Ghazal Geshnizjani and Niayesh Afshordi: Cosmologically Coupled

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(gentle music)
- Hello, everyone, and welcome back
to Conversations at the Perimeter.
I'm Colin and I'm with Laurenand we are just thrilled
to introduce you to our guests this time.
They are Ghazal Geshnizjaniand Niayesh Afshordi.

(00:21):
They are both researchershere at Perimeter Institute.
They work in astrophysics and cosmology,
the Big Bang and black holes,
and they also happen tobe married to one another.
- We talk about a little bitof everything in this episode.
Niayesh also shares with usthat he's recently applied
some of his knowledge and skillsfrom astrophysical modeling
to studying the spread of COVID 19.

(00:42):
And Ghazal tells us abouther recent children's book
called "Bella, the Black Hole"
and they also tell us a lotabout their work in equity,
diversity and inclusion in academia.
- And what's really fun aboutinterviewing them both at once
is they just have thisfantastic rapport between them.
They finish one another's sentences
and start one another'ssentences and just have
a great sort of funrelationship with science

(01:03):
and the family and with us,so it was so fun to hear.
- It really was a lot of fun.
Let's step inside the Perimeter.
Ghazal and Niayesh, thank you so much
for sitting down with us today.
So in preparing forthe conversation today,
I was looking at both of your websites
and I saw that Ghazal, youdescribe yourself there

(01:25):
as a cosmologist, while, Niayesh,
you describe yourself on your website
primarily as an astrophysicist.
Are you able to tell us whateach of those words mean
and maybe what the difference is?
- Yeah, how do you possibly get along
when you have such different careers?
(all laughing)
- It just reminded me like yesterday,
one of our friends, ourcolleagues on Twitter
posted, "Does your Sundaymorning starts with arguing

(01:48):
about the scattering amplitude?"
And I'm like, "Only Sunday morning?"
(all laughing)
- Why wait till Sunday?
- So I'm cosmologist, I guesstraditionally cosmologist,
but it's hard to say thesethings what each field is really
because all the different disciplines
have so many common interestsand it's always good.

(02:11):
I tell my students right away, you know,
don't just put yourself in one box.
All the amazing things thathappen in science and physics
is when people try toreach over to other fields
and we work with other onesand see what they're doing.
A lot of technical things,a lot of methodology
and other things thatcome in other fields,

(02:32):
really all of them arerelated to nature and nature
has same way of doing things,so you learn from them
what they have learned and right,
so cosmology, I guesstechnically is universe
at really, really largerscales beyond galaxies
and the evolution of the universe,
historically how it startedlike and how it began,
or as far as we can goback in time to today

(02:55):
how it's evolving andwhat's gonna be its fate.
Obviously the little things that we see,
even as small as a planet in these scales
came out of the universe soeverything we do in cosmology
will have implication for understanding
the rest of the science in the cosmos,
like how the initial conditionswere set back in time

(03:19):
which gave rise or plantedthe seed or everything else
that grew out of it.
Okay, I leave the astro to Niayesh to go.
- That's the excellent questionand I don't really know.
I guess it's our historical differences,
but as Ghazal mentioned,cosmology is a study
of universe as a whole andin including its formation
and its history, butastrophysics can be that,

(03:42):
but also can be just looking at things
in more detail right now.
I would say that astrophysicshas a broader purview
in the sense that you couldget very deep in understanding
the stars or molecularclouds in our galaxy,
or you could get deep inunderstanding the early times
at the Big Bang, so I would say, I mean,

(04:04):
being an astrophysicist islike being a generalist.
My own background, when I was a teenager,
I was an amateur astronomer.
When we were taught what thatmeans, the meaning is lover,
so someone who loves to dosomething and that's using
contrast to I guessprofessional astronomers
who do this just to makemoney like I am now,

(04:25):
but the amateurs do it forthe love of doing things
or doing astronomy.
- Did you have your owntelescope as a teenager?
- I did have my own telescope.
So I started from there.
I mean, I wanted to do astronomy,
study the stars and whateverout there in the heavens
just for the love of it.
The question is when youstart at face, hard to stop,

(04:46):
and if you wanna understand the stars,
then you try to because you love it
and if you understand galaxiesand if you wanna understand
the Big Bang and it'shard to stop at any point
and that's where you becomean astrophysicist, right,
so you just, yeah,universe is your playground
and you just cannot limityourself to studying one thing

(05:08):
so you study everything.
- The universe is yourplayground, I like that.
That should go on your business card.
- Let me see.
- I notice when I look throughthe work that both of you do,
there's a couple of recurring themes.
One is black holes andthe other is the Big Bang
or the very, very early universe.
Are they related, blackholes and the Big Bang,

(05:29):
and if so, can you tell us how?
- Yeah, in a way they're very related.
It has to do I guess withEinstein theory of gravity.
I sometimes when I'mwriting grants proposals,
I would say when Einstein wrotehis own theory of gravity,
he didn't think it wouldbring also the breakdown
of the theory, and I think in a way,

(05:49):
both Big Bang and blackholes are what we call
singularity points of Einstein gravity
of general relativity,which is like the points
that general relativity is breaking down.
- By singularity, thatmeans that this tiny point.
- Doesn't have to be tiny,
but it's a regime whenthings are not working

(06:10):
within the theory anymore,so I guess technically
there's different mathematicalways to understanding
and it's not clear cut atall because when something
is breaking down, how do you describe it
with your theory because it's already,
like your tools are breaking,
so you cannot even characterize it,
but the people that doit in different ways,
and one way to say this,for example, a spacetime,

(06:32):
this whole fabric is gettingso curved up that the curvature
is getting infinite and weknow infinity is summary.
It's not anymore mathematical-like.
Or like geophysics, it'strajectories that we follow
the math on, then all of asudden they have end points
and then we cannot go beyond that,

(06:53):
so in a way so theyboth are the same story.
One is happening in timeas we go past in time
in our history and theother one is in space.
In certain points in aspace, we see, we predict it,
but at the same time we predictthat things are not working,
are breaking up.
- So you're using bothof those types of study
to figure out the placeswhere Einstein's theory

(07:16):
needs some improvement.
- Yes, exactly.
- Interesting.
- This is probably agross oversimplification,
but the way I understand itis a black hole is this mass
that things sort of fall into it,
attracts into a singularity,
and the Big Bang seems to be a singularity
that does the opposite, bursts outward.
Is that a gross oversimplificationof the similarities?

(07:39):
You can say yes.
- I would say no.
I mean, we wrote a paper saying that.
- You're saying it is true.
- Yeah, I mean, I don't knowif it was worth a paper,
but we actually published a paper
and it wasn't Scientific America.
No, I mean that.
Actually, literally this is true.
I mean the Big Bang is,if you just turn the clock

(07:59):
or the time backwards,
then black hole looks like a Big Bang.
If you hear of a black holethat collapse of a star
into point, but if you imagineyou just take that movie
and run it backwards, it just is something
came out of, well, nothing.
There is the one cast that theBig Bang happened everywhere
and black hole is in one place.
There lies the up basic,had to make that work.

(08:22):
That's I guess a billiondollar question, if you will.
So to make that work and makeBig Bang look the way we do
see it and black holes theway we do see them to be,
you have to change something
because black holes in oneplace, Big Bang everywhere.
- Can studying blackholes give you insight
into the Big Bang or vice versa?

(08:42):
- Yeah, I mean, I think so, yeah.
I think there's a lot ofsimilarity in the things
that could be happening.
For example, if there isa improvement of gravity
or quantum gravity, learningfrom one could shed light
on the other one as well,
but they also have their own differences.
I would never say it's a burst.
I would say it's likeBig Bang is in our back
like a wall or something,we come out of it.

(09:04):
We don't know what's happening beyond it,
but doesn't have to be like,the reason I'm bringing up,
but there is sometimes this misconception
of its explosion and thingslike that and I don't know,
I feel like I don'tconnect to that metaphor
that it's explosion necessarily.
It's something that, yeah,it's kind of going in the past
and all of a sudden we are cut back.

