Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Fraser Cain: Let’s Find Aliens in Our Solar System! (#268)

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Join me and Fraser Cain (https://www.youtube.com/c/universetodayvids) for a wide-ranging romp through the Universe of ideas! We'll take questions and hopefully answer a few. Don't miss this chance to chat with a legend! @FraserCain  Space and astronomy news comes fresh three times weekly from Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today and co-host of Astronomy Cast. If you're a fan of space, sci-fi, and pop culture, you'll love his Guide to Space. These short videos come out every Monday and Thursday and answer a burning question that astronomy fans want to know. We talk about black holes, galaxies, the Universe, and the search for aliens. If you want the latest news in space and astronomy, Fraser records the Weekly Space Hangout live every Friday afternoon at 12:00pm. Join the live broadcast and ask your questions to his team of space journalists and special guests.He's had astronauts, science fiction authors, and space scientists on the show. Watch the video with slides here: https://youtu.be/q1cPyE9rAD4 Connect with me: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating  🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show www.jordanharbinger.com/podcasts for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! Can you do me a favor? Please leave a rating and review of my Podcast:  🎧 On Apple devices, click here, https://apple.co/39UaHlB scroll down to the ratings and leave a 5 star rating and review The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast. 🎙️On Spotify it’s here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2G3PRMUhxGQkyQzLiiCqlf?si=8656119458df4555 🎧 On Audible it’s here : https://www.audible.com/pd/Into-the-Impossible-With-Brian-Keating-Podcast/B08K56PXJX?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp&shareTest=TestShar Other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast -  Support the podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating  or become a Member on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are there artifacts of alien civilizations here in the solar system? That's a really good question. And it's a really, like if there was one way that aliens would travel from star system to star system, they would send self-replicating robot probes. It would be pumping out more robot probes. It would be in a place where there's a lot of minerals. Let's look in the asteroid belt. That's a really compelling idea to me.

Welcome friends to the Into the Impossible podcast. I'm Brian Keating, the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego, where I'm also the Associate Director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination, and today you'll hear not a few callbacks to Sir Arthur C. Clark. You'll stay tuned for that, because we're talking to a fellow science communicator, a journalist, and the proprietor of the Universe Today Empire, and that's Fraser Kane. He's well known for his YouTube channel and as I said as the publisher and founder of Universe Today, a reformed computer programmer.

You'll hear a little bit about that. And we really talk shop about science, communication, and also bringing authenticity and veracity to both science and science podcasting as well. I know you'll like that as much as I did. Fraser's inspiration and really kind of been a mentor to me, although I think we're about the same age. So I love having conversations like this, going deep, taking questions. So I took questions both on Twitter at Dr. Brian Keating and on YouTube at Dr. Brian Keating.

And you can subscribe to both of those feeds to interact with me and my guests. And I always love taking questions from you, my beloved audience. So today you're going to hear a little bit about what makes Fraser tick, some advice to other podcasters and scientists as a whole. what he's most interested in in science and most hopeful about coming soon from new technology. And he claims experimentalists like yours truly are his favorite types of subjects. So with that, I want to bid you entry into this fascinating conversation, but not before I ask you to do me a few free favors, which hopefully be favors for you too.

And the first is to join my mailing list, bryankeating.com slash list, which is free. And you'll be entered to win a sample, a fragment of some space schmutz. some fragmented meteorite samples that I give away. I've given away over 500 of these in the last six months. And who knows, maybe yours, your name is written on the next one. We'll see about that. The other thing is, of course, subscribe to my YouTube channel where you can get access to all my guests

and have your chance to ask them questions and interact with them. And then the third free thing that you could do, which would be a huge, solid favor for me, is to leave a review on iTunes, a rating on iTunes. a rating on iTunes or Apple Podcast when you subscribe, as well as leave a rating on Spotify and Audible, the other two places where you can leave your constellation, a tiny constellation, just five stars makes my day. But when you do that, it really boost us up in the various algorithm that are used to peruse and determine your listening interest. And I thank you for that.

And I read each and every one. I've gotten 523 just in the USA. Over 600 worldwide. You can leave them anywhere you want. So this one I'm reading to you today comes from InfoSprinkles. Cool name. The title is of the review is Great Technical Literacy. And he or she says, I love the show a lot. I've been gathering ideas and research for a family project. Your show is my favorite to whiteboard out ideas for our studio Transmedia series. Your show is like a technical literacy blow pop. Wow, never been called that. Takes me a while to get through the layers to get to what I want to chew on. But I really enjoyed. Writing this while listening to the new Tim Palmer episode. That was with Nobel laureate Tim Palmer and the Primacy of Doubt.

And that info sprinkle says is going on his or her research pile. So I hope if you're doing research or even if you're not, you'll leave a review and a set of tiny little stars, which will make my day. I can do that on anywhere while you listen to these podcasts. For now, enjoy and go deep, deep into The Impossible with renowned thinker Fraser Kane. Let's go.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Open the five-bay doors, please help. Everybody, it is a treat. I am talking to a legend in this field. This is Fraser Kane. His inaugural appearance on my channel, although he's hosted me so many times. I really feel guilty for his own. I mean, I'm filled with guilt all the time, but more so today.

Thank you for coming. Well, that's good. I mean, I was pretty implicit about it last time. I'm like, this is the last time I interview you until you interview me. And then we're square and we can continue on with this natural cycle that we have together. We had this calendar battle where we send each other. Exactly. I send you a Zoom invite.

No, I say you a Zoom. Tell me when your calendars open. Yeah. The ultimate flex is I will have my assistant use her flip phone or his flip phone. Set up an interview with you. Yeah. Oh, you don't have an assistant. Oh, I'm so sorry.

Sorry. Oh, the universe today empire is, is, uh, being stronger every day. Anyway, Fraser,

this is such a treat. I want to get into so many things with you. I want to talk about your story. Yeah. I want to talk about what excites you the most about our universe. I want to talk about your phenomenal career and your writing, uh, which inspires me and millions around the world.

Uh, and you're so prolific. It kind of, uh, you know, it puts Hemingway to shame. And, uh,

I really want to use this to encourage you to, you know, to turn, your interviews and everything that you do into a book that's not many years in the past, but a new book. And then I can have you back on to do a segment that I call judging books by their covers. We'll hold up. So is that it?

That's the real, like, I can't come back on until I've written another book. That's your, that's your deep way that I have to pass through. Yeah, that makes sense. But seriously, you do so much cool stuff. And like, partially, you know, I've been looking forward to this for weeks since I was on your show. And that episode, I think it was your most popular episode that whole day. It was incredible. It got 10,000 views within the first three months.

It's just that, yeah. Yeah, definitely one of the more successful interviews that I've done was the conversation with you. So, yeah. I was joking. I was saying it was the most popular video of your video that particular day only. You've had so many incredible interviews. No, no. It was one of the most successful interviews that I've done.

Well, I appreciate that. Yeah. But after the interview, after we turned up the mics, we did a BTS, you know, kind of thing where you're talking. And you give me some life advice. And I want to turn to that later about where you see things. But I want to get to know you and have my, you know, my audience is only the square root of your audience. But they're the best in the universe, of course. But I want to start with your origin story.

What got you into astronomy? What brought you to where you are today up there in the Great White, North. There's been to be white north, hopefully. Yeah. I mean, I've always been into astronomy as long as I can remember. Like, I was, I had a copy of our universe,

the Time Life book, I don't know if you remember this, that I would just would go and watch meteor showers with my parents. I would watch science fiction Star Trek. I went through my dad's science fiction books on his shelves when I was old enough to start

taking on novels. I I watched the first space shuttle launch in 1981. I bought my own telescope when I was like 13 years old. And the nerdiest thing is that when I was in high school, I took the journalism program. It was like a three-year program while I was in high school. And I did a column on astronomy every month for the years that I was in high school, what you could see in the night sky, new discoveries in space and astronomy. It was hilarious.

