Julian Dorey Podcast - [VIDEO] - Aliens, God, Darwin & Evolution, NASA, The Multiverse | Lawrence Krauss • 180

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

(***TIMESTAMPS in Description Below) ~ Lawrence Krauss is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and popularizer of science. He is currently the President of The Origins Project Foundation. EPISODE LINKS: - BUY LAWRENCE'S BOOKS –– MY AMAZON STORE: https://amzn.to/3RPu952  - Protect Your Retirement W/ A Gold. IRA https://www.noblegoldinvestments.com/juliandorey or call 877-646-5347 Noble Gold is Who I Trust ^^^ - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/  - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  - Join our DISCORD: https://discord.gg/pz9DwKrh   - SUBSCRIBE to Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@UChs-BsSX71a_leuqUk7vtDg  LAWRENCE LINKS: - LAWRENCE TWITTER: https://twitter.com/LKrauss1  ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Lawrence Krauss Physics Background; The Concept of “Nothing” 9:31 - Black Holes; Flat vs. Curved Universe 14:52 - Why Interstellar is a Bad Sci-Fi Movie 22:08 - How far can we see in Galaxy; Moving Earth; NASA Asteroid Mission 28:39 - Asteroid Dinosaur Extinction; Theory of Everything from Nothing; Miracles 33:53 - Charles Darwin & Evolution; Extinction Events 39:42 - First humans on earth; Science vs Religion 49:51 - William Lane Craig Debate; Why people believe in God 55:41 - Werner Herzog’s “Grizzly Man”; The Physics of Climate Change 1:09:57 - Behind funding of Scientific Research 1:15:11 - Elon Musk; Inflation & the Multiverse 1:27:21 - Multiverse Map; Time Travel; Michio Kaku 1:41:00 - Building Alien Craft; UFOs & Proof; UFO Gov Disclosure 1:48:17 - Lawrence’s expertise; Star Trek 1:54:07 - Working w/ NASA & DARPA; NASA Denied UFOs 1:59:07 - Lawrence’s work CREDITS: - Hosted & Produced by Julian D. Dorey - Intro & Episode Edited by Alessi Allaman ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io ~ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 180 - Lawrence Krauss Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up guys, if you're on Spotify right now, please follow the show so that you don't miss any future episodes and leave a 5 star review. Thank you. 99.99% of its time traveling through space. But they developed something like a flying saucer, which is meant to be aerodynamic in the atmosphere of the Earth, which they didn't even know was there until they get here. But why would they design a spacecraft, a flying saucer, if you wish, which is not the most effective way of traveling through interstellar space? The laws of physics tell us. Here, here's the thing. Lawrence Krauss, welcome to New Jersey, sir. It's so great. I think this is the first time I've been in Hoboken.

Really? I was trying to remember if I've been in Hoboken before. I don't think so. This is my first. It'll be memorable. Didn't you grow up right over here? I was born right over there, but I moved out when I was three months old. I said, I don't want to live here anymore. You made that decision. I grew up in Canada.

You grew up in Canada. In Toronto, yeah. So you're a true Canadian. Well, I'm a sort of semi-true Canadian. Yeah, I actually became Canadian, although when my parents became Canadian, I thought I'd lost my American citizenship. In fact, when I came back to graduate school at MIT, I was on a visa. Really? And, yeah, I was on a visa all the time. And then I got my first job at Harvard, and I tried to get permanent residency.

And the Harvard lawyers said, we think you're a citizen. Yeah. Is that possible to lose it? Well, at that time, you apparently could. You see, my parents became Canadian. They lost their American citizenship because at the time, you had to renounce your citizenship in order to become a citizen of another country. But because I was a kid, I didn't suffer for the sins of my parents. And anyway, so the Harvard lawyers said, you know,

you can find out by applying for a passport, which I did. Got my passport, tore up my visa. And anyway, so I'm a citizen of both countries. Yeah, you don't have a Canadian accent. I don't detect that really. Well, every now and then if I say about or something, I guess I do. But then, you know, I don't know what my accent is. But some people say they can hear the Canadian accent.

I think Canadians hear an American accent. But I lived in the U.S. longer than Canada. I grew up in Canada, but then I moved in my 20s to go to graduate school. And then I lived in the U.S. continuously until two years ago and moved back to Canada. When you were a kid, when did you first get bit by the science bug and the meaning of it all? Well, you know, I've tried to think of that a lot because my mother wanted me to be a doctor and my brother to be a lawyer, of course. And so she told me doctors were scientists. So I think from a little time I was a little kid, since I thought I wanted to be a doctor, I was interested in science. But I really remember when I was 11 reading a book about Galileo that really had a big impact.

He seemed like a heroic figure. And I thought all scientists were heroic figures. I've discovered that's not true. But so I got into that. And then it was in high school when I realized that doctors weren't scientists but I was kind of last month I had in my friend dr. Brian Keating for episode 173 of the podcast I really appreciate all the amazing feedback we had on that one it won't be the last episode we do together I really enjoyed talking with Brian he's such a smart guy and obviously very

keyed into the entire physics community in addition to physics But in that episode almost 84 percent of the people who watched were not subscribed And so what happens when we have a lot of non-subscribers watching who aren't hitting the button Is youtube does not put these videos into the algorithm So that episode did fine But it didn't do amazing despite the fact that the click through the, the watch time were all great, and like I said, the feedback was awesome. So if you'd like to see this podcast, get into the algorithm more and get some more support behind it so that we can get great guests like Brian to come in here, please take a second and hit that subscribe button. It is a huge, huge help, and I appreciate all of you who have already done so.

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So, what should we talk about? No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. And I read a book in high school by a physicist named Sir James Jeans. It was called Physics and Philosophy, and that really convinced me. So I knew I wanted to do science, but I wasn't convinced that that's all I wanted to do. I did history. I took a year off school to work on a Canadian history book, and there were a lot of things I thought I wanted to

do, but I knew I wanted to eventually... Understanding the fundamental features of the universe just seemed like the sort of sexiest thing you could do. And so I always knew I'd go back to it. And I applied to graduate school and didn't know if I'd get in anywhere, but I got into MIT. I also could... I was going to go to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship

to do physics and philosophy, but I'm so happy I didn't. Why? Well, I think philosophy is the kind of thing you get enamored with when you're young, and then you grow out of it, and at least I did. And so I went to do physics at MIT, and I didn't think I'd get a job. There were no jobs, and I got my PhD in early 80s, and before you were born, probably. But anyway, and there were no jobs, so I sort of learned how to juggle and drive a taxi and things like that. But it turned out I got, I was lucky and I got a good job at Harvard.

But when, especially the higher end of education, when you're studying something like that, don't your jobs generally go into academic research and things like that? There were no jobs in academia at that time. I mean, I just remember it was the likelihood of getting a professorship. I mean, it's remember it was the likelihood of getting a professorship. I mean, it's always small, but it just seemed very remote. And it was a gamble. But, and I tell kids nowadays who want to, you know, they want to know what, whether they'll get jobs in this or that. You never know, first of all. But just do what you're interested in. And the training you get will be useful for whatever you're going to do. And to try and choose a career, because you think there's going to be a job in it

is, first of all, you don't know down the road. And secondly, what if you choose something you don't like and you get a job in it? How awful is that? So anyway, it worked out. It was a gamble, but it worked out in the end. And now here you are, published a bunch of published books later, years and years in the space, doing all kinds of research. But the calling card that you're known for is the concept of you thinking that everything came from nothing. Oh, that, yeah. Which is really hard. It is.

Even as someone, obviously I'm not a scientist, but as a layman, sometimes if I'm walking down the street and i start thinking about the kind of decision trees of where everything could have started i then get stressed because i'm like oh my god it could have all never happened and there would have been nothing yeah but then you think about nothing and you're like well wait a minute fuck nothing is nothing but that's still something because if you're picturing nothing you're picturing like an empty room that's well that's the, you got, you really do understand it. Because it's, nothing, it's really hard to understand. And everyone has a different definition of it. And I had to talk about that when I wrote the book.

Because you're right, an empty room seems like nothing, but it's not nothing. The nothing of the Bible, which a lot, you see, a lot of religious people like to say, oh, well, you're not really discussing nothing. You really need God to make something. But the nothing of the Bible really is an infinite empty void. So it's like empty space. What do you mean by that? Well, if you read the Bible, nothingness was an empty void.

And if you think the best example of that is like space with nothing there. But then where did the space come from? Yeah. And so when I talk about a universe from nothing in the book, what I really meant, and I still mean, is no space, no time, everything that we see and everything in the universe that we see within the universe and the space and time that comprises our universe did not exist.

And then it suddenly came into existence. And how did that happen? Well, I can tell you plausibly how it happened. Okay. Because we don't have a theory of quantum gravity. But if you, if gravity is governed by quantum mechanics, gravity, well, quantum mechanics thing says that things are fluctuating all the time, the variables of quantum mechanics. And in gravity, if it's a quantum theory, the variables of gravity are space and time. So if it's a quantum theory, the variables of gravity are space and time.

So if gravity is a quantum theory, then virtual universes, virtual space-times, think of universes like a ball, can pop into existence and go out of existence in a short time. That's what happens right now. If you take space right now, it's full

of virtual particles popping in and out of existence. We know that. We can't measure them directly, because they're virtual, but they produce effects that you can measure, and we can predict those effects, and they're the best measured predictions in all of science. The properties of atoms, the spectra of atoms, we can predict to, in some sense, to 11 decimal places, and if you didn't include the effect of virtual particles, you get the wrong answer, but when you do, you get the right answer. It's the best measured prediction in all of science. So we know these virtual particles pop in and out of existence, and they determine the properties of atoms, they determine the properties of elementary particles.

But if gravity is a quantum theory, then virtual universes are popping in and out of existence all the time. Most of them, you know, are in existence for a fraction of a second. I mean, unbelievably small fractions. Like in our time. Well, even in our time, they could exist and go out of existence. But some of them can exist for a long time if they have zero total energy.

Because if you have a virtual particle that suddenly exists and continues to exist, it violates energy conservation, right? If the particle had a mass, that suddenly exists and continues to exist, it violates energy conservation, right? If the particle had a mass, that's why they have to disappear in a time so short you can't measure them. But in certain conditions, like near a black hole, as Stephen Hawking showed, virtual particles and antiparticles can spontaneously appear, but one of the particles can fall into a black hole,

losing more energy than the rest mass of the particle that remains, so you don't violate energy conservation, and black holes evaporate. That's called Hawking radiation, okay? Is there a way that we prove that? No, right now we, I mean, first of all, you don't really prove things to be true in science. You prove them to be false, okay?

But you could at least measure it, and we can't measure Hawking radiation of black holes because we can't see black holes at that level. We can produce analog experiments on Earth with things that behave like gravity, with fluids, for example. In fact, I just wrote an article in Nature about that. And when we do that, we see the analogs of Hawking radiation. But the mathematics is consistent. So we really think that black holes do radiate. And for people out there, because I know there's a lot, I don't want to keep cutting you off. Sure, sure. No, keep cutting me off. I realize we got to go back to the beginning.

But stuff like black holes, can you just bring people up to speed on how that works? Yeah, black hole is an exotic object. And it's got a neat name, which is one of the reasons they make movies about it. In Russian, by the way, it's called a frozen star, so you don't see any movies in Russian called, but black holes are a neat name. But a black hole is simply a massive object that's, the gravity at its surface is strong enough that light can't escape, right? The escape velocity from the Earth is, I think, 11 kilometers per second. So if you want to send a rocket ship up? The escape velocity from the Earth is, I think, 11 kilometers per second. So if you want to send a rocket ship up and you want to escape the Earth, it doesn't matter

what's on the rocket ship. You've got to have it traveling at least 11 kilometers per second in order to escape the Earth. It's just the way it is, okay? If I put an extra teaspoonful of matter on the Earth, then the escape velocity from the Earth would be a little bit greater, a little bit greater and greater. If I put enough mass on the Earth,

then the escape velocity would exceed the speed of light. But you can't go faster than light, and that really would then say the Earth is a black hole. Nothing can escape. If light can't escape, then nothing can escape. And that was first realized, by the way, in the 1700s by, I mean, not with general relativity, but with Newton's law of gravity by a British basically clergyman who was also ultimately a professor at Cambridge, 100 years after

Newton. And he estimated that if you had a star that was 500 times the mass of the sun and made of the same stuff as the sun, then the escape velocity from its surface would be greater than the speed of light. So he didn't call it black holes. That long ago. Yeah, and it didn't catch on, but he basically got the number right.