(09:26):
We don't know what's happening beyond it.
- Is Big Bang maybe unfortunate term
because bang implies an explosion?
- Yeah, so I often, like whenI'm teaching my students,
I keep saying, "Call it aBig Bang era, at least,"
because we know things gothotter and hotter and hotter,
but I wouldn't say therewas one big explosion,
at least that's my wayof thinking about it.

(09:47):
- So yeah, the questionis it a point in a space
or is it the point in time?
This actually applies to bothBig Bang and black holes.
There is this misconceptionthat the singularity or Big Bang
is a point in a space.
If you're far away from it,
the Big Bang happened in onepoint in space or, I mean,
there's a singularity, thepercent of the black hole,

(10:08):
that's not true.
So in fact, both ofthese are points in time,
or as Ghazal said, is an era.
So Big Bang is a point in time
at which basically physicsbreaks as we know it.
Doesn't matter where you are.
If you are happening oryou happen to be where
Big Bang is happening, thenphysics breaks down, basically,
'cause it's an era or a point in time.
The same is true at thecenter of the black hole.

(10:30):
It's not the point, butrather anyone who happens
to wander across the eventhorizon of a black hole,
they have one eventuality.
There's an era at whichthey will be crushed
with this singularity and that'sa point in time, basically.
That's an era in their future.
It's like saying everybody dies.
- It just happens faster ifyou walk into a black hole.

(10:52):
- It depends on how bigthe black hole is, yes.
But yes, indeed, and yeah, thisis not the point in a space.
If you wander in anywhereyou are in there,
then it's gonna happen to you.
- And what are some of the waysthat you both think gravity
might be modified to help improve the way
we describe these things?
- So the big elephant in the room,

(11:14):
in fundamental physics andespecially in this building,
is the quantum gravity, right?
So we know physics has this regime
that things become quantizedand all of our other forces
of nature can be described in quantum way
and there is this other force, gravity,
that we have not been ableand we think it should also

(11:36):
to merge all of thistogether has to be also have
a quantum description.
A lot of people like, I don'tknow, more than half of people
in this building are working on that
in different approaches,so that could be one thing,
I think, that eventual,but there is also this idea
and it's not new, I think,it's has always been
like since even Newton toEinstein and other things

(11:57):
that there is always a regimewhen we describe things.
You don't have to go all the way
to very microscopic quantumregime to understand physics.
There may be some middleground coming from cosmology.
I feel like this methodhas a always worked,
so maybe we don't have to,
I don't have to startfrom completely scratch

(12:18):
to build up everything.
Maybe start from things thatwe know like Einstein gravity,
we know works.
Can we start modifying thatas slightly one by one?
And maybe on the other side it's gonna be,
eventually gonna reach to quantum gravity,
but there's a middle waythat you better understand
you are still connectedto GR and the things
that you understand, butslightly move away from that.

(12:39):
These approaches in cosmologyare called modified gravities.
And there is one thatNiayesh and I, for example,
have been fond of andworked on and thought of,
which is the Cuscutan gravity.
We have been working on thatbecause one thing interesting
about it is that we noticed

(13:00):
this is the minimalmodification of gravity.
You don't add any additionalplayer to the game, as you say.
- What would a player be?
- A player, technically we call them
dynamical degrees of freedom,
things that can generateadditional dynamics in your field,

(13:20):
like additional car or somethingthat moves things around,
right, and gravity by itself doesn't have,
has two, actually, two, whichare the gravitational waves,
what people call.
Other things that we have,like every other thing,
like varions or electrons,things like that,

(13:41):
you add to theories,
they all have thisadditional degree of freedom.
You add them to your theory.
These are the matter field
and then there is general relativity,
so usually the story is thatyou add the matter fields
and general relativity hasthis own gravitational ways
which really didn't play much for the,
and we didn't detect themuntil six years ago, right.

(14:02):
Everything else we saw was thismatter force as generators.
This Cuscutan is somewhere in the middle.
It's a slightly modificationof general relativity
and it doesn't add additionalgenerator, but modifies it,
and we assume everythingelse is the matter fields
that we had as before.
- Could you explainthe name again of that?

(14:23):
- Cuscutan, Cuscutan is a field
which modifies gravity,but as I mentioned,
because it doesn't have itsown dynamics or generator,
I thought of something that'sthe same thing on Earth,
or like in everyday life,and I thought of a plant,
the parasite plant, whichcan feed off other things

(14:45):
and even modify their behavior,
but doesn't have its own root.
- So it winds around another plant
and takes advantage of its root system.
- It's called dodder, I guess it is.
- I guess dodder is one, yeah.
And then I thought of what'sthe technical term for it
and apparently in plant biology is called-
- Botany.

(15:06):
- Botany.
- That's called Cuscuta.
So therefore we draw, 'causeI suggested the name Cuscutan
and my collaborator accepted.
- Yeah.
As a metaphor of this ideathat it attaches to an existing
theory without requiringits own sort of roots.
- Right, but it slightly modifies it

(15:27):
in a way that might havecosmological implications,
but doesn't mess up otherthings that we don't wanna miss.
- And Ghazal, I know yousaid that you and Niayesh
worked on some aspectsof this theory together
and now you've been doingsome further explorations.
Can you tell us about some ofthe things you both explored
together and maybe some of the things

(15:47):
you've continued to work on?
- It's a long and winding road.
It starts far, far, far away,in fact, Madison, Wisconsin,
when Ghazal was a postdoc
with the Cosmologist, Daniel Chung,
and I used to visit a lot,but their story was really,
what is the fastest thatsomething can travel

(16:07):
and not violate the laws of relativity?
And you would think thatnothing can travel faster
than the speed of light,but it turned out,
in fact, Einstein's relativitydoes allow for things that,
on paper have things thatpropagate infinitely fast
and it's just very counterintuitive,
so we try to make sense out of it
and at the time werealize that even though

(16:28):
Einstein relativity seems to allow for it,
you cannot actually sendinformation with it.
And basically we startedexploring that and then ended up
with this theory of a field,which seemed to be doing this,
that on paper it seemedthat it has basically waves,
sound waves in it thatpropagate infinitely fast,
but in practice, you couldn'tactually send signals with it,

(16:50):
but what could you do with it?
It turns out, as Ghazal mentioned,
it could modify the gravitational dynamics
beyond Einstein's theory of relativity.
And what was hot back then,
I guess it's still hotsomewhat now, is dark energy.
It was just discovered so I guess when we,
they got the Nobel Prize,I think it was 2011,

(17:10):
I don't remember exactly, yeah,
but it was discovered around 2000,
around the turn of the century,
so we kind of were halfwaybetween those at that point.
- Could you just brieflyexplain dark energy
and what changed when itwas discovered in the 1990s?
- Absolutely, so there is this big,
there's been this big puzzle

(17:30):
in Einstein's theory of relativity,
in Einstein's gravity, for over a century
since this was discovered.
So in fact, Einstein,when he first wrote down
his equations, he added this constant
called the cosmologicalconstant and he needed them
to keep the universeecstatic because otherwise
he wanted to either blow up or crash
and he wanted to tame it,

(17:52):
so he just basically added this thing
as just as keep it there.
It turned out that thatwasn't a very effective way
of doing it and he later confessed
that it was his biggest blunderto actually add that there.
If he hadn't, he actuallywould've predicted universe
cannot be a static andHubble later discovered
the universe was not static.
However that the cat was out of the bag,
so this cosmology constantthat Einstein introduced

(18:13):
never really disappeared,so it was always there.
People always knew about itand it took another 100 years
for people to actuallydiscover a sign of that
or something like that.
The problem is it's just sucha big surprise because it
doesn't fit anything else that it has.
So there is this thingthat looks like a constant.
It has energy, it has pressure,it has negative pressure,

(18:33):
so the only thing that we know
that does have negative pressure
and it's a scale that is smallerthat by orders of magnitude
than anything else we see aroundus in the standard physics.
So it's such a bizarre thingthat we kind of physicists
had the field day with it.
I guess they're still having.
They invented all sorts of things
with all sorts of funnynames to kind of model it.

