What is Sean Carroll’s favorite scientific breakthrough? What question about the universe keeps him up at night? Discover the answers to these questions and more with this week’s episode of our “Five on Fridays” series.
Watch our interview with Carroll on physics, the multiverse, and quantum mechanics and purchase his book, The Biggest Ideas in the Universe II: Quanta and Fields.
1. What’s something our viewers might not know about you?
I don’t have any degrees in physics. (Both my undergraduate and graduate degrees are in astronomy.)
2. What’s a big question about the Universe that keeps you at night?
Why is the value of the vacuum energy so small?
3. What’s your favorite scientific breakthrough of the last five years?
The explosion in observations of extra-solar planets and gravitational waves from colliding black holes.
4. What is your favorite beautiful explanation?
The origin of forces of nature in local (gauge) symmetries.
5. What is your favorite quote?
I don’t like quotes, I think that wisdom is generally hard to distill down to just a few words!
