why was sean carroll denied tenure why was sean carroll denied tenure

So, he founded that. It's literally that curvature scalar R, that is the thing you put into what we call the Lagrangian to get the equations of motion. Even the teachers at my high school, who were great in many ways, couldn't really help me with that. We theorists had this idea that the universe is simple, that omega equals one, matter dominates the universe -- it's what we called an Einstein-de Sitter in cosmology, that the density perturbations are scale-free and invariant, the dark matter is cold. Susan Cain wrote this wonderful book on introverts that really caught on and really clarified a lot of things for people. I'll be back. In his response to critics he has made a number of interesting claims . I want it to be proposing new ideas, not just explaining ideas out there. But it doesn't hurt. We worked on it for a while, and we got stuck, and we needed to ask Alan for help. So, that's one of the things you walk into as a person who tries to be interdisciplinary. Steven Morrow, my editor who published From Eternity to Here, called me up and said, "The world needs a book on the Higgs boson. I think it's bad in the following way. I got the dimensional analysis wrong, like the simplest thing in the world. Had I made a wrong choice by going into academia? So, I think that -- again, it got on the best seller list very briefly. So, that appeared in my book as a vignette. I think that responsibility is located in the field, not on individuals. The South Pole telescope is his baby. She said, "John is right, and I was also right. All these different things were the favorite model for the cosmologists. It was like cinderblocks, etc., but at least it was spacious. So, that would happen. And they said, "Sure!" In part, that is just because of my sort of fundamentalist, big picture, philosophical inclinations that I want to get past the details of the particular experiment to the fundamental underlying lessons that we learned from them. So, temporarily, this puts me in a position where I'm writing papers and answering questions that no one cares about, because I'm trying to build up a foundation for going from the fundamental quantumness of the universe to the classical world we see. I took the early universe [class] from Alan. The book talks about wide range of topics such as submicroscopic components of the universe, whether human existence can have meaning without Godand everything between the two. The first super string revolution had happened around 1984. The Caltech job is unique for various reasons, but that's always hard, and it should be hard. Sean, thank you so much for joining me today. It's funny, that's a great question, because there are plenty of textbooks in general relativity on the market. The actual question you ask is a hard one because I'm not sure. That's fine. People like Wayne Hu came out of that. What academia asks of them is exactly what they want to provide. My mom worked as a secretary for U.S. Steel. They're not in the job of making me feel good. My stepfather's boss's husband was a professor in the astronomy department in Villanova. There was, as you know, because you listened to my recent podcast, there's a hint of a possibility of a suggestion in the CMB data that there is what is called cosmological birefringence. Then, I went to college at Villanova University, in a different suburb of Philadelphia, which is a Catholic school. As a ten year old, was there any formative moment where -- it's a big world out there for a ten year old. We should move into that era." But by the mid '90s, people had caught on to that and realized it didn't keep continuing. I'm trying to develop new ideas and understand them. Theorists never get this job. And that gives you another handle on the total matter density. No one told me. You don't get that, but there's clearly way more audience in a world as large as ours for people who are willing to work a little bit. Really, really great guy. But I do do educational things, pedagogical things. I think new faculty should get wooden desks. And I've guessed. I thought it would be fun to do, but I took that in stride. / Miscellany. I think that there -- I'm not sure there's a net advantage or disadvantage, but there were advantages. [3][4] He has been a contributor to the physics blog Cosmic Variance, and has published in scientific journals such as Nature as well as other publications, including The New York Times, Sky & Telescope and New Scientist. I worked a lot with Mark Trodden. There's always some institutional resistance. As long as I was at Chicago, I was the group leader of the theory group in the cosmological physics center. Yes, I think so. When you get hired, everyone can afford to be optimistic; you are an experiment and you might just hit paydirt. Firing on all cylinders intellectually. I've never cared. I remember that. This is December 1997. I talked to the philosophers and classicists, and whatever, but I don't think anyone knew. This is David Zierler, Oral Historian for the American Institute of Physics. When I got there, we wrote a couple of papers tighter. But there were postdocs. First, on the textbook, what