In any case, so if you have a very massive object that collapses to be small enough so the gravity of the surface is big enough, bigger than, so that the speed of light is not fast enough to escape, then nothing escapes. And black holes are exotic, but they're not that exotic. The smaller the black hole, the denser it has to be to have that kind of gravity. If you took an object, the mass of the sun, if it collapsed to be the size of Hoboken,

it'd become a black hole. And that's not to say Hoboken's a black hole. Don't... That's not... No, but, you know, each teaspoon full of matter would be like hundreds of billions of tons. That's how dense it'd have to be. But if you took an object the mass of our galaxy and said how big... What would the density of that object be when it became a black hole? It would be the density of water. Not too dense. The density of water? Water, yeah, but there's so much of it that if you have 100 billion times the mass of the sun

and you compress it to a size so the average density is water, at the surface of it, the gravity is great enough that it's still greater than the speed of light to escape from. Now, here's the thing that's going to blow your mind, I hope. It's a lot blowing my mind so far, but keep going. Okay. Well, if I had an object with the mass of the known universe and asked what would its average density be for it to be a black hole, the average density would be within a factor of two of the density of our observed universe. So you could be living inside of a black hole. It's not so bad.

A closed universe is effectively a black hole. In general relativity, space is curved in the presence of matter, and the universe can exist in one of three kind of geometries, so-called open, closed, or flat. You can't picture them because you're talking about four-dimensional geometries, but go down in a dimension, and you can sort of think of a two-dimensional sphere, the surface of a two-dimensional sphere as a closed universe, because you go around, you come back to where you began. In a closed universe, if I looked far enough in that direction, you'd see the back, I'd

see the back of my head. Ooh. Right? Because light would go around. Yeah. So it's almost... It's like a sphere, but it's a three-dimensional sphere, not a two-dimensional sphere. It has the feel of my head. Ooh. Right? Because light would go around. Yeah. So it's almost... It's like a sphere, but it's a three-dimensional sphere, not a two-dimensional sphere.

It has the feel of flatness. Well, yeah, but you've got to think about what flatness is. So a flat three-dimensional universe is just the universe you always thought you lived in. One where the x, y, and z axes always point in the same direction everywhere. But in a curved

three-dimensional universe, if I go up on the z axis here, somewhere else it's going to be pointing in the same direction everywhere. But in a curved three-dimensional universe, if I go up on the Z axis here, somewhere else is going to be pointing in a different direction. And in a closed universe, it'll curve back on itself. In an open universe, it'll still curve, but it's infinite. It's kind of like a saddle, an infinite saddle in three dimensions. What was, it starts with a T, the word is escaping me right now, but in Interstellar, what was that supposed five-dimensional reality that he went into when he was looking through the bookcases and seeing his daughter? Yeah, well, I try and block that movie out of my mind. I was just talking about it this morning. The worst science fiction movie ever made. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway. Why do you say that? Because, look, it wasn't the black hole. Kip Thorne, who had the concept of the movie, is a Nobel Prize winning physicist and a friend of mine,

and he's a really good scientist. And the picture of what the black hole would look like for that planet, that was his stuff. But the story itself, which eventually made into a movie, which I don't think was his story completely, was just so ridiculous. The simple stuff. You see, for me to like science fiction, I wrote a book called The Physics of Star Trek, which I don't think was his story completely, was just so ridiculous. The simple stuff. You see, for me to like science fiction,

you know, I wrote a book called The Physics of Star Trek, so I know, but, so, the important thing about science fiction is not the science in it, but whether the story is good enough to make you suspend disbelief. And there were so many stupid things about that story at a basic level, not the fancy string theory stuff, which I

thought was silly, but the basic stuff. So the purpose of this whole mission is because the oxygen in the planet is going to go away because plants are dying? Yes. Okay. Now, it took 2 billion years for plants, for organic life on Earth to build up the oxygen level to the level it is. Okay?

So one generation of plants dying ain't going to destroy the oxygen on Earth. Moreover, if it was happening, do you think the solution would be to build this incredible rocket ship to travel to God knows where, instead of maybe thinking of geoengineering here on Earth? Let me give you another... But weren't they saying that wasn't, in their hypothetical

reality, that that wasn't possible? But the problem isn't a problem. It wouldn't have happened. I mean, we wouldn't lose oxygen. That's good to know. But also, let me take a more simple thing. You got the likelihood of being able to create this incredible complex with this fantastic traveling spacecraft in the Midwest,

underground, without anyone knowing that this whole thing is built. It's just there in the cornfield, and somehow one day it just appeared. I mean, those trivial things enough to make me not want to suspend disbelief. I remember I tweeted after I saw Interstellar. I had two tweets.

One said, I saw Interstellar. Three hours can be like 30 years. That was one of my favorite tweets. Well, actually, though, that concept. That concept is right. The time dilation, that's wild. That's true. And I had Kip, Kip Thorne and I were on stage,

and I talked to Kip about that after Interstellar. And I said, yeah, that's true. But the problem is, if the gravity is strong enough to have that kind of time dilation, then you're going to be crushed. The tidal force, because the tidal, if the gravity is very strong. There are so-called tidal forces.

Right? Actually, the force of gravity on your feet is greater than the force of gravity on your head. Alright, so hold on real quick just for people out there. When we're talking about time dilation, we're talking about how time is measured differently, like the farther you get away from something. And that's true because of gravity. Gravity...

When the gravity is weaker, clocks travel faster than they do when it's stronger, okay? Okay, and that's why... That's interesting. Well, it's not only interesting, you use it every day. I used it to get here almost if I've been driving. My driver used it to get here because he was using GPS, okay? Wait, so how... Hold on, I'm going to explain it.

I know I'm going to get there. Okay. I remember writing a piece on this a long time ago. So if we didn't depend on... We need to know about time dilation or GPS wouldn't work. Because GPS satellites are traveling about 10,000 to 20,000 miles above the Earth's surface,

going about 8,000 miles an hour. And so the gravity by those satellites is weaker than the gravity of the Earth. Now, the way a GPS works is basically a signal is sent from your phone to the satellite and back in, and the time it takes to travel to the satellite is measured. And then there's another satellite. That's why you always need two or three satellites for gps to work and the time is measured there and you triangulate because you know the speed of light and the time and measuring the different times you figure where the person is

that's how the satellites know where you are okay well now if the clocks on the satellites are kicking at a different rate than the clocks on earth, then you go out of sync. And you can work out, given the gravity of the Earth and the height of those things, that within a day, those clocks would be out by about 38 microseconds, which doesn't sound like a lot, but light travels about a meter in a nanosecond. If you didn't take into account the general relativity, the time dilation due to general relativity, your GPS in an hour would be out by a kilometer. So we have to take into account the fact that these atomic clocks on those satellites are ticking at a different rate.

So this isn't hypothetical. Your whole life depends upon it if you're traveling in a car. So Interstellar is not all bad. Well, no, no. Well, it's not all bad, but very few things are all bad. Lawrence, you've got to entertain people. I know. You've got to keep it 50% true, 50% false.

I agree, but you can only entertain people like me if the story's good enough to suspend disbelief. I don't mind lots of— But you're a genius. No, no, but hold on. I don't mind lots of science fiction where, you know, I like Star Trek, where there's lots of nonsense, but if the stories are good enough, then you don't mind suspending disbelief. And that story, the basic features of the story, I thought were silly. Because of the Earth dying. bookcase thing it's i just thought it was all my other tweet was uh i saw interstellar should have stayed home and and that was the other button line is interstellar but anyway um but so that was the problem with and pete now you'll get a lot of hate mail or i will now because of that

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Yes, exactly. Black holes. Okay. So black holes are, we think, are real objects, and we've actually been able to image something we think is a black hole. And as I say, Kip Thorne's done a lot of work on black holes. That's not what he won the Nobel Prize for. So they're very exotic objects, but again, if they were the size of the universe,

they're not that exotic. You could live in one, right? A closed universe. Now that's what I was getting back to. So a closed universe is one that closes in on itself. If it's full of just matter and radiation, it'll eventually have to collapse into a point. And how long does – the collapse is instant, but how long could it take to build up to it? Well, if our universe were closed right now and it started to collapse, it would take as long to collapse as it took to get there.

So it would be 12 billion, 13 billion years. I want to make sure I'm not missing something here with how you're talking about it. The way I've always understood it is that, you know, we have the planetary system, the stars, the sun, obviously, then you have it as a part of a galaxy that is a collection of stars, and then all the galaxies comprise the universe, but I want to

make sure you are still referring to the fact that that is everything. I'm just saying that may not be everything, but I'm just saying take some... our universe may be infinite, but take the region of the universe we can see, which is really all that matters. Which is like nothing, though. Well, it's... We can see the sun. No, no.

We can see stars. We can see out to the most distant stars in the... In the galaxy. Not in the galaxy. We can see way beyond our galaxy. We can see 100 billion galaxies in our observable universe. With our telescopes, we can see out back to early times, about 12 or 13 billion years ago, almost, and out to distances of 40 to 50 billion light years away.

Really? Yeah. That's what the James Webb Space Telescope was designed to do. I didn't know it's all that far. Of course it is, yeah. You can see as far as light allows you to see. So we know in our observed universe there are over 100 billion galaxies. Turns out if you go back in time, there were like 2 trillion galaxies you could see.

But a lot of those galaxies have merged today to form. So like our Milky Way galaxy cannibalized a lot of other smaller galaxies. What do you mean it cannibalized? Well, I mean, what I mean is that there were small systems that fell together due to their mutual gravitational interaction, eventually building up to form our Milky Way galaxy. There are a few. There are some satellite galaxies around us right now.

If you live in the southern hemisphere, you can see the large and small Magellanic clouds, they're called. And those are small satellite galaxies, which will eventually collapse into our galaxy. You can see the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2 million light years away. Looks just like our galaxy. It's a beautiful thing with the reasonable telescope. But it's heading right towards us.

In 5 billion years, it's going to collide with our galaxy. Do you think Earth could end long before then, though, too, because of other things? Well, Earth, the sun, at that point, within 5 billion years, the Sun will have eaten the Earth because it'll become a red giant. Unless we move the Earth, which is possible. How would we move the Earth? Hold on. It's easy. You can't just say that. I mean, it's easy. I threw it out there. We're trying to get to Mars right now.

I know, that's going to be hard, but in 5 billion years, maybe you can move the Earth. It might be easier to move the Earth than to get to Mars in a way. Alright, you're going to have to defend that one. Yeah, I know. Well, actually, I learned this from a friend of mine. He actually won the Nobel Prize in physics.

He's a pretty good physicist. So all you have to do, if you want to move the Earth out, you have to change its energy of its motion. And the way you can change the energy of motion is if three bodies collide, they can exchange energy. So all you have to do is direct asteroids close to the Earth, but not close enough to hit it. And they'll gain energy in the process of that interaction of the Earth and Sun system. How would you do that? Direct asteroids to the Earth? You go out to them and put a little rocket on them or knock them to the side. The way we want

to protect the Earth, by the way, right? We know there are objects that are going to collide with the Earth and cause massive destruction if they don't move it. As has in the past. And we now have a system of looking for those things. And as you probably know, NASA did a test mission last year where they knocked into

a... they basically had a rocket knock into a... Wait, I don't remember this. Maybe I do, but it's not in there right now. They knocked into a... They basically had a rocket knock into a... Wait, I don't remember this. Maybe I do, but it's not in there right now. They knocked into a small asteroid and saw the change in its motion. That's probably the way... How did they knock into it? They took a

spacecraft and rammed it into it. You don't know about that? No. Look it up. It's on Google. Unlike most thing on Google, it's true. We're going to put a pin in that one. All right. NASA's DART data validates kinetic impact as planetary defense mission. Yeah.

Let's scroll down, Alessi, if you don't mind. This is the video right here if you want to see it. All right. Yeah. Can we put this video in the corner? This might be copyright, but so in which case we'll just leave it on the screen. It's NASA, so I don't think it is actually. Oh, yeah.

It's government. It might be too long. Do you want to check how long it is? It's a brief one. It's a synopsis. So this, yeah, it's government. It might be too long. Did you check how long it is? It's a brief one. It's a synopsis. So this is the takeoff of it? Yeah. Is that like a rocket?

Yeah, it's a rocket. That's what we call a rocket. How big is that thing? Big. All right, but what are we talking? I don't know. Maybe 10 stories. That's actually, okay.

Oh, the object itself is small. It's probably a ton or less. Did they put anything special in there, like a nuclear bomb or something? No, no, no. They just hit it. They just rammed it into the asteroid. That's it right there. That's it.

