Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Paul Sutter – How To Die In Space (#096)

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

Paul M. Sutter is a research professor in astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University and a guest researcher at the Flatiron Institute in New York City. Paul earned his PhD in physics in 2011 as a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellow at the University of Illinois. He then spent three years at the Paris Institute for Astrophysics followed by two years as a research fellow at the Trieste Observatory in Italy. Prior to his current appointment, he served as the chief scientist at the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio while maintaining a cosmological researcher position at the Ohio State University. Paul’s areas of research include studying the largest empty regions in the universe, mapping the leftover light from the big bang, and developing new techniques for finding the first stars to appear in the cosmos. He has authored over 60 academic papers and given over 100 seminars, colloquia, and conference talks at institutions around the world. A prolific and globally known science communicator, Paul is the author of two books, Your Place in the Universe: Understanding Our Big, Messy Existence and How to Die in Space: A Journey through Dangerous Astrophysical Phenomena. He writes for Space.com, Universe Today, LiveScience, and more, with his articles syndicating to news outlets worldwide. Paul hosts a variety of science shows across all platforms, including as a contributor to How the Universe Works on Science Channel and host of Space Out on Discovery. He also writes and hosts his own shows, including his hit Ask a Spaceman podcast, which is one of the top podcasts across all subjects globally, and his weekly live show Space Radio.   Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos: Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Jim Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM Host Brian Keating: ‍♂️ Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of Into the Impossible Podcast. Today's guest is Professor Paul Sutter, who is an amazing, highly passionate, hilarious, energetic, effervescent astronomer, who has really turned most of his intellectual endeavors to the realm of public science communication. He's involved with any winning productions and media, dance troops, but he's a hardcore scientist, too, and I learned a lot from him. I agree with him on a lot of things. I found it fascinating to hear his perspective on whether or not scientists should basically be forced to learn how to communicate as we learn how to communicate or learn about quantum mechanics.

Should we not have an obligation to bring our research, our findings, our passion to the general public because you guys pay our salary. So anyway, I want to ask you to subscribe to the podcast. Just hit that little bell over here, over there, whether you're watching on iTunes, watching on iTunes, listening on iTunes or watching on YouTube, please subscribe and leave a rating because actually the algorithm is truly based on the number of comments,

likes, subscribes, et cetera, that we get. So the more we can do that, the more great guests we can get. Stay tuned for coming future great guests, including Nobel Prize winners and losers and all sorts of fun things coming up, including a live stargazing party with Adam Reese, Nobel laureate, Wendy Friedman, and others on November 10th, 2020. And if you're listening to this in the future, and the world has not been destroyed, the universe has not come to an end as documented the many different ways it can be documented in this book by Paul Sutter, today's guest, How to Die in Space.

Then I will see you in the future for now signing off and imploring you to enjoy going into the impossible with Brian Cuted. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Welcome to the Into the Impossible podcast. I am your fearful host during these pandemic podcasts. And today we have Professor Paul Suter. Am I saying it right, Paul? It's Sutter like butter with an S. All right. And you're silky smooth. My mother used to say, you're so smooth, you're so cool that butter doesn't melt in your mouth. So that's how I'll remember it. You know, there's this book by Jonathan Four called Moonwalking with Einstein.

about how he became the world's memory champion, US memory champion, I forget. But that was by memorizing, you take someone's name and you equate it to some physical characteristics. So now I will never make that mistake with Professor Paul Suter. No, I'm just kidding.

Sutter, Sutter like butter. Ph.D., Dr. Paul Sutter. How are you doing today, sir? I'm doing fantastic, especially given the climate we're in. I know. It's kind of crazy. I'm hoping to have this podcast out

after November 3rd, if November 3rd does not result in another way to die on Earth. And I want to get into that. But of course, if the Earth doesn't die. But maybe, you know, some of these things that you talk about, these deadly phenomena of the extraterrestrial world aren't looking so bad compared to some of the stuff going on on this terra firma. You know, when Venus looks appealing, you know, we really got reconsider. I know.

I'm looking for real estate there. So where are you calling us, where are we speaking to you over the phone lines at this moment? Are you at the CCA? Where are you located currently? So I am based out of New York City. I'm in my home office right now. And like you mentioned, the CCA, I do have a visiting position at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics. And also I am a research professor at Stony Brook University's Institute for Advanced Computational Science, which is way better than the Institute for Basic computational science.

