Let’s introduce to our audience Dr. David Sloan! Who are you? If you had to describe yourself in 1 sentence, what would you say?

I’m a mathematician who got lost and ended up finding interesting questions in physics and philosophy and spends a lot of time thinking about the universe.

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What are the most
A- Fascinating research
B- Impactful research
C- Fun and whimsical research
You are leading these days? 

Fascinating research: I’ve been working on how to describe physics without reference to size.  Together with brilliant colleagues (Tim Koslowski, Sean Gryb, Flavio Mercati, Josh Hoffmann) we’ve applied these ideas to the universe as a whole and found that they might explain why we experience time always moving forwards, and what happened before the big bang.

Impactful research: Through the Foundational Questions Institute (FQxI) I’m looking at how we can best support revolutionary research programs that change our understanding of the universe. The greatest impact would be to build the support structure in which scientists are free to pursue the projects they believe in.

Fun and whimsical research: I once worked out, with Avi Loeb and Rafael Batista, what it would take to kill off all life on Earth. It was for a real scientific paper, I promise, not part of a supervillain arc. My students may dispute this.    

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The universe has been expanding for 13.8 billion years. If you could rewind it all like a cosmic tape, where would you press pause?

I wouldn’t - I’d love to watch the whole thing backwards and see how it all began, and if there was anything at the start of the tape. 

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Exploring the universe is like being a detective in space. What’s the one cosmic clue that made you go, “Whoa, this changes everything”?

Most of the things I’ve found have really made me think “That’s strange, I wonder why that happens?” I think when I found that removing scale from systems meant that they seem to exhibit a natural arrow of time was something that really shocked me. I wasn’t thinking about time at all, and yet suddenly it appeared. 

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AI…AI…AI…is AI doing anything useful in your field as a cosmic scientist?

I think of AI as a tool. It’s great at spotting patterns in data that are too big for humans to see, and I think ultimately it will end up being an integral part of our work in the way that a computer, oscilloscope or whiteboard are; a force multiplier.

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If you could design an experiment without any limitations of time or money… what would it be? 

The effects of limitless access to money on cosmologists named Dave. There are so many! I would love to be able to fund research into some of the fascinating ideas about the origin of the universe, the origin of time, how quantum mechanics affects biology… I think more than anything with unlimited time and money I’d like to let scientists follow their curiosity and do the research that only they can do. There are so many beautiful, inspiring, brilliant, ideas out there which burn in the hearts of researchers who never get the chance to explore them. I’d love to be able to make it possible. 

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If you could have a superhero power. What would it be?

Tough question! If I pick too strong a power, I’d feel guilty about not using it to do something useful, so I guess I’ll try to go with something fun but ultimately not that practical. I think the ability to produce dog biscuits whenever I meet a dog would be quite nice. My dog thought I already had this power and was quite ungenerous with it. 

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Mystery dinner party…Dead or Alive, who would be 3 guests you would invite to your dinner party?

Dead guests would probably lead to problems with the police, and aren’t known for their conversation anyway, so I’ll go with alive ones. I’ve long been warned that you should never meet your heroes, so I think I’ll just stick with friends that I’ve missed for too long. With that said I would have loved to meet Terry Pratchett. 

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If you could leave a question for the next guest, what would that be? 

If you could send a question to the previous guest, what would that be? 

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What is the most exciting discovery you've made that you did not expect?

See above - I didn’t expect an arrow of time to emerge from removing scale from physics, and I didn’t expect that it would allow us to extend cosmology beyond the big bang. The transition from seeing something strange happening in the mathematics to understanding that there was something genuinely new happening was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. 

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