Whoa. So they had the video right here. And it impacted on that small asteroid. And how far away was this asteroid approximately? I don't know. Far. And there's people happy. One of the few times you have a collision that people

are happy about. When did they, how long did it take after launch for it to reach that? Probably, it probably took, again, I don't remember, but my bet is it took over a year. Whoa. That's not, but you know what though? That's not that far. No, I know, but

that point is that if you know far, it's dangerously close. If we have a planetary defense system where we have telescopes looking for potential Earth-colliding objects that are, say, that will take 10 years to get here, if we see them far enough, you know, maybe take 10 years to get here, then you might imagine

getting a rocket and launching it with enough time to deflect its trajectory by enough to miss the Earth. And that's the idea of planetary defense. It's a really useful thing. I mean, the likelihood that we're going to be hit is small. The big asteroids take maybe once every 100 million years, okay?

Smaller ones, well, those are Earth-destroying asteroids. But ones that could cause havoc are probably more frequent. But it's not that frequent. But it's still a reality, unlike many things that people spend money on. How big was the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs? It was probably between 1 and 10 kilometers across in size. See, that's not that big. I know.

But it destroyed the whole ecosystem. A one-kilometer asteroid that hit the Earth would cause massive devastation. A hundred meters wouldn't, but one kilometer. And so 10 kilometers is probably Earth life-destroying.

Is it because the force of the impact gets it down to, like, the core? No. Or not the core, but below the crust. No, no, no. It didn't. This one that killed the dinosaurs, it landed in Chicxulub.

It just landed in what, there's a big crater in the underwater, now it's underwater in Central America. And so it wasn't the crater, it produced a lot of things like tidal waves, but it also, in the atmosphere, it's going very fast and it's burning hot. And it produced, and it knocked out stuff that would produce fires throughout the whole world. So, you know, there's many different ways you could have imagined. So that could have changed the climate and destroyed dinosaurs. It might have affected the oceans, the acidic level of the oceans from all the...

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apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. The force of the impact and the fires that happened. No one, I think, it's not clear what exactly killed the dinosaurs, but as a result of that collision,

but it could do many different things that would do it. And so, you wouldn't want to be around when such a thing happened. Although the smallest mammals survived, right? And we're lucky that they survived because they became birds and everything else that we... What mammals survived? Well, I mean, there were small... The ancestors of birds that are now birds

who were little dinosaurs. And the point is that big things tended to not survive, little things tended to survive. And those little things, if nothing survived, we wouldn't be here, right? No. So some things had to evolve into us, survive and evolve into us.

So we're lucky that they... And we're an accident. If that hadn't happened, maybe we'd be two dinosaurs having a podcast right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you talk to other physicists, they'll talk about, and I don't want to get to multiverse yet, but sometimes if you look at theoretical multiverse, it could sometimes even be where we're tuned to just the right frequency

that there's dinosaurs in this room right now in another reality. In another reality. Yeah, that's a little metaphysical for me. It's definitely out there. But how old were you when you first came up with your theory that everything came from nothing and that, you know, to extend that, that there is no God or something? Well, I mean, I started to kind of figure the God thing was not likely when I was, you

know, a kid, when I was 12 or 13. Why? Well, the story seemed kind of silly, and everything I knew about the universe seemed to suggest that there weren't any miracles happening that I could see. Really? Yeah, yeah. You don't think it's some sort of miracle that something like the Big Bang could just...

It's miraculous, but it's not a miracle. It doesn't defy the laws of physics. That sounds like... I didn't fuck her, but I used a condom. Well, maybe, but I guess... How do you define a miracle? Something that is beyond... See, you're having a hard time.

Something that is beyond what we know as physical possibility. No, that's not a miracle. How do you define it? A miracle, I'd say, is something that violates known laws of physics. See, that's the very science answer. Yeah, because if it's just stuff we don't understand, then it's not miraculous. It's just amazing.

Okay, and so maybe I shouldn't use the word miraculous. I should say it's amazing the Big Bang happened. But it's... Is there anything we can't explain about the Big Bang right now? There's lots of things we can't explain, but not understanding... What I've said many times, and listen to this carefully. Okay. And believe me later.

But anyway... He's dying over here. Anyway. But anyway, is that not understanding something is not evidence for God. It's evidence for not understanding. There's a lot we don't understand about the universe, but that doesn't mean we'll never understand it. So, you know, my new book, The Edge of Knowledge, the first sentence says, the three most important words in science are, I don't know.

Oh, yeah. Okay, because not knowing is an invitation to explore and discover. I love that message. Yeah, it is important. More people need to hear that, not just in science. Yeah, particularly not just in science. And that's why I think it's important. So, yeah, there's a lot we don't understand about the Big Bang. We don't understand when I talk about how the universe came from nothing. I can't prove I don't have a theory of quantum gravity. All I can show is that it's plausible.

And the fact that it's plausible that you can create a universe with 100 billion galaxies without any supernatural shenanigans is amazing to me. And I thought amazing enough to write a book about. And so, you know, what I can say is the following. If you asked, what would a universe that was created from nothing, that arose from nothing spontaneously by plausible extensions of the known laws of physics, what would such a universe, if it lasted 13.8 billion years long,

what would such a universe look like? And the answer is, it would look precisely like the universe in which we live. Now, does that prove that's the universe in which we live. Now, does that prove that's the case? No, but it's strongly suggestive. It would look precisely like the universe in which we live. Because that's just operating under the assumption of what we know that we can see. No, no, I mean, in order to survive, you'd say, what would be the characteristics of such a universe that would, that rose spontaneously, and what would the processes that would happen, what would it look like, what would it, would it look flat? Yes. Well, you know, etc., etc., etc., and it would look like the universe in which we live. So,

you'd say, well, okay, I can say that's a plausible reality, and the fact that I can, it's like, you know, let's go back to Darwin, okay? Darwin developed evolution, and that is natural selection, without knowing about genomics and without knowing about DNA variations and spontaneous mutations and the basic fundamental underlying mechanism behind natural selection, the variations in genes among a population. He didn't know about that. But what he said was, look, you know, measuring finches in the Galapagos, among other things, I'll be in the Galapagos in a month or two.

Oh, that's awesome. But I can understand how that would happen plausibly, how over long enough periods natural selection could operate to create a great huge diversity of species from a simple beginning. And he said, and he showed by a lot of different examples how plausible it was, but didn't have proof of watching speciation happened. But the theory was so overwhelmingly plausible. It was so much better and so much more reasonable that once he realized it, it became obvious that it was probably true.

And now we know a lot more and we can test a lot of other things he couldn't at the time. And so I kind of view this as the same thing, that we can show this is plausible, but we haven't yet gotten to the point, either theoretically or observationally, to demonstrate the details of that mechanism. Well, I think at this point we've proven it that the concept of evolution is absolutely true. Yeah, evolution is

undeniable happened, the Big Bang really happened, but I can't prove to you that the universe arose from nothing. I can just say it's plausible and it's more plausible than the alternatives. But let's stick with evolution for a second. This is where I always get confused. When I start thinking about the timeline in my head, I'm like, wait, how does this make sense? So if we look at post-Younger Dryas, humanity is born again, right? So obviously, I guess it would be some people had to survive from the catastrophe and everything, but that means other animals. From which catastrophe?

From like post-Younger Dryas when you had like, you know. Oh yeah, there were a lot of almost, well, I mean, happily in the time that, I mean, humans went through a bottleneck where humanity almost went extinct, probably in the tip of Southern Africa, where there may be a hundred individuals. How long ago are we talking? We're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of less than a million years ago. Okay, all right, that makes sense. So when we're looking at evolution, I always have to catch myself not thinking like, oh, the little microbiome started 12,000 years ago and got to this point. Obviously that's not the case. No, it takes, you need long, what Darwin first realized when he visited, when he went on the voyage of the Beagle, which is an amazing book to read, is it was geology that convinced him that the Earth was really, really old.

And how difficult it is. We didn't evolve to understand. We evolved to understand maybe hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years. But millions of years or billions of years are just beyond our, you know, direct intuitive understanding. It's hard to understand how gradual things that seem implausible over long enough times can happen. That's why most people, many people have a hard time

accepting that evolution happened because they think, oh yeah, we have, you know, monkeys and us had a common ancestor a thousand years ago. Well, that's not when it happened. Five million years ago, maybe. And so it's that slow, gradual process of things accumulating over long times that took a while for Darwin to finally recognize.

But it's the same thing. He looked at the stones in the southern tip of South America when he was on the voyage of the Beagle, and saw the mountains, and he looked in the mountains and found fossils of sea life, okay? And he realized that there were geological processes that were happening inexorably slowly, so that those, you know, at some point a long time ago, what was the mountain now was under the sea and then the pebbles that came had to erode from erosion from large rocks

and again the time it would take to do that would be so long that he started to realize then other processes can happen that are inexorably slow just look at the watch and see if you can see the secondhand move or, you know, or see the minute hand move. It's moving so slowly that you can we had the first... the first humans in basic form walking this earth approximately? What do you mean in humans in basic form? Hominids? Meaning we were... there were still apes and there were still genes that we probably... that some now... Well we still have... we still share over 97% of our genes with... Correct. But modern hominids, Homo sapiens,

Homo sapiens have been around, I mean, Neanderthals have been around for at least maybe 300,000 years to 30,000 years ago. Homo sapiens, which is our species, if you want to call it that, evolved less than 100,000 years ago in Africa and coexisted with with the Neanderthals, and probably one of the plausible arguments is

that we, if we coexisted, first of all we coexisted enough to mate with them, we all have Neanderthal GNA and our thing, but it's also possible that modern Homo sapiens were responsible for killing them, okay? For eventually making Neanderthals extinct. It could have happened one of two ways. It could have happened by violent encounters, or it could have happened just simply by out-competition. That as climate change and Neanderthals couldn't adapt adequately, and Homo sapiens did. You know, it's called natural selection.

Most species that have ever been on Earth are extinct. Yeah. And that's why to assume we won't become extinct is kind of a pompous assumption. Because certainly, I mean, we have this great amazing ability called foresight, which in principle would allow us to survive. But if you look around today and see what's happening, it may be doubtful.

Yeah. We'll see. It depends on the day, what I think about that. So most species become extinct, and it doesn't. So to think that we're the capstone of evolution is kind of a pompous assumption. With humanity going back that far, though, and so many cataclysmic-type events that have occurred since, are you someone who ever thinks about what kind of maybe technological breakthroughs

could have happened in previous civilizations that we don't know about now? No. Never? Well, there are things that, look, early civilizations, some of them are quite good. The Greeks knew the circumference of the earth, which was then forgotten until we measured again.

Well, that's during this era, though. Even though it's an early civilization, it's during this era of humanity. Well, there were, yeah, but there were no civilizations that had language and writing and technology before, much before the Greeks. A modern civilization, maybe 10,000 years, goes back 10,000 years. But before that, humans were in small tribes, and before that, you know, even not hominids. As I say, there are small groups of humans in a cave in South Africa for about 100,000 years, during which, by the way, climate change caused the sea to come in

and out by a factor of maybe 10 miles, so during that time, some of that time, they were fishing, getting high protein, probably during that time. For 100,000 years. Yeah, during that time. In an instant. Yeah, during that time, probably when they had high-protein diets is when their brain increased in size, allowing, you know, so all sorts of factors came into our evolution that are important, but there were no,

there's no such thing as ancient civilizations before that had, there's no evidence whatsoever or any plausible argument for why any ancient civilizations, these arguments like ancient aliens and stuff is just bogus so Lawrence Krauss isn't sitting around thinking about the lost city of Atlantis too much no no I'm not not in terms of I mean there are there probably there are cataclysmic events that probably cause islands to disappear

into the water and and and that can happen that can certainly arise by volcanic events but there didn't hide some civilization that knew how to have flying cars or or or so cool or it'd be so much fun if that's right but we have to realize we all want to believe we're like Fox Mulder that's right and then we

have to and so like Richard Feynman said the easiest person to fool is yourself and so you gotta constantly recognize that we all want to believe. And then we have to say, well, what do we want to believe in? And maybe if we believe in it, there's a reason we want to believe in it. Maybe it's not right. Maybe it's not true. But you also, it does work both ways, too.

I agree with you 100%. You have to because I'm right. When I look at so many people these days, and all these stories are interesting, and yes, I look into them too, and there's a part of me that wants to believe all this stuff, whether it be looking at ancient civilizations, some of the UFO stuff, whatever.

But in science, what was that line you had a little bit ago where you said science isn't about proving something, it's about proving something that it's not? You can't prove things to be right in science. You can prove things to be wrong, absolutely. Okay. But just because something survives the test of experiment now doesn't mean it's absolutely right. There could be an experiment that comes along that shows you have to modify your theory. Exactly. So if you are looking, for example, in some of your life's work,

where you are looking all the way to the end of the spectrum. And what I mean by that is to where it's either nothing or it's God, creator, whatever, you fill in the word there. And you're saying that that doesn't exist. Isn't that the toughest thing to even make that decision on? And are you open to being wrong about that? I'm open to be wrong about everything. All right, that's good. That's the whole point of being a scientist. And all of us should be. Being wrong is a wonderful thing. It means you have something else to learn

and I've been wrong many times in my life. Well, I was wrong once, I think, 20 years ago and I remember I was wrong because I thought I was wrong. What were you wrong about?