And then for some weird reason, I didn't continue on in that vein like you did. Yeah. I decided it would be a lot more practical for me to go and take engineering. And then I shifted over to computer science and then was in sort of the computer field for many years. But I was always interested in space and astronomy. And I was at this point where I realized that my knowledge was sort of stuck at a, six-year-old reading our universe and I wanted to progress in what I understood about the current state of space and astronomy. I sort of had, I had the case for Mars in one hand, written by Bob Zuberin,

and I had pale blue dot by Carl Sagan. I read both those books. I got really inspired. And I decided, well, I'm just going to start a website on the side where I explain concepts in space and astronomy me. And by doing so, I will learn. And I just did it as a side gig while I was doing my main job. And within about a year, I was like, okay, this is all I want to do with the rest of my life. Whatever it's going to take, I need to stop helping banks make websites. And I need to start being a space journalist. And that was 1999. So I'm closing it on 24 years now of doing this. So the dark web's loss is astronomy's game. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.

Well, one of the things, you know, whenever I think about you, as I often do, I think that you have exceptional taste. And I'm not just saying this, you know, because you've had me on so many times. But you actually have like a very highly curated list of topics, the way that you do your live streams, your Q&As. And I wanted to ask you first, how do you know when something is hype? and something is legitimate. How do you filter that out? What's the cane method?

Tell me, please. Well, it's funny, it's people like you, actually. I have a council of experts because, like, you know, my background is in computer science, so I can help figure out if I think an AI technology is going to be nonsense or if someone has truly proved that p equals not equal to NP. But my, when I started, I very much came to it, from a science fiction enthusiasm state, wormholes, white holes, black, you know, faster than warp speed,

whatever Star Trek told me was true. And I was really lucky to have a bunch of astrophysicists that I got a chance to talk with. Dr. Pamela Gay was a good example. You know, we did astronomy cast. And if you listen, if you go back to the early episodes, I am just the why are the real laws of physics that we have to obey. And then, you know, I was friends with Phil Plate, work debunking stuff. And, and then, you know, I've had a chance to do a lot of correspondence with Ethan Siegel, starts with the bang, Dr. Paul Sutter, Brian Coburline, who writes with us at Universe Today. And you just, you get your wrist slapped enough times that you start to able to strike that balance between a genuine enthusiasm for interesting things that are happening in space and

astronomy and a reckless optimism for things that aren't really science. And I think the more you, like, I think there's this cycle that people go in where they first start out and they're like, I want to talk about Dyson spheres. And you're like, okay, sure, yeah, we can talk about that's what you're into by all means. But then after a while, you know, they've checked their watch and it's been a week later and there's no Dyson spheres have shown up, they'll be like, okay, well, then let's talk about this dart mission thing. And now we're cooking. Now we've got some interesting space news that is unfolding and changing and this new discoveries being made. And that's what I get really excited about now is just like this perfect balance between what are we doing.

now and what's coming up next? What are the big mysteries that we have? And where might we find those answers in a way that's practical that we might get somewhere within our lives? Talk to me about how you distinguish between the ultimately popular. I find this phenomenon. I think it's called audience capture where you have just kind of a topic that you know is going to be garnering you a lot of views. And yet it may not be. along the lines of something that you find as legitimate as some of your other topics. I mean, you mentioned Dyson Spheres. I can't resist.

Freeman Dyson was the first guest on the Into the Impossible podcast. And of course he had his kind of more far out ideas and more close. Yeah. You know, lately in the zeitgeist, as they say, has been percolating this notion that, you know, we are routinely being visited by alien artifacts and crafts. And I've had on, you know, some of the big names in the, in the skeptic field, you know, from McWest to Michael Shermer. But I've also had on a lot of, you know, people that are proponents of it and really believe

that we are being visited by physics of the 29th century or something like, how do you know how to strike the balance? Because you also will have legitimate scientists that present fact-based research. I've had on more maybe, let me ask you, would you have on, you know, my, my, my, my, my, my past guest, Tom DeLong, he was on the show. I got a lot of flack for that. It actually is my most popular. I don't think I would.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure it was popular. I probably wouldn't, no. And people want to have a point, too. And I'm like, I got as much. But before I ask you how you would react to that, I just want to say that I did get him to actually answer some factual questions that even Joe Rogan never asked him, like,

what is the provenance of the alien artifacts that you have? And he actually admitted for the first time, I think that he can't prove both. linear chain of command from start to finish. Anyway, how do you know how to have that balance? Aliens are super popular nowadays. There is a UAP study being undertaken by the president of the Simons Foundation, my ultimate boss, David Spurgel, along with my colleague, Shelley Wright, here at UC San Diego.

How do you know when to lean into what your audience wants and what you personally may or might not be interested? So I am not super interested in in trying to do stuff that the audience wants. Everything I do is my curiosity. Like if I'm not curious about this, if this is what I'm obsessing about right now, it just doesn't happen. So it's really simple. It's just like whatever I'm curious about, whatever ideas I'm ruminating on right now are what I will, I will book interviews with people.

I will choose those as topics for the news segments. Like it's every part. Like it's what we're covering on universe today. It's who I'm interviewing. It's the kinds of questions I'm gravitating towards answering. It's just what I'm, I'm following my curiosity. And it hasn't steered me wrong so far.

And that conversation that you have with the viewers, and I'm sure you have the same one, that they're in the chat and they're asking you for follow-up questions, you will eventually reach the place of curiosity again. You might know the answers to the simple questions about the signals that are in the cosmic microwave background radiation, etc. But you can have a conversation with someone. They just kept asking you questions. You would get to a place where you're like, I don't know. I'm curious again. Even something that you know, a field that you know quite well, if a person can dig and be curious after a while, it's kind of infectious. So I don't really, it's driven by my curiosity, not driven by me trying to optimize what other people, what I think other people want to hear. And I think that's important. As it sort of back to your idea about, you know, skepticism. Like this idea of, are we alone in the universe is a scientific question.

And anyone who tells you that it isn't is ridiculous. It's absolutely scientific question, right? We're here, we're on Earth, life's everywhere, it's a big universe, where's all the life? How could we search for life? And I find, and I spend a ton of time investigating that question with the kinds of people that I talk to, et cetera. But when a person has anecdotal evidence for something that they think they've seen, I don't find that compelling.

And so you have to just kind of strike that balance of like, what is the kind of evidence? What are the kind of questions? What would it take to convince you? Like, are there artifacts of alien civilizations here in the solar system? That's a really good question. And it's a really, like if there was one way that aliens would travel from star system to star system, they would send self-replicating robot probes. It would be pumping out more robot probes.

It would be in a place where there's a lot of mis. minerals, let's look in the asteroid belt. That's a really compelling idea to me. Yeah. Not, yeah, not that they're flying through the atmosphere and only a few people have seen them and so on. So I think it's... They weren't lurking on the whatever the asteroid that dart smashed into because that would be a kind of rude welcome to the solar system. Welcome to the solar system. Yeah, we caught you. Smash. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, um, You always have to strike this balance. And as you learn more, you realize where you want to sit on that conversation.

And my curiosity, just following my curiosity, has never failed me. Yeah. Yeah. I know of. I say this taste that's kind of remarkable. And I also think you have, not to turn this into a mutual admiration society, but or a unidirectional admiration. But the fact is you have a very large audience.

And I think there's more sort of gravitized. that you know like I could when I was small like when I had Tom Belong on or when I you know had on some more speculative gate names I had 20,000 subscribers and I treasure each I fought hard for each and every one but you have yeah yeah thousand plus the you know plus the universe today audience which is huge plus your huge following on Twitter and social there is an extra level I mean do you you have this you know kind of council people that you talk to but how does that weigh upon you because you can actually be influential in a way that

that a smaller channel may not be able to. I think that's a ridiculous thing to say to me and terrifying. It's a maker. So if you think that I somehow have some kind of, although it does happen from time to time, like I'll reach out to someone and I'll be like, you know, dear Dr. So-and-so, my name is Fraser. I'm the publisher of you ever today. And they'd be like, I know who you are, Fraser.

Yes, I'd like to do an interview. And then I'll talk to them. I'm like, yeah, you know, your work was really influential to me while I was getting my PhD. and I'm just like, so I'm not worthy. So I mean, like, what can I do? Like, I'm a journalist. I'm not a scientist.

And I try to be really clear about that, that when I'm explaining concepts in space and astronomy, I am just a fancy word monkey who is able to repeat the kinds of discoveries that people like you make, right? You're the one who set up a telescope at the same. South Pole and tried to find out the polarity of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Not me. And so it's my job to help you and people like you to be able to explain the work that you're doing in a way that it gets a fair shake from people out there.