Or advanced studies. It's like, what are they doing over there? They don't even know what they're studying? These guys, I talked about it. Scratching it. Yeah. Well, you may or may not know. Stony Brook is my ancestral homeland. I was born at the State University of New York right there. My father was a professor of mathematics along with Jim Simons, who was the founding chairman of the math department. It is now super rich. Yes. And it is now, Yeah, it is now called, you've gone a branding, a rebranding. It's now Stony Brook University, which is very different, radically different from those of us. Trying to be cool, fit in with 21st century.

Yeah, it's SUNY was too confusing, I guess, for other people. But anyway, shorter is better. And I keep, you know, whenever I read the title of this book, I have this song that goes through my mind. And I can't get out of my mind, but it's like how to get along or like how to die. Anyway, I've been singing how to die. I'm going to leave that to you. Yeah, I've been singing how to die in space. That's right.

Let's ask a space man, not ask a musician. What inspired you to write this book? Last I checked, we're not that likely to even get off the earth anytime soon, let alone to go to the heart of Sagittarius A-star. Tell me what inspired you to do this? What did the publishers say when you pitched this book proposal to them? When I pitched this book, I said, look, I tell all the story. these stories in my podcast and media appearances and everything. And it's just fun. And the whole

point of the book is to explore this amazing astrophysics on all sorts of scales and all sorts of locations in a really fun, lighthearted way. The whole point of the book is to have an excuse to talk about awesome astrophysics. Just saying like, here's a book about astrophysics isn't going to sell a lot of titles to publishers or the general public. But then if you say, here's how you can die by learning about astrophysics, like that, that gets people interested. Now, I remember, you know, reading and my wife asked me, why are you reading a book about how to die in space? And I was driving on a long drive with my kids. And I had the choice of, you know, putting on a podcast, you know, one of my podcast or listening to the audio book as I did of how to die in space. And they're like,

turn this podcast off. We want to know how you're going to die in space. And it's just, so happened. My seven-year-old was very curious about the very first chapter was actually perfect for him. He was actually wondering about, you know, how long could you, would you immediately die if you go into space as this cover artist has and you don't lose your head as this guy's losing his head? I don't know. We'll flash it up on the post-production. But if you took off your helmet, are you going to die as my seven-year-old suspects? Yeah, you're going to die, but not right away. Like the first thing that's going to happen to you is once you're exposed to vacuum, all the air in your lungs is going to go out. And don't you dare try to hold it in because your throat in those little slimy muscles are not designed to hold in a lung full of air against vacuum.

So the best thing you're going to do is just let the air go. If you try to hold it in, you will damage your lungs. You will damage your throat. It is going to be bad news. You just let it go. Now, and then the second thing that's going to happen is that all. All the oils and moisture on your skin and eyeballs and tears and sweat and everything are going to instantly evaporate or supplement into space.

And just that's going to cause a little bit of damage, a little bit of burning on your skin, but you're still, you're okay. The big thing that gets you is the lack of oxygen. That's because your heart is still pumping. Blood is still flowing through you all the time doing its thing. It just stops carrying oxygen because there's no air in space. So there's no oxygen. So in about 10 to 20 seconds, your brain is going to go, going to shut down.

You're going to lose consciousness. You can be recovered if you're pulled back in and you can live a relatively normal life. But if you stay out for a few minutes, then as your organs start to lose oxygen, they will shut down. And then when all your organs shut down, you are dead. So it takes a few minutes for you to die in space when exposed to vacuum. It's not instantaneous and you really only have a few seconds of self-propelled maneuverability to get you back into safety.

So it's be far more excruciating than some of the other ways that we recount. And at the end, I'm going to ask you of your preferred method of dying. But first, before we get to the end, as it says in Ecclesiastes, better is the end of a thing or a person than the beginning thereof. But there's a certain poem that I read. It's a long poem. It recounts the epic of a bearded sailor traveling across time and recounting his travels at a certain wedding ceremony.