No, I thought I was wrong. I was wrong about it. No, that's just a joke. I've been wrong many times in my life and the older I get, the more I realize that and so that's fine. There's nothing... But what I'm willing... The difference between science and religion is that you're willing

to change your mind when the evidence tells you to. Do you think science can turn into religion, though, too? Well, science... Look, we're all religious in one way or another. We all want to believe. The usefulness of science is it trains us, if it does right, to be willing to realize that if evidence, if contrary evidence comes along, then you throw out some beautiful idea that you believed in your heart of hearts, like yesterday's newspaper. You're willing to do that, and I think that's the difference between science and religion, and science and ideology. And unfortunately there's too much, there's a lot of ideology creeping into science nowadays, and I've

written about it, as you probably know. And so the idea that nothing is, there's nothing that should be not subject to question. Nothing is sacred. No question is unaskable. And in our society right now, people are saying,

oh, you can't ask what is a woman, you know? And anything should be questionable. Nothing is sacred. Nothing. And that, you know, I used to argue against religious fundamentalists about this now, but now I have to argue against social justice post-modernist ideologues. See, that's religion. Yeah, it's always reasonable to say, but what? Could that be wrong? So that's why, get back to what I said earlier, I don't know is so important, and

you said it, it's not just in science. Our society would be so much better if more people said, I don't know. Politicians, teachers, parents. And maybe I'm wrong. The reason people don't want someone to come on the university campus is that fear might offend them. But you know what?

Free speech was not created to defend the rights of people who are saying what you don't want to hear. It defends your rights to hear it because it might change your mind. Ooh, I don't think I've ever heard that before. Well, I first learned that from Christopher Hitchens, but he... That's good. But he didn't invent that either. It was probably Hume or someone like that.

Still, that's really good. Yeah. Yeah, no, it is. It's really important. Yeah, because, I mean, you've spent so much of your life around academia, and I'm sure the transformation that you've seen there, particularly over

the last decade or so, has to be pretty jarring, no? It is. It's jarring and unfortunate, and I write about it. And it's really unfortunate. In fact, I have a piece coming out this week, maybe in the Wall Street Journal, if they ever get around to editing the damn thing. That, you know, there was, before you were born again, probably, there was a guy named Alan Sokol who gave a spoof.

He was so, he thought this postmodernist nonsense that was infiltrating humanities was so bad. He wrote an article claiming that quantum gravity, you know, he sent it to a journal called Social Choice, which was one of these postmodernist journals that eventually became this, you know, social justice nonsense we're hearing now. And it was full of gobbledygook,

gobbledygook about oppression and this and that. And he got it published. And then he pointed out later it was a spoof, and it caused a great furor because this distinguished journal in social sciences had accepted this nonsense. He wanted to show that the whole field had no content.

And my piece in the Wall Street Journal shows that, unfortunately, the same gobbledygook that was a spoof then is appearing now, not just in social science journals, but in science journals. Yeah. And it would have been laughed off the... Scientists would have just ridiculed that crap now and now it's appearing in journals and institutions are accepting that nonsense. Yeah. It's pretty scary. You're in town right now to do an event with Nick Pope, who I just

recorded with as well, so your episodes are gonna be coming out around the same time, but I'm gonna be recording an episode with his wife Elizabeth. Yes, who I've written about. Yeah, in a couple weeks because of that whole... I mean, she's an anthropologist who, when looking at some found remains, declared it to be, I believe it was female. Yeah. And then she was canceled because they're like, well, you don't know how that remain would have identified. Yeah, I know. You're not allowed to use sex when it comes to –

Are you fucking kidding me? I know, exactly. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I wrote a piece on the sex of skeletons based on the fact that that was cancelled from a meeting on the American Anthropological Association. It's just utter garbage. And the problem is it's the biggest threat to science because saying that you can't ask the question or can't even discuss certain things is the end of science. Yeah, I think it's, that's what I mean, because obviously, as you pointed out, there are plenty of scientists who are still in the space who are not treating science like a religion, like an ideology, but it is creeping in even from the outside forces so much that we're getting to a point where that is the ultimate hack against religion

throughout human history, in that they're like, well, this is how it is, because this is what it says, and you can't ask any questions about it. Yeah, no, yeah, it's just... I gotta hit this and see what it says. Oh, the what the fuck button? Hold on, I gotta give you the idea. No, the reason that I... Now you can edit. What the F?

Yeah, okay, I should have had that. You're not even kidding. No, I had a thing like that from that game where you hit it and it makes noise. Once I debated this Christian apologist named William Lane Craig, and I knew he'd say so many lies and nonsense that I couldn't contradict him effectively, so I... It was on Australia, so I had that button. I told the audience, every time he says something that's a lie, I'm gonna hit it. Now, how do you determine it to be a lie versus...

Because a lie is something that disagrees with empirical evidence. So what kinds of things would he say? Oh, well, you know, I forget at the time, but I mean, well... But we can still see this on YouTube, right? Probably, yes, somewhere. I think probably that debate was real. It was three debates I did in Australia. Well, one thing I knew was there was a movie about me and Richard Dawkins called The Unbelievers,

which he did a podcast about, or what the equivalent of a podcast was at that time, about, but I knew he'd never seen the movie because it hadn't come out yet. So he talked about what we said and did, and then I play a clip from the movie, and it was just totally different. So that's called a lie. That's a simple lie.

He'd lie about what he would say. He'd use these highfalutin things about cosmology to argue that cosmologists implied that God had to exist, and it doesn't. And so I would argue that he was abusing physics and distorting it to get the answer he wanted, which is what people do. Hold on one second. So he's talking about the Christian God in that way. Yeah, yeah. But let me actually even pull it back from that and pretend he was just talking about like a God in general.

Yeah, this goddess Spinoza or something, yeah. If you're lo- whatever it is, some form, Creator A, whatever it is, when you're looking at things that are built in perfect, like, almost symmetry and harmony throughout moving through our planetary system into the galaxies, into the universe, could you see why you might think that something more perfect than us would have had to make that happen? I can see why people... Of course, I can see why people believe in God, have believed in God as long as people have been people, okay?

Because it's a nice explanation of something you don't understand. Yes. But what we've learned is the real universe is far more fascinating than the than the than the little fairy tales of the bible or what you pick your favorite religion uh it's i mean so of course i can understand why people not only think there might be a higher being but want there to be because my goodness it's being in a universe without any purpose is terrifying. And with no one looking after you, terrifying. But it's also exciting. Well, but it depends on your attitude. It's terrifying. And some people may say, well, if there's no purpose, why should I go on living tomorrow? And the answer is,

you make your own purpose. Okay? We make our own purpose in life, and we're here for this brief instant in cosmic time. And my goodness, how amazing is it to be able to look out at the universe and see 100 billion galaxies, to learn about how life works, to experience love and all the rest. And so all of that is significant to us, but it has no cosmic significance. So, you know, it's worth it. But that's interesting. See, you have the perspective of how i don't think

you use the word there but i'm going to put the word there correct me if i'm wrong you have the the perspective of how lucky we are to have this opportunity like you yourself living here it's a great amazing coincidence and i enjoy that without an idea of like a creator at the beginning that's pretty impressive yeah well i think that's thank you but I think it's the right attitude to have, and it doesn't make, it makes life more, look, I think it makes life more exciting to know that we have this unique accident to be here for 100 years, let's say, if we're lucky.

It makes every moment more precious than knowing it was somehow predestined to happen. It makes the opportunity, if you can experience the realities of the world, enjoy them, experience music and travel and all the things that we are fortunate enough to accidentally have. And to me, it makes it more precious.

There's a linguistic argument about loss of faith, and I think it's a problem. Some people, if they lose their faith, feel like there's a gap. But it doesn't have to. The world can there's no loss it can be richer not poorer how do you look at emotion though whether it be i look at emotion i have emotions i'm human happiness sadness love hate what about it how do you how why do we form that well it's probably well look there's a by the way whenever we say we mean how, because why presumes purpose,

okay? And so what we really mean is how. And the answer is evolution, evolutionary psychology gives good arguments for why, even gives good arguments for why you might believe in God. And in fact, you know, I've done lots of podcasts, you know, I just did a podcast with my friend Robert Sapolsky about determinism and and you can understand exactly the mechanism i was going to say why but how um about neuro biological systems release certain hormones in order to you know for survival you know and it evolves into an emotion but why don't other now we we well why that other species feel things, but why do certain species maybe not feel?

How do you know they don't? That's a good question. Okay. And that's an important question. One of the reasons I'm a vegetarian. Yeah, I mean, but I love watching nature videos, and they're brutal. I love watching the videos, though, where certain animals are hunting other animals. Yeah, well, life is not fair.

You know, the universe isn't meant to make us happy, and evolution isn't either. What do you mean it's not meant to make us happy? Well, people like to think that the world is the way it is or the universe is as it is because another way would be worse. But the universe doesn't care. The universe doesn't care that there's going to be an asteroid that's going to destroy the Earth unless we do something about it. Just the way it is. In fact, there's a film by a friend of mine,

a director named Werner Herzog, called Grizzly Man, which you may or may not have seen. Werner Herzog. You don't know? You know it. Do I know him? Yeah, you do. That sounded like a Nazi Germany guy. I don't know. No, it. Do I know him? Yeah, you do. That sounded like a Nazi Germany guy.

I don't know. No, no, he's a great director. I've been in two of his movies, so I'm a big fan of his. All right, shout out Werner. Anyway, yeah, he's a great friend and a great director, one of the greats. But Grizzly Man was a great documentary, and I was actually a judge at Sundance, and we gave him an award for that movie. You were a judge at Sundance?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How the hell did you get that? I know why people always ask me. If I was Brad Pitt, would you ask me why I were a judge at Sundance? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How the hell did you get that? I know why people always ask me. If I was Brad Pitt, would you ask me why I'm a judge at Sundance? I guess. Anyway, so anyway, the award I was doing was related to science,

so maybe there's more sense there. But it was called Grizzly Man. It's a great movie. It's about this guy who loved grizzly bears and lived with them for 12 years until he was eaten by one. Oh, yes, yes, okay. But the best part of that movie is near the end

when the camera close-ups on the eyes of this grizzly bear. And he said, you look at those eyes. I don't see. I don't see. I can't be Werner. I'd love to say he has this great voice. I don't see love or hate or I see indifference. Basically, it's saying Mother Nature ate Mother Nature.

Mother Nature wants to kill you, and don't pretend otherwise. Yeah, I mean, that's a good message. Yeah, it is. It's true, because we anthropomorphize, we make it seem as if somehow the world, there we go, about Timothy Treadwell. What I loved about that movie, among many, besides the fact that Werner's an amazing filmmaker,

is Timothy Treadwell could be a two-dimensional character, because he's kind of ridiculous, but Werner makes him into a three-dimensional character, because he's kind of ridiculous, but Werner makes him into a three-dimensional character, and he admires him for many, many, including his cinematography. All of the footage was Timothy Treadwell's. I mean, he took this footage over the

12 years he was in Alaska, living with grizzly bears. It's an amazing movie, but he didn't, but Werner makes him a real human character with faults and strengths instead of just being a stereotype. That's amazing. Yeah. I've got to watch that.

It is great. Well, you've written a lot about – in the past about climate. And you can watch Werner's other movies that I'm into, by the way. No, just go ahead. We'll plug. You've written a lot about climate change and that argument there. And I'm thinking about that because it's at the heart of a few things we're talking about. It's at the heart of, you know, how the how the planet evolves and how it can destroy itself. It's at the heart of humanity and whether or not we destroy ourselves. And it's also at the heart of the scientific issue that we're having right now, where sometimes it has to be or a lot of times now it has to be everything or nothing. And you either have to think that the planet's going to die tomorrow, or, you know, that it's not dying at all and you deny it. How do you rectify this in our current landscape? Like, when you talk about climate

change, what are your thoughts there, and what are we looking at? Well, I wrote a book about it, but, I mean, look, climate change is... Link in description. What was, I mean, yeah, yeah, it's, well, my book is more, most importantly, I mean, look, climate change is... Link in description. What was... I mean, yeah, yeah, it's... Well, my book is more... Most importantly, I actually wrote it partly for a friend of mine, a magician, Penn Jillette, who's kind of a libertarian, and he wants to know... And his point is that I don't want to be told what to do. I want to know what the facts are so I can make my own decision.

