Fay Dowker on a new theory of space-time

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

For a long time Fay Dowker was mathematically precocious, but emotionally uncertain. These days, despite working in an area with few academic allies, she is more confident than ever. Her approach to a Theory of Everything, known as causal set theory, acknowledges the quantum nature of the universe and takes the arrow of time more seriously than Einstein. Bye bye time travel. Fay started her Life Scientific working on the assumption that the texture of the universe was continuous and smooth, with Stephen Hawking as her supervisor. But mid-career, she changed her mind. She now thinks in terms of 'atoms' of space-time. Down at the tiniest scale imaginable, the universe is granular, made of discrete entities that represent a point in space and a moment in time. Most theoretical physicists were shocked to discover in 1998 that the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating. Not the causal set theorists. Unlike everyone else, they were expecting this result. What's more, if causual set theory is right, there will be no need to explain dark energy, an idea which seems 'just wacky and a little bit malicious', to Fay. Producer: Anna Buckley.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.
0:08.8	Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.7	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes,
0:24.6	you're doing the wrong thing.
0:26.0	Julie, at your service.
0:27.8	Listen to all episodes on BBC sales.
0:31.4	This is the BBC.
0:35.0	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:39.0	First broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
0:41.0	I'm Jim Alleili and my mission is to interview the most
0:45.2	fascinating and important scientists alive today and to find out what makes
0:50.2	them tick. Faye Dowker's performance in the notoriously difficult part three mathematics masters at Cambridge
0:57.9	University was rewarded with the prestigious Tyson Medal.
1:01.9	Soon after she became a theoretical physicist. Her PhD on wormholes, those
1:06.4	exotic shapes in space time that have nothing to do with soil and everything to do with
1:11.0	quantum gravity was supervised by Stephen Hawking.
1:14.4	For decades following in the footsteps of Hawking and many other physicists
1:18.0	she worked on the assumption that the texture of space time was continuous. But-life in mid-career she changed her mind and
	...

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