Barry Barish – Black Holes, Nobel Prizes & The Imposter Syndrome (#100)

Barry Barish is an emeritus professor at Caltech, where he has
worked since 1963. He became director of the LIGO (Laser
Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) project in 1997,
which led to his Nobel Prize in 2017. He has many other awards and
is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and American
Physical Society, of which he was also president. Barry joins our
Nobel Minds playlist on the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE podcast. He shared
the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics with Rai Weiss and Kip Thorne “for
decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of
gravitational waves.” We discuss Barry’s long and remarkable career
that covers many disciplines within physics. It’s not the standard
model, but he has a confidence about himself, and his contributions
that make it seem perfectly natural to have been part of such
varied, noteworthy projects during his career. Despite that, Barry
also admits to feeling like an imposter at times, especially when
singing the same Nobel register as Einstein. What a moment!
00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:55 Starting out at Cal Tech with long
time collaborator Kip Thorne. 00:11:47 Changing from particle
physics to gravity astronomy. Change or stagnate! 00:17:13 Was the
sad demise of the US supercollider really fortuitous? 00:20:00 How
did the discovery of the Higgs Boson by CERN make you feel?
00:22:07 What detector technology enabled the discovery of the
Higgs Boson? 00:23:00 What fascinates Barry the most about gravity
astronomy? 00:27:50 The feedback cycle between theory and
experiment 00:28:45 Does there need to be a unified theory of
everything? 00:29:54 Can/will LIGO detect primordial gravitational
waves? 00:37:40 What is your philosophy of experimental science?
When do you stop an experiment? Why peer review is too
conservative. 00:41:00 What skill sets can be applied from one
branch of science to another? Lessons from the Lockheed Martin
Skunk Works, and Managing big projects. Change Management. 00:57:45
How Barry began in particle physics at Berkley. How students learn
today. 01:03:45 What is your vision for the future of LIGO?
01:10:10 What would most like to leave as an ethical will for
future generations? 01:13:45 About curiosity 01:14:50 What have you
accomplished that you once thought was impossible? Brian Keating’s
most popular Youtube Videos: Eric
Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Jim
Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Noam
Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1
Sabine
Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1
Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen
Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM Host Brian Keating: ‍️
Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating Instagram
at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating Learn more about your
ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices