Hello, RU-vidrs. The World Science Festival is looking for enthusiastic translation ambassadors for its RU-vid translation project. To get started, all you need is a Google account. Check out Edward Witten: On the Shoulders of Giants to see how the process works: ru-vid.com_video?ref=share&v=2UQ8teAebcg To create your translation, just type along with the video and save when done. Check out the full list of programs that you can contribute to here: ru-vid.com_cs_panel?c=UCShHFwKyhcDo3g7hr4f1R8A&tab=2 The World Science Festival strives to cultivate a general public that's informed and awed by science. Thanks to your contributions, we can continue to share the wonder of scientific discoveries with the world.
He's so precise in his dictation that sometimes I play a drinking game where whenever he says something like "uh" or "anyway" or "well, ... " I take a drink. It's usually hard to get a buzz going.
Consider how many towering intellects are trapped behind incoherent, autistic rambling. That's the unique genius of this man: crystalline public interface.
It is so refreshing to listen to professor Witten, speak in terminology that is clear and understandable to delay person. So often in his mathematical lectures, he can speak for over an hour long, and I am unable to understand a single sentence in the lecture.
Edward Witten is a master speaker. In his entire talk there is not a single "eeh" or "umm", or any other disturbances that creep into normal peoples speech. A pleasure to listen to.
Always pictured Witten as a sort of Ivory Tower figure, solemnly churning out technical papers. Turns out he is actually a terrific engaging communicator.
His public speaking skills are made even more impressive because hes most likely autistic. You can see it in his mannerisms in the 1 on 1 interviews. His body language is very stiff, he always Is looking down at the floor avoiding eye contact.
He's an incredible mind. The closest thing we have to Einstein (albeit not quite at that level) imo. True genius. He studied history and journalism too; i think he may have dabbled in linguistics as well. He seems very well read.
Maybe it's just me, but his voice and articulation are almost soothing when wearing noise-cancelling headphones. I could comfortably fall asleep listening to him speak - that's meant to be complimentary (for the record).
Not so sure about that. Many modern-day physicists are surprisingly ignorant about basic philosophical issues and you cannot really be considered smart, let aalone the smartest, if you lack a solid philosophical foundation upon which you base your reasoning. On the other hand, if you only have in mind formulaic and mathematical smarts then a large number of mathematicians would have to be in contention for the title.
I read an article about Witten in the 1980's, I think. It may have been in Discover magazine. The writer said that when very prominent physicists met him for the first time, some of whom thought they might win a Nobel eventually, they just gave up on the dream on the spot. They realized that Witten was so far ahead of them that they didn't stand a chance. This would happen at dinner parties!
Absolutely he should. But don't bet on it. People are WAY too damn stupid to fully appreciate people like him. Instead, they'd rather look up to the Kardashians.
@@psybin Maybe, but in science it is common to show the science and not the presenter, since the facts are important and not the guy. The guy is anyhow well known from one picture at the start, but the formulas etc. are important.
I agree: I have much more respect for Dr. Witten after viewing some of his videos, mainly due to his clear and logical descriptions of the history of physics, but I still believe that "string theory" is bunk .....
Newton is in a class all by himself. There can only be one first. He was the primary builder of modern physics. He also did practically all of his work by himself, and the bulk of his work in a two year span. To top it off, he spent most of his time with alchemy and looking for secret messages and codes in the Bible. Who knows how much more he would have discovered had he devoted his entire life to science.
Some 20 minutes in, Ed begins to describe how every path a particle can take is possible -- if not necessarily probable. Perhaps one way of explaining this is to say that "Everything in the Universe connects to everything else." Essentially in each and every "instant" of time (understood as a "moment of change") all universal influences converge on the particle -- a particle which itself is in unity with all other particles. The law of efficiency simply summarizes all such influences and 'determines' the particle's path through the greater unity of all things. Of course, this explains why the double-slit experiment gives such surprising results. The investigator's presence is also a factor. (A presence that itself does not exist in isolation from all things either...)
What I find is he is so easy to follow. I don't know if this is because of his unusual delivery which I first found slightly jarring but now is actually just really nice to listen to. Even compelling. Really interesting and brilliant guy.
The greatest mathematical physicist of all time. No doubt about this. He is frightening like hell. The way he writes equations it appears as if it is some joke for him. The kind of math he knows there are very few people who can come close to witten.
This comment is so stupid! Largely because it idolises and isolates what is significant from the rest making the assumption that the rest lacks the required knowledge or propensity for that knowledge.
So, you know how time is supposed to be a straight line, with the past, present, and future all happening one after the other? Well, some people think that's not true. They think that all of time is happening at the same time, and that we're just experiencing it one moment at a time. I find that idea really interesting. Imagine if you could travel far out into space and look back at Earth through a powerful telescope. You could see the past! You could watch the dinosaurs roaming the Earth, or the ancient Egyptians building the pyramids. The farther away you went, the further back in time you could see. You could watch the whole history of the world unfold before your eyes. But what about the future? Could you see the future if you traveled far enough away? I don't know. But it's a fun thought to imagine.
A century of these mathematical models. Chronocentric Atomism is exactly analogous to Geocentricism in pre-Copernican astronomy. Manage that, take an overview on the currently popular models as each being a "blind man's report of the elephant" … and understanding most of the puzzles, problems and anomalies becomes trivial. Just as escaping geocentricism made understanding the epicyclic motions relative to a view from planet Earth… quite trivial.