(18:54):
Unfortunately so far,the evidence doesn't show
that necessarily it's anything
more than a cosmologyconstant, but it could be.
And at that time, basicallyone of the possibilities
we saw that, okay, so I mean,
Einstein theory has been so successful,
maybe it's a cosmology constant,
but then what is the next simplest thing
that we could come up with?

(19:15):
And this Cuscutan was an idea,
and it's the nextsimplest things in a sense
that you're not adding anything
to Einstein's theory ofgravity and every other
possibilities that people have studied,
you're adding additionaldegrees of freedom,
additional kind of beasts into the theory
and this one was not just the same beast,
but just a slightly modified behavior.
That was the beginning and we had,

(19:37):
we kind of explored thepossibility, which is still there.
The dark energy could be type of Cuscutan.
We haven't confirmed or ruled it out yet.
- And dark energy,correct me if I'm wrong,
it's what's making the universe expand
in an accelerating rate.
- That's right.- Yes, exactly.
Basically, cosmologists lovethe term dark, whatever.

(20:00):
You put that dark in front of it.
- I noticed that, regarding dark matter.
- We have now dark radiation, dark sirens.
- Does it essentially mean unknown,
it's an unknown quantity?
We don't know what to call it aside from-
- Most of the time.
The dark sirens are slightly different,
but most of the time.
- Different times means different things,

(20:22):
but for dark energy,
it's probably as dark as it gets.
It doesn't seem to beinteracting with anything,
we don't see it, so that'sa term that, I don't know.
I think Mike Turnerfirst invented that term,
but I mean, people,indeed, what was discovered
with cosmic acceleration,which was very surprising.

(20:43):
You would think gravity is attractive,
so if universe is expanding,
it should be slowingdown because of gravity
and low and behold when they measured it,
they realize it's speeding up,
but it turns out theyalready had a model waiting
like for 100 years toexplain it as Einstein's.
- We are not sure yet,like they're still like,
we talk to a string theorist.

(21:03):
First, I think when theastrophysicists started noticing it,
they were still in the camp that no,
in the string theory,there's no such thing
cosmological constant, it cannot be.
Then like once they observeit and then all of a sudden
they started, oh, actually we have.
- 10 to the 500.
- 500 of them in ourtheory and they're like,

(21:24):
now what do we do?
Get rid of all of them.
- Cannot quite decide iszero or 10 to the 500.
- Ballpark.
- Yeah, so now there are acouple of camps, apparently.
Some are like, there are a lot of it
and some are like, "No,we cannot have it."
But what is for sure certainis that it's observed,
something is there.

(21:45):
- Yeah.
Is one of the goals to try to explain it
with as few new variables,
as few complications aspossible and then add them?
- For us, it is, yeah,from our point of view.
I guess our approach issometimes called bottom up.
Their approach, starting fromvery fundamental theories,
top down approach, so they'regoing working our way,

(22:06):
it's going up.
- Hoping to meet at some point some.
- I wanted to ask, you've both studied
the early, early universeshortly after the Big Bang,
is that research related to dark energy?
Can we learn anything fromthe origins of the universe
about what it's doing now, it'sexpansion and acceleration?
- I think because a lot ofit is really mathmat, right,

(22:29):
at the heart of it and themathematics that is describing
the same theory, gravity,so what applies back then
should be applicable today as well.
Some things may be more relevant back then
than they are today becauseenergy is where universe
was much hotter so thantoday, it's much cold,
but at the same time, yeah,the rules be the same.

(22:49):
That's why it's very easyand it happens so very often.
We learn something that canbe done in early universe
and then few years after wetry to apply the same thing
in late universe, oh, thistechnique worked there,
like in that context canwe do the same thing now
in late universe and there'sso many examples of that.
- I guess just to follow up on that,

(23:10):
the most popular theory for the universe
is called inflation, which infact is like a dark energy,
but at like souped up oron steroids, much higher,
much higher energy, sowe see it happening now,
but it's proposed that something like that
with much, much higher rateswas happening early on.
That's to one possibility thatcould be a similar scenario,

(23:32):
of course, on very differentscales of happening
at acceleration of cosmic expansion.
But beyond that, therecould be other possibility
if you have like a cyclicscenario of the universe,
then in fact our futureis our past, so yeah,
what's happening now likethe cosmic acceleration
could be setting up the initial conditions
for the next generation of the universe.
So depending on the scenario,

(23:53):
there could be even more cross-connections
between early and late universe.
- Could there be future Big Bangs?
- There could be, yeah,in a cyclic scenario.
I mean, Roger Penroseis a big fan of that,
as our previous director, NeilTurok and Paul Steinhardt.
They had their differentmodels of cyclic universes
and yeah, so that'scertainly one possibility

(24:15):
that people have studied.
- And is it possiblethat this Cuscutan model
would support some of those scenarios?
- To be honest, I havenot considered that,
but because it has, it'skind of a like a puzzle.
I have been focusing ona particular piece of it
just going from one contractionto expansion, it seems,

(24:38):
so let me back up a little bit.
So if you wanna have, rightnow the universe is expanding
and accelerating so if I wannago back into the beginning,
what scenarios could I imagine?
One is that maybe thenexpansion enters contraction
and then again, expand,that's one possibility,

(24:59):
but there could be otherthings like expands
and then out of it somethingbubbles out or tunnels out,
and then again, so depending on this,
then you have to workon a different scenario
for that transition to happen.
But one thing I amworking on it, maybe this,
at least we can figure out howyou can go from a contracting
universe into expanding universe,which is not an easy task,

(25:22):
like general relativity doesn'tallow it because you violate
center and energy condition,which if you do that,
then the things break loose,a lot of instabilities,
and here it again goesthrough violent behaviors,
but that's where rightnow my focus, in fact,
one of my program is.
It looks like Cuscutancan make that possible,

(25:45):
so you could make universego through a contraction
and then we call it abounce off into a expansion,
so in that context, it couldfall into a bigger picture
of cyclic universe.
We haven't expanded too far.
We are now focused on thatparticular phase of bouncing,
but yeah, certainly could be applicable
to that bigger picture.

(26:07):
- Yeah and I think answer leadsto maybe a bigger question
that when you're trying to,
I guess in the end of theday, approach quantum gravity,
there's so many differentways to approach that
and you're talking moreabout modified gravity
and there's so many ways within that,
so we have a really goodquestion that was sent in
by a master student, Anna Canura,
here at the Perimeter Institute,
so let's play that question.

(26:28):
- How would you describeeach other's approach
to doing physics?
Would you say you havedifferent styles of research?
- Long pause as they considertheir answers carefully.
- I go first or do you wanna go?
- My answer is yes.
(all laughing)
That's it.
- We request a more elaborate answer.

(26:52):
- Maybe I, yeah, I can.
- Is that correct term cynicalor someone who is like,
I have this approach that I question
the validity of everything.
Niayesh has this approachthat no, of course,
that's the way it is, and I'm like,
"No, sit down, let's write it."
So it's a lot of back and forth argument.

(27:13):
Like I am like, I don'tknow, I always like,
"No, there must besomething wrong with it.
Let's check this aspect,let's check that aspect."
He is more optimisticand like taking a leap
to next big thing and, "Yeah,universe goes from this
and then cycles to that."
And I'm like, "No, no, no.
You know there's a lotof things can go wrong.
Let's work it out."