Now, my father and Jim Simons used to enjoy their time on Long Island Sound, on small fishing craft, at least until one of them capsized it. I won't get into that. But the ancient mariner has a rhyme as well. And in this book, there's a lot from a certain character named the rhyme of the ancient astronomer. I want to ask you, who is the ancient astronomer? And is he bearded? Yes, each chapter opens with a few verses from what's called the rhyme of the ancient astronomer,

which in the setting of the book, the book takes place. in the far future where interstellar travel is easy and cheap and lots of people want to do it. And the character, the persona that I take on when I'm writing the book is from like a grizzled interstellar travel veteran who is, you know, oh, you want to go into space. Well, let me tell you why you shouldn't because it's long and arduous and dangerous and difficult and also full of wonders and beauty and discoveries. And so I imagined in that far-flung future that there are, collections of sayings and stories and phrases that have been passed down through the areas

where no one's exactly sure who wrote it, when they wrote it, if multiple authors were involved, where it's just a collection of sayings to guide people through the universe. And it turns out they're almost always cynical. Yeah, I was wondering about that and also what the H index is of the ancient astronomer. But I won't get into that right now. I want to ask you on the back of the book, it says, Paul M. Sutter, PhD, is the author of Your Place in the Universe, understanding our big, messy existence, as well as the host of the Ask a Space Man podcast.

It's currently a research professor at SUNY, Stony Brook. Incorrect. Well, they say there's typos, and this should not be quoted. So this is the advanced reading copy. It's fine. You were allowed to say Stuny, Stony, Stony Brook, State University, of New York's at Stony Brook and also Stony Brook University.

How we're fine. Acceptable brandings. We are not allowed to say UCSD anymore. It gets confused with a neighbor to the north that shall name you name. But then you're also a guest researcher at the Flatiron Institute. If an ancient astronomer happens to time travel back to New York City and wake you up at three in the morning, you do all these amazing things, all these interesting things, hardcore scientific research, popular outreach, popular writing, scientific writing. Who are you? Who am I? First off, if a time traveler teleports into my home

at 3 a.m., I am calling the police. I don't care what they say or what error they claim they're from or what newspapers they're holding. We are getting the police involved. I think the Blasio might shut that down. I don't know if you're allowed to get rid of them. I'm going to work. I'm going to on it. Listen, we're going to get some, we're going to get some firepower involved. Now, who am I? Yeah, so, so I'm an astrophysicist. I got my PhD back in 2011 at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I'm working in giant computational simulations of stuff flowing out of giant black holes inside of clusters of galaxies. Then after I got my PhD, I went to the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, where I worked with Ben Wendell.

on voids. I was a member of the Plank Collaboration, studying the Cosmic Giac Way background, which you are a little bit familiar with, and doing all sorts of cool analyses of radio and affirmative techniques for the first stars. Then in 2014, I moved on to a second research position based in Trieste, Italy, where I continued those research lines. Would you work with there? I have a lot of good friends at Carlo. Mateo V.L. was my sponsor there, but I was largely independent. It was a fellowship, so I was working all over with everyone. Nice. Yeah, and a bunch of the people that I've encountered in Paris and Italy are now

actually working at the Flat-Aren suit, so it's good to see a bunch of old friends again. And it was in the course of that second postdoc where I started my podcast, which is still running. It's called Ask a Space Man. We're on episode like 140 something now. And it was just an experiment. It's like, I like doing outreach. I liked giving talks. I like answering people's questions and I wanted to put something out there in the world. And I thought, okay, I'll just put it out there. I'll just do it. I'll just see if it's any fun. I'll see if I enjoyed. I'll see if it resonates with anyone. It turns out it kind of resonated with people. It turns out I really enjoy it. It really grew. I got a solid audience base right away or after like

six months or a year of dedicated work in it. I got a great audience that opened up all their opportunities, start writing, to start hosting, to start doing other things. And slowly over the course of the past five years, I transitioned from being fully embedded in professional research with a little bit of outreach to now where I'm doing almost entirely science communication and outreach with a little bit of research on this side. So I still work on cosmic voids and large-scale structure. I'm still a member of some collaborations. and but but the majority of my time is spent doing this is writing books and writing articles and hosting TV shows and doing silly YouTube videos and making up lame jokes to put on social media

and doing interviews with with other people like you and just having a blast. Yeah, it really shows in the book and I listen to the audio book and read the physical book and I advise everybody to do that and for the hat trick as well. you say, throw in the electronic book issue as well. You got to have all three copies, all three versions, but you narrated the audiobook, which is something I did not have. I had to audition for that. I know. I was going to ask you about that. You do have a mollifluous voice honed over many, many episodes of Ask a Spaceman and probably some imbiations, perhaps, some libations. Oh, just water, man. I keep it clean. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too, of course. But it really

comes through in the book and the audio book and certainly that you have this infectious passion for doing this. And it kind of brings up one of my next questions is about what is the obligation? I'm going to be provocative. I'm going to be a Fox News host here for a second, if you'll indulge me. I'm going to say, it's cool. Let's go down that road here. Yeah. So I think scientists, they get paid by the public, except that they work for a large institute such as yourself or have a $100 million project funded by the same individual. But anyway, we work for the public. Joe taxpayer, Joe Sixpack.

