The Joe Rogan Experience - #938 - Lawrence Krauss

Episode Date: March 28, 2017

Lawrence Krauss is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, best-selling author, producer, actor, and science and public policy advocate. His latest book The Greatest Story Ever Told So-Far is available now -- http://krauss.faculty.asu.edu/

4, 3, 2, live! Mr. Krause, how are you, sir? Great, great to be here. I have been enjoying your latest book, but I do have to tell you, I think you broke my brain with gauge symmetry. I had to go over that about 30 or 40 times to try to figure out what that means and how that works. Well, it's amazing you did. It breaks our brains. I put it in there in spite of the fact it's hard. That part is hard. But it is so central to the way we think about the world nowadays that I thought, I've got to try and explain it.

And I broke my own brain trying to think of ways to explain it. And I figured people wouldn't devote as much time as you did to doing it. It's so subtle that even physicists have a hard time, in some ways, grasping the implications of it. But it is so central the way we think about the universe. I thought, if I don't include it for the inquiring mind like you, then I'd feel bad. It is so baffling. But you know what? It's one of the things that when I write books, I do most things for myself, in a way.

And in every book I write, I do most things for myself in a way. And in every book I write, I usually learn something. And always when you're explaining stuff, you'd suddenly, most teachers say the first time they understand anything is when they teach it. And gauge symmetry, I'd never thought of really how to explain it. And I tried to explain to my editor, which was great, because she didn't know any science and she kept not understanding it. And then I came up with this explanation involving these chess boards,

which is still subtle, but I realized afterwards it was kind of neat because when I developed this explanation for gauge symmetry, I not only understood it in a new way, but I realized, gee, I now understood physically if I'd had this explanation before, I could have predicted this Higgs mechanism and all the things I only see mathematically

all come out of the picture I gave. So I love that. It's a new way for me to think about the world that I didn't before. Well, most of what you guys do is almost like another language to someone like myself. And what this seems to be, this gauge symmetry seems to be, is like a very complicated word in an alien language. Yeah, everything. It is.

But nevertheless, it's so central. If you can picture the fact that it's fundamental to nature, and therefore if you really want to understand nature, at some level you've got to grapple with it. We're stuck with the world the way it is. It'd be great if it was a lot easier. But would it be? Because I think that's one of the more fascinating things about it

is that it's so bizarre. Well, yeah. In fact, that's why it's the greatest story ever told so far because it's bizarre. And the fact that it's bizarre and we've come this far is amazing. I mean, it's just amazing. We could have come this far in a few hundred years. And it's kind of sad that people don't realize

because they get stuck in all this myth and superstition and the real world is so much more interesting. It is unbelievably fascinating when you delve into the world of quantum mechanics and quantum physics and all these bizarre things that are happening far smaller than the eye can see. You realize it is kind of magic. Well, it seems like magic, but the fact that we get it at some level is remarkable. Because the other thing I find that makes it magic is when you realize that the world we experience is such an illusion, that the real world is so different.

And I love telling the story of how we got there, because you see, scientists are biased and prejudiced and have, you know, they know where they're going, even when it's wrong. But science can overcome those biases and prejudices and drag us kicking and streaming in the right direction. And that's why the story is neat, but it's also lately, I've been thinking in terms of politics, why it's also neat. Because we need that to cut through the crap that we're hearing about in Washington. The same scientific methods of skeptical inquiry,

of reliance on empirical evidence, of testing, of looking at many sources. All those things are so essential for the working of our democracy. But they're the same tools that have led us to, from just beginning to understand how balls fall when you let them go, to understanding the inner workings of atoms and nuclei and how the universe came to be and why we're here. I just find the story so wonderful that it's a shame more people don't appreciate it. And the best part is the so far part to me, because every day the story gets better. Unlike that other greatest story, which was written by illiterate peasants 2,000 years ago and never changes because it was just as boring then

as it is now. And this one keeps changing and we're surprised every day. Well, I think one of the things that's important that you said is that scientists sometimes have ego problems and they have an idea where it's going, even if the evidence disproves them, but that science corrects it. So I think that like using that explanation or using that definition, it sort of defines what's important about it because human beings, even the most brilliant ones are flawed because we do have egos and we are just people. Exactly. And this story that I tell, which is, for me, actually,

for me it was interesting because I really had to learn. I thought I knew the history, but of course, when you write something down, you suddenly realize you don't. And I had to learn it more. And you want to take some of these people and shake them and say, look, the solution's right here. You've got it. Why are you waiting 20 years?

You're looking in the wrong direction. The example I was just thinking about the other day when I was giving a talk, I don't know if you ever saw this video where you're supposed to look at these people bouncing basketballs and you're supposed to, I'm going to ruin it for you and all your listeners if they haven't. I'm proud of seeing that.

Where you're supposed to count the basketballs and see how many people are. And there's a guy walking between them in an ape suit and a gorilla suit and you never see him. You don't even see him because you're supposed to count the basketballs and see how many people are, and there's a guy walking between them in an ape suit and a gorilla suit, and you never see him. Right. You don't even see him because you're so focused on the wrong thing. And that's the way physics often happens.

We're focused on, we think the direction is one direction. We're so focused on it, we don't even realize the solution is there before our very eyes. And I think it's important because people think that scientists and science are the same thing. And they're not. Scientists are ones. The good thing about scientists, the good scientists, is they're at least willing to recognize in the end that they're wrong. So they, they have these preconceptions. And the great

thing about science is it trains us. Yeah, there's these things we are central to our being, but ultimately we realize we're wrong and we're willing to change our minds. That's the difference between science and religion, really, is that, yeah, we have biases. Yeah, we have prejudices. Yeah, we want to believe. We really want to believe, just like the X-Files. But eventually, when nature tells us otherwise, we throw out those beliefs like yesterday's newspaper. That's why science is so neat.

Now, people that are listening to this are probably going, what is gauge symmetry, dude? You just passed over that and you said it was crazy. Is there a way that you could possibly just give a small synopsis? Sure, I'll give, we'll try. We'll see how we do. Okay. So, it turns out that there's a fundamental principle in nature, which really was discovered by this wonderful woman mathematician, Emmy Noether, who wasn't even allowed to get a job because she was a woman at the turn of the century. But she discovered, so there's things we say, and we tell kids, unfortunately, in schools,

energy is conserved and momentum is conserved. It sounds like the Ten Commandments, like we come up with them because we like them. And now we understand them differently. We understand that everything that is conserved, that doesn't change in the world, is due to a fundamental symmetry of nature. So energy is conserved because we now understand

the laws of physics don't change over time. So as long as you contest that the laws of physics are the same tomorrow as they are today, then we know energy is conserved. It's not something we take on faith. It's a mathematical consequence of that. Momentum conservation is a consequence of the fact that the laws of physics don't change from place to place, that they're the same in this studio here as they would be if we were having

this conversation in New York. That seems reasonable, and she showed mathematically it's the case. So there's a famous everyone's experiences who know learned any physics conservation of charge you know the electric charge in any system doesn't change magically over time that's a fundamental property of electricity and magnetism you got certain amount of charge at the beginning it's got to be the same at the end that's a consequence of the fact that it's arbitrary. There's a symmetry of nature that says, you know, Benjamin Franklin called electrons, you know, negative, negatively charged, but it doesn't mean anything because I could have called them positively charged. It's just an arbitrary

definition. If I changed every negative charge in the world to positive charge and every positive charge to negative charge, everything would work the same way. A symmetry of nature represents something that doesn't change about nature when you make a change in a definition. So calling electrons positively charged and protons negatively charged would not make the world different. It's an arbitrary name. Martians could call electrons positively charged and protons negatively charged. There's nothing fundamentally important about the word positive charge. It doesn't mean any different than a negative charge. So I could change every, right now, I could change the charge on every electron in the universe and flip it.