(27:34):
- Is that an accurate depiction?
- I think that's very accurate, yes.
(all laughing)
- But is it useful to haveboth of those perspectives
when you work together on something?
- I think so, yeah, likehe, I'm trying to, yeah.
- It sounds like two halves ofsort of one brain trying to,
you know, check each other.
- Check and balances, I guess, something.

(27:55):
- Yeah, I think Ghazal is verygood at kind of identifying
the details that are importantand needs to be understood
to kind of for the wholepicture to make sense.
My own approach is thatusually I have some
very big pictures that thisshould work and then I say,
"So you need to fill out the detail,"
and then either I ask someone to do it
or just sit down andcount as hours and yeah.

(28:16):
Sometimes the details will be filled out,
more often than not, it doesn't,
and just because the wholepicture was wrong sometimes,
or maybe just takes much more time,
but that's, yeah, that's theapproach, which I don't know,
it's just worked for me,but I think it's very good
that Ghazal can identify all the places
that it doesn't work.

(28:37):
- Does that apply in lifeoutside of science too?
- You can imagine.
- Yeah, he is like, oh.
You know, let's have kids dothis. I'm like, "Wait a minute.
It doesn't work that easily.
I have to do this research.
You have to check that, you know."
- Does this apply to the Cuscutan model?

(28:57):
Ghazal, you're still checkinga lot of different aspects
of that and really looking through it.
- Exactly, like I am, yeah, I am that way.
Like it takes me longer tomake sure I feel confident,
you know, even though like Ihave, we have I think by now
three papers out, I'm stilllike, "Okay, next let's do
one additional step, checkthis thing, check that thing."

(29:19):
And I think to his credit,he does a lot of that too.
Like if he come, he has done it, like,
this is very unique becausemost physicists our expert
in one particular field,but Niayesh does this thing
that he comes up with a theory,
then he checks the dataand they're like, you know,
goes to talk to the statistician
and it's all like simulationand does these things, but.

(29:40):
- It does seem, Niayesh,especially going through
your website, the subject areasthat you're interested in,
it gets to be a bit of a long list.
There's all sorts of subject areas that,
can you explain, is that just a,
have you always beencurious about all sorts
of different aspects of physics?
- Yeah, it's kind ofthis thing in your head.

(30:01):
I guess you kind of, I startexploring different things
as a kid and then at somepoint there's a switch there.
It says, okay, "That's enough, probably.
You wanna stop somewhere."
And maybe that's missing in my head
that kind of keep exploring.
And the thing is, I mean,the more tools you have
and the more experienceyou have at this thing,
you think you can understand more things,

(30:22):
which doesn't work, tobe honest, but yeah,
somehow that hasn't sunk in.
Your experience doesn'tnecessarily lead you to, I mean,
it doesn't help with solvethings better, you just,
there are more and more problemsthat needs to be solved.
But nonetheless, I mean, whenI see a puzzle, be it, I mean,
what happens at thecenter of the black hole
or the Big Bang, or it couldbe, I mean, dark matter halos,

(30:45):
cosmic acceleration, or howCOVID spreads across the globe,
it seems that, I mean, whenI look at what's happening,
I can see all the similarities,
like when we study darkmatter and dark energy,
and then we study the spreadof COVID, neither of them,
we actually see what's happen.
We don't see the virusesgoing around like one by one
and we don't see thedark matter particles,

(31:06):
but what we do see are the consequences.
We see the shutdowns,
we see the hospitals fillingup and things like that,
and we see formation of galaxies
and then that's whereI see the similarities
and it's kind of, it'shard to ignore those.
That's the problem.
I kind of lie awake at night, says,
"Okay, so this is very similar to that,"

(31:27):
and I cannot just fall asleepwithout kind of pursuing that
and that's what happens.
- And are there certainmodels or ideas from your work
in astrophysics thatwere particularly helpful
when you were studyingthis COVID 19 modeling?
- So my PhD is kind ofan interesting story,
which as similar to therest of my academic career

(31:49):
had lots of different things,
but one thing in particularwas very similar to COVID
because I was interested,my supervisor was working
on cosmic molecular background,
but then we also hadgalaxy airways out there.
With galaxies, peoplesee them with telescopes,
optical telescopes,cosmomicrowave background,
you have the satellite that see microwave,
so different things and for the most part,

(32:10):
they are different things,they see different things,
but then what I did was Iactually looked at the correlation
of the two signals andthen it turns out there's
a tiny fraction of thesedifferent things that are same.
So there's some is theeffect of the dark energy,
the cosmic expansion,
some was the effect of hot gasin the microwave background.
And it turns out that theseare the things that you

(32:31):
couldn't see on each of thesesurveys on their own easily,
but if you combine them,
you could actually kind ofget these tiny signatures
are through the combination
and that's what I did for my PhD
and it wasn't very much off mainstreams.
I mean, I was like one of the first people
who were doing it, butnow everybody does it.
And if you just think about it,
you can do this everywhere, right?

(32:52):
So we see very different thingsfor very different reasons,
but if you can combine them,
you can learn something verydifferent that each of those
datasets cannot teach you.
And I realized thatbasically that technique,
which I guess the technicalcan for this cross-correlation
that can be used kindof widely, for example,
in the pandemic that youcould use various measures

(33:13):
of people's activityand spread of a disease
and then through carefully designing
cross-correlational studiesin a space and time,
which is what similar to whatyou do in cosmology, right?
We could learn about the variousproperties of the disease.
For example, if peopleare getting vaccinated
and at the same timethey're having lockdowns,

(33:33):
and at the same time somepeople are getting immunity
from prior disease, how can these three
in track with each otherbecause they could all have
similar consequences andthis cross-correlation
is the way to do it.
In fact, that's how I did,
I could separate theeffect of dark energy,
the effect of hot gas,
and effect of radio sources
but through thiscross-correlational study.

(33:55):
So if you have a lot of data,you could do it, basically.
- You mentioned in one interview that data
from the COVID pandemic,there's a lot more of it
and it comes a lot fasterthan from black holes.
Was it sort of a gift of data for you
that you had these huge numbers?
- It's a curse.
(all laughing)
You would think it'sa gift like for a week

(34:17):
and then it's a curse.
- Too much data?
- Too much data, too much too fast,
too many things happening.
- I don't know, it's theother way around, right?
You're losing the data.
He wasn't quite like thatbecause you were telling me
and was part of the problem,
like I kept telling him,"Tell me about Waterloo,
like what's the economy."
And he's like, "No, wedon't have data in Canada.
All I can tell you iswhat the count is in US

(34:39):
because the data was I've been and there."
It could like cross correlatebetween all different
counties, how many therewere like, I don't know,
30, like more than, 3,000.
- 3,000 counties, yeah.
- Counties where each had theirown dataset you can track.
- And essentially youmade sort of a dashboard
where you input factors say whether or-

(35:00):
- Lockdowns.
- Lockdowns.- Lockdowns, yeah.
- And vaccination rates.
And then it was sort of apredictive model of spread.
- Yeah, that's right.
- One conclusion I saw that surprised me
until I heard an explanationwas that the effect of weather,
or at least the indirecteffect of weather,
hot weather and cold weather.
Could you explain what you saw there?

(35:21):
- I mean, these are all thethings that come out of data.
I mean, I wish I had abetter understanding of it,
but it's in fact, somewhatsimilar to what as I was talking
about that you don'tnecessarily understand
fundamentally what's happening.
Same with quantum gravity,
you don't necessarilyfundamentally understand
what's happening, but ifyou have a good enough data,
you could have an effective description
and what we did is we gotthis effective description

(35:42):
of what's happening andbasically the conclusion
was that if you look at a spread of COVID
across thousands of counties,across thousand about,
I guess you have hundreds of days now,
there are these factors that are at play
and one of the significantones are weather,
that when things get colder,
where the temperatures dipbelow around 15 degrees Celsius,

(36:03):
then COVID spreads faster.
And then this is in additionto all the other effects.
So if you include effectsof mobility and vaccination
and everything, I guess this is probably
the least surprising one
because we had seen that forother prior virus like flu.
In winter, they are more severe.
So there are all of these.
The thing is that there is no one factor,
and this is kind of one of the problems

(36:24):
that I kind of keep rolling my eyes
whenever I see an analysisof COVID anywhere,
which there are so many ofthem it's hard to avoid them
because they just kindasay, "Look, this place,
this country did this, andthen they're doing well,
and then this state didthis or this city did this
and they're doing so well.
Or maybe they did thisand they're doing so bad."
I looked at that and said, I mean,
hundreds of thousands of data points
and there is no one thing.

