Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Part of 1 of 2 – Lawrence Krauss: The Physics of Everything (#170)

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

Lawrence Krauss is an internationally known theoretical physicist and bestselling author, as well as being an acclaimed lecturer. He is currently President of The Origins Project Foundation, and host of The Origins Podcast, His wide research interests have focused on the interface between elementary particle physics and cosmology, including the origin and evolution of the Universe and the fundamental structure of matter. Among his numerous important scientific contributions was the proposal, in 1995, that most of the energy of the Universe resided in empty space. Krauss previously served as Director of Arizona State University's Origins Project, and Foundation Professor for a decade from 2008-2018, and also as Chair of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists from 2006-2018. Prof. Krauss has held endowed professorships and distinguished research appointments at institutions including Harvard University, Yale University, University of Chicago, Boston University, University of Zurich, University of California at Santa Barbara, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), Case Western Reserve University, Australian National University, Arizona State University, and New College of Humanities. In 2008 he created and served for a decade as Inaugural Director of the Origins Project, a national center for research and outreach on origins issues. He has written over 500 publications and 10 popular books, including the international best-sellers, The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing. Among his numerous awards are included the three major awards from all 3 US physics societies and the 2012 Public Service Award from the National Science Board for his contributions to the public understanding of science. Support our Sponsor LinkedIn Jobs! Use this link to post your first job ad for FREE LinkedIn.com/impossiblebiOptimizers for better sleep https://magbreakthrough.com/impossible Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating And please join my mailing list to get resources and enter giveaways to win a FREE copy of my book (and more) http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 📝 🎥 🎥 Watch my most popular videos🎥 🎥 Frank Wilczek https://youtu.be/3z8RqKMQHe0?sub_confirmation=1 Weinstein and Wolfram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI0AZ4Y4Ip4?sub_confirmation=1 Sheldon Glashow: https://youtu.be/a0_iaWgxQtA?sub_confirmation=1 Michael Saylor The Physics of Bitcoin https://youtu.be/CaN_CDKqXOg?sub_confirmation=1 Sir Roger Penrose, Nobel Prize winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMuqyAvX7Wo?sub_confirmation=1 🏄‍♂️ Find me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔥 Find me on Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating 📖 Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA 🔔 Subscribe for more great content https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 ✍️Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 📧Join my mailing list: http://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 👪Join my Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/losingthenobelprize 🎙️Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-impossible/id1169885840?mt=2 🎙️Listen on all other platforms: https://wavve.link/into A production of http://imagination.ucsd.edu/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I want to ask you about the very title of your book and the idea of something from nothing. You are telling us that matter arose spontaneously out of nothing, which I find an immensely exciting idea, but many people will find it mind-boggling. Mind-boggling and offensive. I think maybe not as offensive as... I'm to hell with offensive, but mind-boggling... No, no, no. Well, you're not offended, but I've... Check my email. It amazes me because the purpose of the book, to some extent, is to say something remarkable.

And you were kind enough in the afterward to point out the analogy to Darwin, and I was a pretentious to make it perhaps. But the physicist, Stephen Weinberg said, science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God. It just makes it possible to not believe in God. Because until you have science, everything's a miracle. And what Darwin showed, as you said at the beginning of our discussion, is this miracle is actually plausible from basic principles of physics, chemistry, and biology, that you can produce us without a creator. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Of today's guest, Dr. Lawrence Krauss, author of so many books to read their titles would take us to the end of the podcast. Of course, this is the number one New York Times bestselling, a universe from nothing.

He's written the physics of Star Trek. And he's also written the physics of climate change. So this episode is just called The Physics of Lawrence. And I want to welcome you to my podcast. It's been three presidential administrations since we were together, but it's good to see you. It's really good to see you. I'm sorry in a way that we're not together in real life and just virtually. But hopefully that'll change one day too.

Yeah, you were so kind to speak at the math firm. America, Simon's Foundation-supported project in 2012, and that's when we were last together here in UC San Diego. And in that time, a lot has happened, as I said, including, you know, multiple presidential administrations. So actually the first question I want to ask you today, Lawrence, is that I thought that you said you would move to Canada if Donald Trump got reelected. But you're there now, and the president is Joe Biden. What gives? It's just, you know, time lag. It's the country he helped create.

But I also said, just to make it quite clear that I'm obviously not a man of my word, I also said I'd move to Canada if George W. Bush was elected. And I did fly to Canada right the day after that election, but I didn't stay. But it takes some time to become an expatriate. And in any case, I'd like to think that. you know better late than never right right so uh the the books that we're going to talk about today of course we are going to talk about a universe from nothing multiverse string theory uh your vocal uh you know exponent proponent of scientific reasoning uh scientific thinking you are the proprietor

of the origins uh podcast and the origins project foundation which has had many many speakers some of whom i poached so thank you uh laurence for giving me the idea to get shelly glass on and get Noam Chomsky on my podcast, and they're very delightful, and we get to cover different aspects of their personalities. But I do want to start with a universe from nothing, which is subtitle, why is there something rather than nothing? And I'm also going to talk about your previous book. I was about to say penultimate book, but I think you're so productive. You're probably writing with your hands right now, another book. But this book was sort of with a forward by, or an afterward by Richard Dawkins. It's very surprising.

to me, Lawrence, again, that someone who is so well known in the humanist or atheist sort of community that you have a dog named after the prince of the tribe of priests of the Israelites tribes. You have a dog named Levi. Is that correct? I don't know if I can do this. I'm going to try. Oh, my gosh. We're seeing a Levite. Yeah, you're seeing a Levite right there out of focus. There he is. There he is.

And he appreciates the shout out that you just gave him. So why does the world's foremost or second foremost after Richard Dawkins, your friend, why does the most prominent, one of the most prominent atheists have a dog named after the tribes of Israel? Well, I can give you two answers. I don't know if any of them are true. But the first answer is that I didn't choose the name. Okay. But the second answer is, his name is Levi Krauss, right?