It's signed. So every electron is negatively charged now. But now suddenly I'm God and I make every electron positively charged and I make every proton negatively charged. Nothing about the laws of physics will change. I don't understand that. Why wouldn't it change? I mean, is there a function of them being positive or negatively charged? No, no, it's just a name. It's like calling... I could call

up, down, and down up, and it wouldn't make it... As long as it's a noise you make with your mouth. Yeah, exactly. So the name I give it is irrelevant. Okay, so it's not like you would change the actual function of the electron. No, no, exactly. I call it's, it's electrically charged. That's important. Okay. And it repels other, other electrons because they have the same electric charge. That's important, right? Two electrically negative charged particles repel. Right. But look, if I made them both two positive charged particles, they'd also repel.

So the physical consequences would not change at all depending upon how I named them. I see what you're saying. Now, so the example I use in the book to try and sort of describe that is a chessboard. You got white squares and black squares

and you play with the white chessmen and the white... If I changed all the white squares into black squares, and I rotated the board by 90 degrees, it would look identical. And if I changed the black players to white players, and the white players to black players,

the game of chess would be identical. Nothing would change about it. So what's white and what's black is kind of arbitrary, right? It doesn't matter, which is good, because if it kind of wasn't, then chess wouldn't be a fun game because if you always had black you might win if you always had white you might win but it's it's the same right right so so i could change all white squares to black squares and black squares

to white squares and the game of chess would not change so that's a symmetry of the chessboard and that's like that's like electric charge white being negative or positive and black being, you know, so let's say white is negative and black is positive. If I switched all black to white or negative positive, nothing would change about the game of chess. If I switch negative to positive in the universe, nothing changes in the universe. The game of life, the game of physics would not change. The rules wouldn't change. The dynamics, everything would remain the same about the universe.

So that you could sort of, even that is not so easy. I can tell from looking at your face, it's already not so easy. Okay. But you can sort of accept that, right? Okay. Okay. That's the easy part. Okay.

Okay. So here's what gauge symmetry says. Man, this is really weird. I can actually do better than that. I can arbitrarily change each white square in a chessboard to a black square. I can choose randomly which white squares to change to black squares. And I can still make the game of chess the same if I just have a rule book. And the rule book tells me, oh, if you're on that square, you can do what you could

have done if it was a white square. So if I have the rule book, then it doesn't matter what colors the squares are. If I know I was in the square that used to be white, but I call it black and I look and I say, okay, my knight can do this in that square, but it couldn't do that. Right. So if I have a rule book, then I'm arbitrarily free to change the color of each square in a chessboard as long as a rule book tells me what'm arbitrarily free to change the color of each square in a chessboard as long as the rule book tells me what I've done. Right. That's electromagnetism. Because it turns out

electromagnetism has a symmetry that says, you know what, I could change the definition of the charge on electron here, but in the next room differently. So I could call this electron positive and that one negative, and it wouldn't change anything as long as I had a rule book that told me that I made that change and how the electromagnetic interaction would be the same. As long as I'm free to change the definition of what I call positive and negative charge locally, not globally, that means I can do it differently here and there, as long as I have a rule book that says, know what that electron used to be negative so it'll still repel this

electron here even though i call it positive and i call that negative i've changed locally the definition but i also change the rules i understand that okay i understand the need for the rule book now it turns out that the rule book really tells you it's a rule at each point in space right it's a rule tells you what you can and can't do at each point in space. So we call that a function. Because a function is a number or a rule at each point in space. A function at space is exactly that. Well, it turns out the function that does that

is the electromagnetic field. If you ask what would be the mathematical characteristics of a quantity that would make sure the rules remain the same no matter what I called an electron place to place, and you ask how I could write it down mathematically, it would have exactly the mathematical form of the electromagnetic field, the thing that we call the electric field or magnetic field. The mathematics of it is precisely fixed by being able to allow us to change the definition of charge from place to place in a way that doesn't change the ultimate dynamics, doesn't change the way the world works. It's prescribed by the mathematics. The rulebook is prescribed.

And the mathematics of that rulebook turns out magically almost to be exactly the mathematics of Maxwell's equations, which are the equations of electromagnetism. Here's where it gets squirrely for me. Okay, go ahead. Why would you do that? Why would you change the definitions? Why would you need that rule book? Well, because, I mean, what it says is that nature somehow has this symmetry. It doesn't depend, you don't want to, but it says nature has designed itself such that the definition of electric charge from place to place is arbitrary. It really came, if you want to step back, Einstein told us, you know, that length and time are kind of relative to, they depend upon the observer.

the observer, and his theory of general relativity actually said, I can define locally what my coordinate system is, what my length is, what my time is. I can define that arbitrarily locally, and it may differ from place to place. My rulers could differ from place to place, but the universe doesn't care, because there's this thing called the gravitational field that takes into account of that, and nature has that symmetry. So it doesn't matter if I change the rulebook, if I change what I define as space and time locally, the universe behaves exactly the same. So when you say by symmetry, do you mean essentially there's a balance, that there's always going to be an equal numbers of negatives and positives? And if you change the functions of each one, it balances itself out? Well, that's sort of a consequence. It says that the universe can't be charged, ultimately. But no, it really says that that's a quality of nature

that nature doesn't care about. Namely, that's a label. But nature has a symmetry. In physics, symmetries are things when you make changes, then the object doesn't change. Take a sphere, okay? A sphere, you can rotate it. But it looks like a sphere, no matter what rotation you make.

That's a symmetry of the sphere. That's why it's so beautiful mathematically. Nature is the same way. I can take another quantity. I'll call it electric charge at this point. And I can change it. If you want to say make a rotation in some internal space i can imagine an internal space and positive and negative charges were part of some continuum i make a rotation and nature doesn't care about it

it's a symmetry of the equations that govern nature but it turns out the reason this is important let me step back again because your face tells it all. I wish that people could see it. They can. Yeah, yeah. And so what we've discovered is that the playing field determines the rules. The characteristics of the playing fields determine the rules. If baseball, if you played baseball and there were five bases instead of four, the rules would be different. If the distance between home plate and first base was a four, the rules would be different. If the distance between home plate and first base was a mile, the rules would be different. If you had 25 outfielders in outfield, it would be different, okay?