(36:44):
All of these happen in concert,there are various things,
and that's the way scienceworks is that we need to,
I don't really know how, but if this,
if we can teach people this in any way,
either the school or through outreach,
that science is understandingof various things
that happen at the same timein face of uncertainties.
That's the way science works.

(37:05):
You cannot say with certaintythat if you do this,
this is gonna happen.
That that never really happens.
- Right.
- And another thing I keep wondering
when I look at this idea of combining
these different kinds ofdata, as you were saying,
you have a lot of data, butyou're trying to combine
different aspects, right?
And I guess some of thoseaspects might have more data

(37:25):
than others so something thatmaybe still could be important
for modeling somethingmaybe could be harder
to collect data.
So, one in particular, when Ilooked at this online portal
that you made is the numberof people wearing face masks.
I would assume this is something
that's probably quite hard to measure.
- We had a way to do it,
which is a number of peoplewho were Googling face mask,

(37:48):
which was not the best andone of the challenges, I mean,
actually not the challenge,part of the scientific method
is not just understand your data,
but understand theerrors or uncertainties,
and that's not just for yourdata, but also for your models.
We have to understand our model.
We had to understand oursubject and our model,
and we have to understand ourdata and our understanding,
so those were all the challenges
and these are challenges thatwe deal with in cosmology

(38:10):
and we deal with in COVID
so I try to kind ofimport those techniques
in from cosmology to some extent.
But yeah, the thing isyou can never only focus
on your model or your data.
It's all, uncertainty is all aware.
So uncertainty is the real boss, actually.
- Can I ask us to go alittle bit back in time

(38:31):
'cause I'm so curious toknow how and when you met.
- You said you met me first, right?
(Niayesh laughing)
- No, I think you said,
you heard me say somethingand then you could,
you didn't have yourglasses, so you couldn't see.
- No, but I'm talkingabout before that, right?
In high school.
- Oh yeah, high school, that's right.

(38:51):
No, that's true, I did, yes.
- Oh, I didn't knowthere was a high school.
- There was a high school.
- Vague, I mean vaguemeeting as in quotation mark.
- Yes.
- So apparently there was a,
so there was this nationalcompetition for math
and computer science and things.
- In Iran?
- In Iran, each province, for example,
you do the first round and thenyou get to the second round

(39:13):
and we both have made itto the national level.
And then they took us on thisone week competition trip
that now from all provinces people
go to do the second round
so I was competing inmath and computer science.
- Where was that contest?
- The contest, the second roundwas in the city of Mashhad.
So there weren't, I guess, many women

(39:34):
who in the second roundgot prizes and stuff
and apparently Niayesh saysI remember a couple of girls
went up there and got a trophy.
I'm like, "Oh, thatwas me," so you met me.
- Yeah, I didn't getanything in that prize
and that competition.
- So anyway.
- How many students werein this competition?

(39:55):
- The second round, I thinkmaybe 100 in each topic.
- Probably 100, 150, I would think so.
- So you both alreadyhad a strong inclination
towards science and math at that point.
- Math, yeah, so yeah.
I had a good study group in high school,
especially another friend.
We really loved to do math problems.

(40:17):
I didn't think I was good atcomputer science so that one,
I just participated for fun.
No, actually, which way it is?
I think I did it the other way.
I wanted to compete incomputer science, the math,
I participated for fun becausenow I remember, so they had,
the days of the test were alternating
so the day we had thecomputer science test,
the night before that, meand my friend was like,

(40:37):
"Okay, let's sleep early,tomorrow we have to be focused."
- Yeah, I don't know alot of people who say,
"Do you wanna go out and have fun
by going to a computerscience contest with me?"
It's an interesting definition.
- I don't know, and thenthe math one, the math one,
I would go like, "Oh, let's go do it."
- Then the math one was for fun.
- Yeah, honestly like so there was a,

(40:59):
because there is afunniest story about it.
So at the math one,
you might have heard of Maryam Mirzakhani.
So she was competing fromTehran and I was competing
from this other city.
I'm like, look at her.
Obviously she had alreadywon the math gold medal
internationally the year before.
I'm like, "What am I doing here?"
So she was doing andsitting like in the exam.
I was looking at her and Iwas having sipping my snacks.

(41:24):
The little I know I didvery better in math.
I won the silver medal.
I'm like, "Oh, I should havetried a little bit harder."
But anyway, yeah.
- But that was just asort of fleeting meeting.
- And I guess, Ghazal, youdon't remember meeting Niayesh,
but Niayesh, you remember seeing.
- Yeah, I was in like in the auditorium,

(41:44):
but somewhere down there and yeah,
she was on the podium on the scene.
So yeah, so that was that.
I think Ghazal said you heard me.
I was kicked out of the class.
- Yes, so there was amodern physics course
and then I didn't bringmy glasses that day

(42:06):
so I couldn't see very well the board,
so I sat in the front row.
Apparently some students entered the class
and we had this older professor
who was very much into likeetiquette of the class and pain
and he got really upset,started, "What are you doing?"
Like started kind ofyelling at you, I think.
- What were you doing wrong?

(42:26):
- Because I was at another class.
I was trying to take so many.
That was like my first semesterat college and I was trying.
Like everything else I do,I wanted to do everything.
And there were differentclasses overlapping and somehow
decided that maybe I couldjust miss the first 20 minutes

(42:47):
of my class and yeah, butthen my professor was,
who we turned out to begreat friends afterwards,
but he kicked me out and I think I lost.
- So yeah, I just heardlike there was a boy there
and then some of my friends said,
"Oh, this is the guy who wonthe physics context Olympian."
I'm like, "Ooh, like who is that guy?"
- Who's this guy gettingkicked out of the class?

(43:10):
- And then was it shortly after that
that you actually started talking?
- Then you said you cameto my tutorial session.
- Yeah, she had a tutorial.
I remember she solved for the students,
including me there that day.
What is the shape of astring if you hang them
from two points?
Cosine hyperbolic.
- And you were teaching that, Ghazal.

(43:30):
- Yeah, so then I was like a second year
undergraduate student andthe first year undergraduate
approached us and say, "Wouldyour higher year students
want to do some problem-solvingsessions for us?"
And I said, "Sure, yeah."
I volunteered to do that and I thought
this is a very fun problem to solve.
The math is very nice and beautiful
so I was solving thaton the board for them.

(43:53):
- And you didn't kickhim out of your tutorial?
- No, I didn't.
- No, she was a nice.- Show up on time?
- That I don't remember.
- Yeah, I probably thought,"What is he doing here?"
- And so this was undergrad, right?
And then so what happened from there?
- So then the fourth year, Ithink I saw him here and there.

(44:16):
Niayesh didn't take actuallymany undergrad courses anymore.
I think at some pointafter the first semester
he decided to just godirectly through grad courses
and gave up.
And then one of our professorwas planning to organize
international workshop in oneof the islands in Persian Gulf
and so therefore in a yearbefore that in preparation,

(44:39):
he had started this cosmologycourses and cosmology
and he was learning, he was a GR person,
general relativity, hisspecialty was general relativity,
but he wanted to do theworkshop on cosmology and said,
"I'm learning myself."
And he recruited some graduate students
and maybe Niayesh as well andI think I heard about that.
So I signed up for the cosmology class.

