WEBVTT 00:00:01.087 --> 00:00:05.272 There is something about physics 00:00:05.296 --> 00:00:09.296 that has been really bothering me since I was a little kid. 00:00:11.010 --> 00:00:12.819 And it's related to a question 00:00:12.843 --> 00:00:16.087 that scientists have been asking for almost 100 years, 00:00:16.111 --> 00:00:17.280 with no answer. 00:00:19.108 --> 00:00:22.118 How do the smallest things in nature, 00:00:22.142 --> 00:00:24.295 the particles of the quantum world, 00:00:24.319 --> 00:00:27.350 match up with the largest things in nature -- 00:00:27.374 --> 00:00:30.621 planets and stars and galaxies held together by gravity? NOTE Paragraph 00:00:31.250 --> 00:00:34.023 As a kid, I would puzzle over questions just like this. 00:00:34.047 --> 00:00:36.939 I would fiddle around with microscopes and electromagnets, 00:00:36.963 --> 00:00:39.158 and I would read about the forces of the small 00:00:39.182 --> 00:00:40.516 and about quantum mechanics 00:00:40.540 --> 00:00:44.104 and I would marvel at how well that description matched up 00:00:44.128 --> 00:00:45.298 to our observation. 00:00:46.220 --> 00:00:47.803 Then I would look at the stars, 00:00:47.827 --> 00:00:50.351 and I would read about how well we understand gravity, 00:00:50.375 --> 00:00:53.725 and I would think surely, there must be some elegant way 00:00:53.749 --> 00:00:56.394 that these two systems match up. 00:00:57.021 --> 00:00:58.422 But there's not. 00:00:59.673 --> 00:01:00.833 And the books would say, 00:01:00.857 --> 00:01:04.040 yeah, we understand a lot about these two realms separately, 00:01:04.064 --> 00:01:06.674 but when we try to link them mathematically, 00:01:06.698 --> 00:01:08.028 everything breaks. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:08.674 --> 00:01:09.984 And for 100 years, 00:01:10.008 --> 00:01:15.036 none of our ideas as to how to solve this basically physics disaster, 00:01:15.060 --> 00:01:16.874 has ever been supported by evidence. 00:01:18.271 --> 00:01:19.925 And to little old me -- 00:01:19.949 --> 00:01:21.759 little, curious, skeptical James -- 00:01:21.783 --> 00:01:24.651 this was a supremely unsatisfying answer. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:26.011 --> 00:01:28.244 So, I'm still a skeptical little kid. 00:01:28.268 --> 00:01:32.078 Flash-forward now to December of 2015, 00:01:33.029 --> 00:01:35.503 when I found myself smack in the middle 00:01:35.527 --> 00:01:38.467 of the physics world being flipped on its head. 00:01:39.999 --> 00:01:43.319 It all started when we at CERN saw something intriguing in our data: 00:01:43.343 --> 00:01:45.617 a hint of a new particle, 00:01:45.641 --> 00:01:49.857 an inkling of a possibly extraordinary answer to this question. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:51.777 --> 00:01:53.904 So I'm still a skeptical little kid, I think, 00:01:53.928 --> 00:01:56.061 but I'm also now a particle hunter. 00:01:56.085 --> 00:01:59.548 I am a physicist at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, 00:01:59.572 --> 00:02:03.043 the largest science experiment ever mounted. 00:02:03.877 --> 00:02:07.412 It's a 27-kilometer tunnel on the border of France and Switzerland 00:02:07.436 --> 00:02:09.286 buried 100 meters underground. 00:02:09.310 --> 00:02:10.464 And in this tunnel, 00:02:10.488 --> 00:02:14.441 we use superconducting magnets colder than outer space 00:02:14.465 --> 00:02:17.526 to accelerate protons to almost the speed of light 00:02:17.550 --> 00:02:21.427 and slam them into each other millions of times per second, 00:02:21.451 --> 00:02:24.277 collecting the debris of these collisions 00:02:24.301 --> 00:02:28.272 to search for new, undiscovered fundamental particles. 00:02:28.727 --> 00:02:31.191 Its design and construction took decades of work 00:02:31.215 --> 00:02:34.247 by thousands of physicists from around the globe, 00:02:34.271 --> 00:02:36.812 and in the summer of 2015, 00:02:36.836 --> 00:02:40.260 we had been working tirelessly to switch on the LHC 00:02:40.284 --> 00:02:44.751 at the highest energy that humans have ever used in a collider experiment. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:45.735 --> 00:02:48.258 Now, higher energy is important 00:02:48.282 --> 00:02:50.469 because for particles, there is an equivalence 00:02:50.493 --> 00:02:52.694 between energy and particle mass, 00:02:52.718 --> 00:02:55.179 and mass is just a number put there by nature. 00:02:56.068 --> 00:02:57.386 To discover new particles, 00:02:57.410 --> 00:02:59.532 we need to reach these bigger numbers. 00:02:59.556 --> 00:03:02.810 And to do that, we have to build a bigger, higher energy collider, 00:03:02.834 --> 00:03:05.399 and the biggest, highest energy collider in the world 00:03:05.423 --> 00:03:06.889 is the Large Hadron Collider. 00:03:08.271 --> 00:03:13.170 And then, we collide protons quadrillions of times, 00:03:13.194 --> 00:03:17.478 and we collect this data very slowly, over months and months. 00:03:18.813 --> 00:03:23.148 And then new particles might show up in our data as bumps -- 00:03:23.172 --> 00:03:25.617 slight deviations from what you expect, 00:03:25.641 --> 00:03:29.608 little clusters of data points that make a smooth line not so smooth. 00:03:30.379 --> 00:03:32.100 For example, this bump, 00:03:33.010 --> 00:03:35.543 after months of data-taking in 2012, 00:03:35.567 --> 00:03:37.696 led to the discovery of the Higgs particle -- 00:03:37.720 --> 00:03:38.925 the Higgs boson -- 00:03:38.949 --> 00:03:42.314 and to a Nobel Prize for the confirmation of its existence. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:43.972 --> 00:03:47.530 This jump up in energy in 2015 00:03:48.628 --> 00:03:51.920 represented the best chance that we as a species had ever had 00:03:51.944 --> 00:03:53.421 of discovering new particles -- 00:03:53.445 --> 00:03:55.557 new answers to these long-standing questions, 00:03:55.581 --> 00:03:58.678 because it was almost twice as much energy as we used 00:03:58.702 --> 00:04:00.624 when we discovered the Higgs boson. 00:04:00.648 --> 00:04:04.389 Many of my colleagues had been working their entire careers for this moment, 00:04:04.413 --> 00:04:06.489 and frankly, to little curious me, 00:04:06.513 --> 00:04:09.423 this was the moment I'd been waiting for my entire life. 00:04:09.447 --> 00:04:11.178 So 2015 was go time. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:12.654 --> 00:04:14.864 So June 2015, 00:04:15.722 --> 00:04:18.381 the LHC is switched back on. 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:21.917 My colleagues and I held our breath and bit our fingernails, 00:04:21.941 --> 00:04:24.452 and then finally we saw the first proton collisions 00:04:24.476 --> 00:04:26.432 at this highest energy ever. 00:04:26.456 --> 00:04:28.532 Applause, champagne, celebration. 00:04:28.556 --> 00:04:32.152 This was a milestone for science, 00:04:32.176 --> 00:04:36.798 and we had no idea what we would find in this brand-new data. 00:04:39.990 --> 00:04:42.168 And then a few weeks later, we found a bump. 00:04:44.192 --> 00:04:45.868 It wasn't a very big bump, 00:04:46.952 --> 00:04:49.464 but it was big enough to make you raise your eyebrow. 00:04:49.488 --> 00:04:51.739 But on a scale of one to 10 for eyebrow raises, 00:04:51.763 --> 00:04:54.373 if 10 indicates that you've discovered a new particle, 00:04:54.397 --> 00:04:56.124 this eyebrow raise is about a four. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:56.148 --> 00:04:57.298 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:58.432 --> 00:05:03.643 I spent hours, days, weeks in secret meetings, 00:05:03.667 --> 00:05:06.027 arguing with my colleagues over this little bump, 00:05:06.051 --> 00:05:09.287 poking and prodding it with our most ruthless experimental sticks 00:05:09.311 --> 00:05:11.288 to see if it would withstand scrutiny. 00:05:11.988 --> 00:05:15.449 But even after months of working feverishly -- 00:05:15.473 --> 00:05:17.905 sleeping in our offices and not going home, 00:05:17.929 --> 00:05:20.006 candy bars for dinner, 00:05:20.030 --> 00:05:21.600 coffee by the bucketful -- 00:05:21.624 --> 00:05:25.867 physicists are machines for turning coffee into diagrams -- NOTE Paragraph 00:05:25.891 --> 00:05:27.290 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:27.314 --> 00:05:29.850 This little bump would not go away. 00:05:30.704 --> 00:05:32.842 So after a few months, 00:05:32.866 --> 00:05:36.576 we presented our little bump to the world with a very clear message: 00:05:37.457 --> 00:05:40.168 this little bump is interesting but it's not definitive, 00:05:40.192 --> 00:05:43.521 so let's keep an eye on it as we take more data. 00:05:43.872 --> 00:05:46.163 So we were trying to be extremely cool about it. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:47.463 --> 00:05:49.651 And the world ran with it anyway. 00:05:50.383 --> 00:05:52.015 The news loved it. 00:05:52.735 --> 00:05:55.290 People said it reminded them of the little bump 00:05:55.314 --> 00:05:58.737 that was shown on the way toward the Higgs boson discovery. 00:05:58.761 --> 00:06:01.889 Better than that, my theorist colleagues -- 00:06:02.548 --> 00:06:04.865 I love my theorist colleagues -- 00:06:04.889 --> 00:06:08.501 my theorist colleagues wrote 500 papers about this little bump. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:08.525 --> 00:06:09.980 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:06:10.574 --> 00:06:14.540 The world of particle physics had been flipped on its head. 00:06:15.745 --> 00:06:19.987 But what was it about this particular bump 00:06:20.011 --> 00:06:24.101 that caused thousands of physicists to collectively lose their cool? 00:06:25.596 --> 00:06:27.032 This little bump was unique. 00:06:28.198 --> 00:06:29.567 This little bump indicated 00:06:29.591 --> 00:06:32.613 that we were seeing an unexpectedly large number of collisions 00:06:32.637 --> 00:06:35.968 whose debris consisted of only two photons, 00:06:35.992 --> 00:06:37.236 two particles of light. 00:06:37.260 --> 00:06:38.497 And that's rare. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:39.069 --> 00:06:41.689 Particle collisions are not like automobile collisions. 00:06:41.713 --> 00:06:43.232 They have different rules. 00:06:43.256 --> 00:06:45.906 When two particles collide at almost the speed of light, 00:06:45.930 --> 00:06:47.351 the quantum world takes over. 00:06:47.375 --> 00:06:48.635 And in the quantum world, 00:06:48.659 --> 00:06:51.852 these two particles can briefly create a new particle 00:06:51.876 --> 00:06:54.656 that lives for a tiny fraction of a second 00:06:54.680 --> 00:06:57.561 before splitting into other particles that hit our detector. 00:06:57.585 --> 00:07:00.990 Imagine a car collision where the two cars vanish upon impact, 00:07:01.014 --> 00:07:03.283 a bicycle appears in their place -- NOTE Paragraph 00:07:03.307 --> 00:07:04.378 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:07:04.402 --> 00:07:06.863 And then that bicycle explodes into two skateboards, 00:07:06.887 --> 00:07:08.068 which hit our detector. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:08.092 --> 00:07:09.471 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:07:09.495 --> 00:07:11.448 Hopefully, not literally. 00:07:11.472 --> 00:07:12.814 They're very expensive. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:14.191 --> 00:07:17.939 Events where only two photons hit out detector are very rare. 00:07:17.963 --> 00:07:21.685 And because of the special quantum properties of photons, 00:07:21.709 --> 00:07:25.497 there's a very small number of possible new particles -- 00:07:25.521 --> 00:07:27.018 these mythical bicycles -- 00:07:27.042 --> 00:07:29.285 that can give birth to only two photons. 00:07:29.812 --> 00:07:32.648 But one of these options is huge, 00:07:32.672 --> 00:07:35.508 and it has to do with that long-standing question 00:07:35.532 --> 00:07:38.054 that bothered me as a tiny little kid, 00:07:38.078 --> 00:07:39.438 about gravity. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:41.946 --> 00:07:44.618 Gravity may seem super strong to you, 00:07:44.642 --> 00:07:48.742 but it's actually crazily weak compared to the other forces of nature. 00:07:48.766 --> 00:07:51.397 I can briefly beat gravity when I jump, 00:07:52.390 --> 00:07:55.233 but I can't pick a proton out of my hand. 00:07:56.463 --> 00:07:59.679 The strength of gravity compared to the other forces of nature? 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:02.670 It's 10 to the minus 39. 00:08:02.694 --> 00:08:05.231 That's a decimal with 39 zeros after it. