Lee Smolin - Are the Laws of Nature Always Constant?

The laws of nature or physics are assumed to be everywhere the same, on the far side of the universe as sure as on the far side of your house. Otherwise science itself could not succeed. But are these laws equally constant across time? Might the deep laws of physics change over eons of time? The implications would be profound.




Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist, a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[jamesbentonticer]

One of the best guests. More of him please.

[jareknowak]

Smolin had surgery at the end of August, I hope He is okay.
I love listening to Him.

[HarryNicNicholas]

i have to say i admire their cool, chatting about the origins of the universe while escaping from alcatraz is quite a feat.

[michaelcorenzwit]

Enlightening post. Smolin is excellent at explaining very complex concepts. I appreciate his making clear that he is not completely convinced and that he is speculating.

[abhishekr]

There's nothing that so dates an era than the conception of its future. Profound!!!

[micpin]

These guys don't want to admit that the whole field is stuck.
Everything what these guys says now is just speculation, guesses and "we don't know".

[lowelllarsen]

Very interesting concept- maybe EVERYTHING is relative - our time frame is too short to recognize this

[bazoo]

3:22 - And here's the crux of the question: without a possibility, even in principle, to test our hypotheses of "what's beyond our Universe", they remain in the realm of philosophy at best, and often just SciFi. This does not mean, of course, that such musings are "forbidden" to physicists, just that one must not give them more weight than they are due. OTOH, it is useful to keep in mind that the postulate of our "mediocrity", that is, that there's nothing special about our position in space and time, is an axiom, rather than firmly experimentally confirmed fact (beyond what dr. Smolin says at the beginning.)

[rooryan]

It’s seeming more and more like the Big Bang was not the beginning of the universe, and/or we live in a sort of multiverse. I don’t know if science can give us the answer to that question, but I do know that if either space or time are truly infinite there’s not a human on earth who could claim to understand that reality

[jamesruscheinski]

when the expansion of universe gets far enough along that there are pretty much only evaporated black holes left, could the massive remnants (singularities?) of these evaporated black holes be drawn to each other, whether through gravity and - or something else?

[mintakan]

I wonder whether physics is laboring under an ideal, a certain paradigm. That would be Laplace's Daemon (determinism). But what if there's another paradigm that better describes the breath and depth, of what's going on. This would esp. apply to biology. But what if it also applied to the laws of physics, as Smolin suggests.

[aminomar]

As long as human logic is universal it doesn’t matter whether the laws of nature are fixed or not (human mind can tackle it).
this universe built within cycle two.
It’s very likely that there are so-called multiverse but that doesn’t matter for humans right now (too early and doesn’t affect this universe directly)
better to think about something more realistic and useful !
Humans didn’t reach that advanced mental and technological level to think about such a things (right now it’s a kind of sophistry and hallucinations).

[Epoch]

Smolin has had some of the most interesting Concepts in science I have ever come across.

[hbahr]

Scientists pushing myths (hypothesis) that don't explain why our world is the way it is, that they cant observe nor experiment because they feel that the world is too fined tuned. Tough luck, why not imagine elfs and unicors before the Bing bang. It is absolute fascinating coming from scientists

[jamesruscheinski]

where could changes in laws and physical constants of nature come from? would such changes happen through quantum mechanics, or are there other possible ways to make physical changes to constants and laws of nature?

[caiomarciorodrigues]

Some 20yrs ago, Rupert Sheldrake rose this precise question about the stability of physical laws.

[nurgahaditia]

🤔 and i dont even understand what you both talking about!? 😅
😁
🤕😅
#justupidea.. ✌️😁

[rc]

laws of physics seem to be real, everywhere there's matter, at least 🤔

[markberman]

But do we know all things and all laws or the universe or are we still blinded by ourselves? Laws (that we have discovered or forgotten) in our universe are constant for a reason? What's the reason? Is it related to the gift of sentience? Is there a law that governs the cycles of sentience that we either don't recognize, refuse to recognize, or have lost and forgotten along the way? Everything has a purpose, does what is done with that purpose relate to the idea of our universe being a probability matrix beyond our understanding? How do we get to understanding? We can, but how must we evolve to understand?

[anewviewofreality]

The fundamental nature of existence can't be change, because this idea is paradoxical: an assertion about the truth of fundamental existence is logically required to be unchanging, so to claim it is unchanging is a contradiction. That's to say: what is fundamental and unchanging can't be change itself.