(45:02):
Niayesh already became the TA for me.
That was not the other way around.
There's another storyabout that, which I'm,
and then meanwhile, another.
- Which you're good to tell us.
- Really still very upsetabout it, I can see that.
- I think just the moralof that story is that
if you are a TA youshouldn't date your students.

(45:27):
- So meanwhile, anotherprofessor suggested
another interesting likeproject based for undergrads
and he started the cosmology project
and I think you and I.
- Anyway, there were lots of different.
- A lot of things, so wegot to know each other
and then gradually we starteddating, but then meanwhile,
he was my TA in this cosmology class.

(45:47):
So the story that I'mupset about is because they
give a midterm, he's proctoring the exam,
I am a very like a slow writer.
I can never write in time,
so right now I know like me being here,
I know probably had a disability,
I should have asked forextension, but anyway,
the example had ended and halfway through,

(46:08):
there's a lot of problemsI haven't solve and Niayesh
is like, "Okay, time'sup," took my paper and went
and I had another goodfriend, same took the course
and then they, a couple of days later,
they posted the marks andI was like the first mark
or second mark or something
and then this friend ofmy teases me and says,

(46:30):
"Haha, of course you're dating him."
Got really upset and thenI talked to him and I said,
"Oh, did he say to that?"
Because I gave him extra time.
I let him take the exam homeand bring it the next day.
And they're like, "Whatare you talking about?"
Anyway.
- So you didn't get specialtreatment, somebody else did.

(46:51):
- No, even like the firstand then the other guy.
I'm like, "Oh, gosh."
- And yet here you are.
- Yeah, he should have beendisciplined for that TA.
- I should have been disciplined, yes.
I was a very bad TA.(Niayesh laughing)
- But I relate to you,Ghazal, 'cause for me,
also writing in time was reallyhard and I never, I, yeah,
I maybe also needed toask about something,

(47:12):
but I just can remember after exam season,
I would carry all the stressof the exam in my hand,
I think and then I wouldneed a couple weeks
after exams to recover.
My hand would just be so tensefrom all like from trying
to write everythingthat was there so fast.
And then so it was graduateschool shortly after that?
- And then they went to this workshop,

(47:32):
cosmology workshop in KishIsland, very beautiful island.
If you ever go to like Coral island,
is it one of the fewCoral islands in the world
where like the water is so clear?
Like it's all the beaches is just corals.
And my supervisor was there and I guess-
- Future supervisor.
- Future supervisor, PhD supervisor.

(47:55):
Back then, like he wasvery willing to go to this
like to Brazil, to Iran, to other places
and recruit graduate students.
I mean, like if he's alsoa good graduate student,
he would support them.
So we met him there, hewas very impressed with me
at Niayesh and we said,"Well, we haven't applied,
but we know coming, goingto US is extremely hard

(48:16):
for Iranian student."
He said, "Okay, youknow, I'm gonna go there
and you send your application.
We'll see how things go."
And we didn't really have much hope
because not many Iranianswould make it to US.
And it's a are very hard even to this day,
like it's a hard decision.
If you go there, you'retrapped for few years,
you won't see your families
and a lot of other complications.

(48:38):
But anyway, he went thereand then we both applied
and we got admissions.
In the middle, had to do a lot of things.
We had to go to a thirdcountry to do GRS exams.
We had to apply for visascouple of times, got rejected,
then go to another country, apply again.
So after a lot of hurdles,
we finally got the visa and admission.

(49:00):
- And then we got married.
- And then we said, okay,yeah, we were, yeah,
we were dating and everythingfor a couple of years then
but then we said, "Okay, weare not gonna see our parents
probably for a long time
and if we are planning to get married,
let's do it and celebrateit with them before moving,"
which I think was a good thing.
Like everybody celebratedand then we moved to US.

(49:22):
- And then we disappear.
- Okay, got married, bye.
- Now you're married, you'reboth at Perimeter Institute
and you have kids.
I wanted to bring up your kidspartly because of the book
that you wrote.
Can you tell us a bit aboutthe book and why you wrote it?
- My son was, I mean,
as it is probably with a lot of children,

(49:44):
like they get really upset,obsessed about something
like one day it's the, whatis it, the Sphinx in Egypt.
- Sounds like something theygot from their father, maybe.
- Yeah, maybe, like thenfor a couple of months
we are just looking andreading about Sphinx and Egypt
and our whole future isplanned to move to Egypt

(50:04):
to live next to the pyramids.
And then there is the like humanbody again, like, you know,
there's a phase of thatand there was a phase
of the black holes, like hewas obsessed, like what is it?
And then I'm like, okay.
- Did he know about them because of what
you do for a living ordid he see something?
- No, I think overall spaceis one of those things

(50:25):
that children, maybe it'sthe impact of the media
and outside world, or maybeit's like kids are maybe-
- He must have seen it somewhere.
- But it's not from you twoare arguing over singularities?
- No, if anything, weprobably have the reverse.
- We try to keep themprotected from hostile events.

(50:46):
- Yesterday our youngerson was watching something
about the space on YouTubeand Niayesh was like,
"I don't wanna listen.
There's so many mistakes in that video."
- And how old was your son when he started
getting interested in black holes?
- So he was almost four.
- Wow.
- So at that point I'm like,okay, obviously it's too soon

(51:08):
to teach him any science,but still there's like a,
I maybe I can do a small,
very short story to not scientific,
to include not scientificallywrong things in it,
but at the same time, bejust a story, you know,
just like keep his mindentertained, read it to him.
- Well it's great too 'causeyou have this guide for parents

(51:30):
or teachers as well thatgoes a little bit deeper
so you can give the bookto the four-year-old
and then the parents canlearn a little bit more.
- I think so, I think itall, like I learn a lot
because of my children in other topics
that are not my specialtywhen they become interested
in something and then he bringsup the book and then I get

(51:51):
curious, okay, what is theactual thing that is happening
is you're learning aboutthis country or geography
or this plant or something else.
So I feel like it's verygood bonding experiments
and educational experiencefor parents and child
if they read together things
so that's why I included the guide,
so if you're reading about it,
they also learn a little bitabout the science behind it.

(52:14):
- For the people with, who are watching,
could you show us, it's called"Bella, the Black Hole."
- Yes, "Bella, the Black Hole."
- Would you mind reading us a little bit?
- Okay, sure.
- I wanna say it's alsobeautifully illustrated
and I believe it's illustratedby a relative, is that right?
- Yes, Niayesh's cousin,Nasim Abaeian in Toronto.

(52:35):
I like her work.
- She's an illustrator.
- And it does have a little bit
of a Middle Eastern teamingto it, like I feel like.
- Yeah, it does.
Like you said, it'sscientifically accurate,
but it's obviously notscientifically detailed,
so that's a challengeto write for a child,
to comprehend without gettingthe essential truth wrong.
- Yeah and I'm hoping likeeven as they get older,

(52:58):
they look back at it and like,
"Oh, what did she mean by that?
Maybe I have to go read alittle bit more about this."
"My name is Bella.
I am a very shiny and hot star.
Do you know another star?
Yes, our sun is a star too.
I'm younger, but much bigger than the sun.

(53:20):
Gravity wants to squeeze me."
- I like that that'sjust one page in itself.
Like what a beautifulcondensation of an idea,
wants to squeeze me.
- It's not easy to condensethese content things
into one phrase like that.
- We all had to meet the actual motions
that we had to squeezethe child at that point.

(53:41):
- Oh, is this a participatory book?
- Yes.
I remember that's how itwent, but it's been a while.
- "But the pressure fromhot gas pushes me back.
At last I get tired and gravity wins."
- I think you should maybe not finish it.
- Leave the rest of it.
(all laughing)

(54:01):
- The origin story.
- A cliffhanger.
- Yeah, cliffhanger.
- So I'm not gonna ofspoiled the end of it,
but I guess from the namethere's a black hole appearing.
- Somewhere, yeah.
- And what was your son'sreaction to this book?
- I think he really loveslike those action motion,
like the pushing andgravity and like and then.
- There's spaghetti in there.

