physicsgirl + building a dictionary for the universe

Sabrina Pasterski is a theoretical physicist at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada. She built a plane at twelve, graduated top of her class at MIT, earned her PhD at Harvard, and is now leading one of the most ambitious research programs in modern physics. Stephen Hawking cited her work. And people are calling her the next Einstein.

This episode is about her. And honestly it is one of my favourite ones I have done.

Here is the thing about physics that I never really understood until I started researching this episode. It has two languages. One describes the very small. One describes the very large. Both work incredibly well on their own. And they fundamentally don't agree with each other. For a hundred years the smartest people on the planet have been trying to fix that. Sabrina is one of the people working closest to cracking it.

This is the patch:

• The problem: why physics has two languages that don't speak to each other and why that tension is at the heart of everything we don't yet understand about the universe
• The work: what celestial holography actually is and why it might be the bridge physicists have been searching for
• The person: a first generation Cuban-American from Chicago public schools who built a plane before she could drive and put the whole thing on YouTube

In the lifestyle segment I get into why this one felt personal, and what it means to have one of the most important scientific minds in the world working in Waterloo.

All views expressed are my own.