No idea what Mr Witten talks about, but Ihe is an excellent presenter. I do wonder if physicists lose themselves in theoretical stuff. Are they using their superior intelligence to help their country? To improve humanity? Help nature? Make the lives of millions or even billions of people better?
Is there am age where you are to old for this to have an effect or does your age not matter?? Also how do you find out where the moon was when you were born? How do you determine when you should be saving your self and how long does this period last??
I do appreciate what an intellectual supergiant he is but it's telling that he's won the Fields Medal but never been awared a Nobel Prize. He's more of a mathematician than a physicist.
' On the Shoulders of Giants' ? Edward Witten is undoubtley the greatest living theoretical physicist of the World. But it is overstatement to compare him to Isaac Newton. At least until his M-Theory will be proved a true physical theory. If ever...
I've always wanted to give him a hug. Edward witton is my hero from since i was a small child. I love how he explains the most complex concepts. His books are even better.
I can't believe I'm saying this but I disagree zith Edward WItten on one point he consistently makes. A fundemental sine wave without harmonics (like a pitchfork) doesn't necessarily sound uggly to the human ear. At least, it doesn't to mine. If anything it sounds pure and I find there's a beauty in that too. It can be piercing and arguably rather boring sounding as a solo instrument, but still, it is a useful tool in music, precisely because of its qualities. Instrument sounds that are (almost) pure sines are used quite frequently in music because of their pure character and ability to stand out or cut through. Think of sounds like glockenspiels, vibraphones, xylophones, tin whistles, a fender rhodes piano, the typical whistling synth sounds often used in hip hop and other styles and perhaps, potentially the purest of them all: the theremin. None of them are 100% pure fundamental sines but they can be close enough to be virtually indistinguishable from one. They all might not have character in terms of harmonics, but their pure nature is not per definition uggly sounding. €0,02 from an audio technician and musician.
When Witten jokingly remarked that De Maupertuis thought the principle of least action proved the existence of God, I was expecting the audience to react. The fact that they didn't is a little unsettling.
So what I understand is that I don’t understand this quantum fourth dimension. But I do understand the 3rd dimension quantum geometry and know a 4th exists that I don’t understand.
Perhaps we will never be able to comprehend how to unify big and small because our perspective of big is limited by how small we are relative to the true size of the Universe/the bit we can see. The earth appears flat until you comprehend that the size difference between us and the earth helps us to have that disillusionment. Perhaps, we are atoms relative to the grand perspective of all that truly exists in the Universe and not just the observable universe. We cannot possibly comprehend the scale of perspective necessary to unify all Physics into one seamless thing. We can only touch on the parts that we are able to see. Three blind men and an elephant.
I wish the good professor could use a different analogy than a violin string. He says they could vibrate in many different ways. But of course a violin string can only vibrate when it is taut, and its vibration is determined by its length ! (Since Pythagoras)
What about the suppositional thinkers and scientists that ask great questions. WHY IS OLE ROMER NOT ON THE POPULAR LIST OF GREAT INVESTIGATORS. He gave birth to practical investigation into the speed of light.
As a person who understands physics at a certain level, I realize how he is attempting to simplify the talk. However, I think anyone who does not understand physics at a reasonably deep level....will probably get absolutely nothing from this. These videos will only be important for future generations of physicists to look back and reflect on the current general thoughts of today. Who knows - this video might be as quaint as a pre-Copernican era talk about epicycles ;-) But Ed is fully aware of that. There is a LOT that we still don't know.PS: I wish Feynman were alive and in the audience. I can see him standing up and correcting Witten about the photon. Light ultimately IS a particle (not a wave)...at least we're pretty sure.
G Ru We're all aware of this fundamental fact. Feynman remained fairly adamant that ultimately the photon is a particle. Please visit his lectures on QED (Auckland NZ) here on RU-vid. He also mentions this in his wonderful book: QED - The strange theory of light and matter. The lecture series in NZ covers a small portion of that book. I personally like to think of an analog where a common phenomenon can resolve the wave-particle duality. A soap bubble has wave-like characteristics as a 2-D object embedded in 3-D. When it is popped (RU-vid provides slo-mo shots of this), the bubble collapses to a point. I think QM strings might behave something like this. A closed string may have wave-like properties. But when it interacts with a photo-multiplier, it collapses to a distinct particle...probably in a manner that is still unknown to us. Nevertheless, I was somewhat surprised that Ed didn't acknowledge this. The video is so generalized (especially for him) that perhaps he decided not to bring this topic up.
Aegis Nova Yes. the resultant calculations of QM produce only probabilities of what any particle will do. If we don't attempt to measure a particle (position, momentum, etc), then we can calculate a probability wave-function. This result will be much different than if we DO attempt to measure the particle - which will no longer produce a wave-like probability function. (ie: the particle will behave like...a particle ;-) This is what is frequently called the "Collapse of the wave-function."
I wish this dude would come out publicly about how verbose, silly, and egocentric Eric is. I want one witness, just one witness from Eric's cute little parable about how he discovered everything before anyone else did everyone in the room immediately turned to look at him as if to acknowledge they knew that the all-powerful Eric was truly the discoverer of all. I'm betting there is not one person who can corroborate that story, cuz like most things in Eric's world, the only exist in his imagination.
