{"id":97732,"date":"2019-10-23T03:04:42","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T10:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/were-stuck-inside-the-universe-lee-smolin-has-an-idea-for-how-to-study-it-anyway"},"modified":"2019-10-23T03:04:42","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T10:04:42","slug":"were-stuck-inside-the-universe-lee-smolin-has-an-idea-for-how-to-study-it-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/were-stuck-inside-the-universe-lee-smolin-has-an-idea-for-how-to-study-it-anyway","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re Stuck Inside the Universe. Lee Smolin Has an Idea for How to Study It Anyway"},"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\/qToXP3ehmEI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The universe is kind of an impossible object. It has an inside but no outside; it\u2019s a one-sided coin. This M\u00f6bius architecture presents a unique challenge for cosmologists, who find themselves in the awkward position of being stuck inside the very system they\u2019re trying to comprehend.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a situation that <a href=\"http:\/\/leesmolin.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lee Smolin<\/a> has been thinking about for most of his career. A physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, Smolin works at the knotty intersection of quantum mechanics, relativity and cosmology. Don\u2019t let his soft voice and quiet demeanor fool you \u2014 he\u2019s known as a rebellious thinker and has always followed his own path. In the 1960s Smolin dropped out of high school, played in a rock band called Ideoplastos, and published an underground newspaper. Wanting to build geodesic domes like R. Buckminster Fuller, Smolin taught himself advanced mathematics \u2014 the same kind of math, it turned out, that you need to play with Einstein\u2019s equations of general relativity. The moment he realized this was the moment he became a physicist. He studied at Harvard University and took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, eventually becoming a founding faculty member at the Perimeter Institute.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerimeter,\u201d in fact, is the perfect word to describe Smolin\u2019s place near the boundary of mainstream physics. When most physicists dived headfirst into string theory, Smolin played a key role in working out the competing theory of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/string-theory-meets-loop-quantum-gravity-20160112\/\">loop quantum gravity<\/a>. When most physicists said that the laws of physics are immutable, he said they evolve according to a kind of cosmic Darwinism. When most physicists said that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/a-defense-of-the-reality-of-time-20170516\/\">time is an illusion<\/a>, Smolin insisted that it\u2019s real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The universe is kind of an impossible object. It has an inside but no outside; it\u2019s a one-sided coin. This M\u00f6bius architecture presents a unique challenge for cosmologists, who find themselves in the awkward position of being stuck inside the very system they\u2019re trying to comprehend. It\u2019s a situation that Lee Smolin has been thinking [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,32,41,2229,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-education","category-information-science","category-mathematics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97732","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\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}