Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Jim Al-Khalili Why I Love the Life Scientific! (#223)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to a phenomenal conversation with one of the most brilliant minds alive today. Jim Al Khalili, a renowned scientist, theoretical physicist, and popular science communicator. Jim and I discussed what does it mean to do science, to follow the science, to trust the science. What does it mean when scientists say, scientists say? These are the topics that impact your life in a way that almost nothing else in modern culture does. People look to scientists like Jim, and they look to us for answers, perhaps. to some of the most meaningful questions about their day-to-day lives, but also for the existential questions.

Starting point is 00:00:36 And we got into that at the very end. So Jim and I didn't shy away from controversial subjects like what to do with models of controversies such as global warming, COVID-19, and many, many other fascinating subjects that scientists are participating in and with more and more importance placed upon them. We talked about how he got interested in science, what it means to popularize science. Do scientists have a moral obligation to share the love for that which they would do for free? And I speak for myself and for Jim in saying that. I also got into my patented final thrilling three questions.

Starting point is 00:01:09 You'll have to subscribe to my mailing list at briankeating.com. Put the link over there. And now I want to give you a slight insight into this wonderful new book by Jim L. Kalili, courtesy of his publisher, which is Princeton University Press. So don't forget to subscribe and leave a comment. What gives you the most joy about science? something enchanting, even magical about rainbows. Would their wonder be diminished if you understood how they're formed? What if you knew that the colourful arc that you admire is

Starting point is 00:01:42 really part of a bigger circle or why no two people see the same rainbow? Science empowers us to see the world more completely and deeply. In eight short lessons, enlighten your mind and empower your life. Unlock the joy of science. Today, you are all in for a treat as we speak to Professor Jim Al-Kalili, who is a fellow of the Royal Society, a quantum physicist and holder of the University of Surrey distinguished chair as well as a personal chair in physics. How many chairs can you have? You've got a university chair, a personal chair, and the public engagement of science. Yeah, I've got a whole three-piece suite, I said. You're like a one-man IKEA.

Starting point is 00:02:35 Exactly, exactly. You live in a three-piece suit, but according to your website, which I'll link to in the show notes. Jim, how are you today? I understand you're recovering from the very malady that caused this book to become instantiated. We'll get into that. How are you feeling like that? Indeed. Not too bad.

Starting point is 00:02:55 Thank you. I have to say, I've had worse cold, so I got off quite lightly at you. Snuffly nose, a bit of a chesty cough, but I'm fine. Oh, that's wonderful. I'm so glad to hear you're feeling well and rested and so forth. So I am going to try to be mindful of your time because I know it's a very gracious of you to spend any time here. But we have a new book that's coming out called The Joy of Science. This episode will be released hopefully the day of the book release.

Starting point is 00:03:24 And we will make sure to publicize it as it is due for. So I want to start off by doing what you're told never to do in life, which is to judge a book by its cover. So Jim, tell me, what is the origin of this book's title, subtitle, and the awesome cover design as well? Well, yes, I mean, I had a whole list of different titles that I had suggested to my publishers, Princeton University Press. And it was about, you know, rationalism, the scientific method. And none of them really sort of resonated or sort of captured the imagination. And then my editor, for instance, suggested the joy of science. And it really, because, I mean, it is a celebration.

Starting point is 00:04:13 of why science is so important, why we scientists do what we do, how it gives us a better understanding and empowerment because we can understand more about how the world is enlightenment over ignorance. But it's also a book about how we do science, the scientific method, and the fact that if we could use some of the techniques that we use in science, when science has done properly, in daily life, I think it would make everyone the happy. You know, the idea of, you know, the importance of doubt and uncertainty,

Starting point is 00:04:46 the importance of examining your evidence, being prepared to change your mind. So it was eight lessons from the scientific method. So that's one of the reasons why you have sort of the letter eight, two circles on the cover. And the other is the, at the very beginning, I use an example. I'm not the first author to do this. You know, people like Carl Sagan certainly use it, talking about the beauty of the rainbow.

Starting point is 00:05:11 at criticizes Newton by saying, you know, you've destroyed, exactly, exactly, you know, the breaking light into its prismatic colors somehow. Unweaving the rainbow. Unweaving, yeah. And you destroy the beauty and the poetry of it. And rubbish, you know, the Feynman talks about this very eloquently. It doesn't. It adds, it adds to the beauty.

Starting point is 00:05:32 So there's the colors of the rainbow there on the book as well. Yeah, I found that quite lovely. The book is a delight. It's a quick read. I actually, because I don't think it's available yet on audio book format, I actually put it into an app called Speechify and I listened to a British accent voice and it was really delightful. This book can be consumed with delight in just a few hours. And yes, those characters speak vividly through the book as well as some of there may be counterpoints. And maybe I want to start with the epic battle between Walt Whitman and Richard Feynman, you know, the learned astronomer versus the learned physicist.

Starting point is 00:06:12 And of course, Feynman, as you quote, says, you know, do I care less about Jupiter because I know he's not a god and made of methane? No. So I taught a class here with a Pulitzer Prize winner by the name of Ray Armandrout, who's a poet. And we taught a class called poetry for physicists, which is the exact opposite of what you normally teach. But I wonder how much can we learn from our poetic friends? As your countryman, Paul Dirac said, you know, something like poets. attempt to do, explain the most simple things in the most obtuse, obfuscational language possible. And in science, the joy is doing just the opposite. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I don't see that tension. I start off in the book and saying, first of all, science isn't a collection of facts. That's called knowledge. Science is the process by which we acquire that knowledge.