So I wrote a book about the physics of climate change, which doesn't have policy recommendations. It's just so anyone can understand because it's not rocket science. The fundamental physics of climate change is 200-year-old physics that we understand and it works. And so I wanted to explain how it works. So climate change is happening and it is anthropomorphic. It's human-induced and it's happening. And there's certain implications that are unambiguous and undeniable. There are other things that are more speculative.

One of the things that is going to happen, no matter what we do with fossil fuels, given the amount of additional energy that has been absorbed by the Earth due to the increase in carbon dioxide over, say, the last 25 years, the oceans have heated up by something like 0.007 degrees Celsius, something like that. But the amount of heat in that is the equivalent of something like 3.5 billion Hiroshima-level atomic bombs. Five every second, 24 hours a day for 25 years, okay? Now, there's a fundamental property of water,

which isn't quantum physics. It's high school physics. You heat water up, it expands. Now, when that heat is equilibrated in your oceans, it causes the oceans to rise. Sea level rise isn't just happening because glaciers are melting. The sea is getting hotter, and it's expanding.

And just due to the expansion of what we've, the energy we put in over the last 25 years, no matter what we do, sea levels are going to rise by about a quarter of a meter in the next 25 to 50 years. Now, that may not seem like a lot to you, but when you consider that maybe 100 million people on Earth live in places that are less than one meter above sea level. I mean, I wrote the book after visiting the Mekong Delta

in Cambodia and Vietnam, which is like a perfect storm for climate change. 50% or 80% of South Vietnam is less than one meter above sea level. Okay? And the Mekong River, which now supports 60 million people with fish and everything else, it keeps out the salt water because it's strong enough to keep the salt water from impinging on it. And when that salt water, when sea levels rise and

that salt water overwhelms the Mekong, those rice-rich deltas that are the most productive rice-growing regions on the planet are going to turn into mangrove swamps. And so those kinds of things are going to happen. How do we fix that? Well, we don't, I think we, well, things that are going to happen, we can't fix directly, but we can, you know, technology can do a lot. The big problem of dealing with climate change is not technology, it's politics. Of course.

For example, Holland. Have you ever been there? I have. It's a wonderful place. Most of it's underwater. Would be underwater if it didn't have Of course. For example, Holland. Have you ever been there? I have. It's a wonderful place. Most of it's underwater, would be underwater if it didn't have dikes. Okay? Holland is a beautiful place to be, but if technology hadn't intervened, much of Holland wouldn't be there right now. Our Discord and Patreon links are in the description. We are starting to do AMAs on Discord, and we are also now releasing a new show

called The Julian and Alessi Show with my producer Alessi Alamon on Patreon, along with some other exclusive content from episodes that we have been putting out on YouTube that are not seen on YouTube. And so there are ways to do it, but you have to have the foresight and willingness to address those technological challenges and the money. And the problem is, most of the places that are going to be affected are the places that didn't produce the climate change in the first place. But, and if we want to help things, then the first world is going to have to spend a lot of money on the third world, which ain't going to happen, unfortunately.

And if it doesn't, the problem isn't going to just be, in my opinion, the problem isn't just going to be a lot of people losing, you know, being flooded out from where they live. It's when you have not just 1,000 or 100,000 climate refugees, but you have 100 million, you've got to wonder about the sociopolitical impacts of that. Oh, it's a lot. Yeah, and whether that's going to cause a war,

that's going to cause a war, that's going to cause, you know, in Sudan, for example, a lot of the problems in Sudan happen because of a drought where people move from the countries to the cities, and that eventually produces civil unrest that caused it. And so the indirect socio-political impacts of that are potentially tremendous, and I view those as much more serious than the physical

devastations or negative impacts that are that may come from climate change yeah i i think to to your friend pendulet's point i think the issue a lot of people see with it is and it's hard to talk about this topic with people these days you know especially like if exactly but if you're nuanced if're nuanced – we're finally getting used to that. If you're nuanced something when and when in reality what you're doing is just telling people oh you got to use this bendy straw that no one wants to use and that's going to save the turtles well look you know i i try not i i do try to tell not to i try to provide people evidence and knowledge and and hopefully encourage them to

make their own decisions so i try not to tell people how to live. I'm a vegetarian partly because of reasons of climate change, but if there are other reasons, but there's no doubt that that if we more people ate in the worst world or ate less meat there'd be less carbon dioxide put in the atmosphere, for example. But then there'd be more. What? There'd be more available in the atmosphere, for example. But then there'd be more. What? There'd be more available in the wild that would still get eaten. Well, okay.

It's a complicated issue. Yes. Okay, but there are questions that are worth asking. So, you know, the problem with climate change, you hit the nail on the head in the sense is all of us seem so tiny that how can any of us impact on climate change? You know, what can I do, you know?

And the answer is, yeah, there's some things I can do. I can, you know, eat meat. I can maybe travel less than I do or something like that. But what I can do is try and educate people about the reality of it and the potential actions we can take. There's an old saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail mm-hmm i'm an educator

and i happen to think that an educated populist produces a better democracy so i can educate people and they can maybe elect politicians who actually base their policies on empirical reality instead of bullshit but what politicians aren't owned by corporate? Look, you can say it's all, it's never, look, what is true is whether you have a democracy or a dictatorship or a oligarchy or whatever, governments eventually respond. When you have more than 3% of the population that's actively willing to act on a certain issue, governments never lead, they follow. And so what you can do is if it's in the interest of, let's say they're bought by the corporations, when it's the interest of corporations to behave a certain way in order to appease the public, they'll do that. Okay? And so what you can do is

educate people. And when enough people are aware of the situation that if you're a politician, then acting in a certain way is not going to get you elected. You're not going to act that way. Yeah, but there's also, look, people still are going to operate on the, how do I take care of my family? How do I get to do what I do? I mean, look, you're coming from science, right? You are coming from a space with some... Go ahead. Okay. Yeah, I get...

Normally when I'm doing a podcast, people hate when I interrupt, but I'm the guest, so I get to interrupt. You do get to interrupt. Yeah, and so here's the deal. What people do care about are their children and grandchildren. So you're right. I might not be able to say to you, and by the way, first thing I can say is that if we respond to climate change, it doesn't mean we have a less, a worse standard of living. It may mean we have technologies that are even better. Some people like Tesla is better than, you know, so it doesn't mean giving up our standard of life or other

things. But what I can say is that your grandchildren and your children your grandchildren are going to live in a world where the sea level is maybe a meter higher. That means if you live in New York City, if we don't do a lot of stuff, if you live in Hoboken, forget it. Well, this is already a fishbowl. Yeah, exactly. And people are kind of worried about, most parents would

like the future of their children to be better than their own future and their grandchildren. And maybe that's a way you get people to have their own myopic desires match with what we need to do. But there's always the syndrome of, oh, it won't happen to the next generation. It's three generations away. That's the same thing as evolution. It's hard.

Long time is hard. And it's a real challenge. It's a real challenge. And whether we deal with it, it depends on the day. I'm usually pessimistic. But as a well-known writer friend of mine who just died said, Cormac McCarthy said, I'm a pessimist. I asked him why he was so cheerful because he writes very dark books.

And he said, I'm a pessimist, but that's no reason to be gloomy. I'm a pessimist. Anyway, it's my mantra. I'm kind of a pessimist, but life is... You're more of a ball breaker. I think that's what you are. I try to do that, too. Yeah, those three months in New York when you were a kid really rubbed off on you.

I think so. They kind of stayed there. But at the core of it, though, is the simplest and most complicated thing simultaneously in our... not in our world, but in our society. And that is, it does come back to money. People are, I mean, you know how it is. Look, how many brilliant physicists are there out there in this country? A lot, right? And you're one of them. And yet,

you guys, in order to do what you do, you have to have funding. Period. End of story. And you and all of your friends have had people over the years fund you. I mean, Epstein was a guy who funded a ton of physicists and everything. Yeah, but the dominant funding ever since the Second World War... But you don't control that, is the point. You don't control who does that. But the government... Here's the deal.

Here's the way it's worked. It's like democracy. It may be a crummer way of governing, but as Winston Churchill said, it's better than all the other ways. And so the kind of work I did, the particle physics, and even to NASA to some extent, is private industry can't fund it. It's just not enough money, and the payoff

is not close enough. So the government has to fund it. The government creates agencies like the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Those get run by scientists. And then when you do a grant proposal, it's peer-reviewed by other scientists. And so, now, that's not to say scientists aren't biased

and all the rest of the crap. It's not biased, it's that they still have to get funding on top of that. Yeah, so they have to lobby Congress to fund. Who pays them? And the scientists, you know, I've used to visit Congress people when I was more active in a university environment and explain to them what was going on so that they would know why certain things should be funded.

And hopefully try and convince them. But, of course, they're influenced by other things. And so there are biases that come in. But the system on the whole actually works. On the whole, good science has gotten funded. And we've made progress. Just look at all the things that have happened. So you're right.

There are impediments to rational and objective decision-making, but the system, especially a peer review, has traditionally worked when it comes to the funding of science. And part of the reason is that science, that you're not dependent on private industry. Now things are changing and you are seeing billionaires getting more involved.

Yeah, it's been happening for a while. Yeah, and you are seeing them, but you can try and convince them to act rationally, too. Well, it sucks because now society, with this open-source world where we all, well, this is great that we all kind of get to see things. Well, we also get to see things that don't exist in the open-source world, but yeah. I mean, the internet has been amazing, but there's more misinformation than there is information. Absolutely. But what I'm saying is every person has to answer for everything that they've ever been around, even if they're not around it.

I have to sit there and I have to watch. Yeah, it's bullshit. Exactly. I have to watch guys like Pinker, like you, answer questions about Epstein and him funding stuff because he was one of the billionaires that did this stuff and in reality to me what it's always looked like obviously it looks a little different for celebrities and things like that what to me what it's always looked like is you have people who come in and say oh my god i love that you're working on the origins lawrence yeah you know what what's it going to take for you to be able to find x y and

z oh well you know maybe 15 months here you go you are it going to take for you to be able to find X, Y, and Z? Oh, well, you know, maybe 15 months. Here you go. You are incentivized to take that. Well, the point is that would you rather have the people you don't like, whether it's Epstein or the Koch brothers, would you rather have them funding oil and gas industries, or would you rather have them funding people who were looking at the fundamental questions of the world? Would you rather have them spend money on good things or bad things? Now, that's a real poison pill question

that's that's an interesting question but what if they're trying to use their funding of those good things to turn it into bad things well you can't look i mean the coke brothers did that their whole life well you might say that about the government too what if i pay taxes and the government's you know building nuclear weapons well that's true but maybe i'm also paying taxes so that i have health care and I have police and I have military that maybe is defense. So, like, life is just not, you can't, I can't

control the world. You know, it'd be great if I could, but I can't. What I can do is try and have a positive impact. Absolutely. And I can have, try and have a positive impact by getting, by one of the things I can do is if I think the things I'm working on are worth, are worthwhile, I can try and convince people to support it. I may be biased and they can decide whether it's worthwhile.

So that's all I can do, right? Yeah. Is there a way to – even in the modern academic environment, though, because, like, historically we've always thought about the best research obviously happening in academia, but that includes people – students who are on the the come up it doesn't just include the professors and things like that is there a way to foster a better environment so that we kind of have a a more academic led private side of society making making progress here and here's the second part to this question peer review i agree was was actually at its outset a great invention but do we also have a problem where peer review, I agree, was actually at its outset a great invention, but do we also have a problem where peer review is almost shutting things down? It is, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I told you, it's like democracy. It's the worst thing, but it's better than all the rest. I don't want

academics to be... Look, many of my best friends are academics, or have been, and many people I know, and there are a lot of scientists I'd want to keep as far away from government as I can imagine and from the public by the way in the sense of they're just they wouldn't communicate well so look I think all you can do is try and

encourage people to ask questions and keep an open mind about being guided by empirical reality. Not a completely open mind, as the former publisher of the New York Times has said, I want to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. But so all I want to do when I educate people is encourage them to ask questions and to be willing to change their minds.

And if that happened more universally in our society, I think 95% of the problems in modern society go away. Real quick, I just have to go to the bathroom. I want to ask you about inflationary stuff, though, next. So we'll get to that. We'll be right back. Okay. Anyway, it doesn't matter, but I know I'm in.

He's also supported, not my research, but he's supported some public things we've done once. Well, actually, if we're back right now, before I get to the inflationary thing, because we were just talking about it off air for a second. So you have sat with Elon a little bit then? Yeah, I've been with him a few times. How long ago was the last time you were with him? The last time I was with him was, I mean, we communicate by email. And last time I communicated by email with him was maybe a month or two.