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:05.255 --> 00:08:06.412 Worse than that, 00:08:06.436 --> 00:08:09.463 all of the other known forces of nature are perfectly described 00:08:09.487 --> 00:08:11.524 by this thing we call the Standard Model, 00:08:11.548 --> 00:08:14.983 which is our current best description of nature at its smallest scales, 00:08:15.007 --> 00:08:16.163 and quite frankly, 00:08:16.187 --> 00:08:20.364 one of the most successful achievements of humankind -- 00:08:20.388 --> 00:08:24.400 except for gravity, which is absent from the Standard Model. 00:08:24.424 --> 00:08:25.574 It's crazy. 00:08:26.046 --> 00:08:29.146 It's almost as though most of gravity has gone missing. 00:08:30.394 --> 00:08:32.061 We feel a little bit of it, 00:08:32.085 --> 00:08:33.761 but where's the rest of it? 00:08:33.785 --> 00:08:35.067 No one knows. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:36.003 --> 00:08:40.406 But one theoretical explanation proposes a wild solution. 00:08:42.120 --> 00:08:43.459 You and I -- 00:08:43.483 --> 00:08:45.061 even you in the back -- 00:08:45.085 --> 00:08:47.230 we live in three dimensions of space. 00:08:47.254 --> 00:08:49.811 I hope that's a non-controversial statement. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:49.835 --> 00:08:51.664 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:08:51.688 --> 00:08:55.126 All of the known particles also live in three dimensions of space. 00:08:55.150 --> 00:08:57.340 In fact, a particle is just another name 00:08:57.364 --> 00:09:00.373 for an excitation in a three-dimensional field; 00:09:00.397 --> 00:09:02.317 a localized wobbling in space. 00:09:03.288 --> 00:09:06.817 More importantly, all the math that we use to describe all this stuff 00:09:06.841 --> 00:09:09.914 assumes that there are only three dimensions of space. 00:09:09.938 --> 00:09:13.319 But math is math, and we can play around with our math however we want. 00:09:13.343 --> 00:09:16.509 And people have been playing around with extra dimensions of space 00:09:16.533 --> 00:09:17.688 for a very long time, 00:09:17.712 --> 00:09:20.297 but it's always been an abstract mathematical concept. 00:09:20.321 --> 00:09:23.493 I mean, just look around you -- you at the back, look around -- 00:09:23.517 --> 00:09:25.798 there's clearly only three dimensions of space. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:26.954 --> 00:09:28.513 But what if that's not true? 00:09:30.109 --> 00:09:36.364 What if the missing gravity is leaking into an extra-spatial dimension 00:09:36.388 --> 00:09:38.344 that's invisible to you and I? 00:09:39.355 --> 00:09:42.449 What if gravity is just as strong as the other forces 00:09:42.473 --> 00:09:45.614 if you were to view it in this extra-spatial dimension, 00:09:45.638 --> 00:09:48.538 and what you and I experience is a tiny slice of gravity 00:09:48.562 --> 00:09:50.459 make it seem very weak? 00:09:52.158 --> 00:09:53.333 If this were true, 00:09:53.357 --> 00:09:56.105 we would have to expand our Standard Model of particles 00:09:56.129 --> 00:10:00.215 to include an extra particle, a hyperdimensional particle of gravity, 00:10:00.239 --> 00:10:03.234 a special graviton that lives in extra-spatial dimensions. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:03.258 --> 00:10:04.723 I see the looks on your faces. 00:10:04.747 --> 00:10:06.566 You should be asking me the question, 00:10:06.590 --> 00:10:10.234 "How in the world are we going to test this crazy, science fiction idea, 00:10:10.258 --> 00:10:12.749 stuck as we are in three dimensions?" 00:10:12.773 --> 00:10:14.055 The way we always do, 00:10:14.079 --> 00:10:16.218 by slamming together two protons -- NOTE Paragraph 00:10:16.242 --> 00:10:17.394 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:10:17.418 --> 00:10:19.982 Hard enough that the collision reverberates 00:10:20.006 --> 00:10:22.697 into any extra-spatial dimensions that might be there, 00:10:22.721 --> 00:10:25.320 momentarily creating this hyperdimensional graviton 00:10:25.344 --> 00:10:29.724 that then snaps back into the three dimensions of the LHC 00:10:29.748 --> 00:10:31.570 and spits off two photons, 00:10:32.278 --> 00:10:33.616 two particles of light. 00:10:35.417 --> 00:10:38.327 And this hypothetical, extra-dimensional graviton 00:10:38.351 --> 00:10:42.058 is one of the only possible, hypothetical new particles 00:10:42.082 --> 00:10:44.217 that has the special quantum properties 00:10:44.241 --> 00:10:48.477 that could give birth to our little, two-photon bump. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:55.820 So, the possibility of explaining the mysteries of gravity 00:10:55.844 --> 00:10:59.342 and of discovering extra dimensions of space -- 00:10:59.366 --> 00:11:00.958 perhaps now you get a sense 00:11:00.982 --> 00:11:05.106 as to why thousands of physics geeks collectively lost their cool 00:11:05.130 --> 00:11:07.012 over our little, two-photon bump. 00:11:07.036 --> 00:11:09.936 A discovery of this type would rewrite the textbooks. 00:11:10.739 --> 00:11:11.891 But remember, 00:11:11.915 --> 00:11:13.639 the message from us experimentalists 00:11:13.663 --> 00:11:15.902 that actually were doing this work at the time, 00:11:15.926 --> 00:11:17.080 was very clear: 00:11:17.104 --> 00:11:18.278 we need more data. 00:11:18.302 --> 00:11:19.821 With more data, 00:11:19.845 --> 00:11:23.869 the little bump will either turn into a nice, crisp Nobel Prize -- NOTE Paragraph 00:11:23.893 --> 00:11:25.653 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:11:25.677 --> 00:11:28.641 Or the extra data will fill in the space around the bump 00:11:28.665 --> 00:11:30.531 and turn it into a nice, smooth line. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:31.515 --> 00:11:32.733 So we took more data, 00:11:32.757 --> 00:11:35.334 and with five times the data, several months later, 00:11:35.358 --> 00:11:37.048 our little bump 00:11:37.072 --> 00:11:39.420 turned into a smooth line. 00:11:43.217 --> 00:11:46.701 The news reported on a "huge disappointment," on "faded hopes," 00:11:46.725 --> 00:11:49.235 and on particle physicists "being sad." 00:11:49.259 --> 00:11:51.070 Given the tone of the coverage, 00:11:51.094 --> 00:11:54.582 you'd think that we had decided to shut down the LHC and go home. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:54.606 --> 00:11:55.756 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:11:56.628 --> 00:11:58.231 But that's not what we did. 00:12:01.057 --> 00:12:03.071 But why not? 00:12:04.475 --> 00:12:07.320 I mean, if I didn't discover a particle -- and I didn't -- 00:12:08.209 --> 00:12:11.238 if I didn't discover a particle, why am I here talking to you? 00:12:11.262 --> 00:12:13.699 Why didn't I just hang my head in shame 00:12:13.723 --> 00:12:14.947 and go home? NOTE Paragraph 00:12:19.169 --> 00:12:22.520 Particle physicists are explorers. 00:12:23.421 --> 00:12:26.373 And very much of what we do is cartography. 00:12:27.468 --> 00:12:30.320 Let me put it this way: forget about the LHC for a second. 00:12:30.344 --> 00:12:33.726 Imagine you are a space explorer arriving at a distant planet, 00:12:33.750 --> 00:12:35.075 searching for aliens. 00:12:35.099 --> 00:12:36.621 What is your first task? 00:12:37.931 --> 00:12:41.007 To immediately orbit the planet, land, take a quick look around 00:12:41.031 --> 00:12:42.917 for any big, obvious signs of life, 00:12:42.941 --> 00:12:44.760 and report back to home base. 00:12:44.784 --> 00:12:46.408 That's the stage we're at now. 00:12:47.269 --> 00:12:48.756 We took a first look at the LHC 00:12:48.780 --> 00:12:51.064 for any new, big, obvious-to-spot particles, 00:12:51.088 --> 00:12:53.038 and we can report that there are none. 00:12:53.631 --> 00:12:56.304 We saw a weird-looking alien bump on a distant mountain, 00:12:56.328 --> 00:12:58.498 but once we got closer, we saw it was a rock. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:58.816 --> 00:13:01.456 But then what do we do? Do we just give up and fly away? 00:13:01.480 --> 00:13:02.767 Absolutely not; 00:13:02.791 --> 00:13:05.096 we would be terrible scientists if we did. 00:13:05.120 --> 00:13:08.733 No, we spend the next couple of decades exploring, 00:13:08.757 --> 00:13:10.237 mapping out the territory, 00:13:10.261 --> 00:13:12.626 sifting through the sand with a fine instrument, 00:13:12.650 --> 00:13:14.108 peeking under every stone, 00:13:14.132 --> 00:13:15.686 drilling under the surface. 