Nobel physics laureate and former Princeton professor Frank Wilczek GS '74 gave a lecture Thursday night titled "The Universe is a Strange Place," in which he discussed gaps in our understanding of the universe.
His talk focused on "things I don't understand about the universe," he told the audience in Dodds Auditorium. "They're basic enough problems, simple enough to state — but not to solve — that I can tell you about them in 45 minutes."
The subjects of the lecture included the composition of ordinary matter, the nature of dark matter and dark energy, the future of the universe and efforts on Long Island to create a "little bang" simulating the conditions of the Big Bang.
"What appears to us as empty space is really a wildly dynamical medium," Wilczek said.
Empty space is also not at all empty, he added. He showed a computer-generated model of what empty space looks like.
"We weren't designed to see it, but since we have this theory, we can use it to design what our eyes would see if they could resolve minute distances," he said.
Wilczek also recounted sitting on a panel to investigate the possibility that the creation of a "little bang" could bring about a black hole or a similar disaster. His prediction, an almost unequivocal no, was later proven correct when a "little bang" was created in 2000.
"I have rarely felt so confident," he joked. "If I were wrong, no one would ever find out because we wouldn't be here."
Wilczek finished by discussing the "fragility of life from the perspective of fundamental physics."
Had strict parameters for the weight of subatomic particles not been met, he said, our universe would not have formed in a manner conducive to complex particles, and hence, our world would not exist. He called the simultaneous fulfillment of all the necessary parameters "the conspiracy that achieves complexity."
"The particles that we see are" — Wilczek paused, looking for the word — "epiphenomena."
"That's reality and we are just little bubbles on it, if you like," he added.
Wilczek taught at Princeton from 1974 to 1981, after which he spent seven years at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He then returned to Princeton to join the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study, but left in 2000 for MIT.
The lecture was presented by the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce and was part of the annual Albert Einstein Memorial Lecture series.
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