was the gap in general relativity that you saw that necessitated a graduate-level textbook? For many interviews, the AIP retains substantial files with further information about the interviewee and the interview itself. So, you didn't even know, as a prospective grad student, whether he was someone you would want to pick as an advisor, because who knows how long he'd be there. Sean Michael Carroll (born October 5, 1966) is an American theoretical physicist and philosopher who specializes in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and philosophy of science. I think, now, as wonderful as Villanova was, and I can rhapsodize about what a great experience I had there, but it's nothing like going to a major, top notch university, again, just because of the other students who are around you. It was very small. The Planck scale, or whatever, is going to be new physics. We make it so hard, and I think that's exactly counterproductive. No, I think I'm much more purposive about choosing what to work on now than I was back then. In fact, I did have this idea that experiencing new things and getting away was important. Then, the other big one was, again, I think the constant lesson as I'm saying all these words out loud is how bad my judgment has been about guiding my own academic career. w of zero means it's like ordinary matter. I learned general relativity from Nick Warner, which later grew into the book that I wrote. Again, a weird thing you really shouldn't do as a second-year graduate student. I don't want to say anything against them. I think it's more that people don't care. I was like, I can't do that, but it's very impressive, but okay. I think that's true in terms of the content of the interview, because you can see someone, and you can interrupt them. This is easily the most important, most surprising empirical discovery in fundamental physics in -- I want to say in my lifetime, but certainly since I've been doing science. It wasn't until my first year as a postdoc at MIT when I went to a summer school and -- again, meeting people, talking to them. So, I did start slowly and gradually to expand my research interests, especially because around 2004, so soon before I left Chicago, I wrote what to me was the best paper I wrote at Chicago. And this was all happening during your Santa Barbara years. Author admin Reading 4 min Views 5 Published by 2022. No, and to be super-duper honest here, I can't possibly be objective, because I didn't get tenure at the University of Chicago. Of course, once you get rejected for tenure, those same people lose interest in you. She's like, okay, this omega that you're measuring, the ratio of the matter density in the universe to the critical density, which you want to be one, here it is going up. Various people on the faculty came to me after I was rejected, and tried to explain to me why, and they all gave me different stories. One is the word metaphysical in this sense is used in a different sense by the professional philosophical community. That's one of the things that I wanted to do. But, yes, with all those caveats in mind, I think that as much as I love the ideas themselves, talking about the ideas, sharing them, getting feedback, learning from other people, these are all crucially important parts of the process to me. That is, as an astronomy student, you naturally had to take all kinds of physics classes, but physics majors didn't necessarily have to take all kinds of astronomy classes. The guy, whoever the person in charge of these things, says, "No, you don't get a wooden desk until you're a dean." The point I try to make to them is the following -- and usually they're like, sure, I'm not religious. So, I'm a big believer in the disciplines, but it would be at least fun to experiment with the idea of a university that just hired really good people. It was a little bit of whiplash, because as a young postdoc, one of the things you're supposed to do is bring in seminar speakers. The slot is usually used for people -- let's say you're a researcher who is really an expert at a certain microwave background satellite, but maybe faculty member is not what you want to do, or not what you're quite qualified to do, but you could be a research professor and be hired and paid for by the grant on that satellite. The modern world, academically, broadly, but also science in particular, physics in particular, is very, very specialized. This is not a good attitude to have, but I thought I would do fine. ", "Is God a good theory? And they had atomic physics, which I thought was interesting, and Seattle was beautiful. Well, I think it's no question, because I am in the early to middle stages of writing a trade book which will be the most interdisciplinary book I've ever written. Again, and again, you'd hear people say, "Here's the thing I did as a graduate student, and that got me hired as a faculty member, but then I got my Packard fellowship, and I could finally do the thing that I really wanted to do, and now I'm going to win the Nobel Prize for doing that." Well, I just did the dumbest thing. They need it written within six months so it can be published before the discovery is announced. I'm not someone