Do we need to abandon Einstein? | Eric Weinstein and George Ellis go head to head on wormholes

Eric Weinstein and George Ellis battle over Einstein's relevance in today's perception of the universe.

This was taken from the debate 'Down the wormhole,' which was filmed at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales in May of 2023.

At the highest speeds of current rockets, it would take more than 100,000 years to reach the nearest star. For Hollywood and the many who want to believe in the possibility of space travel across the galaxy, the solution is wormholes, swirly tubes that allow us to cross vast tracts of the universe and time in a magical jump. Compatible with Einstein's theories, scientists have been reported to have even created them. But critics claim this is false, arguing that we have no evidence for such a thing. The experiment was a simulation of a wormhole and was not real. And even if holes in space time existed travel along them would be impossible.

Should we accept that wormholes are an invention we want to believe but for which there is no evidence? Should we reluctantly conclude that space travel to habitable planets is never going to take place and we will always be alone in the universe? Or is it just possible that our sci-fi imaginings will successfully drive invention?

#DownTheWormhole #WasEinsteinWrong #SpaceTravel

Eric Weinstein is a mathematical physicist and the host of the podcast The Portal. He is the former Managing Director of Thiel Capital in San Francisco and was formerly a Co-Founder and Principal of the Natron Group in Manhattan as well as a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University in the Mathematical Institute.

George Ellis is a distinguished professor at University of Cape Town in South Africa. He co-authored 'The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time' with physicist Stephen Hawking, and is considered one of the world's leading theorists in cosmology.

[TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas]

Do you think we should abandon Einstein? Let us know in the comments below!

[_uncredited]

Unwritten rule of journalism: If the headline is a question, the answer is no.

[chrisb]

Eric's point is that if you want the NEXT Einstein, you gotta break free! Imagine if Albert had only held to Newton?

[sidviscous]

After all, it was Einstein who said "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

[seananderson]

Einsteins work is valuable as is Newtons. We do need to break out of Einsteins paradigm, and be serious about it. I imagine Einstein would be the first to agree.

[MasterSimpkins]

Eric is at the height of his game here.

[vtrandal]

Einstein’s theory of gravity is still our best working theory of gravity. The title to the video is Clickbait for people who don’t understand that.

[phantom]

I've listened a lot of physicists - Green, Carrol, Cox, Keating, Kaku, Wolfram, etc.
Weinstein, although may be somewhat arrogant, is by far the best historian of physics and mathematics and literally destroys everyone in a debate based on his knowledge.

[EveK-North]

I’m not sure to whom Eric is addressing? Scientists would love nothing better than to disprove Einstein. You don’t get famous by validating Einstein but by proving him wrong - by showing an even better explanation than what Einstein has shown.

[AriesKJJ]

It's amusing how many times in my lifetime people have announced that they have disproven Einstein!... and wonderfully hilarious how many times they have admitted Einstein was right after all!

[coldpotatoes]

I think Eric is in the right century, in 3D mapping a new way was found 4 months ago called Gaussian Scatter using A.I a week ago it’s up to Gaussian Scatter 2.0. The adaptive value of breaking current understandings in order to pursue new ones is obvious.

[nazimdelaine]

Totally agree, our institutions need a shake up. We've been going in circles around Einstein much too long!

[lowket]

The question is valid: proof Einstein wrong. He would be very proud.

[europa_bambaataa]

0:15 355/113 is very noteworthy fraction that gets REALLY WEIRDLY close to pi

[ArtisanTony]

too bad we couldn't watch the whole thing here.

[parapickle]

This is exactly how I feel about modern music

[kokomanation]

The general theory of relativity is a great mathematical model that describes the mechanics of the universe up to a certain degree I think it is pretty close to perfect but in the very long interstellar distances it is not enough to describe gravity

[p_rat]

Most people who argue that "we need to break free from Einstein" don't really understand general relativity. They don't really know what they are talking about.

[merlepatterson]

Personally, I will not submit to IAI's "Paywall". Tough break for science education.

[devilsadvocate]

Eric is great at talking about how it’s important to talk… it’s literally all he does.