Starting point is 00:07:08 I also acknowledge that there are other ways that we gain knowledge, enlightenment, and wisdom. And it could be through poetry or art or literature or music or contemplation or religious texts or just discussing and debating with our fellow human beings. Science is one way. When it comes to the natural sciences, you know, our area, physics, for example, science, I believe, is the most reliable way of getting to understand the nature of physical reality out there. poetry is a tool that can bring that to life, can add to the narrative, to add to the story of the way the world is. But I don't think poetry detracts from our ability to understand. I think it enriches in the way that science also enriches out of the world. Yeah, hopefully they can complement each other and not lead to some further warfare.

Starting point is 00:08:11 So you mentioned knowledge. And of course, you know, the word science in Latin means, Siencia means knowledge, but it doesn't mean wisdom. That's what Sapien or Sapienza means. So, you know, do you think at some level enough knowledge can kind of convert you to having wisdom? In other words, is there a quantity after which you assume such amount of quantity of knowledge that you actually become wise? Are they fundamentally blocked off from one another?

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Starting point is 00:09:10 I don't think they're the same thing. I mean, they are connected with each other. The more knowledge and experience you have, I would suggest they're correlated. You should be more rather than less wise. But I don't think wisdom is something that can be acquired. If someone who knows nothing about a particular area or discipline, if they could absorb all the knowledge and information about that discipline, that doesn't make them wise.

Starting point is 00:09:41 That doesn't make them. I like the fact that for me at my stage in my career, I'm now leaning more towards offering wisdom to my young students rather than the knowledge. They're smarter, they're faster than me, they can remember stuff. I've forgotten more than they've learned. But I hope that I can offer wisdom. And I don't think that's the same thing as because I have an accumulation of knowledge.

Starting point is 00:10:06 Right. Yeah. How do you react to this statement? I'm going to drop on you. Follow. Yeah. It's the phrase that has been used by politicians, particularly during the pandemic over the last two years,

Starting point is 00:10:24 to somehow absolve themselves of any responsibility, you know, if they don't follow sensible policies. Just to say we are following the science, it's meaningless. I mean, say we are following the advice of scientists based on our current understanding, fine. But if that's what they mean and they've just shortened it down to follow the science,

Starting point is 00:10:48 three words, fine. But I worry that politicians don't actually understand the science. Following the science means doing science, means following the scientific method. You're not doing that. You're listening to someone giving you advice. In your opinion, you know,

Starting point is 00:11:07 I always get kind of reaction to this, you know, that there is no real, one scientific method. I mean, you don't go down and, you know, I don't go down to my laboratory and say, now I'm going to test the hypothesis and then I'm going to acquire. And actually, in my estimation, I mean, you're, you know, far better qualified to answer, but there's multiple scientific methods. There's deductive. There's inductive. What is the scientific method? Is it just a rubric? Is it just a, I certainly think it's a collection of all the ways that we've used across the disciplines that we call scientific disciplines to gain more knowledge. But there isn't, it's certainly

Starting point is 00:11:50 a, you know, a tick, a box ticking exercise. And say, you know, what does it mean to be a scientist? Well, you have to be curious about the world. Well, you know, a conspiracy theorist is curious. You know, it's about gathering evidence and, well, the conspiracy theorists think they're being rational and gathering evidence and being skeptical and so on. Is it about testing a hypothesis against, you know, come up with a narrative or hypothesis, test it against observation? Well, a historian does that as well. Does that mean history as part of science? No, it means they're using the same techniques to learn something about the nature of the past as opposed to the nature of physical reality around us. So there isn't a list of things. Some areas of science require, you know, falsifiability or

Starting point is 00:12:35 reproducibility and so on. Other areas require testing of hypotheses and coming up with a theory that has predictive power. But even, you know, having predictive power is not enough. You know, your star signs, you're, you know, reading your astrological star chart may say, you're going to get promotion next Tuesday when you're going to work. And sure enough, your boss gives you a promotion. You say, oh, look, it predicted correctly. Therefore, astrology is a science. Well, you know, there isn't one size fits all. It is a, you're right. It's a nebulous term that can mean different things depending on the side. So last year, past guest on the show, Lord Martin Reese told me, you know, pertinent to astrology that, you know, he's responsible as

Starting point is 00:13:16 the astronomer royal to tell the queen her horoscope. I thought that was really nice. I'd like to have that gig, you know, for the president here. I'd like to be the federal astronomer. But in reality, yeah, there is, as we maybe pivot to a subject that you bring up in the joy of science, you know, this kind of fascination with, with Carl Popper and this falsification. And you just pointed out, you know, not only could such a prediction of a soothsayer, as Popper called them, come true, but it's also falsifiable. If you didn't get the raise, so then his hypothesis was falsified, therefore it's science? What gives?

Starting point is 00:13:52 I mean, how much do we put on Popper? I mean, in my understanding, he didn't even think we should put that much emphasis on falsification as the sine qua non. No, absolutely. When I was a student, it was always argued that, you know, the two, the great philosophers of science of our age were Carl Popper and. Thomas Coon, you know, the paradigm shift ideas. I think these days this notion, Popper's idea of falsification, isn't held in such high regard, you know, put on a pedestal

Starting point is 00:14:24 like it used to. You know, we're much more careful now talking about, you know, being good basians, you know, that having, you know, priors, you know, what's the probability that this idea is right? Well, based on what your initial assumptions were, surely, and what's the probability that they were right? The idea of falsification, I use the example in the book, which is that many people have used before. You know, all swans are white. You see one brown swan and you say, see, that suggests that it falsifies your theory that all swans are white. But then how do you know that brown swan isn't just a white swan caked in mud?

