Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Dr. Brian Keating on Time Travel, Aliens, Wormholes and Other Things You'd Ask an Astrophysicist

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

Today's guest is Dr. Brian Keating. Brian is a Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of physics at the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. He's also a public speaker, inventor, and an expert in the study of the universe’s oldest light, the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We dive into a fascinating conversation about space, time, aliens, time travel and all kind of other things that make my head explode. Buckle up! The Kindle version of Brian Keating’s new book, Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, is available for just 99¢ this week only here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09DBYPK55/ Subscribe to Dr. Brian Keating's YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests.  For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are going. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van! Oh, man, here we go, my friends. Welcome back to another audio adventure on Insight. I'm Chris VanFle. Thank you so much for being with us on this one. And if it happens to be your first time here, make sure to hit subscribe or follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you're listening right now. This conversation today gets deep. You know, it's not every day that you get to talk to an astrophysicist, So it's an honor to welcome Dr. Brian Keating to the show. He's a professor of physics at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. He's also a public speaker, an inventor, and an expert in the study of the universe's oldest light,

which is called the Cosmic Microwave Background. I don't know what that means, but this is why we have Dr. Brian Keating on the show. He's also a podcaster, and he has an amazing podcast called Into the Impossible that you can find wherever you're listening to this right now. You can also find him on YouTube by searching for Dr. Brian Keating or just clicking the links in the show notes.

And on social media, he's at Dr. Brian Keating. I just, I had so many questions for him about space and time and aliens. And it's such a mind-blowing conversation with a brilliant. mind. Please welcome Dr. Brian Keating. Brian, thank you so much for joining us. It's truly an honor, Chris. Thank you so much for hosting me. I don't even know where to begin with someone who has as much knowledge as you do, but I want to begin from the beginning here, if we can. Were you always interested in being an astrophysicist? You know, I was, but I didn't think it was even possible to be an astrophysicist. I thought it was like being a wizard.

Being an ice cream taster, you know, it's like, those aren't jobs that anyone's going to pay you for. But it turns out that people will pay you not, you know, not terribly well, but I'm a state employee here in University of California, San Diego. But, you know, don't tell Gavin Newsom our current governor. Don't tell him that I would do it for free because it's the most fun job in the world, punctuated by, you know, sometimes of sheer frustration. but mostly it's incredibly fun. I get to study and think about how do the universe come to be? Where is it heading? How is it evolving? How are the smallest things in the universe?

The protons, neutrons, quarks, etc. How do those affect the biggest features of the universe? And what is the ultimate fate of not just humankind, but of the universe itself? So for me, it's the most thrilling thing I could possibly imagine doing. Well, look, for people who aren't dealing with this day in and day out like you are, Brian, I think it's hard for us to like wrap our heads around the concept of where did the universe come from and things like that. How do you, when you were getting into this, how do you start to break down those massive questions into something that you can actually handle in the day to day? Exactly.

I try to think about things as relates to, you know, just an ordinary person. I think that's part of the problem is that people don't think about it so much, lay people, the general public. And I think that's a byproduct of the cultivation of science as kind of mysterious things done by specialist operating in a specialized environment that, oh, you guys can't really understand. So we're going to make it very mysterious. But then we're going to ask you for money, you know, and to fund our research exploits and support us. And I think it's a vicious cycle that needs to come to an end. And so in part, what I'm trying to do is demystify science and the biggest concepts in the universe, not by dumbing them down. I never do that with my podcast or my books.

Instead, what I want to do is take people on a journey in a language they can understand and deconstruct these massive concepts. But you already mentioned, like, how do the universe begin? You know, what's that like the origin story? So I usually ask people like, what's your favorite day on the calendar? I'll ask you, what's your favorite day of the year? Favorite day of the year. Yeah, what's like the best day of the year?

I'll go with Christmas. I get to be with my family, get to see everybody, eat great food. Christmas is a great answer. Exactly. And it has a spiritual component. So what is Christmas? It commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, right? If you're Christian and I happen to be Jewish, but he's still a pretty good Jew. So it was the beginning of not just his life, but of the entire religion of Christianity, which benefits billions of people around the world, right? So it's an origin. For me, I think about my own birthday or my anniversary or my kids' birthdays. And I think about those. So what are those? What are those all have in common? Origins. Now, what's the one thing about an origin that you are not really privy to. Well, if it's your own origin, you know, you weren't there to watch yourself, you know, being born. You have to rely. Nobody wants to see that. You have to rely on the, on the honesty or the testimony of other people, right? That's just a natural thing. Now, what do you do if it's the origin of time, Chris? Who could even imagine such a concept?

So from the very early age, I was always fascinated by these origin stories. How did I come to be? how did the earth come to be, how did the moon come to be, and eventually how did the universe come to be? And to get to that point, it was really a work in progress that I'm still grappling with to this very day. But the more you learn, the more fascinated you get. And for me, my origin as an astronomer started with something that if I can convince your audience to buy one thing on Amazon, it won't necessarily even be my books.

It would be a small telescope. because a small telescope for a child, when I encountered a telescope age 12, I really set the course in motion for my career, for everything that's good that's happened to me in the world, but also for a life, you know, kind of just a fascination. And what my mission is in life is to get every kid on Earth a telescope. And probably someday I'll make my own Keating brand, you know, optical telescopes.