First of all, why should he care about anything you talk about in your book, millions of years in the future, perhaps? That's my first provocative question. Why should we care? And then I'm going to get a little bit more personal about scientist obligations. But first, why should Joe Sixpack, Joe, Bag of Donuts? I don't know why his name is always Joe. Let's call him, let's call him Clemonds.

Why should he care about all the stuff? A bag of donuts. Hello, Mr. Bag of Donuts. I hope you support me in the upcoming election. No, you should care because this is fun. You should care because this is interesting. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th.

Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. and the best have you wait in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. You should care because trying to figure out how the world works is a part of who we are. No, astrophysics, like figuring out how black holes work or the earliest moments of the universe, it's not going to make more efficient car engines or faster internet.

It's not going to change your material life, but that was never the point of science in the first place. The point of science is that we are curious. We are curious people. We are a curious species that defines us. Art and music and dance and curiosity are all a part of who we are. And science is an expression of that curiosity. So you should care. And I'm in terms of grateful for your taxpayer support to keep science going. I recognize that this is a privilege of scientists to be able to do what they do. Science does lead to great technological advancements. That's more of a fun byproduct and then the main point. But you should continue funding science and you should care about what astronomers are doing because it's fun to learn new

things. It's fun to explore and discover and be curious. And so you can read my book and that this book is the result of hundreds of years of trying to figure out how the universe works. And if it surprises and delights you and you enjoy it, then you are participating in the very reason that science exists. Indeed. Now, a lot of those lines, let me keep on, you know, let me go to his wife, Clementine, bag of donuts. And so you scientists have this, have this amazing privilege. You're in your ivory towers, et cetera. How come you're good at it, Paul, you're your brilliant communicator. You have obvious infectious passion and joy and everything you do. How come, you know, the researcher at the state college down the street, how come she's not doing it? Shouldn't she be forced to do it?

shouldn't she be as good as you and take as many classes in vocal coaching, auditioning as you did, as you did? Why does she get off scot-free and it doesn't have to do outreach to the people. I pay her salary. Yeah. That's a very, very good question. So thank you for saying I'm very good. I really do appreciate it. I didn't take a single class.

I didn't do a single coaching. I make this all up as I go along. and my skills have been developed and honed over years of just forcing myself to do it again and again. As to other professors, other researchers, should they do it? Should they be forced to do it? Yes, they should. I actually think it is an obligation of scientists to communicate their science to the public for exactly the reason that you specified, which is the vast, vast majority of science is publicly supported. And if the results of that science isn't being communicated to the public in a way that they can understand, that is our fault. That is our problem.

If scientists are continually surprised why there is distrust in science and a gulf between scientists and the public, guess whose fault it is? It is the fault of the scientists. It's our fault. So, no, I don't expect a professor to launch a podcast. or host a YouTube series or write a book, okay? But the incentives in the academic world are all wrong. If you are an upcoming professor or even fully tenured professor,

the way you advance your career, the way you get recognition among your peers, the way you get pay raises within your university, of the way you better position yourself within your department or your field, is by writing papers and getting grants. And that takes up about 120% of your time. With the remaining negative 20% of your time, you are expected to serve on committees, teach,

and then maybe have a family. Preach, brother, preach. And I think this is broken. The universities and institutions around the world do not incentivize public outreach and communication. not necessarily in terms of a financial word, but they just don't make it part of the package, part of the expectations of a professor or a graduate student or a postdoc. And so no one bothers or largely no one bothers because there's no reason to do it.

There's only so many hours in the day they've already got 50,000 things that got to get done. And continually scientists run into this roadblock of, hey, we have new science. and then people don't listen. We complain about journalists distorting and running away with our headlines and hyping up bad science. We complain that people aren't paying attention to real science. We complain that people don't understand the scientific method and the scientific process. Well, who's better positioned to teach people than the actual scientists?