Starting point is 00:15:01 So the falsifying counter example itself may not be correct. And we've seen this in physics. You know, the famous experiment of the fast... Oh, yes, opera. Yeah, they are opera experiment. You know, they detected these particles that looked like they were getting from A to B fast on the speed of light, oh, Einstein's wrong, you know. And then, but it turns out the experiment itself was wrong.

Starting point is 00:15:24 There was a loose cable behind one of the counters and the computers. That's right. Just having one false... Yeah, so falsification is probably not as a strong... a definition of what a good scientific theory should be. And then you mentioned, you know, a frequent character in all popular books, in addition to Feynman and Galileo and Newton, you mentioned Einstein just a second ago. And chapter five in this wonderful book is called entitled Don't Value Opinion Over Evidence.

Starting point is 00:16:00 And I wonder if we could talk about authority. And my favorite scientist of all time is Galileo, who said, in matters of science, the issues of authority cannot overcome the humble reasoning of a lone individual. Of course, I get that all the time. Yesterday alone, I mean, I posted on my Twitter, you know, I'm going to be talking to you. And I got all sorts of questions.

Starting point is 00:16:21 Like people want me to ask you about their theories, about, you know, conscious electrons and this thing. And we'll get to some audience questions. Don't worry because that is part of my hallmark on this channel. But nevertheless, you should also have some respect for authority. already in science. As Feynman or Sagan, I can never remember which one said, you know, I'd rather have, you know, answers that questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned. To me, that's a canard against, you know, religion. But I wonder, you know,

Starting point is 00:16:51 do we worship, you know, this guy a little bit over much? Are we kind of infatuated? In fact, in the public, when we see things like the, during the coronavirus that you just mentioned, or with the Iran nuclear deal, they trot out 70 Nobel Prize winners, you know, 11 of whom have been on my show. You know, and they'll just trot them out. And then we're supposed to say, okay, we'll just do what you say in all these matters. Even though you're a condensed matter physicist talking about a vaccine that's, you know, MNRA. Anyway, to what level should the general layperson experience a little bit of the joy of science

Starting point is 00:17:23 by questioning the authorities, even this guy? Absolutely. I mean, first of all, having is something we see on social media more and more these days, you know, valuing opinion over evidence is, is a, is a worry. And it's true that, you know, when my plumber comes around to fix my boiler and he says, oh, I know what's wrong with it, you know, there's this error. It means you've got to change this circuit board. I don't say to him, don't worry, you know, I've had a look on YouTube and I know exactly what I can do it myself. You know, I'm a theoretical visit. I totally, I must be able to

Starting point is 00:17:59 forget. I know so much more than you. No. Lenny Saskin was a plumber. So, right, right. Okay. So he can do that. He can say that. But the rest of us, no. He can say that. But the rest of us, no. So to some extent, you have to say, look, someone has expertise because they've had years of study and thinking about this. And you can't just come to it and say, what right does this person have to say that they're right and I'm wrong? You know, I'm sure you get the same as me. We get the emails and the letters from people saying, I have no background in physics. However, you know, I'm sure you get the same as me. We get the emails and the letters from people saying, I have no background in physics. However, you know, I'm sure. I've proven, I cubed, you know, not actually square. And if you help me, I'll share the Nobel Prize with you. Yeah, but I'm not telling you yet because, you know, that's right. You have to help me get my stuff up. I think, oh, so that, so, you know, you don't want to insult people. Some of these people are very earnest, in that these people are very earnest and genuine,

Starting point is 00:18:56 and they've spent years thinking about this stuff, but they haven't had the benefit of, you know, doing a proper course in physics, for example, relativity theory. And in all likelihood, you know, you have to tell them, look, just because no one believed Einstein when he came along, you know, and he changed the, you know, the paradigm shift, doesn't mean that you are also another Einstein. With all due respect, yeah, with all due respect, you know, that he was one of a kind. But you're right, the flip side is that we overly respect someone because they have a type. or because, you know, they have expertise in one area, and we assume if it has the whiff of science, then it must be true. I mean, in the commercial world, in businesses, this is how they advertise stuff.

Starting point is 00:19:49 You know, you add a new yogurt or a new face cream. You add a scientific word there, and scientists have said, you know, and therefore it becomes the truth. So we do have to question where the evidence comes. So chances are if someone's dedicated their life to a subject, then I would give them the benefit of the doubt. I wouldn't assume that I shouldn't trust anything they say because they may have ulterior motives. They may have ulterior motives.

Starting point is 00:20:17 They may be saying something because their paymasters want them to or because they want to promote a particular theory because they've invested their lives in it even though it's wrong. But there's a good chance that if you're an expert, you probably know more than someone who just comes up with. Do you think you can turn someone into a scientist, you know, just based on their pure passion? Like you said, curiosity, you know, I'm curious about conspiracies, myself sometimes. We'll get to those later in the next interview. But can you really convert, you know, teach someone to be a scientist?

Starting point is 00:20:51 Can you start and if? Well, well, yeah, absolutely. you can. I mean, being a scientist, we are not a separate species from the rest of humankind. You know, we are people who, you know, we're all curious as children and we ask the why questions. Most people, as they grow up, they, you know, they got to get on with their lives. They've got to get a job and a mortgage and a family and all the, you know, the challenges of daily life. And they stop asking those why questions. They stop being curious about how, why is the world the way it is. They don't have that luxury. Those of us who are trained in science, it,

Starting point is 00:21:27 becomes our job to keep asking those questions, so we remain curious. But training someone to become a scientist is nothing special. It's about showing how we do science. It's about, you know, the scientific method. You know, it's one of the most important things are never being completely certain about something, always allowing a place for doubts to change your mind, and also being prepared to admit when you're wrong. You know, and I always said that's the difference between a good scientific.