So now, now you get it. Okay. That's right. Well, he's got good genes. Yeah, exactly. You know, one of my dogs doesn't behave properly, and we always say, you know, it's bad genes, but then we have to put him. I have a third answer, too. I just occurred to me.

His mother was Jewish. That's right. Well, you know, the Levites in the temple service would, they were, of course, very powerful, but they were subservient to the Kohanim, the Kohane's, the people that you meet Cohen or Kagan and people like that. And they would have to wash their overlords feet. That was part of their service. So I hope Levi, your dog, will do the same to his owner. He would be very happy to wash my feet.

He would be happy. He licks them, actually. There you go. So I want to turn now to books because you are a prolific author. And actually, the first time we almost met, we had a close encounter of the Cleveland kind. In 1993, I graduated from Case Western Reserve University. And that was a year you became chairman of the physics department. And so I think we just missed by a couple of weeks.

But at the graduation, the previous chair, who I can't remember who it was, he gave all the graduates. There were only 13 of us. It's a great school. It remains a great school. But he gave all of us physics majors a copy of Stephen Weinberg's dreams of a final theory, which could not have come at worst timing because, of course, later that year, the superconducting supercollateral, which Stephen was advocating for and agitating when it was canceled. I want to ask you about books.

I heard you say once that you were turned on to what we call popular science by a man that I'm very fond of. and I actually have him incarnate or perhaps in miniature form. I have a lot of puppets, Lawrence. Maybe someday you'll have a puppet. By this man here. You see this guy? You recognize this guy? That could be Galileo, I'm not sure.

It is Galileo. Yeah. It's a telescope. You see, that gave it away. Yeah. Well, I didn't know if it was a snake he was holding, but I assumed it was a telescope. I actually have a lot of— I'm a big fan of Galileo's, by the way.

He had a great sense of humor. So tell me about that. I'm actually record—I've taken upon myself with the help of Carlo Rovelli to make the first. ever audio book version of the dialogues. It's never been done before in human history. So Carlo, myself and a good friend of mine, Lucio Piccerillo, are recording the first ever audio book of any of Galileo's books. In Italian? What's that? In Italian? Yeah, I see. See. No, no, I'm not doing it at Italian. Well, they're English. The other two sounded like they're

Italian, so I figured maybe you could do that. Carlo Revelli, of course, is a renowned author, a thinker, advocate of loop quantum gravity. We're going to get into all that. But let's get back to Galileo. Gallo means so much to me because he really was the first scientist. He was a popular author. And Stephen Jay Gould, in the book that I tried to get an audio version of and found to my chagrin, it didn't exist and then had to make it myself, Stephen Jay Gould called him one of the greatest writers of nonfiction in human history. I mean, superior to new. I've said, and you may have, if you've read things I've said, I've said many times that it upsets me that we have these great books programs at universities and you have to. read Ulysses, but you don't have to read the dialogues. The dialogues are easier to read and funnier, certainly, I would think. Oh, yeah. And yeah, so Galilee was a role model in many ways, but, but, but, but what, what, uh, probably, well, the reason, I read about him, a book, not by him, but I read a book about him and I was 11 or 12 for, in grade, in grade six, I think. And it was probably recommended

in school, I was in some enrichment program. And it really had a huge impact on me because it made me think, and I've since discovered this isn't true, but it made me think of scientists as brave individuals fighting for truth and willing to confront obviously pseudoscience, superstition, whatever. And so that brave effort of his really, really resonated with me. I remember at the time thinking that. but also the notion of being the first one, you know, to see the moons of Jupiter and, and changing obviously the way we think about the world.

And in fact, one of my books, Fear of Physics, really begins with Galileo in an important way. Because really, I mean, he changed everything in such an important way. We don't really give him credit. And one of the things that when I've taught, over the years, I've taught many courses, standardly called Physics for Poets courses in universities. When I taught at Yale, which is where I taught right before I went to become chair at Case Western, I sort of changed it to physics for lawyers because I'd met a lot of pre-law students, but I'd never met any poets in any of the classes that I taught.

But I always made a point of requiring them to read Galileo because it's readable. And the utility of using the Socratic method, which he does, and with humor, but also pedagogically, there's a lot of evidence that the only way to really learn something is to confront your own misconceptions. And that's precisely the way more or less he teaches things. And he had great thought experiments well before Einstein. He would have had the Italian version of Goduncan experiments. And they're great.

And they're wonderful ways of realizing your own misconceptions. And I've used them once. I was once in another life lecturing before many leaders of the free world, it turned out. And I asked them, you know, I had a piece of paper and a book and I asked which would, which it hit the ground first. And of course, they all said the book, but then I did the standard thing, which I'd do with class A, why? And of course, many of them would say books heavier.

And then I, you know, and then I scrunched up the paper into a ball and, and, and that drop. and that was shocking them, but it was really a version of what Galeo did. And so his pedagogy was great. But as a scientist, he really was, I used to say he was the father of modern science. But then I actually read a piece by his father, who was a musician, by the way. Yeah. And it's a great discussion of the nature of truth and empirical evidence. And I kind of realize, well, it's clear why Galeo grew up to be the way he was.

his father was a passionate advocate for truth and evidence. And so I like to think of Galais' father as the father of modern science, since Galais was the first modern scientist. That's right. That's his heritage, his legacy of that. Yes, his father was a musician, and then he would use things like tempo and so forth, later on influencing him to take his pulse to use that. So he timed.