But for now, you can go on Amazon, get almost anything. out there, give it to a kid. And from where you are, I don't care if you're in the middle of L.A. or San Diego, where I am now, New York City, downtown Tokyo. You can see the same exact moon craters, planetary moons, the Jupiter, the rings of Saturn. And unlike any other scientific discovery that you may have heard of, have you ever heard of like the Higgs boson or gravitational waves, Chris? These are like major discoveries and science, you know, kind of very abstract and but imagine like you've seen like a particle accelerator where they smash atoms together and they're big like nobody can buy one of those those costs about 10 billion dollars and they take

five years to build 10 years to analyze data but a telescope you can recreate the exact emotion the exact psychological emotion and visceral feeling that Galileo himself the father of optical astronomy had in 1609, when he took a tiny telescope less good than anything you can buy on Amazon, turned it and looked at the moon and said, wait a second, the moon has mountains, it has craters, it has lava, it has all sorts of weird stuff. You can see that from L.A., San Diego, Tokyo. I don't care where you are. So that's the one takeaway I want to leave people with. Get a kid in your life, a telescope. Now they have ones you can attach your iPhone to. You can take pictures, share it on Instagram, do whatever you want. You know, tag Brian Keating sent me.

But the point is, you know, for my perspective, that is what I'm trying to do because it can inspire a career or it can just inspire an evening. And both of those are magical. But every time I look through a telescope, Brian, it makes me realize how small we are. And it also makes me realize we're just on a rock flying around space at some insane rate of speed. That's true. But, you know, there's kind of a virtue and humility. I'm having Ryan holidays coming on my show in a couple of weeks. And, you know, his all notion is of stoicism.

And I actually made a video on my channel. I do interviews, but I also do deep dives into different topics. And there's a famous statement by, it turns out a rabbi, you know, in the Jewish tradition. And he said that in your pockets and your pants or your shorts, you should have two different letters, one in each pocket. And one pocket should say, I am nothing but dust and ashes. And the other pocket should say the whole universe was made for me. And just like, you know, you can't imagine like, Chris, if you think about it, does the world exist if you don't exist? Like, do you know? You'll never know.

I know. You know what my notion of perceiving you means. I'll tell you something scientifically. You and I might call like that beautiful, you know, YouTube trophy behind your, uh, you know, upper left shoulder over there, which I'm very jealous and envious of someday. You're going to get one soon enough. So I see that as silver, and you call it silver. It's shiny and you'll get a gold one, whatever that comes next, right?

But there's no guarantee that the actual chromatic signal that my brain processes is identical to the exact chromatic process that you see. Or another example, you ever see a candle flickering? The human eye perceives it differently, depending on our genetics, depending on our physiology. So we can't even have a notion of perception. And yet, we have this powerful notion that, yeah, the world would go on without us, but we don't know that. So you actually don't know that you're insignificant.

I claim you're the most significant. You're the pinnacle of creation because without you, reality doesn't exist. And there's nobody that can disprove that, Chris. So I think you should temper your humility, which is admirable, with a dose of not swagger or arrogance, but just this notion that I have a mission, I'm put on earth to do something in your case. in the arts, it's in film, et cetera. And you're mastering that particular craft. And maybe that's the mission you were put here for. If you ask a bumblebee, you know, spin a web, it can't do it. Ask a spider to make honey. It can't do it. But each one of them has a unique mission.

And I think each one of us does too. I think for you, your mission on this earth is to ask a lot of questions that you may never in your lifetime find out the answers. Is that not a little bit of a daunting task? Yeah. Well, there's all sorts of reasons that gives me hope. See, science, unlike, you know, say the Emmys behind you or something like that, or the Nobel Prize in my case, is not a finite game. So that's an example of a finite game. You won an Emmy, somebody lost an Emmy. You know, somebody won a Nobel Prize on my podcast. Somebody didn't win a Nobel Prize. Those are finite games. There are zero-sum games in a certain sense. And science has a lot of it. Has a Nobel Prize. I just mentioned. It has tenure. It has getting into,

you know, a good college. It has, you know, research grant awards. It's very hard to get. But at the same token, it's an infinite game because you could never win science. Oh, I'm done. You know, we got it. I got everything. You can never do it. And the way I like to think about it is if you imagine like an island and that island represents all of knowledge and the island can keep growing, you know, let's say there's

some Hawaiian island is formed. It's got lava. The island grows. Its area gets bigger. But also the boundary where it encounters the ocean of ignorance. That gets bigger too. but a line is less big in some sense than the area of the island. So you make progress and you win, and nature is always kind of receding, but sometimes

she'll let you see a little bit of her secret. And I think those moments of discovery when you realize no human being on Earth ever knew what I know now or ever thought to do what I do now, that's the object of a scientist. And we love that kind of state. We love being in that state of uncertainty because uncertainty means opportunity. What does the best research show us now, Brian, as to how old our universe is? Yeah, we have a very accurate understanding of our universe's composition, what it's made of, how many galaxies there are, how many stars there are. And it's come so far in just the 20 years,

25 years, 21 years since I was a graduate student. When I was a graduate student, we didn't know the age of the universe. It was uncertain. It could have been like 10 billion years old or it could have been 20 billion years old. And so there were objects in the universe, certain very old stars whose age we knew very accurately to be, say, 11 billion years. So people were saying, well, that's kind of weird. There could be a star that's older than the age of the universe. That's like you being older than your dad. It's kind of weird, right?

