But I will remind you that I took three years as my undergraduate and four years as a graduate student. Randall: I hate having to answer that, because it gives away my age. Tippett: And it seems that the period in which you have been a scientist, these last few decades - when did you get your Ph.D.? It’s sort of the richness at the fundamental level, but it’s also the richness of the complexity that derives from that, those simple ingredients. And we can see how that fits together and then how that came about and try to understand that with science, over time. Randall: I mean there is, of course, also the richness of how the pieces fit together, which is the wonderful stuff that we observe in the world. Tippett: So richness is just that variety of particles and qualities that’s known and unknown. There doesn’t necessarily have to be a reason, but we’d like to see, is it somehow essential to getting us to this point in the world? So that’s part of what I’m referring to there. So there’s particles beyond what seem essential to nature or us or life, and we don’t really understand why they’re there. What role do they play? We know there are electrons, but there are heavier versions of the electron known as the muon and the tau.
We know, for example, that nuclei have what we call up and down quarks inside them.
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Randall: Well, I think part of what I’m referring to is simply the fact that we really don’t know how to explain why certain particles are essential to the world we live in. What does “richness” mean in the context of what you do - in that sentence? Here’s something you wrote: “Our world is rich - so rich that two of the most important questions particle physicists ask are: Why this richness? How is all the matter that I see related?” And I just wanted to ask you to explain what you’re describing there. Tippett: That’s such an interesting way to state it. But we also try to work backwards, seeing what we observe and trying to see how those pieces fit together. We try to find the starting point we conjecture some theories. I think it’s misleading, because I think it gives this nature of science as ‘”We have this starting point, and then we derive everything.” But really, that’s not how it works. Randall: It’s not just lofty, it’s misleading. I think we’re responsible for the laws of nature that we can understand. And I don’t think we’re responsible for the fundamental laws of nature. Randall: So I am totally not responsible for that name, which I find really arrogant and obnoxious. Tippett: I have to say, looking at the website at Harvard - it’s The Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature, the High Energy Theory Group. I think it was later on that I really came to appreciate nature more, really starting, probably, in graduate school, when I started hiking and exercising more. We didn’t actually see that many stars where I was. But yeah, I can’t say that I’m really one of those people that said I really wanted to understand the stars. Basically, I went to the library and read what I could.
Randall: I actually don’t think I came across that many scientific books as a kid. Tippett: It was interesting for me to read that you grew up in Queens and that you’ve said that as a young girl, you were more entranced with books like Alice in Wonderland than the scientific books you came across. Professor of Science at Harvard University. Tippett: Lisa Randall is the author of bestselling books for non-scientists, and she is the Frank B. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. They’re not obviously wrong, they’re just not obvious to us. And that’s the beauty of science, is that we can go beyond these prejudices, if you like, these intuitions that we have built on our ordinary, everyday experience that allows us to think about things that seem obviously wrong. Lisa Randall: It’s OK to be aware of our limitations as human beings, that these are things that make it harder. We explore what she’s discovering, as well as the human questions and takeaways her work throws into relief. She’s pursuing a theory that dark matter might have created the cosmic event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and hence, humanity’s rise as a species. Now she’s moved into illuminating what she calls “the astounding interconnectedness” between fields which have previously operated more autonomously - astronomy, biology, paleontology. Krista Tippett, host: Theoretical physicist Lisa Randall started out seeking answers to questions in Standard Model physics and ventured into pondering extra-dimensional worlds.
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