And I don't know if you've been, you probably have that. You've probably been to the museum in Florence, science, which I find, frankly, much more fascinating than all the other art museums in Florence. I find that museum is science. And when you go to Florence and it's busy, because you can't get into the art museums, you can always get into the Museum of Science. And not only see Galli's finger, but see the actually instruments that he used to discover the laws of motion and change the way we think about the world in a way that in some ways was nothing more profound than what maybe what anyone else did. But the rest of modern science was impossible without what, without

Galileo. And Newton, basically, Newton, you know, Newton's first law, at least, is just sort of a natural extension of what Galileo did. And so Newton was lucky. I mean, Newton was amazing, but certainly lucky to be born a generation or two after Galileo. Yeah, yeah, he took the mantle on, I think, on the year that Galileo died, right? Yeah. He was born on Christmas Day, at least, everyone always says that, Lawrence, but they don't realize that the Gagorean calendar changed. So it's actually, I think he was born on what we would call January 4th or something. But I want to read a passage from Cedarius Nunchius, which I think is the book that with the aid of the telescopic lever figuratively move the earth more than any other scientific instrument, more than the

large Hadron Collider, more than LIGO. And I want to read it, and I want to particular pay attention to the second half of this passage. So Galileo says in Cedarius Nuncius, the story messenger, he says, with the aid of the spyglass, the universe may be observed so well that all the discharges. that for so many generations have vexed philosophers are destroyed by visible certainty, and we are liberated from their wordy arguments. You're no fan of philosophers, if I recall correctly.

It's a bad rap. I get accused of that just for making a few jokes. Well, yeah, I want to get to that because, you know, when you spoke here, I got pushed back once, you know, for the colloquium that you gave from the string theory. you've pushed on philosophers, especially in the wake of a review by a prominent philosopher of a universe from nothing. What is this kind of, you know, of course, Galileo and Newton were considered natural philosophers, whatever that means. It's very different from what is your beef with philosophers? Look, I don't have really beef with it at all, but let me say that the difference, what made natural, I mean, science was natural philosophy.

I mean, so it grew out of philosophy, so there's no denying that. But then you can also say philosophy grew out of religion, but philosophy isn't religion and science isn't philosophy. Sure, we respect the legacy. But the fact, what he said in the story, Messenger there, just by looking through a telescope, you can destroy the debates, is a great example of the difference of the scientific method,

the whole methodology that he epitomized, and also largely created, compared to say Aristotle, who, who, no doubt was a wonderful philosopher and was. And people have made me appreciate him more than I had before, but who, but one of the things Aristotle said is that men and women have a different number of teeth. And what Galileo could have said to him and would have said to him is, why do you look in their mouths and count? And that's the difference.

Now, so look. But you know, he did do something amazing, Lawrence Aristotle. The only scientific thing I think that he did, Aristotle, that is, that wasn't wrong, is he said that whales aren't fish. Now, I don't know how the hell he did that, but he did it. But some people have also told me his, some of his biology was actually better than I'm getting credit for it. But let's not, let's not, we didn't come here to either bury or praise Aristotle. So let's get back to, um, so philosophy, we all do philosophy. And philosophy as an endeavor, which is really logical thinking, critical analysis. I mean,

it's a central part of, of all intellectual disciplines. So, so, so, let's be clear about that. What, the beef that I have is the people who's, and I don't have a beef, some philosophers, well, I don't even want to put it this way. The claim that you have to study philosophy to be able to do physics is just wrong. That's all. It's just empirically wrong. As I like to say, most physicists can't spell philosophy.

But, but it's, but, and so it's not, I mean, the more you read of any subject, the more you may appreciate your own discipline. So there's no denying that. But you simply don't have to, and most scientists don't read philosophy. Moreover, the philosophy of science, which is an interesting field. When it comes to physics, it's really irrelevant. I mean, in the sense that the questions of interest of those philosophy of science, which may be interesting intellectual questions, and I don't deny they might be, my only point is that they don't influence the progress of physics. So some of them are incredibly interesting questions, but they don't influence the progress of physics. And that's just an empirical fact.

It's not an opinion. It's just a fact. Now, the key point here, I think, is that when philosophy influences science the most is in a discipline where the questions aren't well-framed. When the questions aren't well-framed, philosophy is a wonderful discipline for helping frame good questions that drive that field forward. And a field, for example, that I would argue is maybe in such a state

is sort of has to do with brain science, consciousness, okay? What is consciousness? You know, is a question that is very usually, when you ask that, you get a vague answer at best. And so that's why there's a lot of interplay, I think, between neuroscientists and philosophers and when it comes to brain science. And I know a few philosophers who are,

Dan Dennett and others who are, who are, who are, who are interact very strong with neuroscientists. But in physics, the questions are well framed. And the questions, you know, we've, we've evolved so much since the time of Galileo that really, the field, you know, to really make progress, you have to, you have to understand the intellectual baggage of the field, which isn't philosophy. Right. And that's true. Now, what is interesting is that the results of physics can change, can then be utilized later

by not just philosophers, but other people, to change their worldview. And that's what the universe for nothing is all about. And some people object to the fact that science changes the meaning of certain things, including nothing, the word nothing. And my answer to that is, well, that's just the example of learning. I mean, and so science changes a lot when I talk, when I've debated with some Christian apologists, for example. Classical logic, maybe, useful, but when it comes to quantum mechanics, we often have to throw it out the window. It's peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speeds.

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And it's not because we want to, or we have a predilection. It's the nature is the way nature is. And so in any case, I think philosophy as a discipline is incredibly important. And I've read philosophers and they've had a great intellectual legacy and some of the work they do in their own discipline. It may be incredibly difficult and interesting. But it just doesn't impact on the field of physics. And that's not a pejorative.

That's just a fact. One of the main characters in the greatest story ever told so far, why are we here, is Plato. Yeah. He plays really an outsized role in that book, even more than the person we're going to turn to next. But I can't resist because you brought up Galileo, you brought up consciousness. Galileo was also one of the first people to tackle the problem, a hard problem of consciousness, almost to no avail. But what I love. There hasn't been much progress since in my opinion.