who gains energy by interacting with other people. There is a whole other discussion, another three-hour discussion, about how the attitude among physicists has changed from the first half of the 20th century to now, when physicists were much more broadly interested in philosophy and other issues. They soon thereafter hired Ramesh Narayan, and eventually Avi Loeb, and people like that. 1.21 If such a state did not have a beginning, it would produce classical spacetime either from eternity or not at all. And then, even within physics, do you see cosmology as the foundational physics to talk about the rest of physics, and all the rest of science in society? The astronomy department was just better than the physics department at that time. It was really a quite difficult transition to embrace and accept videoconferencing as an acceptable medium. I taught graduate particle physics, relativity. So, I gave a talk, and I said, "Look, something is wrong." It's taken as a given that every paper will have a different idea of what that means. What was your thesis research on? I'm not sure how much time passed. I was absolutely of the strong feeling that you get a better interview when you're in person. Melville, NY 11747 So, thank you so much. Do you see this as all one big enterprise with different media, or are they essentially different activities with different goals in mind? But I'll still be writing physics papers and philosophy papers, hopefully doing real research in more interdisciplinary areas as well, from whatever perch. Like, a collaboration that is out there in the open, and isn't trying to hide their results until they publish it, but anyone can chip in. My stepfather had gone to college, and he was an occupational therapist, so he made a little bit more money. But then, the thing is, I did. The astronomy department at Harvard was a wonderful, magical place, which was absolutely top notch. When I was at Harvard, Ted Pyne, who I already mentioned as a fellow graduate student, and still a good friend of mine, he and I sort of stuck together as the two theoretical physicists in the astronomy department. So, I said, "Okay, I'll apply for that. So, I wrote up a little proposal, and I sent it to Katinka Matson, who is an agent with the Brockman Group, and she said something which I think is true, now that I know the business a lot better, which was, "It's true maybe it's not the perfect book, but people have a vague idea that there has been the perfect book. It wasn't even officially an AP class, so I had to take calculus again when I got to college. I guess, my family was conservative politically, so they weren't joining the union or anything like that. I say, "Look, there are things you are interested in. Maybe it's them. I made that choice consciously. Having all these interests is a wonderful thing, but it's not necessarily most efficacious for pursuing a traditional academic track. I don't think that was a conversion experience that I needed to have. So, his response was to basically make me an offer I couldn't refuse in terms of the financial reward that would be accompanying writing this book. And, you know, video sixteen got half a million views, and it was about gravity, but it was about gravity using tensors and differential geometry. But mostly -- I started a tendency that has continued to this day where I mostly work with people who are either postdocs or students themselves. As far as I was concerned, the best part was we went to the International House of Pancakes after church every Sunday. I said, the thing that you learn by looking at all these different forms of data are that, that can't be right. Yeah, so this is a chance to really think about it. That's not what I do for a living. Faculty are used to disappointment. That's all it is. And you know, Twitter and social media and podcasts are somewhere in between that. Even though academia has a love for self-scrutiny, we overlook the consequences of tenure denial. I'm sure the same thing happens if you're an economic historian. It's difficult, yes. So, I said that, and she goes, "Well, propose that as a book. Actually, Joe Silk at Berkeley, when I turned down Berkeley, he said, "We're going to have an assistant professorship coming up soon. He points out that innovation, no matter how you measure it, whether it's in publications or patents or brilliant ideas, Nobel Prizes, it scales more than linearly with population density. In many ways, I could do better now if I rewrote it from scratch, but that always happens. Different people are asking different questions: what do you do? What do I want to optimize for, now that I am being self-reflective about it? Let's sit and think about this seriously." I have a lot of graduate students. That's the job. I'm not going to really worry about it. So, in the second video, I taught them calculus. But very few people in my field jump on that bandwagon. I know the theme is that there's no grand plan, but did you intuit that this position would allow you the intellectual freedom to go way beyond your academic comfort home and to get more involved in outreach, do more in humanities, interact with all kinds of intellectuals that academic