So what I go around, whenever I give talks, whenever I give a public talk, I try to connect with the nearest university or college and give a talk to their physics or astronomy department and talk about outreach and talk about what I've learned from the front lines and doing this myself and trying to make a living out of it and what they can do with small slivers of their time so that it doesn't get in the way of their research, it doesn't get in the way of their teaching, doesn't get in the way of their family, but they can do a small part in community. communicating science, whether on social media or Instagram or writing a couple blogs or just making themselves available to reporters, either on TV or print, of just pushing a little bit to get a little bit

more science out there in the public with no one in the middle. So it's direct scientist to public exchange. You know, for me, I always liken it to imagine there's an actor or actress and you say, I've got this play, it's called Hamilton. Are you interested in being, ah, no, I don't care. It's just probably the most innovative play of the last 50 years. We have some of the best material that's ever been created in the entire universe to speak about, the very universe itself, the different aspects of this very smallest structures, the very largest structures, things that border on philosophy, theology.

And I always say, when people say, oh, I'm not good at public speaking, you know, I'm good at giving PowerPoint. Well, you know, you probably weren't born good at quantum field theory, but somehow you made it work, right? So it is about effort. The only partial disagreement I have, otherwise we have perfect, you know, mutual admiration society is that I do think we should, you know, as Galileo said, you know, measure what is measurable and make measurable what is not so.

So in other words, if you don't have a metric to a praise or a prize how someone's doing in this realm, as you're saying, there's no incentive. first aspect of incentivization is to have some kind of metric and say, look, this is a component we expected of you if you're not good at it. We have these things called, you know, trainers. And look, your proof that you can do an amazing job, build a following, have a fan base. Predominantly, I don't think it's a source of immodesty, but, you know, because of the strength of the material and your education that gives you that ability. So, so I, the only disagreement I would have is just to say, I think we should train people in how to speak. Look, most of our

days, as you said, you know, have to do with writing papers or getting funding. And both of those are persuasion, right? I mean, both of those involves some amount of persuasion. In fact, Jim Simon Oh, like 90% persuasion. Read any journal article on the archive. It is 90% persuasive. And we never teach our students this. You know, it's like they're just naturally going to become gifted. I have students that are from all over the planet and they're not English native speakers. And I would send them to toastmasters and I would get them up public speaking. And I realized, hey, it doesn't just go to my student from Thailand. It also goes from my student from Illinois, and what have you. So I think we're in good resonance there. I want to read a poem,

since I think science as a form of culture and perhaps highest culture, maybe we'll get into that and we talk about relativity in just a little bit. That's a poem called fire and ice, written by a frosty man named Robert Frost. He said, some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I know enough of hate to say that for destruction, ice is also great and would suffice. What is your preferred method of cosmic or personal destruction? Wow, this is getting dark. So personal destruction, okay, it's either getting eaten by a hippopotamus or just peacefully passing in my sleep surrounded by loved ones.

But when it comes to the earth Like my grandfather as he was driving But when it comes to the earth We're gonna we're gonna burn to a crisp So Frosty was wrong I mean it was uh I mean he's not a cosmologist So I'm he had a 50-50 shot

Yeah so I recently reviewed Professor Katie Max book The End of Everything Astrophysically speaking And I was musing about you know This proliferation first of all There's a lot of new work on theories of everything. And I want to talk to you about that. I got a bone to pick with that. But first, what's the eschatological, you know, the fascination with the other side? Normally we think of,

you know, the Big Bang, the origin of the universe, maybe cyclic cosmology, however you like to phrase it. And so, but now we're talking about the end of perhaps everything and there's a lot of books nowadays coming out. What do you attribute that to? I think it needs two things. One is the far future of the universe is a very strange, very poorly understood a region of time, where physics, as we know it is going to completely break down and we need new laws of physics to ultimately understand it, just like the beginning of the universe. And so all the fascination we had at the beginning of the universe can apply to the end where just things are going to be different in a very, very strange way. And so I think there's always going to be some set of fascination with that topic.

And the cool thing about cosmology is that physical cosmology is we're using science and scientific tools to answer questions that have be deviled humanity for all of humanity. We've always wanted to know what is our place in space and time. How did this world arise? Will it transform? Will it end? Will it become something else? What are the rules that govern this existence? This is the basis for like every single cosmological model based in religion and also based in physics. But in the past hundred years, we've been able to start answering these questions using physics and develop the field of physical cosmology and begin to place ourselves in time and space, be able to start answering these questions using physics and develop the field of physical cosmology and begin to place. to sketch out the rules that govern the universe, be able to answer some questions about or begin to start to try to attempt to answer some questions about what the universe looked like in its

beginning state. And the very next thing is, well, what comes next? Okay, we got the past, we got the Big Bang, we got the now, we have our universe, well, what happens next? And so I think it's always going to be a part of the discussion. I think it's always going to be fascinating. that little tantalizing thing that seems just out of reach of understanding is always, always going to be absolutely fascinating. Right. It reminds me of this kind of fascination that Elon Musk has with going to Mars. And he said he wants to die on Mars.

