Lisa Randall laughs. That may not seem at all remarkable until you consider what's on her mind right now. She is out to liberate humanity from the pervasive but quite possibly mistaken assumption that we live in a three-dimensional world. "The disinformation campaign began in the crib, which first introduced you to three spatial dimensions," she warns in her recent book, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions (Ecco, 2005).
Starting in earnest a couple of decades ago, a group of physicists began seeking deeper truth in string theory, which holds that the fundamental particles of nature consist of minuscule vibrating strands of energy. Problem is, the theory works well only if the strings vibrate in more than three dimensions. Randall, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University, is a leading light of a second generation of researchers who are taking that idea to an even grander level, envisioning not just tiny strands but huge territories of higher dimension, called branes. She thinks this approach could revolutionize our understanding of gravity and uncork the deepest workings of the universe.
Yet Randall is resolutely down to earth. She chafes at the thought that her ideas should be restricted to the confines of academia, she both respects and swats aside her importance as a woman in a male-dominated field—and then there is that laugh, hearty and throaty, that erupts repeatedly during our conversation. She finds this world rich and comforting and funny. She just wants to give it a little more dimension.
Where did your interest in physics begin?
When I was in school I liked math because all the problems had answers. Everything else seemed very subjective. The teachers in English class would say, "What is the reason that this is an important book?" They'd look for the three good reasons, whereas you might think of some other one. I didn't like the arbitrariness of that. Later I decided that just doing math would drive me crazy. I'd be up all night working on a problem, and I thought, "I can't live the rest of my life like this." [Laughs] I wanted something more connected to the world.