Starting point is 00:21:57 theory and a conspiracy theory. Ask a conspiracy theorist, what evidence would it take for me to persuade you to change your mind? And they would have to admit nothing. Nothing would. By definition, a conspiracy theorist, that's their whole reason for believing what they believe, because nothing is going to dissuade it. Whereas a scientist, a good scientist, has to be prepared to say, I was wrong. I thought this theory, this hypothesis, this, I could explain this phenomenon. You've presented me with data or some observational evidence that suggests, I'm wrong. I have to change my mind. Not all scientists do that, right? Not all scientists are good, but that's the way it should work. And I don't see any reason why anyone couldn't learn in that way.

Starting point is 00:22:37 Right. Now, when you hear things like trust the science, I want to pivot now to actually what I understand is the impetus for writing the book, it came out of the COVID pandemic, which unfortunately you're suffering from, but you're recovering from and we should have a swift full recovery in time for dinner. But COVID came out, I recall things in the UK, Professor Ferguson, the rival institution and coming out with models predicting dire numbers of deaths in very short period of time, and eventually maybe that'll prove to be correct. And similarly, you mentioned global climate change and global warming.

Starting point is 00:23:16 A lot of this is based on extremely complex physics. and if at all, if it is linear, if we can actually be reductionist and say that, well, a virus is just biology, biology is just chemistry, chemistry is just cell, you know, physics, et cetera, et cetera. At some level, physicists should be able to do stuff. And yet, we get a lot of things wrong when we turn to models. Talk about, like, what is the role of a model in science and not the... You say 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.

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Starting point is 00:24:17 One of the guests, So I'd have a radio show on the BBC, The Life Scientific, which has been going for many years in which I interview other scientists. And I remember interviewing a climatologist, Thames and Edwards, very smart scientist who works on mathematical models. And she has a website and a blog which has the title, all models are wrong. I forget where the quote comes from. All models are wrong, but some are more useful than others, right? like that. So a model is a model. It makes a prediction and it's only as good as whatever information you feed it in the first place. We try and develop our models to make them more, more sophisticated.

Starting point is 00:25:01 We trust models more if you have two very different computational models, two different sort of imaginary pictures of reality that make the same predictions. If they come at some, you know, prediction about how something will change and evolve, like how the climate would look like 50 years from now and they have different assumptions and inputs and yet both points as the same thing happening tends to make them it's a bit like doing two different experiments and two different labs and they both discover the same phenomenon that reproducibility so so a computer a computational model is a is like doing an experiment in the lab but with zeros and ones and you can get it wrong in the same way that you can get your experiment wrong so so so

Starting point is 00:25:47 models are useful, but we shouldn't trust that they are telling us the truth, but at the same time, we shouldn't dismiss them out of hand simply because they're incomplete. Right. And I think that's all well and good when you're looking at, you know, the millennium simulation of structure formation in the early universe, or you're looking at, you know, how certain, you know, primates, you know, evolved and got out of Africa. But, you know, on the other hand, when it impacts, you know, the lay person in their daily life, things like climate change, things like viral, you know, epidemiology. If you can't trust these people who, as you say, rightfully so, have dedicated their lives to this career.

Starting point is 00:26:30 I mean, does it do, does it do, what does it do to the scientific confidence? People have confidence in science when they will, if anything, know. Yeah, I think for one thing is people need to understand how science works. I think that's something that has happened to some extent over the course of the last two years of the pandemic. People have seen the scientific method in action and they've seen these modelers saying this is going to happen or, you know, the way to stop yourself from catching COVID is to, you know, to wash your hands. I don't know if this was the same thing in the US, but in the UK it was there was the mantra, wash your hands while singing happy birthday twice through, right? you know, that length of time. And then, you know, a few months later, it was, oh, no, no, no, washing your hands isn't so important.

Starting point is 00:27:15 You've got to wear a mask or you've got to have a ventilation. And so people who don't understand how science works, said, hang on, you guys just told me that I could avoid catching COVID washing my hands. Now you're saying, I've got to wear a mask. You know nothing. But if people understand how science works, say, well, no, this is, in the light of new evidence, we need to be able to backtrack, to change our minds, to, you know, to revise our view. What also is important, particularly for something like climate change, I think is that we have to apply the precautionary principle, that we know we're never going to be sure that, you know, the climate is going to change in this way or that is going to lead to these dire consequences.

Starting point is 00:27:57 But in all likelihood, it's the famous example that, you know, 97% of climatologists say, you know, we humans are changed the climate. There must have been some survey some years ago, the 97% of, you know, and then people say, well, hang on a minute, so you're not sure. So there's 3% of good scientists who argue the difference. Maybe you're wrong. If you go to your doctor and your doctor says, you know, if you don't give up drinking and smoking and change your diet, you're going to be dead in five years. And you say, well, doctor, how sure are you?

Starting point is 00:28:29 Well, I can't be sure. I'd say 97% sure. You're not going to turn around and say, oh, okay, I'm going to seek a second opinion because you're not sure. you adopt the precautionary principle and say, chances are, you're right. Better safe than sorry, we should do something about it. And that's how I feel about climate change. Chances are things are going badly wrong, and we need to do something about it.

Starting point is 00:28:52 Maybe we don't have to. Yeah, one of the powerful takeaways from the book and from conversations I've heard on the life scientific and elsewhere is that when you say something, when a scientist says, I don't know, it doesn't mean like, everything's equally likely. You know, it doesn't mean like, I don't know what's going to happen with, you know, it doesn't mean like COVID's nothing or it's everything or glibate would change. And yet again, when it does impact, you know, the ordinary person, I feel like you and I,

Starting point is 00:29:22 let's, I just want to toot our own horns for a second. We get paid by the taxpayer at some level to do a job we would do for free. I mean, but I would do it for free, right? I don't know about you. But I assume that you would because you have so much joy. Literally, that's the reason I think you use that in the title, right? So it's pleasurable. We get paid.