So the playing field determines the rules, right? Baseball would be a very different game if it were played on a field that's different. What we've discovered in nature is we used to think the forces were kind of fundamental. You know, Newton told us F equals MA and all that. What we've discovered is the thing that really constrains what can happen in the world is the playing field and the characteristics of the playing field. And for physicists, what determines the characteristics of the playing field are the symmetries of that playing field. In fact, baseball, the fact that it looks like a diamond is a symmetry, right? The playing field looks the

same. I could call first base home plate and home plate first base if I rotated the whole field, right? It determines, in some sense, that's a characteristic of baseball that sort of determines the rules of the game, okay? And what we've learned is what's really fundamental in nature is the characteristics of that playing field, and what determines the characteristics of that playing field are the symmetries of nature, the things that demonstrate to us that what we think is fundamental is really just an arbitrary label.

Like electric charge, we've discovered, is an arbitrary label, locally as well as globally. And that determines the whole nature of the forces that can happen. Once you say that electric charge is an arbitrary thing, and nature doesn't care what you call positive and negative from here or Mars, that determines the nature of the force, of what we call the electromagnetic force. It's completely prescribed. And it turns out that's true for all the forces in nature. The nature of the force, of what we call the electromagnetic force. It's completely prescribed. And it turns out that's true for all the forces in nature. The nature of gravity is determined, as Einstein showed, by the fact that you can change what I define as one meter here, and on Mars call one meter something else, and nature doesn't care what I label as a meter. It turns out gravity takes that into account

and says what we define as length is irrelevant. The fundamental gravitational field is due to a curvature of space that is independent of what we define as length or time locally. It's a weird thing, but it's a property of space and time that Einstein discovered for general relativity. We've discovered it for electromagnetism. It turns out all the forces in nature respect that same kind of mathematical symmetry, that there's some quantity that you can change in your equations. I can change its definition in the equations, but the physics remains

the same. And the nature of the equations is prescribed, the mathematical form of the equations is prescribed precisely by the requirement that I can change, in the case of electric charge, that electric charge is arbitrary. I can call an electron positive or negative anywhere I want in space, and the equations don't care. That prescribes the form of the equations. They have to have a very particular form,

a unique form, and that unique form happens to be the form that it has. Now, so you can say, look, it's an accident, that really there's something fundamental, that the equations have this form, and we've discovered this mathematical symmetry is an accident. Or you can say that the mathematical symmetry is fundamental, it's a property of nature, and it prescribes the form of the kind of forces that nature,

that the world allows. When you say that it's fundamental, that the symmetry is fundamental, do you see the symmetry, do you study, like, ecosystems? Do you study, like... I know about them, but I'm... But do you ever contemplate them when you're thinking about theoretical physics? Do you ever look at, like... I know about them, but I'm... But do you ever contemplate them when you're thinking about theoretical physics? Do you ever look at, like, how these animals sort of stay in balance in these ecosystems, especially when they're untouched? Well, I mean, the mathematics of... I mean, that's the great thing about physics, about science in general. It's kind of like Hollywood. If it works, you copy it. And so we often find the same mathematical formalisms apply to vastly different systems.

So there's a very famous set of equations of predator and prey for ecosystems. And you can look at those equations, and they're the same kind of equations that apply in many different systems, in oatmeal boiling. It's amazing how the same mathematics appears in very different systems. And we can therefore use what we've learned in one case to apply to another. That's why we copy it, because it works so broadly. It's amazing that very few equations turn out to so broadly describe so many vastly different systems. And predator-prey relationships, which is, I think, what you're talking about in ecosystems.

How, you know, there's a very... And even with plants as well. I mean, like the full system. Yeah, once once you and it becomes more complicated when you include more variables but physics of course is generally much easier than many ecosystems that's why i do physics it's so much easier it's because it's really the low-hanging fruit nature and maybe for you well i know but but but for most people listening to this there's probably a hundred people that have driven into trees by now. Yeah. Like, what in the fuck is this guy talking about?

I'm glad there's people like you out there that are contemplating this stuff. They can feel good that the laws of physics are independent of whether they've run into the trees. Yes. I'm sure that gives them great comfort. Yeah, exactly. It's just the study of this is so taxing. It is, but, you know, that's okay. I mean, what sort of bothers me is that people, when they think it might be taxing, they don't want to think about it. But the interesting thing is, that doesn't apply in other areas of acting.

So people can be, they don't think they have to be Eric Clapton to enjoy guitar music, okay? Or Picasso to enjoy weird paintings, or Shakespeare to enjoy plays. But somehow, and all of that's taxing in its own way. And the more you, let's take Bach, the more you understand music, I'm sure the more you appreciate Bach cantatas, all the different voices. But I can enjoy just listening to it. But people say, in every other activity it's fine but when it comes to science they say nah it's not easy for me i can't even touch it at all and what i try and do in my books and other places say look there's things you don't have to

master it but and and so you may not master gauge symmetry it's the most subtle and complicated thing in all of modern physics but you can still even if you skip that section of the book there's still things in there you can appreciate about how we understand the world that we couldn't appreciate before and have that orgasmic aha experience that hey the world is different than i thought and that's that's what's wonderful so you can appreciate science without mastering it sure it gate symmetry and things like it are basically mathematical concepts. So to talk about them in language without math is always sort of verbose. Well, I think what's important about your book, chapter 10 or 11, I think,

I think what's really important about it is you're not speaking in layman's terms But you're also not speaking in theoretical physicist terms. You're making a bridge Well, yeah, and and and someone I think Richard a few people said nicely said about the book that as I they say they claimed Design someone said I'm trying to make it Simple, but not simpler than it can be yes, and I think that's great way saying well But I think it's important to do that, right? I mean, it respects the reader because it doesn't, you know, it says, look, you want to understand it? Okay, here's what you need to know to understand it.

And here's how I can try to explain it without math. And you can puzzle through it and think about it and eventually maybe get to that aha stage. Or I could just say, you know, poof, it all happened. You know, and that's religion in a way. But except the difference is this has content, religion doesn't. For people like me that have never studied it, when I read what you're doing and I read what's been done and I read all of the people out there that are trying to decipher all this magical stuff out there in the universe, it's important just to be aware that this is going on. Because I think for the vast majority of the 7 billion people on the planet, this is just unknown. Exactly. And yet it's being discovered, it's being contemplated, it's being studied constantly.

And not just that it's being done, but it's amazing. It's changed our picture of our place in the universe. And therefore, I think science is like art, music, and literature. They all serve the same purpose. Science also produces technology. And somehow people think that's all science is good for. Sure, it produces the technology that's allowing you and I to have this conversation and people to listen. It's allowing you and I to live longer, all of the rest.

But the really neat thing about science is it is just like those other things. It changes our perspective of ourselves. And that's what's so wonderful. And I once said that science is kind of one of the purposes of science is to make people uncomfortable. And I thought I felt regretted that for a while, but it really isn't. If you're never outside your comfort zone, then you're never growing. I completely agree. And I love that quote in the book. I think that for a lot of people really isn't if you're never outside your comfort zone then you're never you're never growing i completely agree and i love that quote in the book um i think that for for a lot of people that discomfort is just people are tired you know they work they've got jobs they've got families they got a lot of stuff to do and something like this comes along that just like throws a monkey wrench

into the gears of the mind yeah it does but sometimes you want your mind blown and sometimes you know you can skim over or i try with each of my books to say, okay, so that part you can get, but, but, you know, it's not like suddenly you won't understand the rest of the book. And, and the stuff is so neat. The idea that there's this invisible field everywhere in the universe that changes the way you haven't got there in the book yet, but, but that changes our picture of the universe is amazing. And people should have the opportunity to know that our picture has shown that we are a cosmic accident, that we're just like an icicle on a window whose direction, if you lived on that icicle, might seem very special to you, but it's an accident.

