IEEE Spectrum June, 2010 - 20

geek life
Astrophysicist
Stanford Woosley
Director, center for
Supernova research,
university of california,
Santa cruz

"The universe evolves.
Stars evolve. People evolve.
Everything that is alive
evolves. We may be the
path toward some ultimate
intelligence, some ultimate
life in the universe that would
be virtually indistinguishable
from what we call God."

Physicist Steve Biller
tutorial Fellow in
experimental particle
physics, mansfield college,
university of Oxford,
England

Filmmaker roger Nygard interviewed religious leaders, philosophers,
cultural icons, and physicists for his documentary The Nature of
Existence. photo: courteSy of roGer nyGarD

Why Do We Exist?

the answer is coming to a theater near you

F

ilmmaker Roger
Nygard-best known for
the cult film Trekkies-
tackled the most existential
of questions in his 2009
documentary, The Nature
of Existence, as we noted in
our February 2009 issue, a
month before the movie's
debut at the Cinequest Film
Festival in San Jose, Calif.
Since then, the movie has
gone on to win three awards,
including Best Documentary
Feature at DocuFest Atlanta,
and it has been invited
to screen at more than a
dozen other festivals. It's
20

now scheduled to premiere
in theaters in New York
(18 June) and Los Angeles
(2 July), followed by other
theaters across the country.
Nygard asked 170 thinkers
on five continents 85 of the
toughest questions he could
come up with. It was the
physicists who waxed the
most philosophical, he says-
except for one. "Stephen
Hawking wouldn't grant
an interview," says Nygard.
"He said, 'I'm tired of the
God question.' " Here are
a few musings of those
who weren't. -Susan Karlin

NA * iEEE SpEctrum * JuNE 2010

"Particles, in fact, don't exist.
Consider, for example, a
particle we all know and
love, the electron. They're
all the same. You know if
Theoretical physicist
Sylvester James Gates Jr. you produced an electron
on the other side of the
Supersymmetry expert,
universe, and you brought it
university of maryland,
here and compared it with
college park, md.
an electron, they're the
"In science, whenever we see
same. Not in the same way
a diversity of viewpoints,
that you pick up two red
at the end of the day they
billiard balls and say, 'These
all become unified because
are pretty similar.' We say
there's one reality. If religion
they're identical. This is
is talking about something
because the electron as a
that is external to us, then
separate, distinct entity...
all of them will likely
doesn't really exist, they are
follow a similar path."
merely bumps in something
called 'field,' which is
Physicist
a property of space and
Leonard Susskind
time. And if it's true for
codiscoverer of string
the fundamental particles
theory, Stanford university
in nature, it's true for
"Sometimes people pray hard
everything that they make
for a miracle, and a miracle
up, including us. And so at
happens-a miracle meaning
something very, very unlikely. some level, we don't exist."
But the most unlikely
For more information: http://
thing of all would be if no
www.thenatureofexistence.com.
unlikely things happened."
spectrum.ieee.org
http://http:// http://www.thenatureofexistence.com http://spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2010