Oh, really? by email and last time i communicated by email with him was maybe a month or two oh really but but last time i was physically with him was a while ago probably around 2000 probably at least five years ago how legit based on i mean we know where he is obviously in pop culture and how people look at him as a genius and everything and i certainly do too but how how legit do you think that is and and like what do you mean legit he's done some amazing things but like he's done you know he's done some amazing tesla spacex are just amazing i agree okay but but and i people make the presumption that because people are extremely successful they're also somehow extremely smart and know everything about the world and the point is they're very good at what they do but doesn't mean they're very good at everything. And so I know a number of billionaires who are on that illusion too,

just because they've been billionaires that somehow they can do anything. And the answer is they can do what they've done, and it's been very successful. But the same is true for science. The same is true for anyone. And so I am skeptical, and I judge everything skeptically, and I'm based on the evidence. And so Elon has done amazing things that I could never do and brilliant things that I could never do, but some of the stuff he says or does is stupid.

So that's just the way it is. Yeah, I mean, he's definitely an odd communicator. Well, that's part of it. That's kind of the price you pay for it, right? Well, that's, yeah. Is that genius? Well, I don't know. There are people I know who I think are smart that also could communicate.

But it's not just that. I think it's, you know, all of us have crazy ideas. And if you're Elon, then some of those crazy ideas also because you have a platform be it publicized. And so you just have to filter what everyone says just because someone you just have to realize that everyone is wrong at times yeah and i am too i told you that one time 20 years ago well actually speaking of being wrong because this ties right into the topic of of universal inflation but i i had a friend of yours, Brian Keating, in here recently, who also is responsible for us talking together. But Brian, I love talking with Brian. He's so

enthusiastic about science. He's so much fun. But he's done a lot of amazing work in his life, and one of the things he has spoken and written about very openly is the fact that in some ways his granddaddy of them all project proved to not be what he was looking for. Yeah, that happens. And what he was looking for for around 15 years was he was trying to prove from experiments in the South Pole that the universe was inflationary. And he felt like he posits that if you prove that the universe was inflationary, that that would mean that the multiverse, which could mean a few different things, does exist. So what I wanted to ask you was, first, if you could just give people a quick rundown of what we mean when we say the universe is inflationary, and secondly, if you think it is.

Well, yeah. Let me say the idea that if we could show that inflation happened, I actually wrote a paper on this. I was one of the people who did. You write about a lot of things. Yeah, well, me and an Nobel Prize winning friend of mine, Frank Wolchek, wrote a paper showing that if you could measure what they were looking for,

we proved that if you could measure what they were looking for, you could have indirect evidence that the multiverse existed, which is the best we'll ever have. But it would turn metaphysics into physics because you could show that we'd have indirect evidence that was pretty incontrovertible that there were other universes. And it's an amazing thing, but you can show that. We'd also be able to prove that gravity was a quantum theory.

Those are the two implications of that paper. And what do you mean when you say gravity is a quantum theory? It means it's quantum mechanical, that the fundamental variables of space and time behave under the rules of quantum mechanics. And if that's true, by the way, you can create a universe from nothing. But anyway, the multi... Inflation is the best fundamental theory. It's the only... Let me say not just the best. In my opinion, it's the only theory based on well-defined physics that's testable,

that can explain why the universe looks the way it does, or rather how the universe looks the way it does. Without inflation, the universe that looks the way it does now that's 14 billion years old seems absolutely impossible. But with inflation, it happens naturally. And moreover, inflation is a phenomena that would happen almost invariably in the early universe, given the laws of physics as we know it. What do you mean by that? Okay, so that inflation... Okay, we've got to step back now.

Let's do it. Yeah, I know. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Squeeze with your hands. We do it. Yeah, I know. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Squeeze with your hands. We're going to need to work hard. Okay. So inflation is based on the idea of what's called a phase transition.

So let's say it's a cold day here in Hoboken. It's below 32 degrees, okay? And it's been raining before that, and the streets are full of water, right? But the water isn't ice yet because it's and and it's been raining before that and the ground is full streets are full of water right but the water is nice yet because it's rush hour and the cars are are are traveling through and knocking the water around and keeping you know stopping it from freezing then after rush hour suddenly the water freezes because it's below 32 degrees and the preferred state of water below 32 degrees is ice. When the water, when it's below 32 degrees and the water really wants to be in ice, when the water becomes ice, it releases energy.

Okay? Now, so it's in this place called a false, it's not in the true ground state. It's not in the state it wants to be when it's below 32 degrees and it's not in the ground true ground state it's not in the state it wants to be when it's below 32 degrees and it's still water the lowest energy state of water at below 32 degrees is ice that's why that's why ice forms okay but you can stop it from forming ice if you do things like stirring it constantly and things like that. Okay? Got me? But because it wants, ice is the lowest energy state, that means the water contains more energy than it would have if it were ice. And when it becomes ice, it releases energy.

Yes. Okay? Got me? Makes sense. Yeah. Well, as the universe cools down, big bang, it can get stuck in what's called a false vacuum, a false ground state. It can get stuck, just like the water does, in a state that isn't quite the lowest energy state for a little

while, okay? And then it can release that energy, and everything can heat up, and you can have a big bang, like we've seen, okay? So if the universe exists in that false vacuum state, what happens? It means energy is trapped that would later on be released. Where does that energy exist? It exists in empty space. There's nothing there, but that space has energy. It's allowed. Okay?

But if you put energy in empty space, it's gravitationally repulsive, not attractive. You know from high school that gravity sucks, right? Yes. Okay. When you put energy in empty space it blows okay it it it causes and so it that causes the universe to expand exponentially fast and during a very short time the universe can an unbelievable time period of say a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. The universe can increase in size by 40 orders of magnitude. It's incredible. And then if that energy, if that phase transition happens and that energy is released, all of that energy goes into particles and radiation and heats up the universe and all the rest, and then

the universe can evolve. That's inflation. It turns out, if the universe can evolve. That's inflation. It turns out if the universe expands by 40 orders of magnitude in that short time, you can explain why the universe is so uniform on large scales. You can explain why it looks flat today, why it has all the properties it has. So this phenomenon that we think can happen naturally

in any theory that has a phase transition, and most of our theories of particle physics involve such a phase transition and most of our theories of particle physics involve such a phase transition inflation will happen the hard part is not getting inflation to happen the hard part is getting it to stop because I would you how would that happen well it turns out in most if we're right in most of space it hasn't stopped there are little pockets of space like snow like snowflakes that fall or rain drops. You get a little pocket where the water condenses.

In a little pocket, what's called a pocket universe in these theories actually, the phase transition occurs locally. And when that little occurs locally in that region, you get a hot big bang. But most of space is still inflating. And that means other regions may not yet have had a hot big bang but most of space is still inflating and that means other regions may may not yet have had a hot big bang and and and may to my maybe at this instant there's another universe that's that that's leaving in the inflationary state and only beginning a separate universe a whole yeah all separate in the sense that it's causally disconnected from us because the space

between us is expanding faster than light. On a different time pattern. Well, no, they're all in the same time. But it might not happen now. It might happen a billion years from now. It might have happened a trillion years ago if inflation was happening on a large scale. And that means, and that's the origin of the multiverse. Okay, but real quick, before you go on.

Are you saying then that that universe exists on a parallel plane of a similar idea of what we're doing, but it has a different outcome because it's on a different schedule? Or did I totally miss that? Sort of, but you're making it sound more metaphysical than it is. It's just a different region of a vast space, which we now call the multiverse, which had a big bang that happened earlier or later. And what you can also show in inflation is that when you leave this false vacuum state,

the state you can go into can be different. It's like snowflakes. Every snowflake looks different, right? And so imagine the universe being like all these multiverses, these different universes being like snowflakes that condense out of this background inflationary state, okay? That may go on for an infinitely long time, and that means an infinite number of snowflakes can form, okay, over time. But in each of them, the laws of physics can be slightly different.

And if the laws of physics are slightly different in each universe, then you can say that some features of our universe that seem really strange, if the energy of empty space were any different than it is now, by a significant amount, life wouldn't have evolved. Life wouldn't have formed. There would have been no life. So you might say, that's really weird. It looks like our universe was created so we could exist. But instead

you can think of it as a kind of cosmic natural selection. We exist in our universe because we can exist. It would be really amazing to find ourselves living in a universe in which we couldn't exist. That would be really amazing to find ourselves living in a universe in which we couldn't exist. That would be really amazing. And so it could be that life, the universe, life evolved to exist

in a universe in which it can exist. There may be other universes that have separated out from that, that have condensed out of that background inflationary fate where the laws of physics are different and no life can exist. There can be no galaxies and no stars. Or there may be universes with very different laws of physics are different, and no life can exist. There can be no galaxies and no stars. Or there may be universes with very different laws of physics where different things could

exist and different kinds of life could exist. And so it's possible, but you get to the point where if there are, over an infinite amount of time, an infinite number of universes, then you have all this craziness that infinity allows. There could be a universe that exists where, is the same as our universe and the Earth is here, but I'm interviewing you instead of you interviewing me. Okay? And yeah, when you allow it for infinity, anything can happen, but that's kind of metaphysics. Okay, well, let's get into the deeply theoretical then, which is obviously completely

in any way not even proven fake or real or anything but like i've heard you talk about the multiverse as two potential separate ideas a multiverse and i may mess up the language here so just correct me afterwards but a multiverse that unlocks all the way up to 11 dimensions or unknown dimensions or a multiverse that exists into a fourth or fifth dimension that just has all kinds of i guess guess, like onion-like layers to that dimension? How does – can you unpack that? Well, that's a different multiverse. Yeah, exactly.

Right. Can you unpack that? Well, there – I mean, the multiverse from inflation, I view, is incredibly well-motivated because inflation is likely the explanation of how the universe came to look like it is here now. And if inflation happened, there's almost certainly a multiverse that inflation produces. That's one kind of multiverse. That's different universes that are separated in space by an amount farther than we can ever see.

Is it like the multiverse that, say, Philip K. Dick wrote about in The Man in the High Castle? That type of thing, where it's different realities of the same set of circumstances? No, that's... Well, I mean, not really, in the sense that these are just different universes in different space. You draw a big map of the multiverse, there's a universe here, there's a universe there, there's a universe here, the universe there, they might be different, they might be the same, if there are enough of them, yeah, there could be two of them that are almost identical, okay? But they're separated by

distances larger than light will ever be able to travel, and therefore they're never connected. They're never causally impacted by each other. So that's just different universes separated in three-dimensional, four-dimensional, but three-dimensional space. But the universe you're talking about, which is the multiverse you're talking about, arises in theories like string theory, which assume there are extra dimensions, for which, by the way, we have no evidence whatsoever. Right. Okay? Important to point that out. But if there are extra dimensions, then yeah, if there are seven dimensions, and we live in a four-dimensional universe then, in an infinitesimal distance

in that extra dimension at the edge of our nose in another dimension, there could be a whole other universe that has, you know, that may be four dimensional, may be seven dimensional. Is that where the idea of where it's, like, tuned just right that I was talking about a little bit ago? Well, the idea comes in both. If you have many

universes, and the laws of physics are different in those universes, then this idea of fine-tuning happens naturally. It's called the anthropic principle. The idea is if there are many different universes and the laws of physics are different in each, it's not surprising to find ourselves in a universe which looks like it's fine-tuned, not because the universe is fine-tuned for us,

but life is fine-tuned for the universe in which it exists just like darwin yeah it looks like life is fine that the earth is fine-tuned so life can exist on it well it's the other way around the life life evolved because it could and the only life forms don't go extinct are those that appear perfectly fine-tuned for their environment because they know how to get food and they know how to reproduce. It looks like there was divine creation, but instead it was the finches learning to have the right, I mean, evolving to have the right beaks to be able to get the prey that they needed in the island and the Galapagos that they lived on. If that were proven to be true, it be possible in your estimation i guess theoretically completely yes to traverse to traverse across no no no in in string theory and in in the in the

inflationary multiverse those universes are separate and essentially forever will be so there's no way there's no it... Like what Philip K. Dick wrote about would not be possible. No. Just like the many universes in Star Trek. You know, in quantum mechanics, some people like to talk of many worlds theory. It's usually bullshit. But I mean, the languages, the idea,

I know where it comes from. But the point is you never can jump between those. It's the law of physics that you're stuck on one quantum trajectory. So are you saying there's no such thing as time travel? No. That's making a stretch. No. Okay, so why not?

I'm saying it's extremely unlikely. Extremely unlikely, but that's not a no. But I don't need another... One of the resolutions of the time travel grandmother paradox is that I go into another universe, right? The grandmother paradox, you go back in time and kill your grandmother before your mother was born. I don't know why you do. You're sick.