Exactly. But in physics, look at the comparison. So I like that ratio test that you're proposing as a rubric for at least assessing which problems can be attacked by rigorous, hard, scientific thinking and data and evidence in which ones may be forever locked away, free will, as you say, and consciousness perhaps being of two. I'm not as pessimistic. We have a long way to go, but I haven't seen any limits. Right now, I still haven't, you know, people ask what are the limits to science? How we say, well, if I knew, you know, if I knew I'd have to know what the limits. are right i mean it's just it's kind of crazy but i don't see a brick wall yet there's there

are problems that are very hard and i and i people think i'm joking when i say i've been in the stage with many biologists when i say i do physics because it's easy because it is easy compared to consciousness and and and so it's not surprising that we've made a lot more progress but i don't see an ultimate barrier to understanding it eventually and maybe you know i'm agnostic about that yeah and i want to talk about uh prospects for ai galileo or as i call him a i or galileo or galile AIO. We'll talk about that later. And if computers are even capable of doing such things as Galileo or Einstein did, we'll get to that later. But last part, last direct reading from Galileo, because they can't resist, really involves what's very little known about it. He also was a great, you know, observer of the human condition. And I believe he came up with what's known as the Dunning Kruger effect, which will segue back to a universe from nothing. So what he says in Sagredo, who is the character I'm playing in dialogue, Sagrado says this, It always seems to me rashness on the part of some who want to make human abilities the measure of what nature can do. On the contrary, there is not a single effect in nature, even the least that exists, such that the most ingenious theorists, can arrive at a complete understanding of it.

In fact, this vain presumption of understanding everything, Lawrence, can have no other basis than never understanding anything. for anyone who had experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing and had truly tasted how that knowledge was accomplished, he would recognize that of the infinity of other truths, he understands nothing. I want to ask you, Lawrence, have you ever understood something that you feel was sort of as high level, a discovery that you made perhaps for the first time in human intellectual history?

once or twice let me say there are a few times I made some profound discoveries but nature didn't choose to agree with them they could have been right they weren't mathematically wrong as a theorist you know as an experimentalist

you're either right or wrong based on the experiment but as a theorist you can propose things that are perfectly consistent but nature may not you know there was a one site I was sure I had the solution of what's something called the solar neutrino problem that was beautiful but nature didn't do that But I think the one time that I really did really feel that was when I first became convinced

there was a cosmological constant and no one believed it. And spent a few years before I even convinced, I think, my colleague and co-author, Michael Turner, before we finally produced that paper in 1995 arguing that the evidence suggested that 70% of the universe was the energy of empty space. And we did it. And I must say, in some sense, it was a realization that I guess I felt that was the first one to kind of really appreciate that. But at the same time, to be fair, a large part of wanting to publish that was the decision

that I was convinced that it was a crazy possibility. But it was the only possibility to me that agreed with all the data. So what it meant to me was that some of the data was wrong. So I really wrote that to point out that, hey, some of the cosmological data must be wrong because if it isn't, you're driven to this insane possibility, and the insane possibility turned out to be right. So that's probably, for me, the most explicit example of, you know, again, if you're a theorist, you often, you go through these phases, almost like death of people, death of loved ones, in almost every stage of a, well, I mean, sometimes you're just pushing things forward a little bit,

but if you're ever proposing something particularly new, you go through the stage of love and you think, oh, this is, this could really explain things. And then it gets moderated and then generally the experiments show it's wrong or something. And so you go through this grief period as well. So I've had this hope many times that I might be the first one to understand thing. But the dark energy was probably the most concrete example of, potentially sort of being right. And that brings us to the next stage of the conversation, which we'll get into, you know,

nothingness, et cetera. And this involves the beginning, not of one of your books, but of the recent book by your debate partner, Stephen C. Meyer, who is a Christian apologist, and he has been on the show. We have talked about his new book, Return of the God Hypothesis. I'll put a link to it right over here. Don't bother. Don't do that to service to your listeners. Well, Lawrence, you know what? I actually wrote a blurb for that book, and you'll be amused why, because he sent me this book. And in it, he said, you know, I've seen your videos. And I've had some videos critical of string theory and the multiverse and stuff I hope we can get into. But he said, you know, I thought you might find this book interesting. And if you wouldn't mind considering a blurb, you know, it's got Brian Josephson, which, you know, is a controversial figure. But I thought it would be interesting to have a blur from a guy who won the Nobel Prize, right, whose name Brian. And then another blurb from a Brian who lost. I see.

I see this. But anyway. That was your rationale. Okay. Well, I was pleased to see that at least in an article he wrote afterwards that he claimed that writing that book was motivated by, in part by debate he had with me in Toronto where he was. You're the opening line. You're in the opening line of the book.

And the book goes through basically trying to make the argument from design, essentially that two different instantiations of information lead. And he is a PhD from Cambridge in philosophy of science, just just further. record. And we were talking about philosophy of science just a minute ago. But the claim that he makes is, you know, I'll leave aside the DNA, you know, that requires a mind, etc. But that the low entropy, you know, starting point of the universe leads to, you know, there aren't things in the universe that decrease entropy, according to the second law. And he goes through the board, the board, Guzke, the Lincol, there actually does a good job explaining what that is. He talks about,

you know, alternative proposals. He gets into all sorts of, all sorts of mathematical WIC rotations and he goes after Stephen Hawking and a brief history, which I've actually taken big issue with Stephen Hawking for kind of literally in that book, he says, I'm going to do a trick, don't pay attention to it. It's just a mathematical. And he does what's called a WIC rotation, which you're very familiar with. And then all of a sudden time has no boundary. Okay, so I think that's kind of nonsensical. No physics nowadays. I think he did. Stephen was an old friend of I think I know why he said that. But anyway, I won't, I won't say. And then there's also so much of so many of these books nowadays that mentioned God, et cetera, the God equation.

the God hypothesis. Anyway, what do you make of this notion of the, is it a problem that the universe seem to start, unless you apply the Alpertian, which I know you might have issues with, you know, this past hypothesis, instantiation by fiat of a low entropy state. Talk to me about what do you think of as a problem for the, in the ordinary Big Bang, Bord Goose, the Lankan boundary proposals. What do you think of it as a problem? Is it a problem or people? I think people are, first of all, I think people are. people like Stephen Meyer are trying to point out what they think are problems because they've heard people talk about problems that aren't really problems.