(54:22):
- Spaghetti.
- Actually, can you explainthe spaghetti reference
'cause it does actually,
spaghetti has a scientificsort of black hole meaning.
- Right, so spaghettification,that's the term, I guess,
that as we get pulledinto a big black hole,
stellar black holes, right?
Is that the.
- Well, any, depends on how close you get.

(54:44):
- Yeah and then people have this idea
that they would just let go inside nicely,
but that's not how it'sgonna happen, unfortunately.
They're gonna, does thisinterstella have the,
they don't they go, that movie.
- The movie.
They have a very big back hole, so this-
- Okay, so that's when they just went in,

(55:05):
like thinking there they went in
without anything happening to them.
- I don't think they got spaghettified.
- No, they didn't, right,
but in this one she getspulled and get the title,
you start to get stretched and stretched
and then become like a spaghetti,
so there is not really much of you
that's gonna make it inside.
- It's nice that you couldwrite about something

(55:25):
that is kind of, thatidea is kind of scary,
but in the book, Bellais this lovable character
who's explaining her life cycle.
- And then you can see insidethe mom or parents' mind
that what they'restruggling at that point,
like between the differentfoods, like, you know,
eat the broccoli, but no spaghetti.
(all laughing)

(55:46):
- And Niayesh, I know you also have a book
that you're working on and Iknow we're not gonna give away
too many details, but do you wanna say,
is there anything youwanna say about that?
- Yeah, it's gonna be aslightly more elaborate version,
but yeah, but more focused onthe Big Bang and various ideas
and characters that are involved.
- Just to be clear, nota kid's book, right?

(56:06):
This is a popular.
- Yeah, I think kids'parents could read it.
Yeah, so this is goingto be a popular audience.
I hope teenagers couldenjoy it, but we'll see.
I don't actually know howmuch of it I can give away.
I feel like I can hardly control myself,
but it's gonna come outhopefully within a year or so

(56:29):
and it's more about theBig Bang and various people
and characters involved.
- Another cliffhanger.
- Another cliffhanger, yes.
- First we have to finishreading "Bella, the Black Hole."
- Yes.
- That's a prerequisite, I guess.
- Exactly, start with that,
and then we gonna buildup our way to the bigger,
the other one.
- Well, another thing Ireally wanna make sure

(56:50):
we ask you both about is thatyou're both quite involved
in outreach and versed in writing books
and in other forms as well
and you're also both advocates for equity,
diversity and inclusion,EDI, within academia.
For example, Ghazal,I know you're involved
with the Supernova Foundationand a few other initiatives.
Can you maybe tell us alittle bit about some of these
initiatives you're involved in?

(57:10):
- EDI is quite close to my heartbecause I mean the journeys
I've gone through to make it to today,
still being able to do research has been,
as I mentioned, alludedto, it hasn't been easy.
- You mentioned you were theone of two women on stage
in your high school contest.
- So there is a pre-immigrant phase,

(57:33):
which I had to deal with certain things
being a woman and being inscience and being in math,
it had its own hardship.
Then being a Middle Easternfrom a certain country
in North America, we hadto deal with another set
of problems and thenhaving a two-body problem,
which is often a lot of womenphysicists have to deal with.

(57:56):
I think a good proportion ofthem have two-body problems.
- Can you tell us what that phrase means
for people who might not know?
- Oh yes.
So for some reason,female physicists also,
their partners are also academics
and therefore finding two academic jobs
in the same location is quite hard,
so we refer to this as a two-body problem

(58:17):
where one body finding a second job
or having two in the same institution
or at the same city is quite hard.
- I mean, finding even one is hard,
so finding two is less possible.
- Exactly, and we havebeen through so many things
over the years, like I had to,even pregnant with this guy,
this little kind of older one,

(58:38):
the closest job I couldfind here was in Buffalo.
So pregnant, I had to travelback and forth to work,
crossover, come back and like.
- Was it like five days before he was born
that we crossed the border?
- Yes, also crossed.
I'm glad I didn't know this,
but things could get complicated
if he didn't come right on time.

(58:59):
Because I was like, "Oh, it's no big deal.
If I'm having a delivery,
I'm just gonna go to the hospital."
But like apparently not, no.
That could be riskydriving alone and going.
But anyway, and I mean, again,
not adding two-body problem,having families in academia,

(59:20):
all of this have a lot of challenges
so marginalized communityhave that on top of everything
else as well so whatcan we do to help out?
I mean, I feel like I mightnot be able to move mountains,
but even if I can help oneperson, that's my goal.
I have done something, right?
The little things we can do

(59:41):
and one thing that wenotice, a lot of places,
a lot of challenges are easier to tackle
if you have a network,if you have a friend
who is there with youand can hold your hands.
And especially if they're alittle bit ahead in your road
and can tell you like, youknow, "I faced the same thing,
don't doubt yourself, youmight be able to do that
or there's a strategy.

(01:00:01):
Like why don't you talk to another person
or put you in contact with someone else?"
So this Supernova Foundationcame out of this idea.
The original story was thatanother friend in Ames,
the director of cosmology group there,
used to organize undergradworkshops in Moreshas,
so we went for one ofthose, similar to what

(01:00:23):
my supervisor did for us, I guess.
After a couple of years,
I think we went therein 2013 and 2015 or '14,
he contacted me and a few of other women
who had participated andsaid, "What I'm noticing
in this small scale communityis that the students
that come to our workshop,we have seen some of the men

(01:00:43):
go to graduate school,but none of the women,
is there anything we can do?"
So seven of us, three from thepeople we met in a workshop,
Michelle Lochner and Valeria Paterness.
Michelle is in South Africa.
Valeria is-
- Katerina.
- Katerina is now based in Paris, France.

(01:01:04):
So we volunteered to start something.
I came back to my friends at Perimeter.
- Nasipia Swaney.
- Nasipia Swaney, ChiamataOtaley, and Sarah Chanderra.
I recruited them and Renna Logic
who is now professor in Toronto.
Seven of us started with eight mentors.

(01:01:25):
We said, "Just do whatever we can do."
Like every couple of months,let's talk to this women,
how they're holding upand it was not easy.
We didn't have the experienceof doing this kind of work
before, but at least one of those women
made it to graduate school and followed up
and then on to pursue herarea or dreams in physics.
And then we thought about, okay,

(01:01:47):
if there's only seven of us,
what if there were more of usand we could have other women
who can help and out ofthis came this a story
of Supernova Foundationwith no financial support,
with no administrationsupport, no nothing,
just women physicists volunteeringtheir time and good heart
decided to help other women,undergraduate women in physics

(01:02:11):
who are in other places whoneed someone else like a mentor.
Michelle put a lot oftime and work into the,
a little bit of like websitedevelopment on that side of it.
Mom D. Knight became ourprogram administrator for free.
And now I think we have around300 mentees, 100 mentors.

(01:02:32):
We have a long waitinglist because unfortunately
we cannot accommodate anybody.
If you will go to ourwebsite, it shows the globe
and they have like anywhere from Brazil,
Argentina to India andother Africa, other places,
women who taking part andwhat we learned through this
process, first of all, I learned a lot.
This was a learning curve for me

(01:02:52):
like how to be a good mentor.
What are your role as a mentor?
You are not supervisor,you are not a counselor.
What things can you do to help?
But also we realize we arehelping each other too,
like just connecting marginalizedpeople to each other,
having a network for themto talk to each other,
not to feel helplessor alone and isolated,
that by itself is a big step.