00:13:16.106 --> 00:13:18.699 New particles can either show up immediately 00:13:18.723 --> 00:13:20.856 as big, obvious-to-spot bumps, 00:13:20.880 --> 00:13:24.821 or they can only reveal themselves after years of data taking. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:26.103 --> 00:13:30.513 Humanity has just begun its exploration at the LHC at this big high energy, 00:13:30.537 --> 00:13:32.328 and we have much searching to do. 00:13:32.352 --> 00:13:38.177 But what if, even after 10 or 20 years, we still find no new particles? 00:13:39.053 --> 00:13:40.748 We build a bigger machine. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:40.772 --> 00:13:42.346 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:13:42.370 --> 00:13:44.060 We search at higher energies. 00:13:44.476 --> 00:13:46.046 We search at higher energies. 00:13:46.946 --> 00:13:49.999 Planning is already underway for a 100-kilometer tunnel 00:13:50.612 --> 00:13:53.588 that will collide particles at 10 times the energy of the LHC. 00:13:53.612 --> 00:13:55.949 We don't decide where nature places new particles. 00:13:56.366 --> 00:13:58.012 We only decide to keep exploring. 00:13:58.036 --> 00:14:00.594 But what if, even after a 100-kilometer tunnel 00:14:00.618 --> 00:14:02.478 or a 500-kilometer tunnel 00:14:02.502 --> 00:14:05.343 or a 10,000-kilometer collider floating in space 00:14:05.367 --> 00:14:06.945 between the Earth and the Moon, 00:14:06.969 --> 00:14:10.031 we still find no new particles? 00:14:11.597 --> 00:14:14.291 Then perhaps we're doing particle physics wrong. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:14.315 --> 00:14:16.106 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:14:16.130 --> 00:14:18.087 Perhaps we need to rethink things. 00:14:19.127 --> 00:14:22.389 Maybe we need more resources, technology, expertise 00:14:22.413 --> 00:14:23.921 than what we currently have. 00:14:24.610 --> 00:14:27.951 We already use artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques 00:14:27.975 --> 00:14:29.128 in parts of the LHC, 00:14:29.152 --> 00:14:31.558 but imagine designing a particle physics experiment 00:14:31.582 --> 00:14:33.251 using such sophisticated algorithms 00:14:33.275 --> 00:14:36.443 that it could teach itself to discover a hyperdimensional graviton. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:36.467 --> 00:14:37.624 But what if? 00:14:37.648 --> 00:14:39.093 What if the ultimate question: 00:14:39.117 --> 00:14:42.590 What if even artificial intelligence can't help us answer our questions? 00:14:42.614 --> 00:14:44.725 What if these open questions, for centuries, 00:14:44.749 --> 00:14:47.418 are destined to be unanswered for the foreseeable future? 00:14:47.442 --> 00:14:50.371 What if the stuff that's bothered me since I was a little kid 00:14:50.395 --> 00:14:52.918 is destined to be unanswered in my lifetime? 00:14:54.395 --> 00:14:55.551 Then that ... 00:14:56.282 --> 00:14:58.376 will be even more fascinating. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:00.144 --> 00:15:03.369 We will be forced to think in completely new ways. 00:15:04.361 --> 00:15:06.419 We'll have to go back to our assumptions, 00:15:06.443 --> 00:15:08.782 and determine if there was a flaw somewhere. 00:15:09.401 --> 00:15:12.796 And we'll need to encourage more people to join us in studying science 00:15:12.820 --> 00:15:15.882 since we need fresh eyes on these century-old problems. 00:15:15.906 --> 00:15:19.040 I don't have the answers, and I'm still searching for them. 00:15:19.064 --> 00:15:21.393 But someone -- maybe she's in school right now, 00:15:21.417 --> 00:15:23.101 maybe she's not even born yet -- 00:15:23.783 --> 00:15:26.916 could eventually guide us to see physics in a completely new way, 00:15:26.940 --> 00:15:31.208 and to point out that perhaps we're just asking the wrong questions. 00:15:32.112 --> 00:15:34.522 Which would not be the end of physics, 00:15:34.546 --> 00:15:35.952 but a novel beginning. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:37.204 --> 00:15:38.354 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:38.378 --> 00:15:40.919 (Applause)