Brian Greene, Stephan Hawking in mind — justify taking away so much time from doing research to write popular science books? Wouldn’t that be a waste of time when you could be writing groundbreaking articles instead? Leave popular science writing to professional science journalists and second-rate physicists. Just how much time do you waste writing a popular science book anyway? A year or two?
Note that John Barrow could turn out a dozen single-author refereed-journal papers and a couple of popular books in a single year. I once asked someone who knew him how much he works, and the reply was “pretty much 9 to 5”.
#18, Dr. Randall spoke correctly with regard to “effective theories”. “Effective theory” is a technical term (see for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_field_theory), and she was saying the concept of “effective theories” is an important one to understand.
OT but is Prof. Carroll or another of the bloggers on this site going to comment on the rather controversial result from CERN which claims to have detected neutrinos traveling faster then the speed of light in vacuo?
I’m currently reading Warped Passages on my Kindle. I’ll definitely buy the new one when it’s released.
And yeah, what SLC said! Is this Revenge of the Tachyons?
The standard story is indeed incorrect, and the actual issues involved with the Galileo affair were scriptural interpretation and church politics, not “science versus religion.”. http://bit.ly/ntEIob
There is nothing wrong with scientists writing popular books. Thats one way the spark of curiosity and wonder about the universe is ignited in the minds of the next generation of scientists. Writing scientific papers that push the edges of science is hard and difficult work. Taking time off, to write popular books spreading the idea of logical thinking and thought processes is very worthwhile as well. As far as grammar goes (mentioned above). Those who cannot think creatively usually rely upon rigidy and rules for a sense of comfort and a sense of accomplishment. Give a little slack to the creative genious of scientists. Most of scientists have terrible handwritting as well – but who cares? I don’t!
What a sorry lot of carping commenters! I feel like I should buy the book as a small measure of compensation. Amazon tells me it’s already on my wishlist, but they moved it to the top, so maybe I will.
Physicists, Cosomologists, String Theorists etc… know and understand the grammar of the universe (Real/Complex analysis, Group theory, Differential geometry, Lie groups, Differential forms, Homology, Cohomology, Homotopy, Fiber bundles, Characteristic classes, Index theorems, Supersymmetry and supergravity, etc…) Harping on grammer is pedantic 🙂
Numbers are the Supreme Court of science. However Godel proved that we may not prove everything. There are Physics Foibles!! Don’t give up!!
Written communication has rules, if the rules are not followed ,communication suffers.
Lisa, are you still sanguine that LHC will find evidence for extra dimensional models, given that nothing has been seen so far in LHC , Tevatron or other experiments designed to look for extra dimensions?
I’m pretty sure I replied to some comments here, but now those comments and my comments on them are gone. It would be nice if the number stays and “comment removed” (perhaps with a reason) replaced the original text.
I am so glad that this book was written. It is good for my head and heart, and I’m not finished with it yet. I don’t WANT to finish – I wish it were (for the grammarians above) longer!
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How far can popularized science go?
Multiverses and M-theory will never be made comprehensible to a general
audience even by expert expounders like Randall and Greene. (I do not claim to
understand these subjects.) It results in a priesthood of technology and
science who profess concepts beyond the layman’s ken. The new elites are
practically as elevated and unassailable as Aristotle was in the Middle
Ages. This isn’t good for the current intellectual environment and it has
implications for participatory government. Can education effect this?
A thought from Percy Bridgeman in Harpers about the meaning of
uncertainty way back when it was a new idea: “The immediate effect will be to let loose a veritable
intellectual spree of licentious and debauched thinking.”