You have some questions at that point, right? You want to ask mom what was happening back then. But in this case, the universe now we know, is 13,798 million years old with an uncertainty of less than a percent. In other words, it's like I could guess you're. age, you know, just by the way, but imagine I guess your age, I guess the day you were born, the hour you are born, the minute you are born, as opposed to, you could have been born in 1990 or you could have been born in 1960. Like, that's crazy. Now we know it incredibly precisely,

along with a host of other cosmological fascinating properties of our universe, including what's likely to happen to it billions of years from now. Oh my gosh. So isn't there some stat that there's like more stars than there are like grains of sand or something like that? Yeah. Exactly. There's a, you know, it's on certain. Mind blowing. But it's exactly like. So go down to the beach or go down, you know, just imagine how many grains of sand there are.

And then look up at the night sky. If you're in a dark place, you can see the Milky Way. Your eye cannot resolve the individual stars that make up just our galaxy, let alone all the galaxies in our universe. And Chris, there may be a tantalizing possibility that just as we're not the only planet in our own solar system, just as the sun is not the only solar system in the galaxy, just as our galaxy is one of hundreds of billions or trillions of galaxies. Now people say there's a possibility, very tantalizing, very speculative, that our universe

isn't the only universe. Oh, my God. And so then that obviously brings us to the question if we can't be the only life form out there then. Yeah. Well, it's very, again, very fascinating to me because we have no evidence of life on other planets or other, even within our solar system as yet. we have maybe hints and there are possibilities and there's water and there's carbon and oh well

water and carbon give it enough time it'll make a you know a you know bacterium pop out no that's not really as well understood as people would think so actually just the sheer you know possibility imagine you say like well um america is really big right so there's got to be people everywhere in america but like you know if you've ever been to the desert nobody out there you know if you go 20 miles from LA and you can be somewhere there's nobody around. So just a sheer potential for life doesn't by no means guarantee the existence of life. And I have some thoughts about what it would mean if we definitively found the existence of alternative life in the universe, including intelligent life. And I don't think humans really are capable of understanding

what, how we would react, because even scientists don't know how we would react in terms of What a mysterious phenomena like UFOs or something? Like we don't have any unified approach to that the way we do about how particles are formed or how galaxies are formed. It's much more open to kind of broad speculation, even at this point. But I feel like if there's that many stars out there and even a handful of them have planets revolving around them, the odds seem to be in the favor of there's got to be some other sort of life out there.

Yeah. So that's a very, very often spoken of analysis. And I think there's some merit to it. But again, imagine there was just like three things that you needed to make to make this conversation happen. Sure. You needed a universe to come into existence. That universe had to produce certain types of elements like hydrogen, helium, that comprised the very first stars that ignited it in the universe. Those then grew and made heavier elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, all the things that we need for life, for DNA.

and then imagine that the DNA, the chemicals, there's just pure chemicals, assembled into molecules. And those molecules eventually were like amino acids and then proteins and DNA. And then those evolved. And so let's say there's five or six. Let's say let's call it 10 different steps. Universe, first stars form, they die. Second stars form. They form elements.

Elements form molecules. Molecules form amino acids. Amino acids form proteins. And this is very simplified and very controversial. And then that evolves from non-sile. And then, oh, by the way, the first things that form are kind of like fish. And then they're like dinosaurs. And then an asteroid had to come and kill the dinosaurs for us to really become prolific as mammals.

So let's say there's 10 of those things. And imagine each one has a one in a thousand chance of happening by random fluctuation, natural selection or whatever. So that's 10. That's one 1,000 to the 10th power. That's smaller than the total number. that's larger than the number of stars in the observable universe by a very large amount. So even though, you know, you might, there are many, many stars in the universe, there's by no means

all the conditions necessary as input conditions like I just outlined. And by the way, there's probably like 10,000 different properties, each one with a probability of one in a million of happening by random chip. So we just are not equipped to handle those kinds of analyses. And so we just kind of default, well, that's a lot or that's a little, and that's where we hear our emotions from. With all the work that you've done over your career, how do you view time? Is time a finite thing in your mind? I believe that time is one of the most mysterious attributes of our universe. You cannot really grasp a time is. And any definition of time typically is a totology, is a circular argument.

In other words, you'll say time is what happens between events, but then what separates events is time. Or one of my guests on my podcast, he says, time is what clocks measure. And I'm like, what's clock? Well, it's something that measures time. So it's literally a circular definition. And because of that, we can notice the concept of change. What does it mean to change?

and something can change in position at the same time, like the positional, you know, imagine instantaneously on a railroad track. At every point on the track, there's something, you know, train is either there or not. So that's changing in space, but then the train could also be in motion, and then you could say, oh, it's changing with time.

So these are attributes of space and time that are hard to grasp and hard to understand. But I think it's, what's important for us to realize is if you had a definition of time, the other thing that you need to do is figure out how did time itself get started. Imagine if time there's. Oh, man. Like, does time pass?

Because then there would be a moment, like a minute before that, there was no time. And a minute after that there's. But so then how did time start to move and change and flow? So we don't have good notions or agreed upon. We have conjectures. There are scientists that believe that they have an answer to those questions. But I would say it's still one of the most hotly debated topics in all of science. and even philosophical and theological.

If time had a beginning, is it like, you know, the descriptions in Genesis, is it some Hindu tradition description? Those are really fascinating things to contemplate. And, you know, I'm happy to say I do get paid to study. I love it. This is like a real-life Christopher Nolan film. It's like trying to figure out what happened at the start and the end of Interstellar. Exactly.