And I heard Lord Martin Rees, who graced my book with a blurb, he said, yes, it's likely that Elon Musk will die on Mars. He may die on impact. And I want to ask you, if you had sort of a letter from God, you know, or whoever your deity is, a letter from coffee, I don't know. But you had insurance. We'll take a Clement Bag of Donuts. Clement Bag of Donuts. He's back again.

That's right. If you had guaranteed, you would not die in space. Which of the celestial phenomena that you so articulately portray in this gripping book would you most like to get close to and up close? and personal. You know, I really, it's so hard to pick. It's like picking your favorite kid, which is everyone has a favorite kid, but you don't. My mom used to say, when I asked her, I'd say, you know, who's your favorite kid? And she'd say, oh, that's like asking me to pick, you know, do I prefer my left hand to my right hand? I said, mom, you're left handed. Yeah, left hand. You have a genetic preference for one hand. Yeah. So, but you don't publicly

say, which is your favorite kid. But okay, I'll say of all the phenomenon that I visit in the book and exploring the book. I am actually very, very intrigued by cosmic strings. I did a little bit of research on them. So there's some lines of professional interest in them. Just seeing a cosmic string, encountering a cosmic string, I think might answer more questions about physics than, say, encountering a black hole would.

You talk about the black hole, And it's not often I get to talk with such an astute observer and knowledgeable professional about black holes, about relativity. But luckily, I talked to Nicholas Eunice the other day. No, I'm just kidding. I'm talking to you now. But I do want to get into a subject that I did bring up with Clifford Will and Nicholas Eunice, who teaches at your alma mater now at Urbana Champagne. And they have this book called Is Einstein Still Right? I had earlier this year, I had Professor Jim Gates on to describe his book,

proving Einstein right. Soon I'll have Lee Smollin on my podcast to discuss Einstein's unfinished revolution. And next, y'all of Albert Einstein. I have Eric Weinstein on my podcast. But you make a lot of Albert Einstein in this book. He's kind of an overarching protagonist in many of these books. Of course, he died with this unfit. revolution in some sense, this theory of everything. And I want to talk about it, because you

mentioned things like quantum gravity. You mention singularities. What evidence do we have that a singularity even exists to motivate the need for a theory of everything? In other words, putting back on my bag of donuts, Dr. Bag of Donuts to you, if I put that on, it's like, there's no proof of anything infinite in the entire physical world, only in the mathematical world. Why should I even care about a singularity. I don't think they exist. Oh, that's the exact point. We don't think singularities exist. And the presence of singularities in the mathematics of general relativity that gives rise to black holes when you figure out that black holes exist and you see that there's a singularity there, that there's a point of infinite indency, your first instinct and the instinct of

many physicists 100 years ago would say, well, then obviously it's wrong. Or it's just an approximation or obviously we're getting something right, but black holes don't really exist. Fast forward a few decades, we realize that black holes do exist. And as the decades have progressed, resulting in the latest Nobel Prize, like, black holes really are a thing. They really do exist. Although the citation to my friends and guests of upcoming and past guests, Sir Roger Penrose, is for, and to Andrea Gess, up the road here in University of California, is for a compact object at the center of our galaxy. Not a black hole. What do you make of that? Okay, okay, fine. Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get into semantic arguments with the Nobel Prize Committee. I have enough problems

with them, as it is. But like, it's about black holes. And this is not the first Nobel Prize awarded for something related to black holes. And so we're like, okay, black holes exist. And they keep doing all the things that general relativity predicts them to do. Uh, And they keep behaving in the exact same way we predict, the exact same properties. And so we keep realizing that black holes are real. But all the math we have about black holes tells us that there is a singularity at the center. There's a point of the infinite density. We know that's wrong.