(01:03:13):
A lot of times it's likemaybe a senior physicist
asking another senior physicist,
"What did you do when you had this thing?"
Like, if you are in partof this collaboration
and things like, it's comeup, how do you handle that?
And so far working, weare growing quite fast.
So we don't know, we areplanning to maybe restructure it
to make it more sustainableto accommodate the growth,

(01:03:34):
but let's see how it goes.
- And so the mentees aremostly around graduate level?
- No, they're mostly undergraduate,
but sometimes master students.
So now we are thinkingof restructuring it,
maybe we can do, so when we started,
we would even have PhD students
mentor undergraduate students,

(01:03:55):
but now we are thinking,because as we learn,
like sometimes a youngerpostdoc needs a mentor
from the faculty or a graduate student
who learned from a postdoc
so we might do a littlebit of restructuring,
but the original plan was graduate student
and higher mentoring undergraduate.
And we started having eventaking master's students.

(01:04:18):
I have had master studentsmentees just recently,
like one of my mentees,have to brag about it.
She's interviewing liketop schools in the world,
has like admissions, like, oh my God.
- That's great, soundslike the kind of thing
that would've been helpfulif it had been around
when you were their age.
- I think so, I mean,I know so many people

(01:04:38):
and broke my heart alongthe way that we lost, right,
because I make thisanalogy other places too,
I'm saying this is like a,
for marginalized peopleclimbing the academic ladder
is like a ladder whichis constantly shaking
so you keep losing people along the way
and I've seen it, like I'veseen it in my lifetime,

(01:05:01):
like so far in my career
how many we have lost along the way.
- And it's hard becausethis is such a big problem.
I think so many peopledon't know where to start
and I just love what you saida little while back that you
can start with something thatmaybe seems small at the time.
Now this has grown into somethingthat's not at all small,
but you started with somethingsmall that you thought
would be helpful and thatcan take you into something

(01:05:24):
that can really make abig difference later on.
- Yeah and I feel like itfills into like, again,
my personality, like we discussed this.
Niayesh is big picture.
I'm gonna change and comearound like, let's just focus.
Let's see what I can dohere and see how it goes.
- It takes both types.
- Yeah, exactly, both are very important.
- Nice of you to say.

(01:05:45):
- Niayesh, do you havelike big picture ideas or?
- Actually, I mean, Ghazal is the expert.
Actually I have a feeling, I mean, she's,
maybe we have a little bitof a role also because I
Ghazal is, she's also, am Isaying you're the president
of the women in math in Waterloo.
- Chair of the women.
- The chair of the women in math,
so she has kind of theSupernova Foundation,

(01:06:07):
I think it's a great, it'ssuch a big project now,
even though it started smalland also all this stuff
she's doing it, the womenin math in Waterloo,
at the University of Waterloo.
I'm still at the level ofhelping one person at the time
so I haven't really haveas big of an ambition,
but I try to do my best in this regard.
- Well, we have one more question

(01:06:28):
that was sent in by another student,
so maybe we can play that one.
- I'm Matt Duchen, a PTstudent at Perimeter.
What do you think eachother's most interesting
and exciting contributions have been?
- We've talked about-
- For the listener, theylooked at each other
and didn't answer this.
- Well, I'm laughingbecause I sometimes do
these interviews, postdoc interviews,
and this is what I ask.

(01:06:49):
- Really?- Now I'm on the hot seat.
(all laughing)
- Now, but you're supposedto say that about me, right?
- I think that's the question, yeah.
- You brag about hiscontributions and vice versa.
- Or bad.
Doesn't have to be brag, it's okay.
- Yeah, I think thatcross-correlation, that was a,
I think that Niayesh wasa pioneer in this era.

(01:07:11):
Now it's, I mean, not that I'msaying not gonna be as big,
but I'm saying that oneis now tested and grown
and it was a bigcontribution to the field,
how we can extract someactual physics and separate
these things out of such tiny signals
in different parts of data

(01:07:32):
or completely different datasets, I guess.
- And I don't even think weasked you about that, Niayesh,
about these black hole echoes.
Do you wanna tell us alittle bit about that?
- It's entirely not your fault.
I do so many different things.
Like each of them is like a black hole.
I actually did work onactual black holes as well.
So the story of echos,

(01:07:52):
which I think Ghazal was alleging to,
as maybe not the most exciting thing I do,
but you see, maybe time will tell.
So this is started with seeingLIGO gravitational waves
around five or six years ago,
which they won the Nobel prize for.
But in fact, it's amazing thingbecause it opened this door
for us for looking deepinto places where gravity

(01:08:13):
is very, very strong,basically as strong as it gets,
these back holes that weknew about them before.
Like for example, from EventHorizon Telescope picture,
you knew there is some placewhere gravity is as strong,
but it was very hard to get very deep
because basically justlight stops at some point.
And gravitational wavesactually can get deeper

(01:08:34):
because gravitational wavesare actually weakly interacting
with matter, so they can probevery, very deeply into places
where we know gravity shouldbreak these singularities
we were talking about.
Now, whether they will actually get there
is a matter of debate since LIGO discovery
gravitational waves, I'vethought about this problem a lot
and we've written paperson this with my students

(01:08:55):
in the past five years or so.
I think it's kind of inevitablethat if quantum mechanics
is somewhere united withgravity, at some point,
then black holes cannotbe these bottomless pits
that basically generalrelativity tells us.
General relativity tells us that, I mean,
black holes are, don't have any end.
Basically things fall in andkeep going in and in and in

(01:09:18):
and never really, nobody fromoutside will never hear you
hitting the bottom of a black hole.
According to Einstein,that's a one-way street.
But if you believe in quantummechanics, it cannot be,
there should be a finitedemand of a space there,
so eventually, you gotta hit the bottom
and you're gonna hear backand those are the echoes
that we've kind of beenexploring for a while.
I think it's an opportune time

(01:09:39):
'cause the first time youcan actually hear back holes,
but also hear them so deeply basically,
just when they're formingand basically you can see
basically down into thevery bottom of them.
We think echos is a possible signature
of what could be sitting atthe bottom of the back hole
and a very opportunistic timeto basically looking for this.
I mean there is no guarantee,

(01:10:00):
but I think that's whatI'm most excited about.
Also Ghazal has had a lot of interesting
and influential works, butI mean, she talked about
some of them, for example,how Cuscutan could help us
balance the universe,the contracting universe
could become expanding, butprobably the most important,
exciting thing is that she showed,
I mean the very early universe,

(01:10:20):
at least one of the three tenants of,
I mean physics as we knowit should break down,
it's either that you needto have negative pressure,
that inflationary phase like we do now,
but if you don't do that,
you either get propagationfaster than the speed of light
or you need some quantumgravity effect basically.
So she actually proved the theorem

(01:10:42):
to that effect, so it's a technical work,
but it's a solid technicalwork in the spirit
of the kind of thing that she does,
that they're all, she crosses all the Ts
and dots all the Is sothat there's no doubt left.
That's what's happening.
If you think you know, thereare three possibilities,
thanks to Ghazal we knowin the early universe

(01:11:02):
and everything elsepeople have thought about
falls under those three.
- I guess, to explain thatempirically, we noticed it,
that people are comingwith these scenarios,
but I noticed that they eitherfall into one of these three
and again, okay, why is that?
There should be a reason for that,
that people are coming up only with these
three different possibilities.
- So she proved the theorem

(01:11:22):
that these are the onlythree possibilities.
- That's why it is happening.
- Seems like both of thesecontributions you're mentioning
really speak to each of your strengths
and your unique approaches to research.
It's neat to hear.
- Thank you so much for joining us.
It's just been-
- Thank you, thank you for inviting us.
We enjoyed the conversation.
- It's a lot of fun, thankyou very much for having us.

(01:11:44):
(gentle music)
- Thanks so much for listening.
Perimeter Institute is a not-for-profit
charitable organization thatshares cutting edge ideas
with the world, thanksto the ongoing support
of the governments of Ontario in Canada,
and also thanks to donors like you.
Thank you for being part of the equation.

(01:12:05):
(gentle music)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ghazal Geshnizjani and Niayesh Afshordi: Cosmologically Coupled