Starting point is 00:29:39 So on what other job, you know, if you are the plumber and you come over to fix the house and the plumber tells you, you can't understand what I'm doing. It's very complicated. And she's right. You know, she's actually very astute and knows plumbing. She's done in her, dedicate her whole life to plumbing, as you said. But yet, if she tells you, you can't understand it. It's very complicated.

Starting point is 00:30:01 And as you quote Feynman saying in the book, you know, if I could explain why I won the Nobel Prize, it would be worth a Nobel Prize. On another day, he said, if you can't explain it to your grandmother, you don't understand. It's like, which is it, Feynman? I want to ask, but anyway, to what extent do you believe or maybe disagree? I'll state what I believe. I think it's a moral obligation that we scientists have and that we fail miserably at half the time because we're so busy. But we have to tell the public in terms they can understand what we're doing with their money that they've given us this treasure to do what we would do for free.

Starting point is 00:30:31 How have you utilized? Because you obviously are one of the master communicators who have ever lived. I mean, actually, because of your huge impact, BBC and in America, Netflix, and all the places, you've had an outsized impact. Did you have training? What is your underlying philosophy of doing that essential outreach, which is to the benefit of science so we can keep getting funds to do what we love? Well, I have to say, in all honesty, I don't do my science communication altruistically because I feel I have a moral obligation for the world to be more scientifically literate. I do it because it gives me joy. You know, I've always said that I don't want just to be a science communicator talking about other people doing the science.

Starting point is 00:31:14 I want to be a scientist who communicates. But when I find out something fascinating about the world, why wouldn't I want to shout it from the rooftops? Why wouldn't I want to tell everyone about it? So when I communicate science, when I'm explaining something to someone who doesn't have the background expertise, they're not dumber than that. You know, this idea that we said we are dumbing down in order for people to understand. That's not, they're not dumber than me. They just haven't had the benefit of years of dedicated thinking about this stuff that I have. And so getting an idea across in a way that I think they can understand,

Starting point is 00:31:52 sure, I'm going to probably leaving out, I'll be leaving out some of the details of the algebraic derivation that are not important in getting the concept across. But it gives me genuine pleasure to see that. any drop, the light bulb come, oh, oh, I see now. I get the same sort of tingle or enjoyment of someone understanding something that I've explained that I got when I first learned that about that. So I do my science communication because I enjoy it personally. Although, of course, I acknowledge, you're right. You know, we have a moral obligation. Not every scientist is good at communicating science. The same as not every, you know, some scientists in academia are better

Starting point is 00:32:33 at research, others are better at teaching, you know, and, you know, horses for courses. But those who can communicate, those who are, who want to, you know, like you and me, you know, who want to sort of get across these ideas and empower society and infuse, absolutely we have to do it, because that's, you know, this is not some, this is keeping to ourselves. No, it's too much fun. It's magic that's real, right? Yeah, right. Going magical even further, and we'll get to Arthur C. Clark's, you know, famous laws later on. You mentioned Arthur C. Clark in the book. I found that delightful.

Starting point is 00:33:06 But I want to ask you, what's the biggest source of hype right now in physics or science in general? What is the biggest, perhaps most overblown thing in science that falls in the category of hype? I think it might be when we talk about the opportunities with quantum technologies and quantum computing, for example. I think the impression that the public get is that quantum computers are going to replace our current computers and they can do everything so much quicker and better. The same with artificial intelligence, you know, that we are years, maybe decades, but maybe only just years away from artificial general intelligence and machines that can become conscious.

Starting point is 00:33:58 you know, that sort of hype, I can understand why because they're exciting and, you know, Hollywood makes a good living out of the science fiction movie themes, but it does give people the wrong impression that we're approaching this wonderful, these technologies that are, that are probably not, we're not going to see in our lifetime. Right. You know, so I think that in a few decades ago, there's a lot of hype in theoretical physics, that we were coming to the end of theoretical physics, you know, that the large Hadron Collider would discover all sorts of new particles,

Starting point is 00:34:32 that we're approaching a theory of everything. And Stephen Hawking wrote an article about 40 years ago about the end of theoretical physics. Just got to dot the eyes across the T's. And no, actually, we're a long way off. We don't even know what dark matter is made of. So there was that hype. I think we've sort of sobered up a bit from that. We realize we have a long way to go in understanding the nature of reality.

Starting point is 00:34:57 but in the technologies that are being promised now, I think there's a good deal of hype that we should also try and pull back from. Very good, yeah. So speaking, you spoke about quantum technology. Just to a plug for next week's episode is with Dr. Nicole Younger Halpern about quantum information. Her book is called Quantum Steampunk, which is delightful. And she talks about that. And in our interview, which you'll hear next week, so please do subscribe to the channel.

Starting point is 00:35:27 and hit the like button if you like conversations like we're having with Jim today. You'll definitely like Nicole's interview about her book next week. It's just funny that you mentioned it because we did talk about that. And it's sort of like what I say about string theory. You know, string theory is the best theory ever made to describe the properties and possibilities of string theory. And it seems like quantum computers are really good as Feynman predicted at like unraveling how quantum computers work and how Lagrangians work. But in my field, you know, cosmology, we hear about the multiverse. I even had on David Chalmers.

Starting point is 00:35:58 I talked about the simulation hypothesis. Are these things that physicists use to generate, you know, clicks and eyeball? I certainly do that, by the way. I mean, this episode will be called, you know, Jim Al-Cla tells all in a way that he's never told it before. COVID-free and loving it. COVID was a 5G ruse. No, no, I'm not going to do that. Don't worry.