And it turns out the forces of nature are what they are by the same kind of accident, because some field froze in the early universe in some direction. If it had frozen in another direction, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation. Would we be a different thing? In fact, in most cases, you wouldn't even have you and me, because there wouldn't

be particles that have mass, and you wouldn't have stars and galaxies and planets. Now, what there would be, I can't say. But I can definitely say that everything we see in the universe would be gone. But you're confident that it was an accident at some point in time and that's what created it? What I mean by accident, no more of an accident or less of an accident than an icicle on a window. Now, if you look at icicles on a window, they're beautiful patterns. They're in all different directions. Now, there's a physical reason, ultimately, why one icicle forms in a given direction, but there's no significance to that.

It may have been a dust particle that caused that part. So we're not saying it's magic. There was ultimately some microphysical reason why that happened and why oatmeal, when oatmeal boils, a bubble occurs in one place and not another. Right. But there's nothing significant about that bubble

popping up here or that icicle pointing in a given direction. It's not fate. It's not fate. It and not another. Right. But there's nothing significant about that bubble popping up here or that icicle pointing in a given direction. It's not fate. It's not fate. It's not designed. Right. Anything is possible in that icicle, okay? And so what I'm saying is our universe is the way it is

because the field froze in a certain direction. Now, sure, there are laws of physics that say the field can freeze in that direction, but it's also laws of physics to say the field could have frozen maybe in another direction. And if it did, everything would be different. Now, by field, how are you defining field? Well, a field is a... Uh-oh, you had to take a...

You braced yourself. No, no, no, I was worried about this. A field is, well, it's like the electric field. Okay. It's some quantity that's defined in each point in space. And the neat thing in particle physics is every field, like an electric field. Okay. It's some quantity that's defined in each point in space. And the neat thing in particle physics is every field, like an electric field, every field is associated with an elementary particle.

So the electric field is produced by a coherent state of photons, the ultimate quanta of electromagnetism. The individual particles that are going into your eye right now and are being absorbed by your eye so you can see me. The reason you can see light is it's a lot of little particles entering your eye that are reflecting off my eyes so you can see them. Okay? And it turns out in quantum mechanics, every field, which is a function of points in space, the electric field in this room. There's a magnetic field in this room

because the Earth has a magnetic field, right? If I put a compass here, we'll feel the magnetic field. That's because actually there's this coherent state of photons that are basically very regular in space. That's really what a field is in quantum physics, a very regular configuration of elementary particles that are sort of hidden in space. And it turns out there's this background field we call the Higgs field, which is everywhere

in space and happens to have a very particular configuration. And then when the particles that make your body and my body up, when we move through it, they experience a resistance that causes them to behave as if they have mass. If the field wasn't there, the particles would be massless. It's like swimming in molasses. It's, you know, if you're swimming in water, you feel pretty light. But if I filled the pool up with molasses and you tried to do 100 meters, you'd be pretty damn tired at the end of it.

You'd feel like you weighed thousands of pounds. We're swimming through molasses. We just don't see it. It's amazing. It's there. I mean, it sounds like, as I was just saying to a group earlier today, it sounds like religion, right? I think there's an invisible field everywhere that's responsible for our existence. That sounds like religion, except for the fact in physics, we can say that's not good enough. If it's there, we've got to find it.

And if it's there, what do we do? If that field is associated with particles, as I like to say, it's cosmic sadomasochism. If I spank the vacuum, if I dump enough energy in empty space, at a single point, I should kick out real particles if that field is there. If the Higgs field is there, if I dump enough energy in empty space, I'll kick out real particles, I'll call them Higgs particles. And you know what? Let me build a big machine in Geneva, the biggest and most complicated machine humans have ever built, called the Large Hadron Collider,

that dumps enough energy into a point in space that can maybe kick out Higgs particles if they're really there. And you know what? They're there. On July 4th, 2012, we announced the discovery of 50 particles that looked and sounded and walked and quacked like Higgs's, and we now have tested them much more, produced many more, and they're Higgs particles. It gives us evidence that that field exists. It was an outrageous and audacious claim that the properties of the universe we see are an accident due to this background field that's there, and if that background field wasn't there, the world would look very different.

It's an amazing claim. But is it a consequence of this field or an accident well the properties of the universe we experience are a consequence of that field but that field being there is as much an accident as an icicle freezing on a window in a certain direction the field could have frozen with a different value it could have frozen with a different magnitude or if that's where i'm gone well look just i don't it's it's very difficult for me to understand why you can determine in one way or another the field here here let me give you an example that i try and use in fact it just got a version of it just got went went online i used a beer bottle as an example you may have drunk beer once or twice in your life i have okay good i don't know if you've ever had a

party i have and you forgot to put the beer in the fridge i've done that put it in the freezer okay so and then what happens you forget that it's in the freezer and then and then the next morning you discover in the freezer explodes explodes you got it why because really the the the beer would rather be frozen but in when it's under pressure in the bottle, it's liquid. Okay? But, for example, if you open the top, suddenly the pressure is released and it suddenly freezes. Okay? The beer has changed from one state to another.

It's gone from liquid to solid. When it's gone to solid, it suddenly releases a lot of energy. Okay? If you wish, you could think of the properties of that beer as a field. It can either be liquid or solid. Okay? And it changes depending upon the temperature and the pressure and all the rest. Turns out the state of the universe changes as the universe cools.

And you could think of that Higgs as like a cosmic fluid that's everywhere. And as the universe cooled down, suddenly it found it would rather be in a certain configuration. It would rather be frozen than liquid. Okay? And it's some numbers that tell you whether it's acting like it's frozen or liquid. Just like I could describe the beer, I could define some numbers that would tell me

whether the beer was frozen or liquid. And so as the universe cooled, that cosmic fluid, which is everywhere, all these elementary particles, if you wish, that are permeating space, suddenly found themselves preferring, as the universe cooled down, to be in a certain configuration rather than another configuration. Okay? And it really is no different than the arbitrary state of an icicle. No. Exactly.

It's just essentially as arbitrary. Exactly. It's just essentially as arbitrary. It's not magic, and it's not as if, you know, if we, in some sense, the accidents of what the dust that's on your window and the wind that's blowing and everything else is going to determine what that pattern looks like. But every day, if you had a new cold day, the icicle pattern would look different. Okay? It's not as if every day you'd have the same icicle pattern on your window. It would be different. And that's what I mean by an accident. It's not as if the laws of physics at some level couldn't have told you that if you knew all the configurations on that day why it would

look one way or another. But it's not significant. I guess what I mean. There's no special significance to that pattern that meant God meant it to be. And there's no special significance to the universe in which we live that meant God meant it to be. And there's no special significance to the universe in which we live that meant God meant it to be. It could have been quite different. We should celebrate that it's not quite different because you and I can have this conversation. So it's a wonderful thing that it is the way it is.