And by the way, I should say I've written a response to demonstrate most of his misconceptions in a, in a, in a, called Cosmology Without Design, I think, in the, in the magazine, which is a lovely magazine online called Inference. Yeah, I'll put a link to that. Edd by David Berlinski and Shelley Glashow, in fact, is the, I think, editor-in-chief of it or something. But anyway, so I tried to explain there what the misconceptions that somehow cosmology points to design was. But look, the point is that all you need is a universe that can have from some arbitrarily microscopically small region inflation, and the rest just happens naturally.

So I don't see what, I mean, concerns about the state. date before inflation are interesting. We have no evidence about them. If inflation happened, it erased the evidence largely what happened before them. And we also know we don't have a theory of T-E-E-E-E-E-E-Either. So where people start talking about problems in areas where the physics really isn't well-defined, what I say is, well, okay, that's fine. Let's talk about the physics where we can understand it. And in fact, in my book, Adam, which was his of an atom from the beginning of the universe to the end. Actually, one of my favorite books in a way.

I really began, I think it's useful to begin our history of the universe back to a time when both our theories and our empirical data allow us to reliably extrapolate. Before that, it's just pure speculation. I'm sure we can talk about it, but it's just words. And when we think about, you know, obviously a universe from nothing is making the case

for some pre-existing state of the universe. The one thing that Stephen points out, and others have pointed out too, Paul Steinhart, Einstein Professor of Natural Science at Princeton University, Neil Turrock, fellow Canadian, at least to transplant. Yeah, he's transplant. And student of Stephen Hawking, right?

This notion that you don't need a, necessarily need a singularity. You don't need to have a quantum gravity, I want to ask you, I've asked this of Lenny Susskind. I've had Sir Roger Penrose on after he won the Nobel Prize. I claim I hear this Uroboros statement, this tautological statement, which is that we need quantum gravity to understand the physics of singularities at the core of a black hole and at the origin of the universe. And then why do we need that?

Because the universe began with a singular, but there's no evidence. And as you said, the universe hides evidence of its own origin. Now, I have a vested interest in this as one of the four co-leaders. of the Simon's Observatory, looking for primordial gravitational wave beamers. My job security does depend on this, as up in Sinclair would say. And as I spent many years of my life

discussing those very gravitational waves as signals from the beginning of time. And in fact, actually, happy to say that I was asked, as you probably know, by physical letters to write the companion piece to that paper that your book, behind you is based on.

That's right. And because I was ready. And happily, head of your collaboration, you know, I add all the data in advance, and so I could do that. But anyway, look, I think the point is we do, if we avoid a singularity, which I think is most physicists would speculate is likely, since we don't like singularities, the way to avoid it is probably a theory of quantum gravity. So in my book and in my work, but in my book, I talk about what is an extremely plausible hypothesis about how, and in fact, actually one that

began with work when I was a graduate student, and then I chose not to publish it, and Alex Flanke, actually ended up just down the corner from me, published the paper at almost the same time, I was working with a friend of mine and Affleck on it. But, you know, plausibly, you can create a universe of finite size as a quantum fluctuation. And then, and then you don't know, have to, then you avoid that question, if you want, about the singularity. But you don't avoid the question of quantum gravity because the creation of such a microscopic universe, non-singular but microscopic, that process is a quantum mechanical process that involves gravity. So we can speculate about its likelihood, but we can't calculate the details, if you wish, without a theory

of quantum gravity. So you kind of need a theory of quantum gravity to either whether there's a singularity or not, to really frame the initial conditions of our universe, which is, which as physicists really, that's, I mean, more or less, once you have the initial conditions, then the rest is sort of, you know, just, it's just easy in principle. But the plausibility, the fact that we know a theory of quantum, we know that space and time are the variables of gravity. and that if gravity is quantum mechanical, those two variables become quantum mechanical. And therefore, since there are quantum fluctuations, you should be able to spontaneously create space times. That is incredibly plausible, and it's hard to imagine any theory of quantum gravity

that wouldn't have such a possibility. But that's all you can do at some level, and the rest is talk. But that's all you need to do what I did in the book, really, to point out that ultimately, the surprising thing, and this is where it's signed, I mean, the intent of that book was really to discuss the revolutions that have taken place in cosmology over the last 50 years. And also to point, and also certainly to hit at religion because after evolution, the last bastion of God was in somehow creation of the universe.

After you showed that you can have life without God, then the next people. You can have evolution without. I know, I know, I know, I know. Evolution doesn't, Darwin never talked. In fact, Darwin said we would never understand the origin of life. It would be like understanding the origin of matter. Yeah, exactly.

And I've quoted it. And we're hopefully understanding the origin of matter sometime. Yes. But the point is that that, you know, that's often held as, hey, how could you create a universe without a supernatural being? Because how could you create a universe with a hundred billion galaxies, each containing 100 billion stars? A lot of stuff, if you didn't have stuff there at the beginning. And what's worth pointing out is that that argument itself is just simply fallacious, whether or not you, the other details. As Alan

talked about from, Alan Guth talked about with inflation, you get a great free lunch. Because gravity has negative energy, you can get what apparently is something for nothing very easily. And that was a discussion I wanted to have in my book to point that out that you don't need something supernatural

to have a universe full of stuff if there was no stuff in the beginning. But why not? I think that's really profoundly surprising. It certainly was if you'd asked me, if you'd asked me in the 1970s, early 80s, I would have thought that was, I would have said that's nonsense. But anyway,

so I'm sitting in the office, as you remember from visiting here. This is the office once occupied by Jeffrey Burbage and his wife Margaret left some late great Margaret Burbage. She, one of the Titans of Astronomy of all time. She left some of these plates of, you know, from telescopes from before I was born, taken here. This is actually from, yeah, two months before I was born, 1971. Taken and and so forth. But as you know, Jeff was a major opponent of not only of inflation, but of the Big Bang itself. And in fact, he was one of the foremost proponents of the quasi-steady state universe, along with his late great colleague, Sir Fred Hoyle, who was wonderful.