Starting point is 00:36:20 But in reality, you know, we kind of do, you know, there's a universe running backwards in time. I just saw in the Guardian last week. To what extent does that, is that playful, it's in good fun, or can it really detract from the public support? They find out, like, well, didn't you guys claim neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light? That appeared on page one of the New York Times. The retraction appears on page, you know, this B-17 on the weekend edition six months later. So what responsibility do we have?

Starting point is 00:36:46 I've said we should have a PR budget. I'm fully aware, we should have a PR budget, but we should have a retraction budget as well. Like, how do you deal with the self-correcting essence of science? Would you touch upon so heavily in this book? Science is self-correcting. It's often wrong. Never in doubt, maybe. But how do we correct in a way that shows the public that we're honest?

Starting point is 00:37:07 Yeah, it's difficult when it comes to subjects that, you know, the sexier parts of science, things like, you know, cosmology or particle physics or advances in genetics or artificial intelligence. Because, you know, the media and journalists, even if they're good science journalists, they want the headlines, they want the clicks, they want to infuse, and they don't care if, you know, as you say, you know, a month or two down the line, it turns out that that was just wrong.

Starting point is 00:37:33 You know, it's too late. You know, you've got people excited. In some respects, I think it's good to infuse the wider public with the excitement of science. You know, it happened back when the large Hadron Collider was turned on and then the run-up to it, you know, people say, oh, you turn on, this particle,

Starting point is 00:37:52 We're selling so much energy. You're going to create a black hole that's going to swallow up the earth. And a lot of my colleagues were horrified by that. That's bad science. Well, yeah, it's bad science. But you've got people in bars talking about particle physics, but you then have to follow it up, right? You have to follow up to make sure that people's expectations of what science is going to deliver are realistic. These are exciting things.

Starting point is 00:38:19 they're, you know, fizzing our imagination, but that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, they are correct because you're right, you know, because then if, you know, a few months down the line and say, oh, no, no, you know, we thought there was a, there was inflation and there isn't, or we thought there were parallel universes and that, well, you know, what do we believe? So we've got to, in explaining the excitement and the coolness of some of the science that we do, we also have to explain how we do science. Part of that is to say that, look, this is a hypothesis. You know, we don't know, we haven't tested it.

Starting point is 00:38:55 You know, string theory is very neat and powerful maths. That doesn't mean that, you know, there are 10 dimensions of vibrators that may turn out to be wrong. Is it science? Yes, it's still science. You know, cosmology and multiverse, even if something isn't testable, doesn't mean it's metaphysics or philosophy or theology. it's still part of science. It's just we haven't figured out how to test it yet, right?

Starting point is 00:39:19 I'm more optimistic in that way. One day we might be able to say whether spring theory is right or wrong. But until then, it's nice math. Yeah, and if you say something is settled science, that to me closes off the possibility that a young, you know, Alberta Einstein will come along and solve this great problem that you actually were wrong about, but you didn't know it because you felt... That's a much better outcome.

Starting point is 00:39:41 You know, we didn't want the Higgs boson to be discovered, right? Because that other meant new physics to be. Oh, okay. It's there after all. Tick that box. Yeah, I mean, the experimentalist wanted it to be there. Oh, yeah. Listen, if you've spent 20 years building the largest particle accelerator in the world,

Starting point is 00:39:57 yeah, you want to find something. Speaking of which, I'm going to have Frank Close on soon. Oh, wow. A good friend of mine. Yes, yes. He wrote a great new book called Elusive about Peter Higgs, kind of a bio of him, scientific, but also popular bio of him. So one of the delightful chapters that I,

Starting point is 00:40:14 I really loved, is entitled, Chapter 7 is entitled, Don't Be Afraid to Change Your Mind. I want to ask you, Jim, what have you changed your mind about? In my area of research, so I started off, I don't work so much in nuclear reaction theory now, but I started my PhD was into studying, modeling nuclear reactions. And I remember looking at particular type of atomic nucleus and how the protons and neutrons are arranged. and I had developed a model to calculate cross-sections, so the chances that a particle hitting another

Starting point is 00:40:47 was going to bounce off at a certain angle. And I developed a model, published papers on it, and then realized that what I was doing wasn't the complete picture. And I remember having a running battle with a rival group of researchers, and so we'd like stand up in conferences and, you know, I can ask this question. And I think both of us realized, that the other guy was also right and that somehow we had to find a compromise. And so, you know, you do that in science.

Starting point is 00:41:19 You have a view, an idea, or you develop a theory, you publish papers. You have to be prepared to admit at some point that that is not, you know, the end of the story, that you may have an incomplete picture. More recently, I don't like admitting this, but I hated the many worlds interpretation, the Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics, one of the ways of explaining what is going on in the quantum world, I reluctantly, I blame people like Sean Carroll because they are so persuasive.

Starting point is 00:41:54 But I have to admit that I'm sort of thinking, yeah, it is quite appealing. I'm not as against many worlds as I used to be. And I'm saying this publicly now maybe for the first time, So I may live to regret my words. But yeah, you have to be prepared. That's what science is about. It's not about holding on to a cherished idea or view or ideology. That's why it's different from politics or religion.

Starting point is 00:42:23 In science, it's about the way the world is. And if someone tells you it's not the way you thought it was, you have to accept that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we're coming close to the end of year, a lot of time. and I have a few more questions for myself that I'll wrap up with. But I want to answer at least a few audience questions. And we're starting with one from a young, very shy, very unknown scientist by the name of Sabina Hasenfelder, who endorsed your book, your lovely book,

Starting point is 00:42:54 and Blair, along with she's a past guest, an upcoming guest for her new book, Existential Physics. Subscribe if you want to catch that episode. That'll be a live in-person episode, not live, but it'll be in person. And then one of my best friends, Sylvester James Gates, the Brown University, blurbed it as well. But Subina asked the following question, what's the most exciting area of physics? So it's kind of the contrapos to the what's the biggest hype. She wants to know what do you think is the most exciting area of physics or science. It could be all of science.