And let's celebrate that we've evolved, and I can still say that word in this country, we've evolved a consciousness so that we can appreciate all of the wonders of the universe. Let's celebrate that. So it doesn't mean we're meaningless just because the universe has no purpose. We make our own purpose in our own life.

It means to me, in some sense, that life is more purposeful. There isn't someone pulling the strings. We're pulling the strings. And so it's okay to live in a purposeless universe. It doesn't make life worse. It makes it much better. We just always ascribe significance to things that happen to us. The physicist Richard Feynman used to go up to people and he used to say,

you won't believe what happened to me today. You won't believe. And people say, what? He'd say, absolutely nothing. Okay? Because when things happen to you, suddenly they're significant. You know, you have a million crazy dreams, and then one night you dream

that your friend is going to break their arm, the next day they break their leg, you go, oh my God, I'm clairvoyant. You know, or he'll say this, he'll say, you know, I just saw a license plate. You wouldn't believe, I just saw a license plate. It was J24796. Can you believe it?

Because, you know, that's as significant as seeing a license plate it was j24796 can you believe it because you know that's as significant as seeing a license plate that says 111111 or a license plate that says i am god okay they're all just as significant but the things that appear to mean something to us suddenly take on some significance because we're hardwired to want to believe. Just like the X-Files said, we want to believe. We all want to believe. Why? Well, here's the reason. We want to ascribe meaning to everything. And I think there's an evolutionary reason for that.

For example, if you're an early modern human on the savannah in Africa, the leaves can be rustling in the trees next to you. You can say, ah, no reason. Or you can say, maybe there's a lion there. And what happened was, so maybe there's a lion causing, maybe there's a cause for that happening. Now those of our potential ancestors that said, ah, there's no reason, they got eaten.

Okay? The ones that didn't are the ones that reproduced right right and so in some sense we're kind of hardwired by evolution to want to find purpose and meaning and everything but isn't that just recognizing danger or potential danger of course it is in that case but but but but a side effect of anticipating danger is to ascribe significance to things that may not... You're much luckier if you're... You're much... Not luckier, but you're much more likely to survive if you ascribe significance to everything, perhaps, in the early days, than if you ascribe significance to nothing.

But when you say... When you're talking about significance, essentially you're talking about divine significance. You're talking about significance, essentially you're talking about divine significance. Well, no, but it can be divine significance, but it can just be, you can think there's more to it than meets the eye, right? But when you're talking about clairvoyance or when you're talking about some sort of a divine intervention by a deity, you're talking about something powerful. This is the one that is meant to be the leader of his tribe. But that's a consequence. Yeah, but it works at all levels. It works at all levels from the fact that the leaves are rustling and it means it's lying.

But once we have that hardwired thing, then our desire to believe continues. And social beings may be found that if they imposed some meaning on the universe, on a universe which otherwise is hostile and dangerous, that maybe it might help bind them in tribes, that maybe it would help make them happier about being alive early on, because they might be so scared of a universe that wants to kill them all the time, that it would embolden them. So there's obviously an evolutionary purpose to what is religion. Because if there wasn't, religions wouldn't be everywhere, right?

I mean, pretty well all human cultures have religions. Each one is inconsistent with every other one. Right. Which is the reason we know that they're probably all wrong. But it works. The fact that it's universal must mean there's some evolutionary utility to believing. But then certain things eventually, even though they worked and were useful early on, as our human condition changes,

they may not be so useful. Well, that seems to be the place where we're at now as a civilization. Exactly. I would argue that religion is turning out to be counterproductive now. It may have been useful early on in human history, but now what it's doing is it's getting in the way

not only of progress, but of human cooperation. And so evolution is now counterproductive. But the great thing is we have a consciousness, we have an intellect, so we can actually overcome that evolutionary predilection by realizing we have that predilection. And as Feynman said, the easiest person to fool is yourself. So if you're a scientist, what you have to do is ask yourself, am I believing that because I want to believe or because there's evidence? So if we constantly are skeptical of ourselves, we can know to overcome that ingrained impulse we have to want to believe. That's one of the utilities

of science. So I may listen to you and like you, and I may listen to another radio person and not like them, and I may be therefore naturally willing to assume that they're wrong and you're right. But I should also say to myself, is it really the case, or is it just because I like Joe Rogan

and I don't like, you know, you pick your favorite right-wing nut, okay? And so we should be asking ourselves, okay, maybe I should go beyond my predilections, beyond my biases, to ask why I am sympathetic to what I'm hearing. And if we did that in everyday life, I think we'd cut through the crap more carefully.

So science says, look, we are hardwired to want to have these weird beliefs. And it's fine. Maybe some of them are right. But the only way to know is to test them. If we're not willing to test our beliefs and subject them to the test of nature, then we're going to be deluded.

And that's the problem with a lot of what's happening in our government. People saying, you know what? I really want to believe in this absurd story. And therefore, I refuse to accept evolution. If you're Mike Pence, the vice president of the country, you say, I don't believe evolution, because it doesn't agree with my ridiculous fundamentalist ideas. And he said that in Congress, right?

He said we shouldn't be teaching evolution in schools, we should be teaching intelligent design. And why? Because it offends his personal faith. Perhaps. It might also be a political ploy. It might be, I think, because he knows that a large percentage of the country finds comfort in a leader that subscribes to the same sort of superstitions that they do. Yeah, that could be. He did this before he was in a national office.

He was a congressman. I suspect he did it. It sounds like he believed it, but you're right. He might. Who knows? Right. But the point is that we should realize that we shouldn't listen to that kind of nonsense. Right.

Because there are a lot of people in this country who do think that evolution directly confronts their belief in God, or the Big Bang directly confronts their belief in God, and therefore they don't want their children to learn about that. But what an awful thing to do to your children, to withhold evidence about how the world really works, because you don't have to believe in the Big Bang, but it really happened. You don't have to believe in evolution, but it happened. It's like Philip K. Dick said, the science fiction writer, reality is that which continues to exist whether

or not you believe in it. Okay. And so you may not want to believe in it, but it happened. And for you to withhold that kind of knowledge from your kids because you're worried it's going to affect their faith is, in my opinion, child abuse. Because you're hindering their capabilities as an adult in a society which is highly technological to function effectively. But they're doing it because they believe it as well. Well, they believe it's right. I'm not believing. They think they're helping their kids.

But most of, I don't know if you're a parent. I am. I am. We've all screwed up our kids, right? We all do things for our kids because we think it's good for them. And sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. I'm not saying these people are doing it because they want to hurt their children. They think somehow that not believing in God makes you a bad person.