Yeah, I mean, I get to study all these things. Then they end up in a book or in a movie. movie and it's like a Spider-Man and the multiverse, Spider-Verse. Yeah, it's one of the most fun aspects is how it leaks into the popular culture. And then eventually, you know, becomes something where it influences science fact, not just science fiction. It's fascinating. Is the multiverse a real thing? Like, could there be another version of Brian and Chris sitting here right now in another timeline having the same conversation? You know, what's so interesting is that there are scientists now for the first time in my understanding in human history who say,

not only is there a multiverse, like multiple universes, but for us to speak about a universe is prejudiced and biased. In other words, the natural state should be multiple universes, just like the natural state is multiple planets, multiple stars, et cetera. So because of that, they say, no, you have to prove it's a universe, not a multiverse. Oh, my gosh. Well, then does this lead us then to like the idea of the simulation theory. Could this not be actually happening at all right now? Exactly. Yeah. So there are people that then claim that the universe has this, has this property that if there's effectively an infinite number of universes, or even a large number, as you said, large but finite is indistinguishable from human, you know,

comprehension from infinite. And so then they will say that if you just take kind of a version of Moore's Law and Moore's Law is the statement that your computer, your iPhone, whatever, gets more powerful doubles in power every year and a half or so. And that's an exponential growth, meaning that, you know, in three years, it'll double twice. In six years, it'll double four times, et cetera, et cetera. And the numbers just get literally astronomical. And so if this is happening with our computers now, and imagine if a civilization had a thousand, you know, Gordon Moore in this law, he founded Intel computer. And so that was only in 1960s, to call that 50 years ago. Now, imagine a thousand times more time, 50,000 years of evolution like that. You'd have two to the 50th power,

you know, roughly. I mean, it was just incomprehensible. So you'd have all the computing power that could conceivably to be developed. And so in that case, every single thing could be simulated. Every single physical attribute could be simulated. And what's so fascinating to me, Chris, is if you take this argument to its conclusion, it's not that similar to an argument made by René Descartes back in the 1600s, where he was saying, there's no way for you to know that you're not just what he called a brain in a jar. Like you're not just like, you know, getting sensory input and getting nutrition or whatever. There's no way to do it.

And he actually got out of it by saying this famous co-gito ergo sum, which means I think, therefore I am. Yes. And so he said the thinking process by itself is actually indicative of the free will and the free choice and the ability to not be simulated in that language. Well, I think when the Matrix came out, it kind of opened. of everybody's eyes up and I'm not trying to keep bringing this back to movies, but it's something that we all kind of understand in the pop culture. When the Matrix came out, we kind of went,

wait a second, this isn't just a crazy idea. This might actually be happening. Yeah. And there are people that have done a great amount of research and books about this. There are equally people that then think about, well, let's say that that is true. And they make what's called a ridicio ad absurdum like a logical extrapolation. So they'll say, well, if that's true, then there was somebody that could simulate that civilization. Oh, no. So there's a matrix on a matrix on a matrix.

It's just matrix at infinitum. And then at some point, you run out of particles in the universe. Like, are you going to make a computer out of every single particle in the universe, particle of light, particle of matter? And it becomes absurd. So for those reasons, you know, we look at it. And also, I should say that it's not. quite true that computers can grow, you know, exponentially, right? We only have so much material

on Earth. We only have so much in the whole galaxy in terms of energy. So it can't go infinite. Like we think about this thing like a singularity. You've probably heard of that or, you know, like, but there's actually no physical object known to science that has an infinitely big value or an infinitely small value. In other words, negative infinity or, you know, zero in terms of extent. Like even a particle has some width, breadth, and length to it. And so, too, does, you know, the universe not have any place where there's infinite temperature, infinite density, infinite pressure? Those things don't exist except in the human brain. In other words, you cannot program a computer. If you try to type in the number one divided by zero, which, or fun to do on your smartphone,

I won't say the S-I-R-I, you ask, you know, what's one divided by zero. It's pretty fun to hear what series said, I said it, aren't it? What's the question or questions that keep you up at night? I think for me, the most, the thing that keeps me up at night is to be, be kind of skeptical of myself in that, you know, I have human desires. I have desires for, for, you know, attention, for fame, for research funding, for notoriety and power maybe in my field. and of course I have desires to discover things in science. And it's a very, very tempting drug, this confirmation bias.

When you want to prove your own idea right, it's like natural. Like if people have kids, we know that our kids are the best kids ever live. But that's like confirmation bias because it reflects on us as parents or as individuals. So I think that's the thing that keeps me up at night and worries me. I'm not worried about aliens or an asteroid hitting us. I couldn't talk about that if I didn't. know. I'd have to, you know, I'd have to, you know, scramble the YouTube signal. But, um, but in reality, the, the, um, the propensity of human beings to fool themselves, delude themselves, uh,

mislead themselves, confirm prejudice, bias that, that I have as every scientist has, uh, whether they admit it or not. That's the thing that worries me most. And then if you act with that kind of integrity and purity, hopefully you can make, you know, honest to goodness discoveries that will stand the test of time and not have to worry about. you know, what was the motivation behind them, shall we say? The idea that science is never ending, and the idea that like something that we learn today to be true may not be true in five or ten or a hundred years from now

is really hard for a lay person like myself to wrap my head around. I think for me, it's part of, again, the beautiful part of science. I imagine if, so I've mentioned already, you know, Galileo, Isaac Newton. So these are some of the greatest scientists in human history. Imagine if Isaac Newton said, well, you know, there's just there's just no way to top Galileo. You know, we never would have invented, you know, I'm sure a lot of people be happy, calculus, you know, certain trigonometry. Like, oh, thank God, you know, I wish Newton never. Go back in time and kill Newton.