Who was a titanic influence on cosmology. But he used to say things like that. And also wrote great science fiction, by the way. Wonderful books. Yeah. Yeah. He wrote once that people cosmologists, practicing cosmologists, card-carrying cosmologists, were overwhelmed, I quote, by their, in their appreciation of the Big Bang because of their love of Genesis 1-1.

And I think actually you're, you know, obviously Borgoth-Felincoln and inflation, Allen's work and Linday's work, Steinhart's work, is sort of more of a fellow traveler with the biblical narrative than is Paul Steinhart, who has, all right, I mentioned Paul Seinfeld, but I meant in his initial incarnation as one of the founding fathers of new inflation. not in his now role as one of the most prominent anti-inflation activists in such a thing could be imagined. Sad. Well, let's get into that. Because, yeah, he's the Titanic influence on cosmology and is doing really interesting

alternative work. But we'll get into that, the importance of non-mainstream voices in Cosmo. But getting back to Hoyle. Hoyle thought the Big Bang was too, was an inflation. He'd probably say the same thing. It was too much like Genesis 1-1. and we cosmologists like you, Lawrence, you're overwhelmed by Genesis. You just love Genesis.

But wouldn't an eternal universe, wouldn't that make more sense? In other words, we're in, and I give this to Stephen Meyer, where does Hilbert space come from? You know, where is an instantiation of, you know, as Sean Carroll talks about this and his talk, God is not a good theory. Yeah. So where does the Hilbert space come from? And why not travel in the camp of a cyclic model, like Sir Ronald? Well, first of all, the answer to where the silver space comes is, it's quite simple. We don't know.

We don't know if quantum mechanics arises only in our universe or if it's a universal property of nature. And we don't, and physics in some sense doesn't answer those kind of questions. But I think the answer to, well, look, first of all, it doesn't matter what people think are pretty or nice or cyclical universe is very pretty, but it doesn't really matter whether it's pretty. The question is, what is. it's farther away from God. Well, no, no, yeah. Who cares whether it's far. The point is, we shouldn't be driven by our hatred or love of God.

And as far as I know, no physicists are to first approximation. I mean, it is worth pointing out that the father of the Big Bang really was, you know, well, he was a Catholic priest. He was a priest. And Le Maitre was wonderful. But he also, when the Pope specifically said, hey, this validates Genesis, he wrote, he wrote the Pope and said, no, you don't say that because it's a scientific theory and you shouldn't abuse it.

But so sure, it is a, I mean, if there's one thing that the Catholic Church could jump up and down and say, see, we told you so, it would be that because it was the conventional wisdom in science before 19, well, certainly 1925, say, or even before 1925, that the universe was static and eternal. That was a scientific view. And probably specifically because it wasn't Genesis. I mean, among other things, there was no evidence of anything, of any evolution of the universe. And then the Big Bang was discovered, and it demonstrated that our universe had a beginning, most likely. And the Catholic Church could rightly jump up and down and say, see, we told you so.

But of course, one is just vague words, one is reality, one's got stupid stories associated with, one's got empirical evidence. But I think the bottom line is that no one, what we've grown up to realize that our universe is not all there is, most likely. And therefore to say that our universe at a beginning is not to suggest, what really matters now is the multiverse. That could be eternal if you don't like it. But I like, but for me, what I like better is an argument that Stephen Hawking gave. And so the same thing. Let's say our universe is all there is.

Space and time are coupled. If space comes into existence, then time comes into existence. So there was no time before the Big Bang. And the question, what happened before the Big Bang is simply not a good question. The whole question of causality and everything else goes out the window, because if there is no before, then the traditional notions of causality and inference that, of course, apologists and others love to jump on, is a wrong question. It's like, you know, as Richard said, I think in my book, I don't know what it's somewhere.

What's the color of jealousy, although we know that's green. But so I think the point is I love the realization that we may have to just change our notions of sort of causality itself if time began with the Big Bang because there was no before. And then, and, you know, I love the idea that we're forced to change our notions. But I suspect more likely is that our universe had a beginning in a, in the midst of, of, of, something, from which some universes are beginning right now and some universes are ending, which is a multiverse. Everything I know about theoretical physics right now suggests to me that's the most likely possibility. But I'm not wedded to it. But by the way, I, some people would say, of course, you can't measure your multiverse, but the wonderful thing,

And I wrote a paper pointing this out, and then another one, paper with my friend Frank Wilczek about this, that if we did measure gravitational waste from inflation, it would demonstrate that gravity is a quantum theory, but it will also, in some ways, give us a way of proving that there is a multiverse. Well, I want to get into that because I read that paper, and I've had Frank on to discuss that paper, not in the past year. But in fact, I don't fully understand the quantal nature. You know, one of my professors there, Professor Eck at Case Western, you might remember the late.

Tom Eck, of course, yeah. Yeah, Tom Eck. He was his boss for a while. Yeah, so he used to talk about, you know, we say classical physics, so we should say quantum physical physics. Anyway, getting into that, in what, when I think about a quantum mechanical experiment, you know, all the time, we're going to talk about why there's so many theorists writing, you know, popularizations of science, but not as many experimentalists. But whenever I hear a theorist talk about it, it's always spooky action at a distance, like what constitutes the, quantum to a theorist like you is, you know, spooky action in a distance or it's entanglement, or it is the double-slid experiment in the many worlds and things split up. Anyway, how would

Bicep 2 in the counterfactual universe where, you know, my book is winning the double prize, how in such a universe does the detection of a classical gravitational wave manifest the imprimatur of a quantum process to 381,000 years earlier. Well, because, okay, if it's a scale invariant spectrum, then there's only one dimensional parameter that determines the intensity, if you wish, of gravitational waves. And that's, in some sense, the energy scale at which they're created, okay? and what we showed, I mean, I showed in explicit calculation, and then when I talked to Frank about it,

we came up with a dimensional analysis argument, which is really, really wonderful, which basically shows that given, it's just given that the only dimensional parameter is the scale of inflation, if you want to call it that, but the scale at which the scale invariant spectrum is created, you can show that that spectrum, the power in that spectrum, vanishes in the limit where the Planck's constant vanishes. And so, you know, you can jump up and down and talk about spooky action, a distance, and everything else. But the point is that the finite, all of it comes down to the fact that Planck's constant,

the fundamental constant of quantum mechanics is a finite number. it affects the energy levels of atoms. It really demonstrates the quantum nature of matter and energy, or the initial version, which is that all states are quantized in energy levels. And if H-bar, if the Plains Council went to zero, then atoms would have a continuum of levels instead of a finite spectrum.