Beyond that, you know, I'm not a scientist, so I don't have any of that responsibility. but there's a journalistic kind of overlay that that is unique i look at like what's the what's my unfair advantage to whatever extent i have well i'm an actual scientist who's a professor's tenured and gives me something yeah and i'm doing experiments i'm working with cool students and scientists all literally on every continent of earth uh and but you know that's kind of like my unique thing you're one of the few you know in the science podcast i mean i've talked with arvin and I've talked with Sabina and I've talked with Dr. Becky. And they all have their unfair advantages.

But I've always thought yours is that, I mean, you have this journalistic, it's not like a cakewalk to go on the podcast. I mean, you're not going to ask like, do you deny the allegations against you made by those 14 Sherpas? I mean, you're not going to do that. But you have a journalistic kind of mentality, which I think is not fair advantage. I mean, I don't want to, again, I don't want to. Yeah.

I mean, I think like my job. And, you know, I don't have to put people's feet to the fire very often, but when I have to, I will. And I'm not trying to be mean about it. And I'm not trying to be a gotcha. And I'm not trying to generate controversy. But when I ask a person a question and they don't answer the question, it's really obvious to me that they just didn't answer the question. And I get to ask again and again. And like, am I, you know, I can say like, am I, am I?

I do in this? Did you not catch the question that I just asked you? Because the answer you gave me was insufficient. Let me try again. And so, you know, you don't want to have to pull out the journalism card because you want it to be a conversation. And most of the time, it's just educational. I don't know anything about what it is that they're talking about or I know very little. And but if I have to, then I will. And I suffer no consequences from that. through because I don't have any professional interaction with them right it's not like I'm they're going to be approving my grant

I'm independent universe today is completely 100% independent we have no allegiance to anybody and so we can kind of float free like a you know like a leaf in the wind like you're floating through our solar system but I do want to make yeah exactly yeah you join your Patreon as I am I am a moon member, I think, for many, many, many trillions of microseconds.

But I do want to encourage people to support Fraser. The best way you can do that is follow his content. And then also there's a Patreon as well. We're talking with Fraser Kane, the proprietor of universe today. So many other things puts out so much content. But I notice one thing that you do, and I don't know anything about you, you know, religiously or otherwise, but it seems to me you take a Sabbath and take a. and take a break every year from the brine that is it.

And you were very concrete. You're like, I'd like to have you on. You know, I invited myself on again in the last year. And you're gracious, we say, I take a sabbatical,

basically, for the whole month of August or most of life. July and August. July and August. Okay. So are you out there just like fly fishing on the, on the, no,

I wish. River in Vancouver. What are you doing? What does it mean to you to take that break? And how would you advise other STEM individuals, most of my podcasts or, you know, 20 to 860 or whatever, older men, but they're in the STEM field. Advise them, why is that so important?

I agree with you 100%. Yeah, like the... You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton.

Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on. now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Our lives are spent doing a lot of administration, a lot of detail work, like a lot of just paddling to keep your head above water. But the most important impacts that we can make are the time that's spent in quiet contemplation. The time,

spent where there are no demands on your time and you can think and your ideas and thoughts can fully expand within the space that is needed. And so on the one hand, like while I'm walking in the forest or while I'm cutting down a tree with a chainsaw, my mind is expanding. And I am thinking very deeply about the work that I'm doing and reflecting on what it is that I do and I wouldn't have that time if I wouldn't have the chance to have those thoughts if I was just constantly just grinding all the time so yeah so we've been we've been doing this I've done this for 15 years I let everybody know there's no meetings there's no live streams there's no podcast there's no nothing for July and August every week we stop astronomy cast we stop the weekly space hangout we stop my open space it all just stops at the July 30th and then we pick it all back up again September 1st, and it's two months that I get a chance to travel, to get away from having to be tied to a high-speed internet connection. I mean, I'm sure you know what it's like. Like, you can

never be, like, you're in a hotel and you're like, oh, I got a live stream. I got to figure this out. You know, like, that's not fun. So, yeah, it's important to do that. So, I mean, I think, I mean, that's why I think those sabbaticals exist is that you've got to. You've got to. or you just be spent spinning your wheels until you die. Yeah, you'll burn out and then you have to put your oxygen mask on first, as they say. I think that's a huge part of it. It's hard for people like me who's got multiple careers and young kids and everything, but I find it so refreshing.

And actually, I tell my students that. I say, you may not work seven days a week, but I'm almost like you must work six days a week. In other words, like the fact that you earn a sabbatical is something that to be earned. And of course, they get time off and they get travel and so forth. But I find that it's ultimately selfish for me to do that because they come back, energized, refresh, new ideas that serves to inspire me. And they have to try these hacks of like, oh, delete, you know, turn all your icons black on your phone and why it.

It never works. No, no. Technology is great. No. There was a, I went on a, like I quit one job and I went on this like trip to Europe. And I had to have been traveling for two months at the time. It was about five weeks at the time. And I was on a ferry boat in Greece.

And I was, I was reading a book. And I finally felt my brain unwind. And it had been five weeks of me just being in a pressure cooker. And suddenly I was just like, oh, like. Suddenly the final piece, the last straw came off my back, right? And you feel it. And I don't think people realize just how wound up and tight they are all the time with all of the things that are going on.

And yet it's those perceptions that you have to be able to make to make these fundamental shifts in what is that you're doing and to stay on top of things. So yeah, it's exciting. And one of the signatures kind of things of satisfaction in the behind the scenes segment of our interview that nobody ever heard or will hear was, you know, kind of like, I asked you, you know, Fraser, you know, where do you, like, where would you go with an infinite budget? And you want to, you want to recapitulate what you said? It was very, very, very, you know, kind of important for me to hear at the time.

Wait a second. Like, if I had an infinite budget for space and astronomy? If you had a huge budget, you know, just like 10x, what you have now, how would it affect your life? Oh, like me as a, oh, like me as a journal? Nothing. Oh, right. So I probably, I probably said I wouldn't do anything. I wouldn't even know what to do. Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah. So that to me is like the hedonic treadmill. It's like, you know, people, you get more subs. You want more subs. You get more money. You want more money. But it seems to me you're kind of like that Zen mentality that like who's the happy man. That's he who's happy with what he has. And I look, but I wonder though, like if you did kind of think crazily, I mean like podcast interview on the moon or on the ISS, like what would be like a crazy. What would be like a crazy? crazy 10x experience or 11x experience that maybe not like going to the moon or whatever yet. But what would be like an interview besides yours truly for like the sixth time? What's like a dream kind of either interview or live stream or like something totally different, like short form content?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't. I don't. I don't. Like there was definitely a time when I'd be like, boy, I really wish I could read. out to Dr. Brian Keating and we'd actually get back to me and we could do an interview together. But I can do that now. And I'm just, like, I'm shocked at the people that I've had a chance

to talk to. I mean, you too, right? Nobel Prize winners, um, uh, astronomers, authors, astronauts, space scientists. Like, if this person exists and they have an email address, typically I can coordinate, there might be some nagging involved, but I can typically coordinate an interview with the person. I definitely feel like the coverage that we have on universe today now is as good as it, as I want it to be. I mean, it could definitely be a little better. I look at stuff at Scientific America. I see some outlets which have vastly bigger budgets than me. I think, okay, yeah, we could.

But then I don't know if it would be sustainable. And so I wonder if they're just burning investor money. Like, we are sustainable. We are unkillable in terms of it. of a journalistic endeavor. And that feels, that feels, that's the balance that makes me the happiest is I don't want to, you know, like if someone dropped $10 million on my lap, I'd be like, am I going to have to pay this back?

Like, how's this going to work? I don't, like, I don't want to, I don't want to think about it. Like, investors are a bad thing, in my opinion. So, so the more, I mean, I think, like, the thing is, like, when I get a chance, like, we've had some really amazing writers join the team. Some people have been legends. in the field. Alan Boyle, who is sort of one of my mentors,

Carolyn Collins-Petersen, AKie the space writer, Nancy Atkinson is just about to write her 6,000th article for Universe today. And so, like, I see a lot of these writers who I love to be able to bring on the team, and I think I've had more budget than I could bring on even more writers and do more stuff. So that's all. Yeah, well, that's good to be satisfied. with where you're at. What's been the most surprising or interesting discovery this past year?