I hope we won't do that. And then similarly, Newton got all these things wrong, even though he was so brilliant. and Einstein had to come along to correct him and make that mistake into a new discovery. So it said that, like, you know, there are people that believe the earth is flat. I think that's kind of silly. But it's true that the earth is not around either, which is kind of weird to hear a scientist say. It's not perfectly spherical. So you look at the globe or whatever.

But if you look into the actual dynamics and the spinning body like the earth and has oceans and tectonic plates and they move around, it's slightly deformed from a sphere. It's not perfectly spherical. And so, but if you believe it is spherical, you're wrong, but you're less wrong than someone who believes it's flat. In other words, the job of science is to converge on as close to the right, perfect answer as possible. And then not only get an answer like me give you an answer, but I should be able to tell you how wrong I am about what I'm claiming.

So if I claim X number of people are going to have some virus, I shouldn't just tell you that that number of people could get the buy. I should say, but there's an uncertainty in this, and it could be as large as the number I'm saying. In other words, 10 people might get it, but it could be wrong by 10 people, in which case you should be able to judge as a layperson, as a non-scientist, you know, what actions you're going to take upon it. And the worst thing that I think scientists do is cultivate this image that they are experts outside of their own domain. And I think that's kind of a byproduct that actually does a disservice to science. Because if I tell you, oh, no, you have to be as brilliant as me or Einstein.

You know, Einstein wasn't always Einstein. I have to tell you, you know, he made about seven pretty big blunders that would have sunk almost anybody else's career if they hadn't already done what he did to create E equals MC squared and stuff before that. If social media was around when he was around. 100%. He would have been dragged through the mud is what you're saying. Exactly.

And some of my friends that are really famous professors, including one whose name is his position, as the Einstein professor at Princeton, he won't go on social media, Paul Steiner, because he feels like sometimes you need to have an idea that's tentative, that's nascent, that's just coming to the surface and then have some tests, but not like kill it when it's a baby. You know, it has to have some time to develop to see if it's fertile. And then eventually, if it's not correct, it should be disposed of. And there is a problem in science that we tend to keep ideas around longer than they're actually perhaps warranted because they seem to be so beautiful and they appeal again to our sense of

self of confirmation. Yeah, like poor Pluto. Poor Pluto. Pluto was a planet for so many years and now it's not. Yeah, that's right. The Pluto Union really has taken it on the chin. With the conversation we were having about time, do you think that time travel is possible? And if it is possible, is it something we would see in our lifetimes? So in terms of physical, time travel, it's very hard to make the resolve these various paradoxes that come up when you talk about time travel. Famous one is, you know, let's say you go back in time, Chris, and you go back 80 years ago and you kill your great-wicker grandfather. Yeah. Yeah. So would you be born? Who knows? Well, maybe you would. But maybe you wouldn't. Maybe be totally different. So then how did you go

back in time? If you were killed and you never existed? So there are all these paradoxes that come up with time travel that involve what's called causality. You know, how does a cause, cause and effect to take place? And without knowledge of how that could be really obtained, we're left with kind of, you know, real speculation as to whether or not it's possible. So right now we can talk about teleportation, we can teleport certain things in space, and they can arrive, you know, and they can have certain properties that are almost like traveling at the speed of light.

So some people say, well, it's just kind of a small jump from, you know, taking a proton and getting all of its properties and then transmitting the tens of trillions of trillions of protons that you're made of and teleporting all of them. But I think we're a long way away from being able to understand that. And I say we already have a good means of teleportation. Would you like to know what it is? Yeah. So they're called children. So children, whether or not they're biological, adopted, ideological, are the only known method that I can think about or writing and stuff like that where you can teleport, you can transmit your ideas, your essence, your values even to the future. You can't go back in time. You can't go forward in time, but you can't go. That's the catch.

You're not able to go because, you know, 100 years from now, you're, you know, maybe medical science will advance and you can't go, but most likely maybe it can't. So, but you can teleport your values and you can influence people as mentors. And you are doing this with millions, you know, hundreds of thousands of people are being influenced by you, and this will carry on digitally into the future forever. So that's why it's very important to think about the influence that people have. And you were saying you're insignificant. No, you're very significant. You're able to influence the future.

What else could you want? I feel like with that whole conversation of being insignificant or not, or insignificant or significant, it's like you're on one end of the spectrum or the other. You're either absolutely insignificant at all or you're completely significant. and everything happening around you is happening because of you. Exactly. Yes. Exactly.

You got to have those two pockets. You got to feel like. It's wild. Your destination, you know, but it's also kind of comforting. Like, you think of some evil dictator or some evil person, like, they're not going to live forever. Like, would you want them to live forever? And would you want, you know, this notion of people existing forever that you don't care

for? No. You know, death, they say, is the great equalizer. And, you know, it's just kind of. curious to think about, well, we think of ourselves is so great and we should be able to live forever. But, you know, it's actually, it's something morally that we have to think about. But I am quite serious about, you know, the importance of influencing being a mentor, father figure, mother figure, whatever, and influencing people that even aren't, you'll never

meet. Like, you have so many people, Chris, that you're influencing that you'll never meet. It's just impossible. Like, it's hard enough to keep up with, like, comments on you. Like, let alone, like, oh, I'm going to meet you. But why do we need to meet? I mean, If you take this example, I'm not like a pure materialist, but if you take this example, kind of like Descartes, you know, you are the sum of all these chemical impulses and neurons firing and stuff like that. And then you transmit it into data. Now it's in bits. And the bits can be copied infinitely with no cost, right? That's the whole benefit of digital technology. So your ideas can scale in a way they never could have. Like you couldn't reach 100,000 people 10 years ago,

20 years ago, let alone 100 or 1,000 years ago. So we have vast, power and we just have to use it responsibly. I posed a question on Twitter a few weeks ago and then went down this rabbit hole where I was basically asking, because of COVID, so many interviews have been done like this. You know, they've been done virtually. And I was asking the question, did you actually meet that person if you were just seeing a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional person? And I came to the conclusion that, no, you did not.