But that would create a different place. Hold on. But let me explain to people who don't know why that's a problem, okay? You kill your grandmother before your mother was born. That means your mother was never born. But if your mother was never born, then you were never born. If you're never born, how did you go back in time and kill your grandmother? Okay, that's a problem. Gives you a headache if you're a physicist, okay? That's why most physicists don't think time travels likely. But one of the possibilities

is, that's been proposed as we have, is somehow when you go back in time and kill your grandmother, you end up in a different reality than, you know, a different plane of existence, if you want, than the one before you traveled in time. So in that universe, it's like all the Star Trek episodes. You change the future, you change the past, the future changes, you come back to the future, it's a different future. Okay? See, that's where you have an issue.

And that, you know, so yeah, that, and who knows? But given the laws of physics as we understand them, time travel is extremely unlikely. I wrote about this in my book, The Physics of Star Trek, and Stephen Hawking wrote the foreword for that book for me. Shout out, Steve. RIP. But so he said that time travel is impossible

because we'd already be inundated by tourists from the future. In fact, he had a party once. But would you know it? Well, here's what he did. He said he had a party, and he invited tourists from the future to it. No one showed up. What if they did show up? No, but they didn't.

How do you know they didn't? Well, because he— Can you prove it? They didn't have any—no one drank the punch. But— Or did they, and it still remained gravitationally there? I came up with a better argument against it. Okay, let's hear it.

You can't say time travel is impossible, because the tourists of the future would all go to the 1960s, and no one would notice. You weren't around in the 1960s, but I was. Yeah, that was a hell of a time, I heard. Yeah, I know. So that would be the play. They wouldn't want to visit now.

They'd visit the 1960s, and no one would have noticed if they were weird. But anyway, the point is, time travel produces a lot of paradoxes me the plate. They wouldn't want to visit now. They'd visit the 1960s and no one would have noticed if they were weird. And so, but anyway, the point is, time travel produces a lot of paradoxes that physicists haven't resolved. And we don't have any, and all of the theories as we understand them don't allow you to create

a configuration that would allow time travel, even though general relativity allows for it in principle. And the question is, do the quantum properties of gravity allow you to create the conditions of time travel? And the answer is, we don't know. It's an open question. So it's not impossible. But if you go, so I had the great Michio Kaku in here, who I know you're a huge fan of.

But if you look at the way he talks about, like, the Abraham Lincoln experiment, it's very similar to what you're talking about with your grandma thing. But he's like, theoretically, it would have to be some sort of, or would most likely be, I should say, some sort of river of time in the sense that if you could do it and you went back to Ford Theater in 1865 to stop Lincoln from being shot, you would not be changing the reality in the part of the multiverse that you come from. You'd be changing the reality of a different, now separated, infinite universe. It sounds good, doesn't it? Like a lot of things people say, but it doesn't make it right. In fact, there's no good argument that I know of that... There's no good argument for that. No, that doesn't mean...

It's all theoretical. Well, it involves physics that we don't understand, and it's totally unmotivated, in my opinion. So, yeah, it's possible, it's possible. But maybe pigs can fly. I need Lawrence and Jack Sarfati in a room before I die. I need it. I need it injected in my veins. The two of you would be incredible. Have you done that with him before?

No, I'm on a mailing list that he will not take me off of. He has the best Twitter. He just takes, he'll take emails that that like were big back and forth and copy and paste the entire thing and send it as a tweet is the greatest thing ever i did ask to be removed once but i never did my buddy danny jones went out to san francisco with him a few months ago and did a two-part podcast it was one of the most incredible things i've ever seen in my life but that guy that you you don't remind me of him, like how you guys communicate. I knew you'd

say that. But some of the excitement you'll get or upsetment you'll get at certain things in science, that part's a little bit similar. I just think it'd be funny because you guys would have some obviously very different ideas about how things are. Yeah, and I'm right. And you're right. He'll say the same thing how things are. Yeah, and I'm right. And you're right. He'll say the same thing. I'll be like, fuck you. Of course he will.

Fuck you, I'm right. Yeah, of course he will. But anyway, people can be entertaining, but that doesn't mean they're right. That's true. And that works for everybody, myself included. Sure. But when you're talking about this stuff, it does always go to, especially now with Twitter and the Internet and everyone wondering about the meaning of everything and asking questions about what really is, all these questions of the multiverse and how it could work or things like that, they do always

come back to aliens and extraterrestrial life. Well, like, for some people they always come back to it, they don't for me, but anyway. Well, they don't for you. Well, no, no, they do in the sense that, yeah, we live in a big universe. Is there likely to be life elsewhere? Absolutely. It's just not coming here. Why do you say that? Because everything we know about physics says there's no reason, there's no ability to do it, no reason to do it, and no evidence for it. But it's everything that we know about physics. What if there's a... No, you don't understand. Here's the point. There's a lot we don't understand about the universe. More we don't understand than we do. But there are some things we do understand. And what people don't realize is that no matter what we learn about the laws of physics a million years from now,

if I take a ball and let it go here on Earth, it's going to fall according to Newton's laws. It doesn't matter what I know about quantum gravity. What is important is that the new physics that we learn in the future will not contradict the stuff that's already survived the test of experiment. It may mean that we have to refine it. So sure, Newton's laws have to get refined when you go very fast. You need relativity. Or when you go to the very small, you need quantum

mechanics. But in the scale of you and me and the Earth, cannonballs will always be described by Newton's laws, as will rocket ships. So nothing about quantum gravity that I learn will suddenly say, yes, I'll suddenly know that when I release this ball on the surface of the Earth, it's going to fall up. That ain't ever going to happen. Never.

And so never. We couldn't change it in some way. Never, because to do so would contradict the experiments that have already validated. So here's the idea. So when people say, well, physics that we don't understand could change everything, it isn't going to change the stuff that we know works. And it isn't going to suddenly say I can travel faster than light, or better still, it isn't going to say that balls are suddenly going to fall up. It's not going to allow you to create configurations that violate the known laws of physics. They can violate the unknown laws of physics, but they can't violate the known laws. And that's why in the physics of Star Trek and a book I wrote afterwards,

the Beyond Star Trek, I talk about, for example, one of the ways people think they've seen alien spacecraft is they don't behave like aircraft, you know, like conventional aircraft. They suddenly make right angle turns and are going really fast. One of the ways you might know that you saw an alien spacecraft is it behaved exactly like normal aircraft because those obey the laws of physics. If I were traveling twice the speed of sound and I made a right angle turn,

the G-forces you'd experience would be the same as about what you'd experience of a plane a few thousand feet above the Earth's surface suddenly lost power and crashed into the Earth. The moment it crashed, the G-forces would be the same as you'd experience in that. Planes don't look good afterwards. Now, you might say, okay, well, they have advanced materials. They don't, you know,

okay, yeah, but maybe the aliens inside, forget the materials, the aliens inside wouldn't look very good. I mean, in Star Trek, I pointed out that every time Jean-Luc Picard said engage, he was committing suicide. Because, you know, even if he wasn't traveling

a warp drive, just impulse drive. Let's say you're in a Tesla, and I'll get paid by Elon Musk for saying that. I hope he's paying well. He can afford it. Yeah, anyway. Let's say you're in a Tesla and you're in Ludicrous Drive, which I've unfortunately been in once.

And you get pushed back in your seat, right? So if I'm accelerating forward at the same rate as I would accelerate downward if I jumped off a chair, okay, I would be pushed back in my seat with a force called 1G, equal to my own weight. If I'm accelerating at twice that rate, I get pushed back with a force of 2G. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more.

Limited time only at participating Wendy's taxes extra. I would feel as if I was twice as heavy. Like, okay, 3 Gs, I feel like two people were sitting on my chest, okay? Some people are used to that, others aren't. But the point is that's about the maximum rate of G forces that people can experience for a long time. You know, up to 10 Gs before you be unconscious, the Apollo astronauts appeared.

But the space shuttle astronauts, 3 G's, okay? But what if they figured out things that can... Just hold on a second. I'm holding. This is a force, right? So 700 G's is like a 35 ton weight

hitting you. It's a lot. I can tell you that no matter what you tell me about quantum gravity, if I take a 30 ton, 5 ton weight and I slam it into you, you're not gonna be talking to me about quantum gravity after it happens. Right. Okay? And so that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. So why would you, why would you invent something, even if you could, that would destroy, effectively destroy everything in it? What's the point of having a sudden right-angle turn except to get people to make interesting UFO stories?

Okay? If you were, and not only that, if you're developing an alien spacecraft to come visit the Earth, for some reason, since no one knows we exist beyond 100 light years from now, 100 light years away, because we've only been emitting radio signals for 100 years or so, so no one on a star more than a few hundred light years from now, 100 light years away, because we've only been emitting radio signals for 100 years or so. So no one on a star more than a few hundred light years away knows there's intelligent life on Earth anyway.

But they could want to go out and look if they're way far ahead, no? Yeah, I know. Yeah, I could look at where it's a big galaxy. Right, it's huge. So let's say by accident they stumble upon us, right? They built a spacecraft that spends 99.9999% of its time traveling through space, but they develop something like a flying saucer, which is meant to be aerodynamic in the atmosphere of the Earth, which they didn't even know was there until they get here.

But what if they have other things that they could simulate to do that? But why would they design a spacecraft, a flying saucer, if you wish, which is not the most effective way of traveling through interstellar space, why would you develop an object that's perfectly designed for our atmosphere, if you're just randomly building, look,

the NASA at the time, or the Elon Musks of the time, are not going to spend their money fine-tuned to develop something for a specific system that they don't even know exists they're going to develop a rocket that is best designed to travel through space unless they do know it exists because they have access to it and we don't how do how do they have access to what i mean elon's funded by the government no no no no yeah no but the point is the laws of physics tell us, here, here's the thing.

If you wanted to travel to the earth, if you wanted to build, you know, use warp drive, and yeah, there it looks great. Okay? Fine. Is this the Nimitz that you're pulling up, the video on the screen? Yeah, great. So how do you explain this? I don't have to explain it. Why don't you have to?

Lawrence, you're here. You have to explain it. No, no, I can just say that whatever it is, it ain't an alien spacecraft, because any possibility other than an alien spacecraft, given the laws of physics as we understand them, is more likely. As Richard Feynman once said,

aliens and UFOs are more likely due to the known irrationality of humans than the unknown rationality of aliens. Because anything I can see... Wait, say that again? Aliens, UFOs, are more likely exist in our minds due to the known irrationality

of humans rather than the unknown rationality of aliens. You can see things that are strange. I could do the magic tricks I was going to do for you, and you would see things that are mystical and amazing. But I could tell you they're not happening. You're just, you're fooled. Seeing is not believing.

Seeing is not, is not the best evidence that something really happened. Okay? You have to do other tests. And there's no empirical evidence whatsoever that aliens really happened. Okay? You have to do other tests. And there's no empirical evidence whatsoever that aliens have visited. I know you're turning it down because I'm speaking loud. No, it's good.

But there's no empirical evidence that we've been visited by aliens. Moreover, the laws of physics as we know them tell us it's incredibly unlikely. If you wanted to travel here in a spacecraft like that, anywhere near the speed of light, from a distant star system, you'd have to harness more energy than the power output of the sun. Now, let's say you could do that.

Would you come here all this way, harvest the power of the entire sun, to come all the way here just to abduct psychiatric patients of a Harvard psychiatrist and do weird kinky experiments on them? Well, I have very, very, very strong feelings about a lot of the experiencer stuff. Yeah, okay. And I think even if you look at some of, like, Dr. Gary Nolan's work and stuff like that, there's some explanations there and everything that don't have to be aliens, for sure.

Well, not only, just anything. Swamp gas. Give it any explanation you get. A weird reflection from the sun or a balloon or something that looks like it's a weird angle and you capture it and it appears to be going faster than it is. No matter how ridiculous the explanation is. It's like the magic bullet. Yeah, ridiculous. But almost anything else is more ridiculous.

Let me tell you, anything else is less ridiculous than assuming it's aliens. Yeah, no, I know what you're saying. So it's just, things are likely or unlikely. And I'm a scientist, and I say almost any explanation I can come up with is less ridiculous given the laws of physics that I understand than saying it's out. Right, the laws of physics that you understand.

The gauze of physics that have been tested, that we know. That here. Given the known laws of physics. But I repeat to you, your mistake is to assume that the unknown laws of physics violate the known laws of physics. That doesn't happen. But how do you know that doesn't happen? Because they would be violated now. If the unknown laws of physics told me a ball fell up, every now and then I'd let the ball go and it would fall up.

Okay? What I learn about is not going to change what has survived the test of experiment. But what if it is falling up and we just don't know it yet? You know, there's a bridge I could sell you going to New York, and I could sell you for a million dollars this bridge if you want to buy it. Okay. You could put a toll booth on bridge if you want to buy it. Okay. Okay? You can put a toll booth on it.

