Explaining the “Eureka Effect” | StarTalk

No one can imagine anybody else playing that role but you. So what were you doing? What's your secret? Come on!

I love the whole concept of scientists who deal with, uh, insoluble, uh, problems. I love the story of a noted scientist who was trying to find the solution to some problem and just didn't come. He worked on for months and then one day, he's not thinking about anything. He's getting on the bus and it comes to him, you know?

And Doc Brown, uh, is trying to figure out how to do, uh, time travel, and he falls down in the bathroom and hits his head against the sink, and he suddenly envisions the flux capacitor, you know? So I, I, I love that kind of connection because it's kind of the way it works.

Well, so it's, that's basically the Eureka Effect. Yeah, you get hit in the head or something happens to you abruptly and then the idea pops in. But I'm a fan of the way Isaac Asimov interprets the Eureka Effect, which is—

Which is?

Go ahead, okay, you ready? The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, okay, is not "Eureka" but rather, "that's funny."

That—well, that makes sense. Yeah.

So, Meo, do you agree with this?

Yes, I had exactly that moment. I first was working on string theory in the 1960s, and it consisted of hundreds of random formulas that we had to memorize in a book. But Einstein wanted an equation one inch long that would allow him to, quote, read the mind of God.

So I said to myself, "Hm, that's funny. How come this theory has so many random equations? There should be this one H equation." One day I found it; it's called Stringfield Theory. That's my equation. I'm the co-founder of string field theory, and it summarizes a theory beyond Einstein in one inch long.

But—but was that a Eureka moment or did you just sort of—was that funny moment that no one was looking for it? No one was looking for this one-inch equation, right? Because people were so busy memorizing and using all these little hundreds of little formulas that they would memorize. No one was looking for that one H equation.