And it turns out, and I can show in the blackboard pretty easily, but probably not here at the right time, but sometime I'll come there and show you. Yeah. By simple, literally undergraduate level dimensional analysis, that given the dimensional, and it has to be a scale and variance spectrum for this to be the case, by the way, that you can show that that vanishes. No matter how it's calculated, it will vanish in the limit where quantum mechanics goes away. So if it's there, then, then, and it's a gravitational process, then gravity must be governed by quantum mechanics.

And would the same hold true, you know, if I tell you I've got Johnson noise, stochastic scale invariant, I detect it in my radio receiver from the, the dimensions are different. Okay. Sorry, I shouldn't interrupt, but I know, I think I know where you're heading. And the point is, it turns out the unique, it just, you have to know that there's only two quantities. I should say there's, there's not one dimensional quantity.

If it's a gravitational process, there's another dimensional quantity, which is, which is the gravitational constant, Newton's constant. And Newton's constant has dimensions. That's what makes it different than electromagnetism. And when you say the only two-dimensional quantities are Newton's constant, which tells you the strength of gravity, and the scale at which this thing is produced, when you combine them, you show it vanishes unless in the classical limit. But that's not true for electromagnetism. It's not true for that same dimensional analysis counting doesn't work. Yeah, I wonder, yeah, I wonder, though, if I'm wrong, actually. Because to get the mode counting correctly in the Blackbody case,

you do need to actually include the phase factor for including Planck's constant. But I guess the inference I was trying to make is if you detect a classical wave, you know, but your point is that it's a background and stochastic. It has to have those two features. It's actually, yeah. Yeah, it has to be not just as, yeah, yeah, exactly. For example, we've detected classical gravitational gravitational waves from from colliding black black holes, but in no way that does that in any way prove that gravity is a quantum theory.

It's a very different kind of argument. Right. And then the only other response I would get is that, as you know, because you worked on this for decades, that there is so-called second order tensor perturbation. Anytime I had Alan Lightman on this week, and I told him, my favorite of all his books is a problem book in gravity and general relativity. So we talked about that for an hour. No, no, we didn't do that.

That would be a completely way. But I said there's a problem in there in chapter three where he's talking. about on the Massachusetts Turnpike, where you probably spent many hours of your life, a motorist is shaking his fist at another motorist and how much gravitational wave energy does he produce? And I said, well, but I'm saying to you now, rather, that the early universe, even in the bouncing cosmological models, has a vast amount of matter and a vast amount of acceleration. And so there are second order tensor perturbations, which would produce. Yeah. So if we detect those, then that is, those are implicitly classical. In other words, there is no quantum

gravity in the cyclic or aeon model of Sir Roger or whatever. So I wonder, you know, would there be a way, and it would produce a background. I mean, you'd see a stochastic background of gravitational way to come the metric reverberations of second order. So I wonder, is it possible to falsify it? And maybe, maybe not, but I think this has been helpful. I think there, I've written paper, we can talk about it. I think there are ways to falsify it by looking at a few things, the ratio of density, because those second order fluctuations are related to density fluctuations. and so relating it to density fluctuations, you can try and see comparing what we would call,

and this is probably too much for any of your listeners, scalar vector and tensor perturbations, comparing them. You can, I believe, falsify it. And I've thought a lot about it. Yeah, I'd love to talk about that. Maybe we do on this channel. We also do something called Journal Club, where I have eminent scholars come and talk about deep dives into research,

because my audience is they do like to go pretty deep and stuff. And whenever I have a politician on or, you know, somebody I had the mayor of San Diego on, you know, they kind of tune out. And I loved, or the mayoral candidates. I want to ask a question about, you know, whether or not there are as a natural correlation, and perhaps you're surprisingly aberrant in the sense that most of the supporters of the multiverse or fellow traveling along with string theory. And you are a very, very prominent, you know, kind of outspoken, you know, critic of string theory and what it might mean. Again, you see, you see, I get labeled. Well, I get labeled many things. We talked about this on Clubhouse once. No, no, I know, but I'm a critic of hype is what I'm a critic when it comes to sign.

So I was a critic of the hype associated with string theory. I wrote a whole book called Hiding in the Mirror, which is really about the search for extra dimensions. And it explains why string theory is very well motivated. So as a fundamental area of physics, it's very well motivated. I happen to think probably more than loop quantum gravity, but it's the hype. It's the fact that it's this interesting idea that was claimed to be able to tell us everything and it's told us virtually nothing, except providing an incredible amount useful mathematical tools to apply to other physical systems.

Yeah. Actually, I want to turn to that because you're really. friend Stephen Hawking, late great Stephen Hawking, he would often, you know, concede bets. And on the basis of a proof from, say, Juan Maldesana in, you know, five-dimensional ADS-CFT, you can recover back-in-hawking, you can get all sorts of information. But I want to ask you, like, I mean, I feel like he conceded that too easily. Like, how do we know that ADS-CFT even exists? It's true.

No, I think, I think, look, Steve is a wonderful man, but he's also a very astute. promoter. And I think he did some things he did because he realized they would get attention. And I tend to think that was the case. By the way, I'm really pissed. I had what I thought should have been a famous bet with Hawking and Wilcheck, which I won. And Dennis Overby was there to, but certify it. But he claims he, you know, he's just too shy.