Starting point is 00:43:22 Well, it depends on what the most exciting area for me or the most exciting area that I think other people think is. For you. For me, well, for me, for me, I mean, I, you know, when people look for a theory of everything, working in quantum gravity, they're trying to unify two of the big pictures in physics. You know, the quantum mechanics that describes the world of the very small and general relativity describing the world the cosmic scale. And as we know, you know, they're struggling to find the correct picture, whether it's string theory or loop quantum gravity or some other idea.

Starting point is 00:43:56 For me, what is exciting is unifying quantum mechanics with... So for me, the most exciting thing is this new area of quantum thermodynamics. And that is so appropriate because, as I say, next week, Nicole Younger-Halpern is on discussing quantum... Exactly that. Yeah. Thank you for shutting me up. That's wonderful. There you go.

Starting point is 00:44:19 In quantum information theory, quantum thermodynamics, the far-form equilibrium, statistical mechanics, all those ideas to do with things like the nature of time itself, I find is the most exciting. You know, where does the arrow of time come from? Where does the irreversibility of time come from when down at the quantum world, even and indeed in the Newtonian world, the equations are reversible in time. So where does that direction and time come from? Exists in thermodynamics, it points in the direction of increasing entropy, increasing disorder.

Starting point is 00:44:52 How does that link in with quantumics? So for me, what's exciting is trying to blend together, mesh together, quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. There are people who've spent years thinking about this. I'm sort of coming to it quite green. But I've bought the textbooks. I've started reading the papers. I've got a couple of postdocs working on it. That's what's giving me a buzz at the moment.

Starting point is 00:45:15 Okay. This is a question from my YouTube channel. So a reminder, you can ask questions of all my guests on my YouTube channel, which is Dr. Brian Keating. And this one is from Nicholas Paulson. It's more of a statement. And he says, don't miss the book called The Science of Joy by Jim's brother, Jim acetylily, acetyl.

Starting point is 00:45:35 Acetyl. Not al-cali. I didn't know you had a brother. I didn't know. Nor did I know that he'd written a book so similar entitled to mine. And he's an alkaline. He's an acid. That's the guy. So the last question from the audience from my friend who goes by the moniker, memes of destruction,

Starting point is 00:45:53 which I was actually going to choose. for one of my kids' names. He says, I keep hearing about an anti-universe. Might this or some hidden phenomenon help explain the similarity between gravity and electromagnetism? Can an anti-universe, maybe this universe that runs backwards in time,

Starting point is 00:46:10 could that somehow explain equational simplicity or similarity between Maxwell's equations and Einstein's equations? I don't really know. Well, I don't know. I mean, it's difficult to say what is the similarity

Starting point is 00:46:21 between Maxwell's equations or Einstein's equations, other than the fact that we can describe them both in terms of fields. You know, we have a gravitational field, we have electromagnetic field. But the whole difficulty in finding a theory of quantum gravity is unifying quantum field theory, which encompasses the electromagnetic force with general relativity, which is gravity. So the problem in modern physics is how gravity and electromagnetism come together.

Starting point is 00:46:49 Now, Einstein was working towards this, but he wasn't working, he wasn't doing it. at a quantum level, you know, the idea that there are ideas back in the early 20th century due to Kaluza and Klein, suggesting that, you know, there is a connection between gravity and electromagnetism and you need another dimension to bring them together. But the notion that an anti-universe, I don't even know what an anti-universe means, a universe made of antimatter, or is it a universe running backwards in time? Yeah. They're interesting ideas, but I think there are too many concepts that we're trying to sort of put together logically here to make any sense of. Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer

Starting point is 00:47:34 cookouts with the next grill for burner gas grill on special buy for only $199 and entertain all season with the Hampton Bay West Grove seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $49. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. While supplies last, price in valid May 14th or May 27th. US only exclusions apply. See Home Depot.com slash price match for details. Okay. And we're going to now ask him the patented trademark thrilling three final questions

Starting point is 00:48:07 of existential reality, requiring Jim to look into his crystal wall and predict the future in two of the three questions. And the first one, Jim, has to do with what's known as an ethical will, not a material will, where you bequeath the BBC donations and some of your many chairs that you own there to some needy cause.

Starting point is 00:48:26 But instead, what ethical wisdom or knowledge would you like to impart to future generations when you spring forth this mortal coil, as the Bard said, at the biblical age of 120? Ah, well, I mean, you know, so you come from a Jewish background, my parents, my father's a Muslim, my mother's a Christian.

Starting point is 00:48:45 So it's sort of crazy mixed up in terms of Abrahamic religions here. But I'm a humanist. And in a sense, that can mean lots of things for different people. But what I would say is that what I would like humanity to be thinking is have compassion, have kindness, show empathy, not because you feel you should or because you're ordered to or because a holy book tells you to, although, yeah, that's fine, you can do. but because it defines you as a human being.

Starting point is 00:49:21 So for me, you know, being kind is because I want to be kind, being compassionate and showing empathy. That defines what I. So I'd like people to do that not because, you know, I want to go to heaven or because I don't want God to punish me if I'm not, but because it defines your humanity. It's kind of like the sort of self-interested, but in a beautiful way that you put the reason you do science in the main conversation that we had. it's not only good for others, but it's good for you too.