And you can't use the letters JWST or W. Yeah, I've got it. I've got it. Yeah. Yeah. So this is an interview that I just did about a week ago, which was a guy named Dylan Brout from the Pantheon Plus team. And I'm sure you're familiar with this. But Pantheon Plus is this database of 1,500 70 Type 1A supernova seen recently, but also ones that were seen back in 1998 and earlier that helped measure, like help figure out distance in the middle ranges of the universe. And the amount of precision and effort that they, that went into building this database is really stunning and the kinds of conclusions. Like they were able to measure the presence of dark matter and dark energy to five sigma

at various points in the universe, that's like a one in 3.6 million chance that they're wrong, which is very low. Five Sigma is just an insanely good measurement. And so you've got this beautiful measurement about the expansion rate of the universe, the amount that dark matter and matter was pulling at the expansion in the universe.

It's huge. It's huge. And I think that that people people, and I'm sure you get this as well, but people will just kind of show up and go like, I don't get dark matter. I don't like it.

You know, you scientists are wrong. You're just guessing. You're like, no, no. Like this has been measured to a level of precision that we can scarcely comprehend. And yet there it is.

Sure. Nobody knows what it is. But that's like future scientist's problem. It's about measuring its existence with precision is beautiful. And I just found that so inspiring. I love, I mean, we talked about this last time

on our interview. We're like, I am such a fan of the observers, of the experimenters, of the people who are out there practically making the measurements beyond the theorists. Like, I prefer the experimenters. I'll take a party full of experimenters over a partyful theorists any day of the week. An experiment. Theorist

only has to be right once to make a famous career. An experimentist only has to be wrong once to end their career, although I'm proven counterfactual to that. Well, sure. Yeah. Yeah. So I can't help but read one comment from one

of the listeners. We're going to take questions. So I want you all to put your questions in the chat box, in the live chat, and or you can You can put them on YouTube. I might get for that. But there's a young person that looks like listening from somewhere, maybe over in India, perhaps,

talking about how magical it is to be able to do this during Diwali, which it is, Happy Diwali, Frazier. That's the festival of light, which is very important to us. And how cool it is that. A billion people are not watching this broadcast, but a billion people are celebrating this thing united and that we're communicating at the speed of light nearabouts all the way from North America there. I think it is pretty amazing. And I feel like it is a kind of confluence. And I claim it's a moral obligation for scientists like me who get paid by the public

to communicate in terms of the public can understand. You know, like if I was working, you know, in an envelope making factory or whatever, and my boss comes up and says, you know, Keating, what are you up to? You can't understand. I'm doing. It's very special. Yeah. You get fired at a second, right? So what do you believe? Like when people say no, you know, no, I don't want to come on.

I mean, I've, my fair share of rejections, I've actually been rejected from 100% of the living Nobel Prize winners in physics that are winning. But they had good reasons. But like, how do you feel about that when there is kind of just like burning knowledge? And I understand why they did so completely, just burn out, whatever. Maybe someday I'll keep trying. But I want to ask you, you know, if you do encounter kind of the resistance where there is some amazing result. Today I was just reading about a result from the Ice Cube neutrino experiment down. Yes.

At the South Pole where I've been twice in my life and done some research and know a lot of those guys and gals that work on the amazing. Looking at quantum gravity. And I'm like, I can't find like who the, like I know people on the project, but I don't know who would be like a good. so to speak, not to boost ratings or whatever, but to communicate as a layperson could understand it, but also knows the stuff. How do you do that? So I think you're overthinking it. I think you're totally overthinking it. Like I will see a paper. There was a paper that I just read today about stars engulfing their planets. And I was like, I want to talk about that, please. And so then I just look at who's the first name on the paper, and I reached out to

her, and I sent her an email. And if she doesn't respond, then I'll try the second person on the paper, and then I'll do the third person. And so the person is not an established science communicator. They are, they're not a household name. No one knows who they are. But many times those people have absolutely fascinating things to say. And they're even better than a person who does have a lot of experience because they have a lot of canned responses and they've and they're a little nervous and and and suspicious of talking to a journalist but a person who hasn't been burned yet you can have a really interesting and forth in our conversation about the work that they're doing and it's a joy and so i don't i have i place zero uh interest in the in who the person is

So it's more about I just like I see a topic that is interesting to me. I reach out to the principal investigator of that project and I asked if I can do an interview with them. And I will check beforehand just to see if I can see some YouTube interviews just to see if they've ever done anything or like see them give a presentation at the American Astronomical Society or anything. But I don't I don't do that math at all. And they're my favorite conversations by far. Like once again, you know, I'll take a room, I'll take an interview, I'll take a podcast full of no names than science stars, even though it won't necessarily bring in the traffic. It's going to be a fascinating conversation with somebody who has fresh things to say

and you can have a very natural conversation with them. So that would be, if I was to give you some advice, it would be, you're over the thinking it. Yeah, and I had good luck. I can claim I discovered a star, you know, although she would probably be correct to dispute me. But Kiara Mangonelli, who's at Mangonelli, who's at Yukon stores in Connecticut, she's been a leader in nanograph and the pulsar timing experiment.

Yeah. Had some really interesting results on stochastic backgrounds, gravitational waves. And she was on my podcast about years ago. And then just recently I saw her pop up on Sean Carroll's podcast. I was pretty proud that I got to her first. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you'll have these conversations with these people and they and other people will realize how well spoken they are. But again, if you can help them move their careers forward, that's wonderful.

And that's a really nice side benefit. But it's more about you finding a name, finding a topic that is exciting to you and you're curious about and then finding one name and then start talking to that. Yeah, and I have some advantage. Pick one of those people at random. It just, yeah, I mean, I actually know I want to leave professors on the project, so I'll probably have him on our, maybe as colleagues. But so when you think about some of the questions that are coming in,

this is Billy McBride, the entertainer, Billy's asking, what is the next scientific revolution? So if you had to put your kind of predicting hat on, Maybe not astronomy, maybe anything else. But what would you say is the next scientific revolution? And don't say astrology. Yeah, in private. Oh, well, okay, well, there's that.

No, I mean, I think when I think about the impact that computer science is having an artificial intelligence, you know, we recently got a result that artificial intelligence was able to map a whole bunch of protein folding. Artificial intelligence was able to figure out a new, some new linear algebra. calculation algorithms, which is pretty amazing. So it's this force multiplier that applies across every field. And I think we're, you know, in many fields, we're shifting from you can make a single observation with a really good tool to meta-analysis of really large amounts of data. You're going to be studying a million type 1a supernova with Vera Rubin to measure the expansion rate of the universe. A human being can't do that, but you can have a computer assist.

you as a very powerful tool that you can work together to come to the answer. So I think the once we start to apply the computational power of computers to the kinds of questions that we have, I think we're going to see another revolution across the sciences. And right now, most science, and I'm sure the science that you do, it's just done as a very manual process. But imagine you could feed one billion stars from Gaia data into a supercomputer

or some kind of learning algorithm and go like, what's in there? What's interesting in there? And you could pull some really interesting, see some really interesting patterns. Yeah, 100%. And I wonder, you know,

from the just wedding of the appetite, I mean, I wasn't, I was a beginning college, I think when Hubble was launched and, you know, I wasn't really sure I wanted to do astronomy back then. And I wonder, you know, if you look at Webb now, for the young people that are, you know, alive now and have the opportunity, are there things that, you know, that have only just begun to scratch the surface of your cerebral cortex

in terms of what Webb could do? Or are there things that you're like, if I could, you know, break their wall of silence and get their embargo lifted just for me and I'm a journalist as you are, rather. So what would you want to know? What kind of subject or capability that we know that web probably has is latent and is most interesting to you to hopefully find out about soon? Yeah. I mean, I think where I get pretty like web is phenomenal. It's gigantic, you know, 6.5 meters compared to Hubble's 2.6 meters. It can see out just, it can do a Hubble deep field in any direction in like half an hour. It's incredible, but it still has its limit, right?