Right. But there's no evidence of that. In fact, as Steve Weinberg, who's a Nobel Prize winning physicist, has said, and I love it, he said, so there are good people in the world, there are bad people. Good people do good things. Bad people do bad things. When good people do bad things, it's religion. bad things. When good people do bad things, it's religion. Do you think that religion in its earliest stages was, in a sense, primitive man with

no science, trying to figure out the world and trying to have some sort of rules, almost like a scaffolding in order to move to the next? If you see that it exists in so many different cultures, that it might have been something along those lines. Of course that way. It was their effort to understand the world around them based on what they knew. It was noble. You know, they tried to understand the world. And so there's nothing wrong with it. But claiming

that we today should be guided by the worldview of illiterate peasants in the Iron Age peasants who didn't know the Earth orbited the Sun and wrote down scriptures based on their beliefs at the time.

They argued that that should guide our life today when we discovered 100 billion galaxies in the universe and discovered all this stuff is ludicrous.

So you're absolutely right. The birth of science and religion are the same. And in fact, modern science grew out of religion. People point that out and they say to me,

how dare you talk about religion as being outdated. Science grew out of religion. People point that out, and they say to me, how dare you talk about religion as being outdated? Science grew out of religion. And I say to them, well, that's fine, but children outgrow their parents, right? So great. No doubt, religious ideas, and all our early scientists were religious,

because it was the only game in town. You couldn't be educated, except the church controlled all the universities, and so it was like the National Science Foundation of the 16th century it's not surprising they were all religious because that's that was the only game in town so that that helped create the birth of modern science but science outgrew it and that's okay kids outgrow their parents thank goodness well i think maybe that might help kids outgrow their parents getting religion forced down your throat is one of the best ways for kids to reject it as they get older

for some kids kids like you and me but I get lots of letters you know we made this movie called The Unbelievers which followed Richard Dawkins and I around the world as we talked about this stuff and it was nice and maybe and I hope and it's a well-made film. I like the filmmakers who made it. But I found people come up to me. I had no idea of this.

It's one of the negative aspects of religion that I never appreciated. I have people come up to me almost every day or write me and saying, you know what? I saw that movie and I realized I'm not a bad person for asking questions. And I'm not alone. You know, these people from small towns in Georgia, they have no one to talk to. They think they're the only ones who's asked the question, is God real? Is it okay to not believe in God? And they're told by everyone else,

not only you'll go to hell, but you're a bad person. And suddenly they discover that's not true. And so I think there are a lot of people who have that forced down their throats. It's really hard when you're a kid, you know, and have these, and that's why I do think any kind of religion for kids is kind of child abuse, not, no matter what, because these concepts of a deity and the possible existence of a purpose of the universe

are very deep and subtle concepts. And to expect a three-year-old kid to ram that down a three-year-old kid's throat is unfair because the kid can't address it. It ends up being internalized in ways. And a lot of people, you know, I hear a lot of people who've had deep religious educations who say, you know, it's hard to outgrow that because when that's thrust into you as a child, it's really hard to ever overcome it. The guilt feelings that many religions introduce, the fundamental notion that you're ultimately sinful, and no matter what you do is sinful, is something a lot of people have

hard times with. And that claim of sin is just so, you know, I've debated people who argue that homosexuality is sinful. And it's unnatural. God intended it to be otherwise. And then I point out, well, you know what? You take all mammals, 10%, in every species almost, 10% have homosexual relationships. Sheep have long, 10% of sheep have long-term homosexual relationships. Are they sinful?

Okay, it's not unnatural at all. It's a natural consequence of whatever. Now, why it's a case is an interesting evolutionary question. But it's's not unnatural at all. It's a natural consequence of whatever but now why it's a case It's an interesting evolutionary question, but it's certainly not unnatural. It's so uniform that if it's 10% Yeah, it's a well, you know plus or minus a little bit. It certainly seems to be biology. There's some purpose There's some there's some biological purpose to it And so decorate argue that it's both unnatural and wrong is to misunderstand biology but people grow up being told it's evil because the bible said it right and then they don't want to give people who are homosexual the same rights as other people because they tell them they say god didn't want them to

have the almost so the problem is people are told these things that are ultimately wrong because you know maybe you know because for whatever, the tribe that wrote down that scripture wanted to make sure that there weren't homosexual relationships in the group. Well, it's really baffling when you talk to people about the Bible and the Old Testament versus the New Testament, and they don't even understand where the New Testament was created by Constantine and a bunch of bishops. They threw a bunch of stuff out. And by the way, they think it's kinder or gentler.

Sure, the Old Testament is one of the most, you know, look at the Quran. People say the Quran is violent and vicious. Read the Old Testament. You know, you're supposed to stone your kids if they disobey you.

Yeah. And the reason... Supposed to kill people that wear two different kinds of cloth. Exactly. And the reason that nowadays sort of the old

Abrahamic religions of Judaism and Christianity may seem a little less violent than Islam for some people is because, you know, people take the Koran literally. That's part of sort of fundamentalism. Very few, very few people take the Bible as literally as, namely, hey, we're going to stone kids.

In the 12th century they may have, but now we've outgrown it, and Islam is 600 years younger. And so it's just, the Old Testament is just as violent as the Koran, but no one takes it seriously. But people, most people who call themselves religious, they pick and choose the things they like from the Bible or the New Testament or the Old Testament. They pick and choose the nice, kinder, gentler things. You know, Richard Dawkins Foundation in England did an interesting survey.

So they, the British government does a census, you know, and they ask people's religions as part of it. And in the last census, remarkably, only 55% of the people said they were Christian, Church of England, which was one of the lowest ever. But fine. They went to those 55% people. They did a survey of those. And they said, okay, why do you call yourself Christian? Do you believe in the virgin birth? Do you believe in transubstantiation? Do you believe in, you know, and went down

the list and people say no, no, no, no, no. And then they'd ask, why do you call yourself Christian? And the answer was, we like to think of ourselves as good people. So religion is usurp morality and somehow people throw out all of the evil and it's not just the Old Testament. No one talked about hell more than Jesus Christ. Okay, a guy who's supposed to love everyone talked about hell, this eternal damnation for people who disobey, as Christopher Hitchens used to say, God is like a cosmic Saddam Hussein, but worse, because Saddam Hussein used to just torture his enemies while they're alive. God is worse. He takes the people he doesn't like and tortures them for

all eternity. Who wants such a God? What an awful, disgusting idea. My wife bought this sauna thing. You know what a sauna thing is? It's like a sauna suit. You zip it up and you hit these buttons and it heats you up and it heats your body temperature up. Neat. And it comes from China. And it has this hilarious instruction manual because it's translated from Chinese to English by people that are not fluent in English. Every time I read one of those manuals, I love them. It's unbelievable.

It's like make waste of body go away. Cells to fat disappear. Like very, very strange stuff. And she was laughing when she was reading and she handed it to me and I go, well, this is the problem with the Bible. One of the big problems of the Bible is translating from ancient Hebrew. And Aramaic in some case, but not even Hebrew. Dead Sea Scrolls. Yeah.

But ancient Hebrew, the letters doubled as numbers. So there was no numbers. So the letter A is the number one and words also had numerical value. And when you think about, I mean, and this is, if you've ever looked at this, it's amazing. So people say the Bible, you know, is just the word of God. But then I realized that this came by, in fact, the King James Version was decided by a bunch of people

who decided what to throw out. There were parts of the earlier Bible they didn't like, they threw out. They determined what is now the Old Testament in the King James Version was a bunch of people who got together and decided to throw things out and how to translate things and what to do. It was people. It's not the word of God. It's a bunch of people who got together and decided... To throw things out. And how to translate things and what to do.