physicists never talk to. I lucked into it, once again. It's true, but I did have to take astronomy classes. Wilson wanted the Seahawks to trade for Payton's rights after his Saints exit last year, according to The Athletic. She never ever discouraged me from doing it, but she had no way of knowing what it meant to encourage me either -- what college to go to, what to study, or anything like that. w of minus .9 or minus .8 means the density is slowly fading away. I got books -- I liked reading. By the way, all these are hard. So, I still didn't quite learn that lesson, that you should be building to some greater thing. He knew all the molecular physics, and things like that, that I would never know. That's all they want to do, and they get so deep into it that no one else can follow them, and they do their best to explain. But within the physical sciences, there are gradations in terms of one's willingness to consider metaphysics as something that exists, that there are things about the universe that are not -- it's not a matter of them being not observable now because we lack the theories or the tools to observe them, but because they exist outside the bounds of science. It helped really impress upon me the need for departments to be proactive in taking care of their students. If everyone is a specialist, they hire more specialists, right? Doing as much as you could without the intimidating math. No one has written the history of atheism very, very well. So, that was my first glimpse at purposive, long term strategizing within theoretical physics. So, I would become famous if they actually discovered that. Maybe 1999, but I think 2000. It's not just you can do them, so you get the publication, and that individual idea is interesting, but it has to build to something greater than the individual paper itself. So, that was one big thing. And that's okay, in some sense, because what I care about more is the underlying ideas, and no one should listen to me talk about anything because I'm a physicist. So, I was not that far away from going to law school, because I was not getting any faculty offers, but suddenly, the most interesting thing in the universe was the thing that I was the world's expert in, through no great planning of my own. So, I kind of talked with my friends. Again, I was wrong over and over again. So, I could completely convince myself that, in fact -- and this is actually more true now than it maybe was twenty years ago for my own research -- that I benefit intellectually in my research from talking to a lot of different people and doing a lot of different kinds of things. Let every student carve out a path of study. Carroll, as an atheist, is publicly asserting that the creation of infinite numbers of new universes every moment by every particle in our universe is more plausible than the existence of God. Formerly a research professor in the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics in the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Department of Physics,[1] he is currently an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute,[2] and the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. She will start as a professor in July, while continuing to write for The Times Magazine. So, Shadi Bartsch, who is a classics professor at Chicago, she and I proposed to teach a course on the history of atheism. I think this is actually an excellent question, and I have gone back and forth on it. Where was string theory, and how much was it on your radar when you were thinking about graduate school and the kinds of things you might pursue for thesis research? There are theorists who are sort of very closely connected to the experiments. I was taking Fortran. I might do that in an academic setting if the opportunity comes along, and I might just go freelance and do that. So, without that money coming in randomly -- so, for people who are not academics out there, there are what are called soft money positions in academia, where you can be a researcher, but you're not a faculty member, and you're generally earning your own keep by applying for grants and taking your salary out of the grant money that you bring in. So, for the last part of our talk, I want to ask a few broadly retrospective questions about your career, and then a few looking forward. I love the little books like Quantum Physics for Babies, or Philosophy for Dummies. I was a credentialed physicist, but I was also writing a book. That's okay. Yes. No one expects that small curvatures of space time, anything interesting should happen at all. He'd already retired from being the director of the Center for Astrophysics, so you could have forgiven him for kicking back a little bit, but George's idea of a good time is to crank out 30 pages of handwritten equations on some theory that we're thinking about. So, I had to go to David Gross, who by then was the director of KITP, and said, "Could you give me another year at Santa Barbara, because I just got stranded here a little bit?" Steve Weinberg tells me something very different from Michael Turner, who tells me something very different from Paul Steinhardt, who tells me something very different from Alan Guth.