{"id":236550,"date":"2026-05-05T19:05:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T00:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/sean-carroll-caltech-johns-hopkins-santa-fe-institute"},"modified":"2026-05-05T19:05:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T00:05:23","slug":"sean-carroll-caltech-johns-hopkins-santa-fe-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/sean-carroll-caltech-johns-hopkins-santa-fe-institute","title":{"rendered":"Sean Carroll, CalTech, John\u2019s Hopkins, Santa Fe Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/236550?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>One of the great intellectual achievements of the twentieth century was the theory of quantum mechanics, according to which observational results can only be predicted probabilistically rather than with certainty. Yet, after decades in which the theory has been successfully used on an everyday basis, most physicists would agree that we still don\u2019t truly understand what it means. Sean Carroll will discuss the source of this puzzlement, and explain why an increasing number of physicists are led to an apparently astonishing conclusion: that the world we experience is constantly branching into different versions, representing the different possible outcomes of quantum measurements. This could have important consequences for quantum gravity and the emergence of spacetime.<\/p>\n<p>Sean Carroll is a research professor at CalTech, Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at John\u2019s Hopkins University, and Fractal Faculty at SFI. His research focuses on fundamental physics and cosmology, quantum gravity and spacetime, philosophy of science, and the evolution of entropy and complexity. He\u2019s authored \u201cSomething Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime;\u201d \u201cThe Big Picture;\u201d \u201cThe Particle at the End of the Universe;\u201d \u201cFrom Eternity to Here;\u201d and the textbook \u201cSpacetime and Geometry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the great intellectual achievements of the twentieth century was the theory of quantum mechanics, according to which observational results can only be predicted probabilistically rather than with certainty. Yet, after decades in which the theory has been successfully used on an everyday basis, most physicists would agree that we still don\u2019t truly understand [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,385,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-evolution","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}