It still is only so large. I mean, it's not going to be the telescope that's going to find or it's going to be able to look at the surface of other Earth-sized world orbiting around sunlight stars and tells what they're reading for breakfast. But when you match up the power of web with gravitational lensing, you're adding this. additional telescope lens in front of your web that gives you like another 10,000 times resolution to be able to see objects that are behind it. And then we start to see the first stars forming in the universe. You know, there's some really interesting periods after the cosmic microwave background before the period of reanization, before the first galaxies were coming together,

when a lot of big mysteries about the universe are hidden and I'm quite excited about how the way we learn some amazing things by Web users or by Hubble using gravitational lensing. Once Web starts using gravitational lensing more dependably, I think it's going to be next level again. I think they're under, and I really feel like they're underselling it. Like they're not talking about it, but you take web. and you stare at a gravitational lens that only Web can see, you're seeing something that is magnified behind it,

that it would take a louvoir to be able to see. Right. No, it's so exciting. And then, of course, you know, what the capabilities are really not known, but one thing that you and I talked about in our most recent conversation, capabilities that maybe Web doesn't have that some people think it does have. And this parlayed into a discussion of, you know, the Big Bang and it's, and it's a possible non-confirmation by a man by the name. I've heard that.

I've heard that the Big Bang has been canceled. Yeah, I bunked it. I don't know if that's the proper term, but it was debunked and then I bumped it. And then, but it's kind of unresolved. Put a poll. That what it is? You re-bunked it and you re-bunked the Big Bang? I'll bunk it.

You know, not just for beds anymore. And I put a poll up on my, on my website, on my YouTube. channel and I asked people in the community tab, you know, who won the debate, you know, the Big Bang supporters or the Big Bang Never Happed supporter. It was about, you know, two to one, maybe. There was a little bit of, you know, kind of margin of error, you know, getting into the election season down here in America, you may know, and there's always a margin of error, but it wasn't like, you know, 100 to zero for either side, which was kind of surprising to me. And I know Eric's learner is probably listening out there. Hello, Eric. But, you know, the question of, you know,

can you resolve something scientifically in the debate format? I've had some debates. I always feel like debates, and Martin Reese, who's an upcoming guest on my show, he's basically of the opinion that debates are pointless. I would agree with that. Yeah, but what do you think that scientists have an obligation to the public? In other words, there are all these papers published that Lerner took and use the title, panic, at the discs, and use that to stir up kind of this notion that

astronomers are in chaos, and there are all these anomalies. we can't explain. That's true. There are anomalies we can't explain, but that's the whole point of science. What role should debates have? Obviously, they have to be done with comedy and a little comedy never hurts. What should the debate be used for, if anything? Well, I think, like, I think that's, what's really important is the way the scientific method works, that that skepticism and debunking one another is the is the table stakes for being a scientist like you're you're going to be presenting information and and you're as you again probably are aware of your colleagues are going to descend on you like a pack of hyenas to tear apart every single statement that you make

it makes you stronger. It makes you better. It makes you go into your research very carefully, knowing that you're going to have to defend every single scrap of data that you have gathered and every conclusion that you make. There are no fields that have that level of rigor and sort of combaticism.

I don't know how you describe it with each other. like science. And yet here we are talking on the internet, using lasers, hard drives, I'm using a satellite system to be able to communicate with you. Like, we are the beneficiaries of this powerful philosophy of science and the scientific method that was really only developed since the Renaissance. I mean, it's only been cranking for a couple hundred years. And yet here we are.

And it's only by adhering to the scientific method that we, that we get there. And I think that the scientific method is so powerful and so effective that it has shaken other philosophies, other beliefs, other systems, ways of knowing. And it hasn't, it's not, it's not like it's been targeting. It's just a side effect that the theory of evolution is so strong and so well defended. It has so many independent lines of evidence that people will, it will question the beliefs that they were raised with. And that's not science's problem.

Science is not coming after people and saying, you know, all that stuff that you were taught, it's not true. They're just saying, hey, look, these life forms seem to be related to those life forms. This is how life probably works. And I think that that that process is so important. And yeah, I mean, I just feel like that is what we can sort of all take from it. Right. And I don't know, like, it's got to affect the way you think, right? Like the way you interact with your colleagues is just.

Definitely. Someone says something to you, like the Big Bang isn't real or whatever. And your mind just kind of goes, okay, so what's your? evidence and a lot right yeah it's but there's a i think it's very valuable a you know in other words there's a there's a concept in judaism you know i'm jewish and there's a tomlidic expression which is called uh basically goes uh know how to answer a heretic which you know kind of has a lot of loaded terms in it but but but the bottom line is and i don't think i do a good job i don't think we as a community of professional scientists do a great job of just like the background foundations

You know, I ask Mike, I have an opportunity, you know, once every six years to ask, like, any question in physics to a graduate student on whose committee I'm serving, right? So I love to do, like, the general question. So I'll ask them, you know, how do we know that the, I say, I usually phrase it in the form of something provocative. I'll say, I believe the sun orbits the earth, prove me wrong. And they'll be like, first they'll be like, no, no, really, prove me wrong. I believe that the, you know, that the 5,783 years old from Europe. And actually, I was in Italy last week and I had the opportunity to talk to Professor Luke Barnes, who is a professor in Western Sydney, Australia, who is a remarkable

person in that he's a legitimate, hardcore theoretical physicist, but he grew up a young Earth creationist. And he and I talked about, you know, religion. He's Christian, I'm Jewish. But we had a lot to say. And we were kind of, you know, at this, at a workshop, we're talking about, you know, the possible debates between religion and science. And he's obviously a hardcore science. But he, and he overcame about young.

His father was a minister. I can't wait for you to see this interview. He's such an interesting guy. Yeah, that sounds amazing. He was amazing. Creation Church in Australia. And yet he went to Cambridge. He ended up working.

He's an incredible scientist. He overcame the belief that the universe is young. But I think it's very valuable to have the. that experience to know like, well, how do we know the Big Bang is the most accurate, not infallible, not 100 percent, certainly not disproven. And sometimes as one of the professors who was there at this meeting, who is not either, you know, I think I would call him agnostic as, you know, Freeman Dyson was an agnostic, an actual agnostic, not just says I'm an agnostic so that the atheist, you know, don't try

to convert me more or the atheist, you know, don't think I'm rude. But one of the professors there, I won't say who he is, because, you know, hopefully doing the interview with him someday, but he said, no, it's important to ask questions, even about evolution, even about Darwin, even about... Joel, absolutely. Because it's where the cracks come in that the light gets in, right? As what's it Leonard Cohen used to say, that's how the light gets in. And I think in this case, I want more of my students to know, to teach the controversy,

so it's not that, you know, the earth is flat or something, but it always does kind of devolve into matters of taste. And I think what I think both of our audiences like is that we are, we're talking about actually hardcore, the cutting edge of technology, and we're not afraid to take on these controversies, even things like, you know, are aliens visiting us to the stay, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that your responsibility as a scientist is to do science. And I think that a lot of people unfairly are asking more from a scientist than doing science. It's like asking a mechanic to be a philosopher. Like, their responsibility is to fix cars.

And all of the work that goes into the point that they can fix a car and then they fix cars. Now, they're free to go beyond that and talk about the philosophy of fixing cars. But I think that there is like, because whether a car is fixed or not fixed doesn't crash into somebody else's worldview. it's an uncontroversial job. But when science crashes into someone's worldview, it's not the scientist's problem. It's not their fault. They are, like obviously, if they're rucking, if they're proselytizing, if they are going and attending church and then standing from the middle of the

church and telling everybody that they're idiots for believing in their God, that's bad. That's wrong. But in many cases, the scientists is not doing any of that. Scientists is just like going like, I just, I looked at a black hole and this is what I've, and you know, here's what I saw. Now I'm going to go look at a quick, you know, now I'm going to go look at the Big Bang and here's what I'm going to see. And it's, it's the people with the worldview who are taking offense, who are using this as a chance as an existential crisis for them. But that's a them problem, not scientists' problem. And I think my job as a science communicator is to help assist. in explaining the science that is getting done in the most honest way that I can

and to take some of that load off the scientists because they're busy doing the science. It would be literally like the mechanic having to defend every time they swapped out an engine on a car. With respect, as I always do. I was in, as I said, I was in Florence. I went to Galileo's final home slash prison, which is quite nice. And I think, you know, Jeffrey Epstein would have loved to be in a prison like that. But, you know, when I was there, I realized that, you know, Galileo, not only did he, you know, kind of go against the orders of the church, he kind of disobeyed, like, unaffronly, you know, kind of propositions from Pope Urban.