In fact, I'm not meeting you right now. I'm meeting a digital version of you right now. A lot of people completely disagreed with that. I mean, I can say it both ways. The only thing I would say in contrast is that your eyes have a little, are little telescopes with a lens and a detector, and that detector is two-dimensional. The retina on the back of your eyeball is a two-dimensional detector surface.

So whether or not you're looking at a three-dimensional object, we just have the perception of seeing you in three dimensions because we have two eyes. If we only had one eye, we wouldn't have this stereographic ability to see in three dimensions. So actually, you're seeing somebody right up close. Your turn around. You can see Emmy back there. She is in two dimensions on your retina, just to be devil's advocate. So you mentioned your books. I want to talk about your last book first before we talk about your new book. Your book's about losing the Nobel Prize. What were you up for for the Nobel Prize? So we had made, I had helped to create for the first time in history, this type of experiment, this detector,

telescope, which would be able to observe the earliest epoch in the universe's history, a period of time called the Big Bang. So if the universe began at a single instant, then we would be essentially seeing the shrapnel, the aftershocks. That's not technically correct, but just as a way of saying it, you know, kind of colloquially, that process could be witnessed for the first time by a telescope of the kind that I invented. And that telescope would see not only.

only, you know, the beginning of the universe, but everything that's happened in the universe since that time when it's made of, how it's evolving, and really demonstrate for the first time how the universe began. For that reason, we were told, even from the very beginning, that we would win the highest honor equivalent to an Oscar, an Emmy, whatever, in science called the Nobel Prize. And it was kind of like an idol to me and was something that I worshipped as a younger person. Like that is just the thing to aspire to, the ultimate YouTube plaque, whatever. It's the thing that was driving me as a younger scientist. It's also incredibly, incredibly rare. It is. There are more people, you know, that have been to space in the last year

than, you know, than have won the Nobel Prize over the last five years. So it's just unbelievably prestigious. And yet it's created by a single guy's guy, Alfred Nobel, over 120 years ago. And it was his thought was that he would make it to inspire people to create, inventions that would improve the human condition and make humankind better. And along the way, it's kind of taken on this other role, like more like the Oscars or like the Oscars weren't created or the Emmys weren't created to, you know, incentivize. It was great to reward stuff, not to incentivize stuff from the beginning. And now it's like, you know, when you meet a scientist or something, you kind of ask like, oh, a Nobel Prize. And so it's becoming, you know, not just a,

reward mechanism, but an incentivization mechanism. And so I wanted to, you know, kind of talk about the book is really, it's really a memoir of what it's like to be, to be a cosmological. There is. Losing the Nobel Prize. Yeah. So my publisher, Norton, they, they were kind enough to put like these three chapters that talk about the Nobel Prize. So they're kind of like, choose your own adventure. Like, if you don't care about the Nobel Prize, you just want to learn about cosmology and telescopes and so forth, you can read it. So I was happy about that. So we built this telescope. This is a picture of it at the South Pole Antarctica. So the very bottom of the world we had to travel to for reasons I talk about here to observe this flash of creation.

And we claim that we did do it. And then we had to retract it because we actually made a type of error when we analyzed the results. We didn't like leave the lens cap on or get our thumb in the picture. Instead, it was that we interpreted a signal as being attributed to the beginning of time. But actually, it was caused by something much more prosaic in the universe. literally this dust that fills our cosmos. And so we had to basically kind of humble eat humble pie and retract that claim. And so it was a remarkable story immediately headlines in New York Times, CNN, everything all around the world. And then eventually we had to retract it and rewind it.

And so I wanted to tell the story of why it was so important, how it touches these notions of origins and creation myths and stories. And also what does it like to be an experimental scientist, not a theoretical scientist like Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein. And that's led you, well, that and your podcast has led you to your most recent book, which is Think Like a No-W Prize winner. Yeah. So that book, I was started really because of the pandemic. You know, the pandemic had any positive side effects amidst all the tragedy it caused.

One of which is that we're kind of locked in and scientists couldn't really travel. And a lot of them had books and things coming out. And I had always been interested in kind of the life of the mind as a Scot. intellectual interviewing as many people as I can and kind of downloading their knowledge into my brain. A book is like a total hat to do years and years of worth of wisdom and experience into a couple hours to read. I interviewed nine Nobel Prize winners in the course of the interview and the course of the last year. And I decided I would take all of those and edit the conversations, add some supplementary material, some custom drawings, and really make it into something

that you could digest at your own leisure. With a podcast, you know, you kind of listen, as you know, like linearly. You can't like randomly access stuff. This was like, well, you want to learn about, well, how do mentors influence people? Or how does the imposter syndrome, which features really heavily in this book? How does that, you know, affect my career as a car salesman in Nebraska? I'm not a scientist. So I wrote it, especially not for scientists. And some of the early readers that have been reading it and saying, like, I didn't think I would understand it. But there's like no, this book has no science in it, just cursory description of why they want it. But what I wanted to do is take, Chris, what we call science. The word science in Latin means knowledge. It doesn't

mean wisdom. And I feel like wisdom is much, much rarer, much, much less common than knowledge. And like, Wikipedia has a lot of knowledge, but I'm not going to ask it for, like, what do I do and my kid wants to, you know, wants to, you know, drop out of college and, you know, do. I'm not sure what Wikipedia would tell you there. So in that case, what I wanted to do is distill their wisdom. And I found a lot of it. And so for that reason, yeah, this book is out.