We know that that is a point where the mathematics of general relativity is breaking down. But we don't know what to replace it with. And that becomes a major sticking point. And that's where we want to figure out, like, okay, if black holes exist, like, what's really at the center instead of a singularity? That's right. And I think, you know, the thing that speaks to me so much about your book in contradistinction to some of the more flowery, flowery whizbang, you know, this is so amazing, is that, you know, you're presenting these. You're also an academic. And it shows in the book with, you know, 10 pages of end notes, follow up resources, but that you freely admit. some points you say, and it's fun to hear your voice live, but after listening to you for the last 13 hours straight, I'm sorry, a Sutter binge as I slept. But the point is, you know, you bring up

all the things we don't know. And that, then you say this, this wonderful kind of imprecation, but mixed with a, with a blessing, which is go explore. And what about, you know, these phenomena still are left to explore? I mean, Nobel Prize is equal, solved, settled science, don't they? Well, the book isn't to drive a future Nobel Prize explorers. The book is meant to drive curiosity and wonder. And we don't, even things that are close to home, even phenomena that we are familiar with on a daily basis,

like the sun, there are still many unsolved mysteries about the sun or about the distribution of comets in our solar system. Like we haven't even, we're not 100% sure that the Orch Cloud exists. We think it exists because we think comments have to come from somewhere, but we don't know exactly where it is, how big it is, its distribution, any of that. Everything we encounter in the universe, even things that we have a lot of answers about,

are still full of mysteries. There is always more to learn, and there are always surprises around the corner. In some cases, like black holes or cosmic strings, the mysteries are blatant and obvious because our physics breaks down and nothing makes sense. But really, mysteries are everywhere and they're usually very quiet and very subtle. And they're only there for those who are willing to look for them. As the Krispy Chicken Sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know.

I'm Krispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me and baby I'm a whole meal. And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet.

No. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley 36-2326 participating stores only while supplies lastly out for full terms. Yeah. And I had this conversation not too long ago with Juan Maldesana at another institute. He's institutionalized also.

And we were talking about one of his recent papers called Humanly Traversible Wormholes, and you tangentially bring this up in the book as well. And I asked him, why should Joe Bagged Donut? No, I didn't bring that guy up because I didn't think he'd not say, why did Juan, you know, empanata, someone that he loves from his homeland of Argentina, why would he care about these things when we don't even know

if the Randall-S-C-F-T model 9 or whatever it's predicated on exists? And he said something very interesting, you know, in the context of learning about quantum mechanics from wormholes, learning about, as you talk about Einstein, Rosen Bridges, is another name for them. And he said, you know, you can learn a lot about something that may not exist, which I found really fascinating. It's kind of the opposite of your side. Like, we know that some of the, we know comets exist, as you just said. We know, but we don't know, yeah, where is their stable? Where is their birthplace?

if indeed that is how they come about, as well as some of the other phenomena that were once unknown and unknowable, T. Tori, stars, all sorts of other things that we might not have guessed type 1A supernovae and how they become important. And I want to ask, just getting back to your academia in the final few minutes before I asked the standard list of questions

that I ask all my guests, including who you're going to vote for, no, I'm not going to ask you that. But I want to ask you, you know, in terms of the academic side of things, I asked Nicholas Eunice, who's a fellow Argentinian of Juan de Maldesian, as I said, what was the most like inspirational event in your field? And he didn't say like discovering, you know, gravitational waves. He said when Pretoria came up with this vast supercomputer simulation of the coalescence of black holes and ringdown, et cetera, what is sort of your like eureka moment, your wow signal

as you talk about in the book? For you specifically, Paul, what gets you excited, gets you interested? Because we can't do it all. We only have 120% of our time to dedicate. So what gets you excited about astrophysics, the research side of your vast mental capaciousness? Yeah, I wouldn't point to any one particular moment, but a daily, a daily waking up in the vastness of the universe in this sheer joy and incomprehensible beauty of the fact that I can sit here at my desk with my computer with my chalkboard. I can be having a conversation, writing down equations,

solving them, running simulations, performing analysis, doing all this sciencey stuff about a physical, a particular physical system known as the entire universe where I can sit with a cup of coffee and discuss with a colleague an event that took place 13.8 billion years ago. And we can keep totally straight faces and we're grounded in the evidence and we're trying to discover, analyze some particular part of the signal. Or when we talk about voids, like, oh, yes, we developed a new mathematical technique for identifying voids. These things are minimum 80 million light years across. And we can just sit here and talk about them the same way we talk about breakfast cereal,

that almost the absurdity of it is what powers me. Like, we actually get to do this. All right. Then let's do it. Yeah. And we get, we get paid for it some more than others at those fancy schmancy institutes that you are institutionalized at.