I said, look, you can study it. You can study heliocentrism. But that meant doing things in Latin. That was, you know, I mean, Fraser and I, of course, no Latin. And we can communicate flawlessly. But back then, that was the language of scientists and specialists. And Italian was the language of the people. And they said, just as long as you don't publish anything in Italian, a couple years later, the dialogue, which is not Latin, that's Italian, comes out.

And then, you know, it was so amazing to me to be in this. And it was a prison. I mean, there are bars on the windows. There was a guard out front. But it made it so important to me to see that he was a communicator, Fraser. He wrote another book. You know, I've published the first ever audio book with Jim Gates and with Carlo Rebelli, Frank Wilcheck, Fabiola Giannati and others.

His dialogue, the dialogue got him into trouble. But then he published another book called The Discourse. And he did that under house arrest. And it was a prison. And, but somehow, Fraser under penalty of death. I mean, he was, he was imprisoned under penalty of suspicion of heresy, not heresy. He would have been killed, but it was suspicion of heresy, which I guess is a technicality. but if he got this now he actually had all the pages smuggled out's 400 pages long and it was smuggled to the netherlands where it was published by elzevir you know which publishes a lot of journals nowadays still in public still in some music

he's like to communicate to the public and and i think that yeah yeah i mean like galilee was picking fights though like galileo was absolutely picking fights he was absolutely pushing the boundary i love him but he's a lovable schmuck and he was the equivalent of standing up in the middle of the church and telling everybody that they're wrong and they're idiots. And he was right in this case about the observations that he had made. And but if he hadn't done that, the discoveries that Galileo had made would have come out 10 years later by Cassini or by, right? Like they were inevitable because they are hidden in nature itself. and there's only so long you can go trying to have your philosophy overcome nature.

Nature wins out in the end every single time. And so, again, if you are going to set your philosophy, set your belief system against nature, that's a you problem. That's nature is going to show you how wrong you are every single time. And so I do think that, you know, there are, there is bad. science and there is there are bad conclusions and there are bad actions that get taken from science but i do think that at the end of the day it's a scientist's job to do science and no i think we place i think we place too much or people place too much emphasis on on

them attempting to needing to communicate what they're doing better but at the same time i think that you know, people like you, people like Sabina, people, you know, people who want to communicate and help make this stuff make more people is a wonderful instinct. You're going to pay a price in that it's going to take time away from you being able to do science, but the benefit that you get is you are potentially inspiring more people out there to do science, to understand what's going on, to think critically, to, you know, and there's, and there's, and there's, and there's, and, And that's always my greatest weakness is that I'm not a cosmologist. I can't go right to first principles and explain something because I can do the math.

And it's really valuable. A lot of authority can come from a person who can do the math. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I always say that what I do during the day, I have to talk to contractors at Chile or at the South Pole or I have to talk to, you know, some diesel supplier. and it's very little, you know, pondering the universe, scratching my non-existent Fraser Cain-like beard. But I do feel like it's, you know, those are the people I have to talk to, including, you know, telecons of which I have one in a few minutes anyway.

But I'm going to go along. They're going to let them wait for a little bit. I've got to, I've got to go with like half past. So whatever you do, I got to run. Yeah. So I'll see your half pass, but I'll say I got to go at quarter pass. How about that? Okay.

Perfect. That's the ultimate flex. but but the you know the bottom line is when I get I get to talk to people like you I get to talk to the novel words I get to so it's a privilege and I do find that that only gets better you know as the more I kind of have cultivated a little bit of a reputation for kind of just going after a niche you know which is cosmology which is science but I've lately started a branch I have Neil Ferguson who's a historian at Stanford coming on Jay Batacharya is coming on he is a lot of stuff with the COVID-19 pandemic. So I'm not afraid to do that. But on the other hand, you know, there is also this kind of niche thing that is good to kind of dial into. I wonder now we have a lot of questions from the audience. And then I have my patented final four questions that I'm going to demand responses like a good journalist should.

Yeah, yeah. You know, like when you talk to those people that you're going to be, you know, they're fairly, you know, I know who they are. They're controversial. Yeah. Be a scientist. Yeah. Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer cookouts with the next grill,

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Yeah. No, I mean, the thing for me is like, and at this conference, it was very surprising to me, Fraser, because, you know, I consider myself a, you know, a practicing atheist. I was practicing agnostic. That's 40 and still. But in that, I go to like a temple, like in San Diego downtown. I go to, you know, I do things that keep kosher, but like, you know, are there evidence to do I ever doubt my faith?

And at this conference, there are many, many scientists, professors, very well-known people. whom will come on the show at some point. And, and, you know, people like, Francis Collins wasn't there, but, you know, he's like a very religious person, obviously. But I wonder, you know, I asked them, like, do you ever doubt your faith, expecting them to say, and I asked that of the atheist, too, I said, do you ever doubt your atheism? You know, because, like, will you see a baby born? Like, because they're always say, well, you see a baby born with a defamation and cancer, like, why would God do that? So that's the classic problem of theodicy, right? But is there anti-theodicy? Like you see like a butterfly come out of a chrysal.

Like I once asked like one of these, my very good friends who's extremely pro-choice. And she, she's just so devoutly pro-choice. And I respect pro-choice up to a point. We can debate. That's not what this podcast is about, right? But I was saying like,

she told me like one of her kids bought like a butterfly kit where you get these little caterpillars and they're so cool. And then like literally you put them in, they turn to a chrysalis and then like one day they just start. to hatch and come out. And I said, you know, I won't use her name. I said to her, you know, like, how did you feel? You know, you see this beautiful chrysalis. And it emerges and it transformed from this like hairy, this squiggly thing, like a snake and then starts to fly. And like, what if I came up to it and I just like crushed it, like right in front of her. She goes,

I would kill you. And I was just like, but like, can you see where some people on the other side have, and she's like scientifically minded, can you see where they might have? So I love to ask them questions. Is there anything I could do to shake your faith in your position? Yeah, to Jay, I'm going to ask him, Jay, but J. Bona Tray. Like, maybe you were wrong to publish this study in like three one, three weeks after. But the thing that is so interesting to me, Fraser, is that they will have these talks. But someone like, you know, I can't imagine like Richard Dawkins, like he would be in welcome at this conference, but I don't know if he would come. And I don't know if he would invite any of them to like his comfort. Anyway, you don't have to respond to that because we have a lot to cover still.

But yes, I will. I will hold their, yeah, I mean, that as a journal. For me, it's just about evidence. So just like whatever, like, you know, people ask me about UFOs. Like, do you believe in UFOs? And I don't. I'm, I am unconvinced by the evidence. So have, and if someone says, well, my father saw a UFO, I'm like, I don't find that convincing. I'm sure your father found it convincing and you find it convincing that your father found it convincing but that is not enough for me to be convinced

that your father actually saw an alien spacecraft fly down to Earth. I can imagine a bunch of alternative scenarios and as long as I can how do we figure out what's true and what's not true? And so for all of anytime anyone makes a truth claim

to me I have to figure out a method of discerning what's true and what's not true. That's right. And that is the same technique about everything. Yeah. It's just, and so I, like, I think it's really dangerous to say, I disbel-

I think this thing is wrong. I think it's disingenuous. I think it is, it's not helpful. And, and, but I think it's perfectly acceptable to say, I am unconvinced by the evidence you have presented to me so far about your UFOs. Yeah. Yeah, I have a, can't wait to be proven wrong.

Like, please, show me that I'm wrong. Deliver me the evidence. And usually it's just silence. Right? Because they don't have any evidence. So it's fine. But you can't, you're not going to guilt me. You're not going to threaten me.

You're not going to cowtow me into believing something that I don't have enough evidence for yet. But I want to keep a dramatically open mind of olater and what's possible. I mean, I've been on, on Jeremy Reese, who's an alien scientist. He's in the chat room. He's a good support of the show. He's incredibly energetic, very passionate.

And he and I had a, and I give him his due. He had me on his channel. I'm more on the slightly on the skeptical scale. And he was genuine about it and generous about it, gracious, et cetera. But at the end of the line, I have a video on my channel. It said, astrophysic professor, I don't believe in gravity. I don't believe in gravity. I have evidence for gravity.