Starting point is 00:49:49 I love that answer. Thank you. Now, the next one, we're going to go deep into the future, and you know the movie 2001 Space Odyssey. There are these monoliths with sort of primates that discover them and try to hit it with a bone or whatever. We don't really know what they are, and they're sort of like sentinels, or they time capsules, or they watchers, as Paul Davies has said, or something like that, as possible lurkers.

Starting point is 00:50:12 But I want to know if you had access to a billion-year lasting time caps. What would you put on it or in it to summarize the joy, but also the knowledge that we've acquired as scientists in this brief span of human existence? This was a difficult one. I know, you know, Richard Feynman said, you know, I would just tell the world everything's made of atoms, right? And like from that piece of information, he hopes we could build up all our knowledge. That's too simple. I think you need more than that. but I don't want to sort of be putting in a stack of physics textbooks either.

Starting point is 00:50:47 That's sort of a bit a bit boring. I'm far too modest to suggest I put any of my books in a capsule. But a book that I find profound and beautiful is actually a book by, you know, our hero Albert Einstein. He wrote the special and general theory that this man here. He wrote the general and special. special theory of relativity. He wrote it in German in 1916. So it was very, very soon within a few months of publishing his general theory of relativity. And then it got translated into English. And it's a beautiful little,

Starting point is 00:51:21 it's, it's a, it's a popular science book. Yeah. But it contains some absolutely profound ideas. He kept adding appendices at the end of the book and in which he explained the nature of space and time and gravity and so on. I think something simple like that from which we can determine, you know, the nature space and time is timeless. And I mean, I don't think we, you know, we may, we may advance on Einstein's theory of relativity one day. We may go beyond it to something more sophisticated, but that doesn't make it wrong. So Einstein's little book on relativity is what I would requite.

Starting point is 00:51:55 I just saw that it came up. You're in luck, Jim, because I saw the original signed edition just came up for sale in German for a mere 20,000 pounds. So if you want, you can take some of your material will. No, I'm just kidding. I'll have a Christmas present from you. You can get everything. You're a half-Muslim, half-Christian.

Starting point is 00:52:14 I was an altar boy in the Catholic Church. Yeah, we can do everything together. We're one, two-man ecumenical, you know, collaboration. Okay, last question, because I want to be respectful of your time. Last question involves Sir Arthur C. Clark's so-called third law. By the way, do you know his first law is pretty famous? Any sufficiently advanced technology is it in his things over magic? Right.

Starting point is 00:52:35 His second law, I love to drop on my department chair from time. time to time and it goes like this. For every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert. So these, you're really good with those mojoust. But his third law says the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. The original name of this podcast. I'm going to ask you, Jim, as a 20 year old, 30 year old, you go back in time through your time teleportation device. What do you tell 20 year old Jim to do, to give him the courage to do as you've done to go into the impossible? I think it will be the advice that I don't need to be so concerned about not knowing as much as everyone around me.

Starting point is 00:53:16 You know, when you're starting off, you know, as a young scientist, you feel somehow that there's so much I don't know. I'm maybe I'm not smart enough. Maybe I'm not working hard enough. I realize now that I can't know everything. And, you know, if I wanted to, if I could go back in time and, and, and because, an expert in an area that I know nothing much about now, I could. But the brain is finite. You know, we know what we know, we learn what we can. And it's okay not to know everything. It's okay not to have all the answers, is probably my advice. Yeah, as I put it to Barry Barish when he came on a couple of years ago, he said he had the imposter syndrome, which you talk about in the book, The Joy of Science, when he saw this guy's

Starting point is 00:54:00 name in the ledger that he signed to get his Nobel Prize, you have to sign his ledger. and he looked back and said, I'm not worthy. I said, Barry, did you know that Einstein held Isaac Newton in the highest regard? And Einstein had the imposter syndrome about Newton, who he said did more for human culture than any human before or since. And then I said, Barry, there's a top off to the story. Guess who? Isaac Newton felt the imposter syndrome about. And he said, who?

Starting point is 00:54:25 And he said, Jesus Christ Almighty. Isaac Newton lived in eternal shame that he never lived up to the ideals of the great. Everyone, everyone suffers. Everyone suffers from imposter syndrome. It's been a joy talking to you. You're one of my favorite people. This is one of the reasons I got into doing this podcast. I hope we can meet in person someday, either here in America, in California, maybe, during a winter or over there across the pond. Have a great rest of your day and feel better, too. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Starting point is 00:54:54 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I have also a YouTube channel, Dr. Brian Keating. And I have an email sign-up lease that you can get my Monday magic messages twice a month. I send out a memory and appearance, something that's genius, some beautiful image or idea. And, of course, I share the conversations that you can find in video format. I also do on my YouTube channel, Dr. Brian Keating, you can find explainer videos about things like the origin of magnetic fields, the way that light can come together to produce matter, pure energy, producing pure matter. It's really fascinating. If I don't say so myself.

Starting point is 00:55:35 But really, it's to really hook you into this world of science to answer the questions that you have. So check out my YouTube channel, Dr. Brian Keating. Sign up for my email list. It's easy to subscribe to easy to leave. And leave me a review if you can at Apple Podcast. Spotify now allows you to leave a certain number of stars. I hope it will also be an asterism, no smaller than five stars. And I tremendously appreciate all the love and support that you guys have.

Starting point is 00:56:01 And I hope I am sharing it back, returning it to you. So for now, Dr. Brian Keating, signing. Thank you so much for going into The Impossible. All. Pay off your home. Travel for life. Drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly

Starting point is 00:56:25 Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino and San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at Yamava.com must be 21-20.

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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Jim Al-Khalili Why I Love the Life Scientific! (#223)

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