And a state employee. Well, I guess you're a state employee too. You just have a different governor that is your boss. I want to close with the three final into the employer. possible questions that I love to ask. First of all, you may be familiar with the Sir Arthur C. Clark, who is the namesake of the Arthur C. Clark Institute for Human Imagination here at UC San Diego. And I am the co-director of that august institution or society or center, rather. And in the movie 2001, a space odyssey, which was a future forecast in the 60s of what life in 2001 might look like.

Have you seen that movie, Paul? I have. It's a wonderful movie. It is. And so there are these ominous sort of devices, machines, some say, these monoliths that make appearances, beginning, opening scene on the plains of the savannah of Africa encountered by some primates, later encountered on the moon. And in some sense, they're meant to represent a long-lasting time capsule produced by an intelligent alien civilization. I want to ask you, if you could make a monolith, if you could put the Sutter monolith somewhere, and it would be discovered by an intelligent species of something, maybe a billion years from now. What would you put on in about that time capsule? Oh, good question. I would probably, I would actually probably put art. I would probably put poems and paintings and music. And I would put mathematical proofs in there.

I would assume that a species of billion years now has figured out all the physics and understanding of the cosmos that we've come to and more. And so I think our feats of technological progress would not be very impressive to them. But where our imagination goes, how our imagination and curiosity has driven us, how we've refined it through so many beautiful fields, like science, like dance, I think would be of great value.

The next question also involves Sir Arthur C. Clark, and that is looking backwards in time, what Sir Arthur is famous for his quips for his aphorisms, the first one, most famous one being, and we open every show with him actually reading it, it's pretty amazing. My producer, Stuart Rolkow found him a clip of him reading. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

That's Arthur C. Clark's first law. The second law, and you and I resonate with this, I'm sure, for every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert. expert. And then number three is the only way to find out what is possible is to venture beyond the limits of the possible into the impossible. And that's sort of how I got the name for this podcast. And I want to ask you to a 20-year-old Paul Sutter, what seemed impossible, but now is eminently doable because you went ahead and did it. Oh, yeah, everything about my current situation in life would have seemed impossible to 20-year-old me. I was a lot of. I was,

even a physics major when I was 20 years old. I was in computer science and it wasn't until my junior year shortly after I turned 20 that I switched majors and became a physicist. And so the concept of having a PhD in physics, the concept of making progress in a scientific field, the concept of having a podcast and like doing TV shows, it would have been, I would have not under understood a future me. Yeah. And you think about, you know, a scientific paper that you and I write might take a week, a month to write a single sentence and be read by 10 people, if that, and that includes our co-authors. But your book...

It does not include our co-authors. And they don't read anything. All right. And then your books, your place in the universe and how to die in space, tens of thousands of people read him. And many more by the audiobook and the Kindle edition, hopefully. And so, yes, it is kind of magical that we're able to do this and reach across and have the impact. You know, I say, I outsold, you know, I got a bigger advance than Nietzsche, you know. And so that's saying something. But in reality, you reach so many people.

And that brings us to the end of our questions. And I want to give you an opportunity. You talk a lot about angular momentum in the book and the power, the sheer power of angular momentum, no pun intended. Now I ask you to enter the spin zone. And please plug where people can find the spaceman. All right. You can go to my website, which is P.M.Sutter.com. Or you can just Google, search Paul Sutter and it'll come up.

And from there, you can get links to my podcast, Ask a Space Man, my weekly radio show, Space Radio. You can get links to both my books, your place in the universe, and how to die in space. And those are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, all the usual. You can also get autograph copies from my website. You can also get links to my show on Discovery Digital. It's called Space Out, and it's really, really fun. Also links to all my articles on space.com and live science and universe today. Links to all sorts of cool science and art projects like a project I do with a dance company here in New York,

a project I do with an Emmy-nominated composer here in New York, all sorts of cool science and art projects. Just go to p.m.Sutter.com. It is the hub. I put everything there. Everything is there. Everything rotates around it, not unlike an R.R.

Lera star creeding composition from its neighbors. Professor Paul Sutter, it's been a thrill and honor and a pleasure. I hope to get this out before perhaps the Earth comes to an end. Hopefully not in the next few weeks. Thank you so much for coming on the Into the Impossible podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It was really, really fun. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Thank you.