And I think that that's the thing. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So we've got a question from Andy Oates, who's a great friend of my show. He's a subscriber to your channel as well. He and another member in the chat room, one of your best videos, in my humble opinion, is about ion drives. It's one of your most popular videos.

We want to talk about space technology. Andy's asking, will Artemis take off in November or will it sit oxidizing into 2023? So first of all, what excites you about space technology and the space race that's going on today? Do you think we're going to reach Mars? First answer about Artemis, sorry, and then will it take off? Okay, will Artemis? Yes, I think Artemis will launch in November. And in fact, I think it will launch on the first try.

So I think November, what is it, 13th, 14th? I think it's going to launch. Like, there's nothing left. Right. The, like, unless another hurricane bears down on Florida, then it's going to launch. They've looked through all of their fueling problems. They've trouble shot every single thing that's going to make them. And there's a ton of pressure.

They've got Go fever for sure. And because there's no human beings on board, I think they're going to go, they're going to err on the side of let's just go. So I do think it's going to launch. I think it's going to beat Starship by far. I think Starship is, like Musk said it might launch in November. But like you have to multiply Musk time for our being.

There's 33 separate Raptor 2 engines strapped together in a configuration. that's never been attempted. It feels like there are more tests that they're going to want to do before they actually let that monster get off the launch pad. I still sort of hold by my completely unscientific prediction

that they're not going to launch until March-ish. Okay. So, but we'll see if I'm, I can't wait. Again, I can't wait to be wrong. Like, in the perfect world, Starship launches and is perfect. And SLS launches and is, perfect and people have a really difficult time figuring out what they're going to do from this

point forward but to see two super heavy lift rockets take off within a few days of each other would be the greatest thing ever i'm just not i just am not the most ultimate goal of going tomorrow i mean do you feel like that is a legitimate is there scientific legitimacy even sustenance of human life uh on earth which is his primary emission uh what what do you make of that ambition that must Yeah, I mean, I think I can't wait for there to be a base on the moon. I can't wait for there be a base on a asteroid, a base on Mars, where you've got human beings living there, doing scientific research. But I don't think it's ever going to be beyond what we have in Antarctica.

Like there is a scientific reason to go to these places, if nothing, just to send human beings to other planets. But it is not to try and send a million people to live. on Mars. Like if we could do our very, very best possible job of making Mars, like we terraformed Mars and we grew plants on Mars, it would still suck compared to Earth. And after a while, that's just got to get exhausting, where you're just like, you know what's a place that's like a terraformed Mars? It's Earth. And you were right there all along. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, I upcoming guest on the show Lex Friedman.

I told him on his show, you know, I said, you know what happened the day after life has discovered somewhere in the universe, some slime mold on, you know, Vesta. And he said, what? I said, absolutely nothing. Like, I could go out to the position, you know, 10 miles away, and I could scoop up some life. And you know what? You're right. Antarctica, I've been there twice.

It's been a month or more in my life there. You know, the South Pole you'd have to pay me to go back to. coast is pretty cool. Right. There's pay. Yeah. And the self- is a thousand times more habitable than Mars. Like it's a thousand times more pleasurable than Mars. Easily. Okay, let's

take some more questions from the audience. So feel free to type in your question underneath in the live chat. You can also, you know, find more information about Fraser on his channel. I put a link to that there. I put links to my appearances on

universe today with Fraser in the past years. So let's see. Let's see. Was math discovered or invented? That's his iron doth bachelor. You believe math is mathematical ideas. Are they discovered or are they invented by humans? I have no opinion.

Okay. I mean, if it was discovered, like, are the math, are, is one plus one equals two? is that a thing that exists in the universe or was it invented by human beings? I'm going to, I mean, I'm going to lean on the side of them being invented because we do, because we do math and sometimes we do math that doesn't work, but,

but I think, and you can go back, like, you can go right back and prove that one plus one equals two. Yeah, it's about 200, it's long proof, yeah. Yeah,

but it was like a foundational assumption, right? Yeah. But I don't really, I don't really have an opinion either way. So, yeah, I'm going to have some more. I've had a few mathematicians. I've had Steven Strogett's.

I've had Jim Simons. I'm having Ed Frankl who wrote a wonderful book called Love and Math. He's coming on the podcast in your future. Stay tuned for that. Yeah. Do you have an answer for that? Inventive discovered? The answer is yes.

Okay, perfect. Okay, good. Yeah, so my ambivalence is right. Okay. Yeah, because there is sort of a purity. Now, it was so interesting to me about this conference, and that's why I like to go to things that I don't necessarily agree with. And that's because, you know, you hear things like there was an eminent sign.

If I told his name, I mean, he probably doesn't care if I told it, but he's at Harvard in their molecular biology and math and does all this incredible. And he basically went through methodically this whole proof that God exists based on math. And I mean, it wasn't like really a crazy crackpot. I mean, Einstein said things, Galileo, hometown whose hometown we're in. God is a mathematician of the very highest order. Eugene Wigner, you know, what is the essence to explain? explain to human beings, the unreasonable effectiveness of math to physics. It's a puzzle. It's a mystery. Anyway, I want to get more into technology.

Andy Oates asked, what's your opinion about thorium rocket engines or can you give us an update on your ion drive? What excites you about space? Besides these ginormous rockets, what other technologies are needed to enable us to go to planets or the stars beyond our source? Well, I mean, ion drives, this is an idea of having ion. particles, usually xenon, krypton, and you blast it at the back of your rocket using an electric field, and you get very high accelerations in return. But it's on a particle level. The actual force coming out of an ion engine is very low, but the efficiency is very high.

And when you're considering the tyranny of the rocket equation, efficiency is the most important thing. So you can accelerate to really high velocities over one. long periods of time by firing your ion engine. There's a new type of ion engine that's being developed by NASA that's going to see existence in future missions. So there's some more powerful ones out there. And when you connect a fusion reactor to ion engines, you get a pretty great technology stack. You've got really high efficiency, limitless amount of power with ion engines capable of using that power to accelerate your propellant out.

I think if there's going to be missions going to and from Mars, we're going to see ion engines play a role in that. But I think that the revolution in rocketry right now is what's happening with SpaceX, with Starship, the idea of a fully reusable two-stage rocket system. Like if you didn't have to throw your rocket away every single time, that you could just use the, the, like just the cost of the fuel each time to launch your rocket, you can bring down the cost of launching things by an order or two of, you know, several orders of magnitude, which makes a lot

of missions, which seemed impossible in the past, suddenly start to make sense. Right. Which brings up. Launching propellant depots, things like that. So I think it's, it's not going to be complicated. It's going to be really simple. Like it's, but it is rocket science. building the fully reusable two-stage rocket is going to be

is what's going to be exciting. Which brings us full circle to what got you into space, which was the shuttle missions, which were pioneered to bring us to space on a weekly basis or whatever, never really changed that. Yeah, exactly. We're not going to get into. One thing we need to have and that people are curious about in the chat room

is, you know, the human being going to Mars. So Martin Reese, when he was on the podcast recently, he said, you know, Elon Musk wants to die on Mars and Elon, and then he said to Elon, Elon, I hope it's not on impact. But there are these, you know, kind of, and I also asked him, like, has it it feel to be the Astronomer Royal to the King now? Because he used to joke that his job was to tell the Queen her horoscope. So you'll hear some of that in a couple of weeks when I process the episode. But anyway, oh, that's amazing. That's so far. We might have to like put people in suspended animation, like what was that movie a couple years ago?

So I wonder, can you answer kind of the human question before we turn to final questions and then wrap up? How we can actually physically get a human being two years or perhaps longer, maybe much, much longer to go to another star system? How is that possible? Well, I mean, like within the solar system, flights of two years, you're taking a human being

that was evolved under the protective magnetosphere of planet Earth and our atmosphere, and you're putting them out into the cosmic void, they're going to be getting hit by cosmic rays, they're going to be getting hit by radiation from the sun, and they're going to receive a lifetime's dose of radiation in just a few months. The price they will pay is cancer and cardiovascular disease and problems with their eyes. In the same way that a test pilot takes on the risk of dying every time they strap in,

to some new vehicle. They do it as a, as one of the risks of their job. It's sort of like the same thing about a person who's going to climb Mount Everest. Like you send us, you know that there's a 15% chance. You're just going to die when you climb that mountain. And that's just,

and it's outside of your control. So there is no solution. And like maybe there'll be some long term, like in 200 years from now, we'll have technological solutions to solve all these problems. But until then, it is not a tourist trip to Mars. It is a potentially suicide mission for a lot of people and almost certain health issues for everybody who attempts this journey and think for a lot of people, it's worth it.

Like they're stoked to go to Mars and they're willing to pay the price, which is that they're going to die young with cancer. And that's the sacrifice that they're willing to make to exceed. extend humanity's influence to other places. I wouldn't, but they do. And I respect them for what they're willing to do. And I don't think there's anything more like I think that people just don't appreciate how dangerous it is, how unforgiving that planet is, how awful the journey is going to be, and how little reward we're going to have for actually being there. Yeah, 100%. Okay, Fraser. We've reached the

end of our regularly scheduled content, but I do always love to ask my guests who honor me coming on with these four questions of fundamental existential reality. Okay. So the first one is, relates to the namesake of the Arthur C. Clark Center of Human Imagination that I am the associate director of. I have the honor of being the associate director of. And it has to do with his famous statement in the very very very important. very in the very movie 2001 space audits. Which gave us the name podcast. I don't know if you know that.

The podcast comes from the iPod, which came from the word Podbay Doors, which I open every podcast with. And that's what Dave says to how, right? Okay. Anyway, getting around that. So any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic.

I want to ask you, what thing have you discovered in your paragrenations around the world of science and space? that is most impressive, that is most magical, that is most technological, perhaps, that you would like to have humanity have a little bit of swagger in our collective steps about. What is the most impressive, most magical, advanced technology? Well, I think, like, you know, I see so many of these things that they sort of fall out of my brain as soon as I see them. But the thing that I've been mulling around with right now is artificial intelligence, content creation.

generation, how you've got things that are writing words, drawing pictures. It's really unsettling to type in a text description of some scene and have a picture show up in front of you instantaneously. And that really feels like it's bordering on magic to me. And I understand the underlying technology to some degree. It's so weird. And yet, It felt like if you said, like, when will you be able to say, computer, show me a picture of an astronaut riding a horse? When will that technology exist? A computer will just show you pictures of astronauts riding horses. I would have thought it would have been 50 years from now.

And yet here we are. And so to see things fall technologically so quickly, it's just, it's stunning to think about. the future that we're rushing headlong into across all these fields of artificial intelligence. Yeah. I mean, I think back to my grandmother, you know, grew up in the Stethal of Eastern Poland. And, you know, she was riding a horse and putting a donkey cart. And she lived, you know, to see men, grown men twerking on TikTok. And to have that, Frazier, is just so, okay. Next. That would have been, that would have been my second thing to be TikTok. Oh, you know, you love it. That's great.

The next thing that I love to ask, my guests who honor me, actually it has to do with not millions of years in the future, but maybe 70, 80 years in the future when you reach the biblical age of 120 years old. What wisdom, not material goods? What wisdom do you want to put in what's called your ethical will? In other words, a gathering of knowledge, but really of wisdom that you can communicate to not just your biological relatives, but your ideological relatives. What would you like to leave for humanity to guide us in the future when you're no longer with us physically? Well, I think, you know, one of the things that got me into space and astronomy in the first place was this idea that we may or may not be alone in the universe and that finding on an

answer to that question is one of the most important, I think it's like the most scientific important question we can ask. And I would love to know that I helped get an answer to it, if possible. And not, you know, I mean, obviously, I'm not a scientist. So my job is to communicate. My job is to connect. My job is to is to, is to, is to, help raise awareness that this is a scientific question and that the answers the search for the answers are fascinating and important and I think if people can go back and say oh Fraser helped communicate when we thought it was stupid Fraser helped us realize that it was important I would feel like it's life well lived that's wonderful okay last two questions now I want to ask you also

pertinent to Sir Arthur C. Clark, who said the following, when a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is possible, they're almost certainly right. But when he says something is impossible, they are very probably wrong. Now, I'm not calling you elderly who are about the same age, but I want to ask you, Fraser, is there something you've changed your mind on? What have you most recently changed your mind on that maybe you were wrong about in the past? well I think the thing that I've changed from people who are my audience will know we've talked a bit about that the the reason the worthwhalness of of sending humans to Mars of us living you know I read the case where I mentioned earlier the case for Mars inspired me yeah to get into this field and the idea of us colonizing Mars was really exciting to me and I think that now I that is no longer interesting to me. That the more I learn about our planet,

the more I appreciate the world about the universe, the more I appreciate the world that we happen to be on. How isn't it weird that we are perfectly evolved to live on this planet? So this is the best place in the universe. And I'll pick any aliens on if they disagree with me, that their planet is better. But it's the best place for us.

And so it's like you could search your whole life for a better place. And it turns out you were living there all along. Yeah. And don't squander it. And I think that takes us to our final question, Fraser. Now we're going backwards in time. No more going forward time traveling. Starthorffrey-Claarck's so-called third law states the only way of discovering the limits of the possible

is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Now you know where I get the name of the podcast from. I want to ask you, what mysterious aspect of life? As I said, most of my audience is 20 to 50, 6th year old men. I want to give you get your life advice to your former self. What would you do differently? What moments of great clarity or some inciting incident or something that was formative to you? Would you go back to, if you like, and give yourself advice to give yourself the confidence to do as you've done

and go into the impossible. Advice to your former self. Yeah. I mean, I think I've been really fortunate that I've always been who I am. Like as a, when I was in high school, I was running role playing games. I was, you know, I was the D&D nerd. I was, I was enthusiastic and would never stop talking. and that shifted into various interesting careers and stuff.

And so I was never ashamed to be into the things that I was. And I think that if I could go back and talk to younger Fraser, I'd be like, just double down, lean in. These things that you love, video games, space, are fine and are, you're not alone and, and just do it. And I think that for me, you know, back then, you're more classified as a geek, as an nerd, as someone who, you know, wasn't cool. And I, it never really bothered me too much, but I think for a lot of people, they,

they do, they can't be their authentic self. think if the sooner you can get into embracing your authentic self, the more fun you're going to have with life for sure. Absolutely. Braser, I want to be completely honest, you are a true hero to many of us that are trying to do a very difficult thing, which is to increase science literacy. I think the future of the earth depends on it. We are always, oh, how do we get more people in STEM? Well, one way is to make it accessible, make it fun, bring humor, because humor Belize the sense of confidence that I think you really have this unique, as I said. Your unfair advantage, which you exploit in the most benevolent of ways, is such a gift.

And I want to encourage my audience to definitely subscribe if you haven't. Support him on Patreon. This is a very important mission. He employs many, many writers, and they have this mission and so unified. And one of my favorites, I keep promising to have her on, Nancy Atkinson, who wrote 11 years to the moon, I think. Yeah. You have this incredible staff.

It costs money to keep that going. So please do support Fraser. Subscribe to his channel. And the best thing of all is you will reap the benefits of interacting with Fraser. The more you give, the more you'll get. Fraser, thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day. Sorry, I kept you so long, but it was too much fun.

No problem. Yep, the timing's good. I got three minutes. Thanks, Brian. Take care. All right. Bye. Bye.

All right. Well, that's a wrap for this episode with Fraser Kane, proprietor of the universe today. You can find his podcast at Universe Today, Fraser Cain. It's linked. The video is linked in the show notes below. And I want to thank you for going into the impossible with me and all of you, 523 of you in the U.S. and 600 plus around the world who've left reviews for the podcast. Sign up for my Monday Magic mailing list where I share the most magical technology from around the world and influences on me and what I've been up to. I had a recent trip to Galileo's hometown, as I said in the episode. And you'll get pictures and updates and all sorts

stuff be entered to win, copy in audio form of his dialogue for free. And I can send that anywhere that emails or receipt. So for now, enjoy. Thank you for going into The Impossible. Please share it with a friend, won't you? Someone you think might enjoy learning a little bit more about science and what scientists go through in order to get our ideas out into the universe. Thanks again. And until next time, have a magical, magical week. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of

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