What I Learned While Meeting a Celebrity Physicist

November 3, 2008 By Guest Contributor 7 Comments

Last week, I went to a lecture in Chicago given by physicist Lisa Randall, author of Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions.

It was excellent.

Of all the things I learned, this was the most important:

It freaks scientists out when you want them to autograph a full-sized, close-up picture of themselves from an old issue of SEED magazine.

She was a good sport :)

Also: My Bristol Palin iPhone takes some blurry photos…

Filed Under: General 7 Comments
  • mikespeir

    Heard her talk on TV once. Don’t know why. Didn’t understand a word.

  • http://darwinsdagger.blogspot.com Darwin’s Dagger

    Hottest scientist since Marie Curie.

    I know, bad joke and sexist too.

  • Polly

    @Darwin’s dagger,

    Now, had you said, “positively radiant, like a modern day Marie Curie” I think that would’ve been in poor taste.
    But you didn’t…

    and neither did I. ;)

  • http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/ miller

    Incidentally, I actually read that book a few years ago. The entire thing. This surprises myself because it was not an easy read.

    To summarize it in a sentence from memory: There are a ton of ways in which the universe can have more dimensions than we see, and many of those ways make predictions that will soon be testable.

    Oh, she also had the weirdest allegories at the beginning of each chapter. Did you get to hear any of those in her lecture?

  • http://friendlyatheist.com Hemant Mehta

    Incidentally, I actually read that book a few years ago. The entire thing. This surprises myself because it was not an easy read.

    To summarize it in a sentence from memory: There are a ton of ways in which the universe can have more dimensions than we see, and many of those ways make predictions that will soon be testable.

    Oh, she also had the weirdest allegories at the beginning of each chapter. Did you get to hear any of those in her lecture?

    She did refer to some of them :) I found the talk enjoyable. It was not really for the scientifically literate, just an overview of the type of work she does and a giant outline of her book.

  • Rat Bastard

    Not as good looking as my physicist wife, but, then I’m a little prejudiced. She’s obviously way smarter than my wife, though. Doctorate, teaches at MIT? Mighty sexay!

    …more importantly- is she atheist?

  • http://www.flatlandthemovie.com Dano

    Wow, I’m jealous. She almost got involved with Flatland but it didn’t work out. I just picked up Warped Passages… Gotta do more research while developing Sphereland!