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Raphael Bousso is the Chancellor’s Chair in Physics at the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics, where he leads the Bousso Group in research on quantum gravity and quantum information. He is a renowned string theorist famous also for his development of the string theoretic landscape and the Bousso bound in holography. In this episode, Robinson and Raphael discuss the groundbreaking work of Jacob Bekenstein, Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind, Gerard ’t Hooft, and others on the black hole information paradox. They then turn to how this led to the formulation of the holographic principle, which has had profound implications for research on quantum gravity, especially for Raphael himself, who has recently been working on quantum information theory, quantum communication, and other ways in which classical gravity “knows about” and encodes its own quantum states. 

The Bousso Group: https://lightsheet.berkeley.edu

OUTLINE

00:00 Introduction

04:14 Working with Leonard Susskind and Stephen Hawking

6:29 Why Do Physicists Care About Black Holes?

19:11 Do Black Holes have a Temperature?

23:51 How Cold is a Black Hole?

27:32 The Black Hole Information Paradox

41:31 Do Black Holes Mean Quantum Mechanics Must be Thrown Out?

47:09 Black Hole Complementarity and Holography

54:09 What Is Quantum Gravity?

01:01:15 Why is Quantum Gravity a Low Energy Problem?

01:06:54 The Bottom-Up Approach to Quantum Gravity

1:11:12 On String Theory and Holography

01:16:00 What Are Bousso Bounds?

01:22:58 Is Gravity a Quantum Error-Correcting Code?

01:32:09 Is Gravity a Fundamental Force? 

01:37:25 On String Theory and the Multiverse

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, and everyone in-between.