It was people. It's not the word of God. It's a bunch of people. Have you ever heard of John Marco Allegro? Well, I know a lot of people that know Allegro, but... John Marco Allegro is one of the scholars that was... He was one of the people that was deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls. And he wrote a book in the 1970s called The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Oh, I've heard of the people that was deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls. Okay. And he wrote a book in the 1970s called The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.

Oh, I've heard of the book. It was his determination after 14 years of deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls that the entire Christian religion was a massive misunderstanding that it was really all about consumption of psychedelic mushrooms and fertility cults. Yeah, I've heard that. I'm skeptical of that. I should say, but I'm skeptical of everything. It's fascinating.

It's fascinating. But there are a lot of people who have written really interesting books on the early history of Christian religion and Judaism. I know a number of those scholars, and it's really fascinating. In fact, there's really great evidence that Jesus wasn't even divine in the early Christian way. I mean,

his divinity came about 300 years later. It's some really interesting work. And so, religion has evolved, and we now take it as if it was sort of obvious. Apparently, according to the books I've been reading lately, there's really good evidence that, you know, not only did Jesus never call himself God, his followers never did either. And this resurrection thing was put in later when people wanted to make him divine. Wow. And so that's fascinating.

Again, you could be skeptical about it. We should be skeptical of everything. But what's really amazing, and this is what bothers me. I wrote a piece for the New Yorker once that said all scientists should be militant atheists. You were really criticized for that. Well, by some people. By some people, yeah. And praised by others.

Yeah, but the point is that people who criticize me never read the piece, which often happens for my work, because there was a title, and the editor chose a title, which is fine. But what I said was, when I simply asked the question, could it be that Jesus was, you know, what I just said, could it be that Jesus wasn't always considered divine in the Christian religion? You know, a scholarly question. said, could it be that Jesus wasn't always considered divine in the Christian religion? You know, a scholarly question. When I asked that question, in many cases I'm called a militant atheist. How dare you question our doctrine? And I said, nothing should be above questioning. Nothing should, in our society, nothing should be sacred. Everything should be open to question. So if simply questioning makes me a militant atheist, then all scientists should be militant

atheists, because we should adore questioning. And so I wasn't arguing we should be handing out pamphlets. I said we should be asking questions. And so the discussion you and I just had would be viewed by some people, and will be viewed by some people, as sinful. Sacrilege.

As sacrilege. Should not be on the air. Should not be allowed to have that discussion. Because how dare we question the divinity of Jesus Christ? Because after all, he was God. And to question his divinity is to do the work of the devil. And that's so sad. Because, you know, you should be questioning. And it is fascinating where people draw that line to whether they draw the line at the

New Testament or whether they go back to the Old Testament or whether they even buy, I mean, how many people are believers in the Dead Sea Scrolls? I mean, how many people have gone over the work from Qumran with a fine tooth comb? Exactly. But by the way, I don't like the word believer. I should say that I use it sometimes. I think if you're a scientist, you'd never use the word belief. Okay.

Something's likely or unlikely. Okay. But belief is not a part of the, if you really want to think of rational inquiry. Of course, you can have, we all are colloquium. We all have beliefs, which means we have preconceptions. But really what we're saying is this is highly likely based on what I think or what I know before. And when I learn something, does it make it more or less likely? Well, I respect that. But if you're talking about... I use the word belief all the time, but I try not to. Okay. It's one of those things like the word like,

I try not to use like in sentences because people like use it like way too much. Like, there's gotta be a way. All kids, if you go to high school now, listen. Yeah. But it is strange to me that people do draw those arbitrary lines and when they decide the doctrine is real, they'll tell you, you know, if you start talking to him about the Old Testament and they're trying to be a Christian apologist, they'll say, well, listen, you're talking about the Old Testament and we don't go by that. We go by that thing that emperor of Rome created with a bunch of bishops and he wasn't even Christian himself until he was on his deathbed. bishops and he wasn't even christian himself until he was on his deathbed well you know exactly and people but people like to define themselves and and i don't want to you know it sounds patronizing as if oh i'm you know we're better we all believe crazy things you and i also do we all what crazy things you believe 10 and well here's the here's what we all believe 10 impossible things before we get up for breakfast as louis carroll you say you believe that you like to do is carroll like a

big proponent of acid probably i didn't't when he wrote Alice in Wonderland? There's lots of things. But it doesn't matter. The idea is interesting. We all, humans are not just rational beings. In order to make it through the day, we convince ourself of 10 impossible things. It might be that you love your wife. It might be that you like your job.

It might be that you think- What if you do love your life? What if you do love your wife? What if you do love your job? That's not impossible. But there are other things that you may find. Ten? Well, you could pick it.

You might find that you... But do you believe anything weird? I'm sure I do. But do you ever explore it? Of course, I try. Some of the things I probably... I'm a human being, so I make it through the day. I may convince myself I'm interesting.

You are interesting. Well, that's nice, but, you know. I thought you were interesting before I met you, and now you've confirmed it. Oh, good. I was going to say, now I know you're not. But, you know, let me put it this way. I may convince myself I'm handsome and I'm sexy and whatever it is that we all convince ourselves with.

If you were in a room full of 100-year-old dudes, you'd be handsome and sexy. Exactly. But if I'm in a room full of maybe not 100-year-old dudes, I might not be. You'd have issues. But so would I. A bunch of male models. But we don't have issues. We say, oh, yeah, those male models.

But they look like they're getting – No, not me, man. But that's great. That's great if you have your eyes wide open, if you're comfortable enough in your own skin. And hopefully, part of growing up, part of becoming an adult is learning that a lot of the ridiculous notions we had are just that and getting comfortable with that. That's part of maturing, I think. So when we're now more comfortable in our own skin, we're able to accept ourselves. But I bet when you were a teenager, you would have had a harder time saying, you know, those other guys are better looking and more interesting than me. Oh, yeah, for sure. Okay. And so that's part of growing up. And that's what science helps civilization do, is grow up.

That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, do you think that any of those bizarre beliefs are important at all to people today? Or do you think, how do you think society would function if we all abandoned religion? And what about the people that have included it as a part of the sort of, again, the scaffolding of how they operate in this life? And there are people who do good things. There are people who are more generous and give to

charity because of religion and help their neighbors and go to, you know, at Christmas time, go to soup kitchens and all. There's no doubt that that happens. And they generally do, genuinely do experience positive results from that. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's not as if religion breeds badness in everyone. Right. But what people should realize is it's not as if the lack of religion breeds badness in everyone.

The question is, is it necessary? Right. Altruism and kindness can exist on their own. Exactly. So you can do all of that. And I know people who go to soup kitchens at Christmas time who are atheists. The point is, it's not necessary. So for some people it helps.