You can make tons of money. Just give me a million dollars now and it's yours. Okay. So what do you think then of all this? Because, by the way, I'll show my hand here. I do have some, you know, my tingly senses are going off with some of the disclosure stuff. Yeah, you should. That's the other thing that makes it implausible.

More implausible than laws of physics. That our government could hide a secret like this for 50 years when any one individual could make a gazillion dollars by throwing a piece of evidence. Not talking about it to Congress or saying that you heard about it from someone else. But if you think our government could keep a secret like that, if someone, I know, look, I know how the government works.

I know a scientist. That's more implausible to me than the alien spacecraft thing. Listen, I think you have an argument there. I do. I think about that a lot. Like how many people, when you think about like the conspiracies and stuff, how many people would have to be in on it with not one fuck-up, not one person you forgot to kill because they weren't going to listen to your blackmail, right?

It gets tough. Too much money to be made for it to not, you know, to be kept secret. It gets tough. Government can't keep stuff secret. It's just ludicrous. And you got to ask yourself, when you hear someone say these things, what's in it for them? Now, that's a fair question. What's in it for someone who can testify before Congress that someone told him he's seen

their cousin had a friend who was in the room during an alien autopsy? Okay? I mean, come on. Did you see our recent podcast? I feel like you watched it. Can I borrow you for an extra 15 minutes? We're having such a great convo,

Lawrence. I'll give you 10. 10. All right, 217. Five. 218. No. All right, well, we're definitely going to have to bring you back and everything.

Yeah, yeah. But I'm sorry. I do have an event, and I have to be up. Oh, I know, I know. I have to do something before that. It's just essential. I feel you 100%. I mean, I would love to spend another hour here, and I'll come back.

I know. You'll fly me back first class, and I'll be back. Fuck yeah, we'll do it. Yeah, you'll pay for it. Yeah, okay. But what's the – when you go to write a book because you've written a lot throughout your life, and you've done it – like we've focused a lot on your whole focus on something coming from nothing. But when you've done it across the board, like you've done a lot of different types of topics and you've written a ton of papers. How do you decide to sink your teeth into things? Because it seems like your interests scientifically span almost the entire

span of it in a way. Well, they do. Everything interests me. And so I do stuff because it interests me. That's the final answer. I mean, you know, I don't do, and all scientists are that way at first, but we're not trying to say, I'm not trying to save the world in my science. I mean, you know, I don't do... And all scientists are that way at first, but we're not trying to... I'm not trying to save the world in my science. I do stuff that I like. And the world... How could you not be interested in everything that's going on? I wonder that, too. When I was a kid, I wasn't. People ask me, how can you... And the answer is, how can't you

be? And so, I like to think... I mean, I'm motivated in... Well, my motive in my science and what do I think will address the most fundamental unknowns in the universe? That most leads me there. In my writing, I try and think about what might interest the public

in thinking about the amazing features of our world, and so that leads me in a lot of different directions, and that's why I've written a lot of different books. It's easy to write the same book over and over again. I know people who've done it, and I know you mentioned one or two people here who've done it, and I know you mentioned one or two people here who've done it.

I'll go back against that. I think Meachie's written about a lot of different things. Anyway, let's not go there. He has, equally authoritatively. Anyway, He's not like that.

Anyway, he's a nice guy. And let me say that. And, but, but what I try and do is pick a topic that, you know, I know something about, but that I may not know a lot about. So for me, it's a learning experience often as well as, and so that's one way I can ensure that the subject or difference. If I reach beyond my comfort zone. I'm in the climate change book. I'm not a climate scientist.

Right. But my thought was, if I, as a trained physicist, cannot explain climate science in a way that people can understand it, how can I expect anyone to? And so that was, and it was a great, and the pandemic was on, I had nothing else to do. I wrote that book in 10 times more quickly than any other book I've ever written, because I had nothing. 18 hours a day, I had nothing else to do. I wrote that book in ten times more quickly than any other book I've ever written, because I had nothing. 18 hours a day, I had nothing to do but that. I had no interruptions, no travel, no nothing. But you know, so... And the Star Trek book came out by accident. I was... When I taught at Yale and I went in New York often, I was talking to my editor from my previous book, and her daughter was a trekker. She was a tre... Is that what they call them? They used to call them trekkers. I don't editor from my previous book and her daughter was a trekker

is that what they call it? they used to call them trekkers I don't know what they call them anymore were you a trekker? first be trekkie trekkie?

no I wasn't anything no I just I watched every episode of Star Trek when I was younger but I also watched Bonanza and everything else

William Shatner believes in aliens by the way William Shatner and I have talked many times you can watch our podcast together

oh my god I gotta see that yeah it's a great I didn't know you had that see that Bill's come on a podcast, we've been together That's awesome He's my pal So you're still friends, you disagree and you're friends Well you can disagree with people Of course you can disagree with people

My friend Christopher Hitchens taught me that a lot But Bill is amazing He's a hoot. There's no doubt about it. We did it. It doesn't matter. I won't tell you the story.

Next podcast, I'll tell you the story. But what were we talking about before you so rudely interrupted me? Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I got you off that. You were talking about the Trekkie versus. Oh, Trekkie, yeah. It used to be called Trekkers, Star Trek, Trekkers.

But she said, what about the Star Trek? And I laughed, and I took the train back to New Haven. And I started thinking, well, how would I make a transporter? And then I started to think of all the fascinating science you could, you know. And then I thought, I don't want to write this book, because I don't want to alienate like a hundred million Star Trek fans.

I don't want to write a book that says, this is wrong, this is wrong. I did agree to write that book, and then I thought, how can I do that? It took me a long time when I realized, well, what I can do is I can take something on Star Trek that resembles something in the real world and talk about the real world. So I can use Star Trek as a hook to talk about the physics of the real world, which is far more fascinating than the physics of Star Trek. So I talked about time travel, talked about warp drive, talked about lots of different things,

transporters. And I use it as a hook because people are intimidated by physics. If you go to a party and you tell people you're a physicist, they'll say, how about those Yankees? Okay? Whereas if you say, but what about time travel or warp drive?

And then they don't realize they're interested in science. Now they perk up. Then they perk up. So use those as hooks as a way to talk about the sciences. And so I try and think of ways that I might reach the public in ways that they're interested in that allow me to talk about fundamental science or science that's interesting. So lots of different ways. And that's really the origin behind the 12 books I've written. See, that's huge, though, because what you're talking about is the difference between simplicity and complexity in a complex world,

because you have to be able to explain it to the fifth grader in a basic term to get them to want to go deeper, and I think that's the biggest problem a lot of us had when we were teenagers in high school. They didn't really do that, you know? Well, it's also a challenge. Einstein said, you don't understand it if you

can't explain it to a fifth grader and I found many times in my writing books that I thought I understood something until I tried to explain it in a book and then I realized I never really understood it wow and so it's and that's fun for me that's profound yeah it's so profound that I think it's a good way to end this episode yeah alright

alright I'm catching I got one more question for you because you touched on it earlier but have you done any work at all in the past that you're allowed to talk about vis-a-vis maybe consulting with NASA? I mean, there's nothing that I've ever done that's classified. Okay. So there's nothing that I've ever done that I can't talk about. So have you consulted with NASA? I have.

Yeah. I mean, what do you mean consulted with NASA? I have, yeah, I mean, what do you mean consultant NASA? I've been, I have NASA grants. I've also, I've also, I've also, DARPA, which is a Defense Department agency, asked me to, and a friend of mine, to look at various proposals for basically, you know, anti-gravity devices and show they were all wrong, okay? I mean, so, so yeah, but... Show they were wrong.

Well, I didn't. They wanted to know if any of the... It was on different things, but it was basically asked us to look at crazy proposals, and we looked at them and explained why they were crazy. When was this?

20, 30 years ago. You think all those sharks that are biting people might be DARPA sharks? That's like the working theory we have. I don't know. Anyway, I don't know. But so I've never had... There was... i was offered a job at los alamos and i had to

be and to get it past the security clients back then but i didn't take the job and and um no i i no interest on personally in doing classified research that doesn't mean i don't think people shouldn't do it i just myself wasn wasn't interested. Well, why do you think NASA, obviously, like in the 60s... And NASA isn't... When I talk about classified, NASA isn't really classified. It isn't? Really? No.

NASA is a public government agency that now, every now and then, NASA will... Put their work. Listen to me for a second. All right. Every now and then, NASA will, with the space shuttle, send up satellites that were Defense Department satellites, and so that mission was classified because they were working for the Defense Department. But NASA is not an agency. NASA, the whole purpose of NASA is to try and be open.

In fact, that's why they had a commission that explored all the claims of UAPs, and recently, as you may know, although it doesn't get as much publicity, as some guy talking to Congress about friend best friend's wife's brother you know but uh but um you know they just you can see it on the internet you watch the NASA report on UFOs and they'll say there's no evidence there's no wait NASA said this yes you see that's the point it's not about two months ago it was headed by headed by a friend of mine, a guy I've written papers with, David Spergel, who was at Princeton, is now at... But could they just be covering it up? The whole point is, do you not think that they would want to be more famous? You would

have heard of them. If they wanted to be more famous, they could have said... But maybe they don't have a choice. There it is. Okay, NASA report finds no evidence that UFOs are extraterrestrial. September 14th. NASA's independent study team released its highly anticipated report on UFOs on September 14th. And believe me, they would have loved to find evidence for aliens.

Alright, hold on. Scroll down where it says bottom line. Bottom line, the study team found no evidence that reported UAP observations are extraterrestrial. But Lawrence, I need facts here. I need data. This is just an article. You know what I mean? Well, the point is, yeah, it'd be great. Find me some data that they're extraterrestrial. And that's fair.

And there isn't any. And the fact that there hasn't been for the last 60 years, in spite of all the claims, is good evidence that there isn't any. Well, why have we lost interest at NASA and in pop culture and things is, and I don't mean to say oversimplified, but as simple as going to the moon like we did 50 years ago. Well, NASA hasn't lost interest in it. It's still doing it. In my mind, it's largely a waste of money, but it's still doing it. Why is it a waste of money? Because it involves people. I mean, if you're, look, I shouldn't say it's a waste of money.

I think the moon is actually a reasonable destination for NASA to consider going to. But what you have to realize when it comes to science, the best science NASA does doesn't involve putting people into space. And there's a simple reason. If you put a person in space, 99.99% of the cost is devoted to keeping them alive. Yeah, it's a lot. Okay? You put a rover into space, as I like to say, you could send a rover to Mars for the cost

of making a movie about sending Bruce Willis to Mars, okay? And so, on the whole, we can do so much more science and so much better science without putting people in space. That doesn't mean we shouldn't put people in space. There are other reasons to put people into space. Adventure, national priorities, national esteem, and maybe, to some extent, you know, industrial arguments. But from the point of view of understanding fundamental science,

the best science NASA's ever done, and probably will ever do, doesn't involve humans. Well, do you think that's why a lot of it's... It involves humans on the ground, not in space. Do you think that's why part of it is now it's moving to a lot of potential private research with that? Like you see Jeff Bezos trying to do this stuff. I'm all in favor of people spending their own money on that kind of thing, private money. And I was involved in a Russian billionaire spent a lot of money

trying to think of a way to send an object to a nearby star at a fair fraction of speed of light. And Stephen Hawking was on the program, so I was called Breakthrough. Which billionaire? Yuri Milner. And he funded Breakthrough Listen, Breakthrough, and I was on Breakthrough Starshot. And I thought it was really neat, because you'd explore the limits of technology.

Unfortunately, at every meeting, I became more pessimistic about being able to do it. But I'm happy to have billionaires spend their money on that kind of stuff. Got it. Well, Lawrence Krauss, I really appreciate you coming here. Thank you. Where can people get the best information about you? Twitter? Twitter is misinformation and information.

You'll find find on Twitter. You can look at my website, lawrencemkraus.com, or the Origins Project Foundation, which is the foundation I run. And you have the podcast, too. Exactly. I was going to say the podcast,

which you can see ad-free on our Substack Site Critical Mass. You can go to YouTube and look at the Origins Project Foundation. Yeah, you've got a lot of amazing people on there. Yeah, I'm really lucky, including Bill Shatner, so you see. Oh, yeah, see, I got to go see that. That's awesome. But listen, thank you so much for doing this. I definitely got to do this with you again. You are entertaining as hell, man. Thank you very much. It's been a lot of fun. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought, get back to me.

Peace! Thank you for watching this episode, guys. If you haven't already, please smash that subscribe button and hit that like button on the video it is a huge huge help to getting our videos into the algorithm on youtube so thank you to everyone who does that and also if you don't already follow me on instagram you can get me at julian dory podcast for daily exclusive clips that we put out from the show or on my personal page at julian d dory the links are in the description below see you guys for the next one