Welcome to “Ask Me Anything,” a new Hippo Reads series dedicated to following knowledge to the ends of the Earth. This is your chance to explore everything you’ve ever wanted to know about a particular topic, but never had the chance (or audacity!) to ask. At Hippo, we’re always asking questions to which we don’t have the answers. We have a feeling our readership also has a lot of burning questions about the world. As such, we’ve created a new venue for you to ask your most pressing, most bizarre, most creative questions of a vetted Hippo academic.

YOU ASK THE QUESTION, WE’LL SOURCE THE ANSWER

Here’s how it works:

  • On Monday, we post an open call for questions along with an introduction to that week’s hand-selected expert.
  • You submit your questions—using the form below—by Friday of that week.
  • We forward a selection of your questions to our expert.
  • The expert considers them. His or her answers run in a post the following Friday.

We encourage you to share this campaign—and your questions!—via email and social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.), spurring a lively conversation. As many of us remember from G.I. Joe cartoons, “knowing is half the battle” (we’re still unsure what comprises the other half).

THE INAUGURAL HIPPO READS EXPERT IS:

David Kaiser,

Theoretical Physicist & Historian of Science

MIT

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Introduction by Benjamin Winterhalter

I first encountered David Kaiser through his appearance in a recent NOVA special (Brian Green’s “Fabric of the Cosmos,” not to be confused with Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos”). He’s a distinguished professor at MIT, where he teaches both physics and the history of science, and he serves as the department head of that university’s program in Science, Technology, and Society. Beyond Professor Kaiser’s many awards—which include one from the History of Science Society for his first book and a MacVicar Faculty Fellowship for excellence in undergraduate teaching—he also loves sharing his interest in science with the public. He’s published approachable, exciting articles about physics in a wide variety of popular venues, including Scientific American, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post. His most recent book—the dreamy, engaging How the Hippies Saved Physics, a chronicle of the strange relationship between the Bay Area counterculture and the quantum revolution—should not be missed. Neither should his appearances in the NOVA special, for that matter.

In a recent interview with Professor Kaiser, I was struck by his welcoming demeanor. He treated me—a relative physics novice and general science outsider—with a kind of warmth that my half-baked thoughts probably didn’t really deserve. He courteously mapped the words from my mangled questions onto cogent, interesting topics in contemporary physics, and displayed an impressive degree of patience with my out-there curiosities. That’s exactly why I thought he would be an impeccable choice for our inaugural Ask Me Anything. He’s not only one of the top scholars in his field, but a great person to talk to.

Perhaps the best way, however, to communicate his openness to you, dear Hippo reader, is to show you. Here, then, is a teaser question, intended to demonstrate that you that you really can Ask Him Anything:

Q: I understand the idea that forwards time travel is theoretically possible, but what about backwards time travel? How could such a thing occur? Doesn’t it lead to all sorts of paradoxes—multiple “yous,” for example?

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUBMISSIONS!

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED. WINNING QUESTIONS WILL BE ANNOUNCED MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2014. 

What would you like to ask Professor Kaiser? Here’s your chance to engage with one of the world’s top theoretical physicists. Don’t be shy…

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Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via flickr