What's New in Science With Sabine and Lawrence | Fusion Dark Matter, String Theory in Biology, and Rapid Evolution

About this episode

Lawrence Krauss and Sabine Hossenfelder discuss recent developments in science, including fusion dark matter, quantum mechanics, and the implications of AI in mathematics.

I’m back with my friend and colleague Sabine Hossenfelder for another episode of “What’s New in Science”. I think this is one of my favorite dialogues that we have had. Spending time with Sabine was a nice chance to step away from my physics lecture series for a bit. I know many of you have been enjoying the lectures, so don’t worry, they’ll be back soon. In this episode, we covered the kind of science news I like best: ideas you can argue about and results that make you recalibrate. Sabine opened with describing a clever proposal that future fusion reactors might double as axion dark matter factories, producing a flux of very light, weakly interacting particles through neutron-lithium reactions in the shielding. That led to a discussion about what people mean by “axions,” why particle physicists tend to be more particular about the term, and why I’m always more interested in dark matter candidates that were invented to solve an actual problem, not just to fill a cosmological gap. From there we jumped to quantum mechanics at the edge of common sense, with a Vienna experiment showing interference from a cluster of thousands of atoms, and a friendly disagreement about whether…

People in this episode

Host: Lawrence M. Krauss

Guest: Sabine Hossenfelder

Topics covered

• fusion dark matter
• string theory
• quantum mechanics
• AI in mathematics
• rapid evolution
• particle physics

Keywords

• fusion reactors
• axion dark matter
• quantum mechanics
• AI
• particle physics
• dark matter candidates
• neutron-lithium reactions

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