And it's, it's the intent is to really demystify scientists and the process of science, show science as human beings producing, working in collaboration, even though they might be rivals, competitors, you know, warring to win this finite game prize. At the same time, they're also battling this infinite game to understand our universe and how do we fit into it in the limited amount of time that we all have. What I love about the book is it's a science book that's not really

written about science at all. Like anyone can understand this. And what's great about it, I love the quote, success leaves clues. And I love that through the nine scientists that you interviewed here. There's so many clues that keep coming up and so many similarities. What would you say is the one thing that all nine of these scientists have in common? I think that they have a certain sense of humility, of unworthiness almost, and that led to most of them, not quite all of them, but most of them testifying, admitting that they suffered from the imposter syndrome, not only as young people, but after winning the Nobel Prize. And the reason was kind of like surprising. And when I heard it for the first time for my, like, hero in the book, is the guy who inspired me, Barry Barish, who won the Nobel Prize in

2017, for detecting the aftershock of two enormous black holes, colliding together at the speed of light, sending shrapnel out throughout the universe, and in the form of gravitational waves. And he said, when he went to Sweden to get his Nobel Prize, you have to sign this book. And the book says, you know, yes, I, you know, Barry Barish got my Nobel Prize and you don't owe me anymore. And he said, well, I'm kind of curious. So I look back, he looked back through the rest of the book. And he saw in there this guy, you might recognize Albert Einstein. And he said, I'm not worthy. I'll never be worthy. Einstein was great. And I said, look, Barry, I got to tell you something. You know, Albert Einstein worshipped Isaac Newton and said he was not worthy. He was an imposter in front of

Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton, too, worshipped at another person's feet. And that was Jesus Christ. So I think it's come full circle. We start off with Christmas. Now we're coming back to Jesus Christ. So we all suffer from this. And the key is to break through it. So you've mentioned the Oscars and the Emmys as a great analogy. And I appreciate that.

In those worlds, you get to be a nominee. Even if you don't win, you can go, I'm an Oscar nominee. Can you do the same thing in your world? No, that's the whole thing. You're not even allowed to say that, you know, you were nominator. So I actually took a risk. and I published the invitation letter in this book when they asked me to nominate the winners of the world front. I wasn't supposed to do that, but you know, don't tell anybody.

I won't tell anyone. Wow. I am just, I'm so fascinated by all of this. And I don't know if we'll ever be able to comprehend any of this stuff. Where we came from, where we're headed, how long we've, well, I guess you're saying how long the universe has been here. But these just seem like the questions that, I don't know, are like fundamentally make us human. Exactly. 100%. We can even speculate about alien life and whatever, but we're the only conscious beings that we perceive reality in our way and that can make contributions to it, that we have free will.

If you believe in a God, like you see a dog, the dog doesn't really have free will. I mean, I can make it do whatever I want within bounds of physical law. But in the case of human beings, there's no bound on what we can do. I find that very thrilling and very promising. Yeah. What do you think is the biggest thing that you've learned since starting your podcast? It's called Into the Impossible. Yeah.

Which anyone can listen to wherever they're listening to this right now. What's the biggest thing that you've learned by talking to some of these fascinating, incredible people? I've learned, you know, there's an old cliche. And I have non-scientists on the podcast, you know, quite frequently. Military leaders, billionaires, and incredible. tubers and people I love and respect. But, you know, majority is science or science related. And, you know, there's an old joke, Chris, like, how do you know a scientist is an outgoing person? And the answer is, because he looks at your shoes when he talks to you.

And these people are very much in contradistinction to that quip. Because they're worldly, they're erudite, they're scholarly, they're humane, they're conscientious. They're thoughtful. They're leaders, their followers. They are deep thinkers. And, you know, kind of, when I was a kid, Chris, I, when I was in college, I didn't take advantage of college. It sounds weird. But like, I just wanted to get good grades so I could get into graduate school so I could get a PhD.

I was in graduate school. I wanted to get good grades and do a good research project so I could get a what's called a postdoc. It's like the minor leagues. And then I was a professor. I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to get tenure. And then I wanted to win the Nobel Prize. So all these different states.

stages throughout my career, I'm a little bit ashamed to admit. I never really stopped the smell roses. And so the podcast has enabled me to kind of create what I call a free university that you can attend in your pajamas, taught by the world's most brilliant people on YouTube. You know, you won't have any student loan debt. And I get, you know, this incredible unfair advantage that I can call up somebody, email somebody and say, I'm Brian Keating, got this YouTube channel. I've got this podcast. We've got to tens of thousands of people following us. And people want to hear about your idea or your book or what it was like to win the Nobel Prize and what you're thinking about humanity's future

are placed in the cosmos. And to me, now it's like my chance to go back. You know, they say you don't get second chances, but having a YouTube channel, as you know, gives you a lot of fun opportunities that I just could not take advantage of. And I'll say I completely relate to I did not take advantage of. I did not take advantage of my time in university. I just wanted to get through or enjoy my time with friends and have a few delicious beers while I was there. Exactly. Exactly. And what's great is, especially with the way the internet is now, you can literally never stop learning. And that was always the case with books, but now you can listen to audio books. You can look up absolutely anything ever on YouTube. Any question that you might have has probably already been asked by thousands,

