As a science journalist, one of my job's greatest perks is the not-infrequent chance it offers for in-depth chats with scientists who may fly under the public radar but are nonetheless living legends in their chosen fields. All of whom, I might add, are invariably far smarter than me and usually eager to offer profound, provocative responses to my simplistic prompts.
This week's top story—an interview with the preeminent Dutch theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft—is no exception. For more than a half-century, 't Hooft has been crucial in codifying and in some cases rewriting the rules that underpin our physical reality, contributing discoveries too numerous and technical to summarize here. Among other things, he's considered one of the key architects of what would eventually become the Standard Model of particle physics—the most thoroughly tested and successful scientific theory ever devised.
On the eve of 't Hooft's reception of a $3 million Breakthrough Prize, the richest in all of science, we sat down for a 45-minute video-call conversation. I had planned to merely touch on a small sampling of monumental achievements from across his long scientific career, but 't Hooft boldly took the discussion in several exciting new directions.
Much of our talk revolved around fundamental (and seemingly quite abstruse) questions of what, exactly, is occurring when subatomic particles interact with each other in the quantum realm. 't Hooft, you see, is dissatisfied with standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, which posit that the outcomes of such processes are inherently statistical in nature and therefore impossible to ever exactly predict on a case-by-case basis. Lurking behind that probabilistic murk, he suspects, is a deeper and more deterministic reality awaiting our discovery.
Consider that just a teaser. I'll leave the rest of his insightful, wide-ranging thoughts for your read of the interview itself. Enjoy!
—Lee Billings