I think he didn't want to, anyway. But it was early on. It was shortly after the dark energy was discovered that I argued. And there was a great deal of all this hype about all quid testants of it. We'll be able to measure that it's changing and blah, blah. And I said within a decade, there will be no, nothing that will be able to tell us that it, that dark energy is changing. There will be nothing that I'll able to tell you that it is a cosmological constant. And therefore, there's nothing that tells you.

isn't. And there'll be no observational data. And they say, oh, no, no, no, within a decade. So both Frank and Stephen were wrong. And neither of them had, well, Stephen died. And Frank has refused to admit he made that bet. But it's surprising because in his book, which I have somewhere here, and I talk a beautiful question, but written in 2014, he makes a claim that within five years, supersymmetry will be discovered. So I feel of Frank that as Sir Roger Penrose once said, the quickest way to get rich is to make a bet with Stephen Hawking. Because no matter what you bet, he's going to concede because of the attention, I think. And oftentimes he would have two different positions on the same.

But you don't become rich by betting with Stephen Hawke. You just get some notoriety. Yeah, you get a subscription to Playboy or something. Yeah, something like that. But anyway, Stephen, Stephen's certainly to take a bet, and I never got to either. We just bet a very expensive bottle of wine, and I never got it, and it doesn't mean matter. But anyway, yeah. Yeah, so, but I don't think.

So, first of all, whether I, you know, putting people in camps worries me. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not a fan of this claimed progress in string theory. I have great respect for the work that's being done in many ways, which, I mean, Ed Witten is another friend of mine and someone I admire tremendously for their abilities. But, you know, but string theory isn't quantum corner, it hasn't explained the world. but that has nothing to do with whether a multiverse is a very sensible idea. The really sensible multiverse, the well-motivirce is not the multiverse of string theory, the extra-dimensional many universes.

The only one that is inescapable, it seems to me, is the one from inflation. And that multiverse, namely there are many universes in, you know, there need not be extra dimensions, but they're in four dimensions in three plus one dimensions. there are many spatially separated universes over time is generally an in inescapable prediction of inflation and i find that the well-motivated multiverse the notion that there may be many other universes in higher dimensions i mean i was very happy that it got one of my students roman sundrum tenure but but uh when he proposed large universes i guess with lisa randall but but but i've always as ugly as sin.

Yeah, I guess the only sense I kind of pejoratively say that they might be fellow travelers is that some claim that both are unfalsifiable. First, before I go there, I want to ask you a question. I mean, you hear this a lot as a canard and experimentalist will say things like, oh, well, you know, it's not even wrong or theorists will say it. You know, because you can't falsify it. But I think we're overwhelmed, to use Hoyle's word or vernacular. kind of overwhelmed by Popper.

And Popper is not Girdle. In other words, I think Gertl said something that's quantitative and not just qualitative. It is qualitative, but it's mostly quantitative. You can say what the limits of a particular field of human endeavor is or are. But in physics, falsifiability is not the sine qua non. Nor did Popper actually say he was a big fan of the steady state theory, as you know. Well, yeah. Or had the virtue of falsified theory.

Well, I think there's different levels of falsifiable. The question is not, can you falsify theory? The question is, is it in principle falsifiable? And those are two different things, I think. Yeah, exactly. In principle, you can imagine string theory being falsifiable. I mean, you know, you can imagine somehow doing experiments that might be able to test a prediction if they ever made one of the early universe. So it's not falsifiable now in the sense that, that, first of all, it really doesn't yet make predictions. And secondly, the scale of those at which its predictions involved in generally are beyond the realm of our experimental ability right now. But that's a different level of something than falsifiability. And the question,

you know, the question I used to ask is inflation ever falsifiable? And I used to think the answer was no, but I don't think it's the case now. Well, let's get into that. I mean, I have said that inflation could have been falsified if we measure the curvature to be, you know, 0.90, which we could measure. No, no, you know, you see, you're too young. That's a problem. Okay. You see, you're, you, you, you, you've never been a problem before, but yeah, but yeah, well, anyway, it's, um, it's a problem. Um, but happily it's a problem you're going to quickly get over. Anyway, um, but, uh, or not quickly, but eventually I'll get over. Um, and that is that, that's why I used to say it wasn't false viable, because the minute, when, when,

And then all the, before 19, before we wrote the paper on the cosmological dark energy, the conventional wisdom at that time in the early 90s of, of astronomers and cosmologists, and these are the, the non-particle cosmologists, was that the universe was open, that the curvature, you know, that, that, that, that, um, omega wasn't one. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, um, and, um, and, um, And that was a conventional wisdom. And in that picture, there were a million inflationary models that would produce an open universe. So the minute that, the data showed that, all of the theorists would immediately develop inflationary models, which I thought were incredibly ugly, but I think many inflationary models

are ugly, which would make an open universe. And the point is, you could design an inflationary model that would, that was what my concern was. You could design an inflationary model that would produce an open universe or a flat universe. and potentially even a closed universe, haven't thought about the details. But, but, and that bothered me because then I'd say, well, if we measure one and that's all,

if that's the only parameter we have, which at that time, we thought even that would be a stretch. Even that, even that would be a stretch to be able to measure that. But if we could measure that, it wouldn't prove inflation to happen. It would just make it plausible. But inflation wouldn't be disproved if Omega wasn't one, if there was curvature.

And that used to bother me. And of course, now people don't have to worry so much about that because the dark energy has saved the day. It was one of the reasons that Mike Turner and I argued it was there, among other reasons, because it allows a flat universe, but one in which matter doesn't dominate. Yeah, anyway. That would have falsified. So you're saying that would have been a falsification of inflation more generically than curvature, not being equal to zero? No, no, neither of them would have been a falsification.

None of those things could falsify inflation. What I'm saying is that looking at curvature is not a falsification of inflation because you can design inflationary models that will allow, at the end of inflation, you'll have curvatures. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. We hope you enjoyed listening to Part 1 of this two-part episode of Into the Impossible, featuring your host, Brian Keating, in an in-depth, wide-ranging, discussion with celebrated author and physicist Lawrence Krauss.

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