if not millions of people online. Exactly. I mean, you go for education, for entertainment, You know, my kids, if YouTube is raising my kids, it's, for me, it's, it's, it's an opportunity. I think YouTube is the future of education. And I'm not just joking about that because we're on YouTube now, but because you'll be able to do things with, say, transcripts and translations. I mean, I reach people, you reach people literally on, you know, all seven continents. I've spoken to people from, you know, including Antarctica. And the ability to archive it, then to transcribe it, then to eventually make artificial, versions of, you know, these conversations. And like, people, unfortunately that have been in my

podcast are no longer with us, they passed away. And luckily, thank goodness, I have that archived and now I can use that to influence a generation of people that will never meet those people. Like, almost like, you know, do you know the name of your great, great grandfather that we were talking about you killing? And oh, how could you? How could you not know the name of your great good grandfather? You're going to kill. But, but now someone, the analog of, you know, this great scientist, great, good, great, good, a hundred years from now, will know and see him and hear his voice or her voice. It's incredible. It's crazy that I don't think I even know the name of my great, great, great grandfather. Yet when I am a great, great grandfather, my great, great

grandchildren will not only know my name, they'll be able to see what I looked like, what I sounded like, how I interacted with people. 100%. Yeah, it's wild. Unless the simulation gets to them. That's true. Right back to that. Brian, I have thoroughly enjoyed this and I hope that this is the first of many conversations like this that we have. I would love that, Chris. Congratulations on all your success. You're such a wonderful soul and I love your content. And it's just such a pleasure to meet you. I'm so glad we got a chance to have a chat. Now, likewise. I'm so glad I was able to meet the two-dimensional representation of you through this conversation. And you do such incredible work and thank you for, not just me, for everybody listening to this. Thank you for getting our minds

kind of spinning here. I don't know if I completely, you know, comprehend everything you're talking about here, which is so great. Well, you know that book? Chris, you ever hear of this book? Everything I ever needed to know I learned in kindergarten. Yep. So I have a new book coming out. My third book is everything I needed to know I learned in advanced quantum mechanical graduate school in four-dimensional space time calculation. I think it'll be a bestseller. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Where can people best get in touch with you or follow you on social media. Yeah, so I'm pretty active on Twitter, Dr. Brian Keating, DR. Brian Keating, same YouTube. That's my YouTube handle. And yeah, that's where I'm at. My podcast comes out every Tuesday. I do a deep dive interview and every Thursday I do a solo video

on some fun topic in science and media. I like to keep it politically free. I don't like talk politics too much of that. So I want a safe space where people can go, enjoy, take college, classes at zero tuition. Although I always, you know, we'll accept donation. I'm just kidding. I end every conversation with the same question because I start and end every day with gratitude. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunities that I've had. So what are three things in your life, Brian, that you're grateful for right now? Well, I mean, first and foremost, my health and having, having health, because without health, you don't have wealth, you don't have any ability. I'm grateful to be in America.

I'm grateful to be a living under the auspices of the most wonderful, you know, country that's ever existed. And I'm actually grateful that I was fired as a 27-year-old, just got my PhD, working at one of the best universities under a Stanford University. I'm grateful I got fired because I wasn't happy in the job I was doing research at that time. And because I got fired, I was able to get a new job with a better employer, somebody I got along much better with. And that was in California, Caltech. And I left Stanford to Caltech under, you know, my tail between my legs. Because of that firing, Chris, I was able to eventually get this job here at the University of California,

where I'm the chancellor's professor of physics and the director, co-director of the Arthur C. Clark Center. And because of that, because of coming here, I met my wife. And because I met my wife of 13 years now, we've been able to have children. And without that, I'd be nothing. And so I love that you do that. I love that you memorize that or know that and speak about that. I'll just say one thing in my religion, which I said is Judaism. The word Judaism comes from Yehuda.

And the word Yehuda in Hebrew means gratitude. In other words, you are supposed to be people of gratitude. And it doesn't just mean Jews. you know all the studies that say the more grateful you are the happy you are. So for me, happiness stems from gratitude from family, friends, health and the blessings that come with that.

So I really, I really love that vision that you have. Well, you only got fired from this job, met your wife, and had the kids on this timeline. Who knows what happened on the other timeline? In the spider verse,

anything is awesome. Brian, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chris. This has been a blast. I feel like this conversation could have gone on another eight hours. It was just such fascinating stuff and such a fascinating guy.

Big thank you to Dr. Brian Keating for letting me pick his brain about all of this stuff. You can find him on social media and on YouTube under Dr. Brian Keating. And you can find his podcast called Into the Impossible wherever you're listening to this right now. It's also the name of his new book, Into the Impossible. think like a Nobel Prize winner. It's available now on Amazon. I have put a link down below for that. And also his YouTube channel,

it's down below in the show notes. Make sure to give him a subscribe. Make sure to give me a subscribe. If it's your first time here, thank you so much. Make sure to subscribe or check to see that you have subscribed. And if you're here for every single episode,

you're awesome. I super appreciate you. And I'll end this episode with a quote from writer Arthur C. Clark, which is the inspiration for Brian's title of his book and the title of his podcast into The Impossible. The quote is,

the limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible. Be great, be grateful. Hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll see you on the next one for some more insight. The Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands

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Ever heard of them? To Rock Bottom. Dude, I was born in 1987. I can't believe he's doing this. Hammer Allie. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.