Episode 078 - Dr. Sean Carroll
Probably Science
Andy Wood, Matt Kirshen
4.8 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2013
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Theoretical cosmologist at Caltech, author and blogger Dr. Sean M. Carroll invited Matt and Andy to his Pasadena office this week to lend some insight into his areas of expertise, including: Being the house cosmologist on a paleontologogical dig! Dark matter! Defying what you thought you knew about the conservation of energy! The fixed density of dark energy! What happens a quadrillion years from now! Boltzmann brains! You might not have existed before this very instant! The arrow of time! Entropy! The second law of thermodynamics! We are the creamy tendrils in a universal cup of coffee! Consulting on movies like Thor and Tron: Legacy! Imposing boundaries on superheroes! Another blow to new age-y quantum BS! Multiple universes!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Probably Science |
| 0:02.0 | Welcome to Probably Science. |
| 0:11.0 | I am Andy Wood, and my co-host Matt Kirshin and I have taken to the road once again. |
| 0:17.0 | We're once again in Pasadena, site of the lovely Caltech for a special guest. |
| 0:22.7 | Very special. I know a lot of you guys really liked the episode we did with Jan 11 a few weeks ago, |
| 0:28.0 | Theoretical Cosmologist. And as we were leaving, she said, oh, I could maybe put you in touch with some other scientists if that's something you'd want. And we were like, yes, that is exactly something that we would want. One more of that. And the first thing she said was, oh, you've got to talk |
| 0:41.3 | to Sean Carroll. So she was kind enough to email and put us in touch. And Sean was kind enough to |
| 0:45.9 | say, yep, come on up to Caltech. So thank you, Sean Carroll. The mic was not on. I'm still happy to be here. There we go. Physics. Excellent, excellent. Yeah, so you are a theoretical |
| 0:56.1 | physicist, an author with two popular books and probably many more academic ones, but the author of |
| 1:02.3 | the particle of the universe and from eternity to hear. That's right. Those two popular books, |
| 1:07.1 | one textbook in general relativity, but then mostly what you do as a physicist is you write papers, not books. |
| 1:11.9 | Oh, okay. |
| 1:12.4 | That's my stock and trade. |
| 1:13.8 | Right. |
| 1:14.2 | So the books are the more like, hey, general public. |
| 1:16.3 | Here's the stuff you can follow. |
| 1:17.6 | The books, yeah, they will actually pay you to write the books. |
| 1:19.4 | It's great. |
| 1:20.0 | You know, when you write a physics paper, you pay them to publish it. |
| 1:22.6 | So it's not a way. |
| 1:23.2 | Really? I didn't know that. I mean, it can be as low as zero if you choose to write journals, but many journals have |
| 1:28.9 | what are called page charges. |
... |
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