Monday night, I had the privilege to participate in the 2011 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, hosted by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The convener and master of ceremonies was Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the superb Hayden Planetarium, and the wonderful host of the PBS NOVA TV show scienceNow.
Joining me were five other theoretical physicists, some of them well-known to the general public from their books and documentary appearances: Katherine Freeze, from the University of Michigan, Brian Greene, from Columbia University, Janna Levin, from Barnard College of Columbia University, Sylvester James Gates, Jr., from the University of Maryland, and Lee Smolin, from the Perimeter Institute near Toronto.
Tyson's task, which he fulfilled admirably well, was not trivial: to keep six physicists with different ideas and opinions in check, making sure we didn't veer into technically arcane topics, losing the audience. We could talk about quantum vacuum fluctuations, superstrings, the multiverse, and dark matter, but had to explain ourselves in English.
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