I would argue that on average, and this is where you can have a debate, but on average I would say the net effect of religion is negative. And I know colleagues of mine, some of whom would disagree with me on that. But I think if you look at the net effect of religion on society in the current world, and maybe even over human history, the net effect is negative, and I would argue you could probably get many of the same features. If we dispense with religion right now, it'd be a problem, because right now, for many people, religion gives them community, a sense of community, a sense of belonging, religion gives them community, a sense of community, a sense of belonging,

and maybe for many, a sense of comfort and death and all sorts of things. So we couldn't just sort of... It provides useful things, as I said before. It fulfills evolutionary purposes. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be so ubiquitous. But I can imagine, at least, a world where we could fulfill those things in other ways. For example, instead of bringing people together for church every Sunday, we could bring them together for a rock concert every Sunday.

Okay? And they'd get the same sense of community. Or maybe for a quantum mechanics class every Sunday. But maybe they might find it fun if it was. But they'd find a sense, or maybe they'd find a sense of community in everyone rolling their eyes just like you did now. Because I suspect that happens in church a lot, too. For sure. A sense of community and everyone rolling their eyes just like you did now. Because I suspect that happens in church a lot too.

For sure. A sense of community is very important to bond people and bring them together. And religion does it. Yes. But the point is

what bothers me is when people say well therefore we need religion and the answer is maybe now but could we imagine building a sense of community because we care about each other

and we have a commonality in other ways. That's another thing that makes science so wonderful, right? I've called the Large Hadron Collider the Gothic Cathedral of the 21st century because the Gothic cathedrals were built in the 11th or 12th century by thousands of artisans over centuries working together. They had different languages, different cultures, different religions, maybe not so many different religions back then, but they worked together. The Large Hadron Collider is built by 10,000 scientists from over 100 different countries

with different languages, different religions. They're working together. They have a commonality. Science really, much more effectively than religion, I would argue, binds people globally because religions are still an us versus them thing. I'm Christian, you're Jew. I'm Christian, you're Islam, or whatever it is. I'm Buddhist. It's an us versus them thing. I'm Christian, you're Jew. I'm Christian, you're Islam. You know, whatever it is. I'm Buddhist.

It's always us versus them. With science, in principle, anyone can do it. And we're all working towards a common goal, which is to understand how the universe works. We're not interested in pushing our own picture or joining together to believe anything. That's the other thing people think of is, oh, you know, scientists push evolution because we all get together at night and with special rings and talk to each other and say, we don't want to believe anything else. They don't realize if you're a scientist, the biggest way to become famous, and what

we all do when we go into work every day, is try and prove our colleagues wrong. Because that's how you really make progress. Hey, something we thought was right is really not what we thought it was. Those are the great discoveries that push people forward. So it's not as if we all buy into the same thing. We're all trying to push knowledge forward, which means we're trying to discover perhaps old biases and overcome them. And so scientists are bound together not to push their own.

I mean, of course we all have theories, but we're all willing to throw them out if the theories are proven wrong. And we're all willing to celebrate being wrong. And that's a wonderful thing. And as I always say, if you're a theoretical physicist, the two favorite states to be in are either wrong or confused, because that's great, because then you're going to learn something. And if we are more comfortable with not knowing, which is the other aspect, I think, that science for many people is terrifying.

Because if you deeply believe you know the answers, if you deeply believe there's a God, you can put aside that uncertainty. And for many people, uncertainty is terrifying. But being comfortable with not knowing is wonderful. And moreover, I would argue is better for teachers and for parents. You know, your kids ask you questions and you really want to always give them the answer, whether you know it or not. But it'd be much better to say, you know what, I don't know. Let's figure out if anyone knows this, because then they participate in the joy of discovery. They're not told something by some authority. And same with teachers.

I do think we should be teaching questions rather than answers. We should be teaching kids how to question and then how to search for the answers, how to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, how to distinguish the nonsense from the sense. Especially in our society right now, we used to teach school as if it's just a compository of information. Now we know, in my phone I have more information than in school, but I also have more misinformation. How do I tell the difference? It's the process, and that's what we need to teach in school, the process of skeptical inquiry, relying on evidence, checking many sources, testing your ideas constantly.

testing your ideas constantly, then those are the tools kids need to deal effectively in the modern world with an Internet and with news sources which are equally full of misinformation as well as information. One of the biggest issues I think that people are having with religion in the 21st century is these areas where you're not allowed to question and explore, that things hit these walls where this is God's will and this is the way it is. And in my mind, what we say, that is just code word for, I don't want to think about it. Right. It's too confusing. It's too complicated.

Or too terrifying. Too terrifying. And that, or people say, and this amazes me, I get people, people say, you will never understand the origin of the universe. You'll never understand what love is. Science will never, ever explain love. Science will never, ever explain love. Science will never, ever explain X. Well, what will? And then I say to them,

well, that's incredibly pompous statement. Because if you say that science will never explain this, you must understand it. Because how do you know that we'll never explain it? We never know what we won't be able to explain until we try. And maybe there are things about our universe that we'll never understand. But we don't know until we try. You can never say up front that science will never explain this or that

because you haven't tried. And in my experience as a scientist, there could have been brick walls, but I've watched progressively those brick walls crumble as we move around them or we break them and it is so Exhilarating and that's why it's the greatest story ever told it's so exhilarating to see them knocked down and things you thought we'd never Understand remember one of the forces nature a very prominent physicist in 1960s early 19 actually in 69 69 said it will be a hundred years before we discover

Understand this interaction. Next year, the theory came out. And it's so wonderful to see how the story surmounts the biases and the anticipation of individual scientists. That's the greatest story ever told so far. Well, what's ridiculous about saying no one will ever figure anything out is that what we figured out over the last 200 years is monumental. And then human language has only been around for 40,000. Absolutely. We live another 50,000 years, 100,000 years. As long as we don't, as long as we keep open inquiry, you could imagine moving.

I mean, look, we went through a few hundred years of the Middle Ages where the incredible inquiry based um civil culture of the greeks was just forgotten i mean you know the greeks had determined the circumference of the earth not only that it was round but what its circumference was by simple measurements that were then not accepted because of dogma so we have to if we want to progress we have to beware of dogma how did they figure out the circumference of the earth? Oh, it's really neat. I think it was Aristarchus. I figure which of the, was the Greek now? It's amazing. Well, what he said was, look, so in a certain time of day, a certain time of the year, the sun is directly overhead at 12 noon. Okay. And in my, so I look,

and I can tell that by looking down a deep well and I see the reflection of the sun exactly in that deep well. Okay? So the rays of the sun, which are coming down in the same direction towards the Earth everywhere, comes down in the deep well. But 100 miles away, the well, because the surface of the Earth is curved, the well is pointing in a little bit different direction. So the

sun's rays come at a slightly different angle. So on this day, I will measure that the sun is directly overhead for me, but I'll get my friend 100 miles away to measure the angle of the sun relative to the well, and that tells you that the Earth is curved. And if you do the geometry, you can work out if 100 miles of the Earth's surface causes the sun's rays to suddenly be at that angle, how curved the Earth is and what the circumference of the Earth is.

It's plane geometry that, in principle, any high school student could do. But when you say 100 miles away, first of all, how are they communicating with this guy 100 miles away? They're not immediately, but the guy writes it down, and then he takes a horse, and they come and compare notes later. And they use a sundial to determine the time? The sundial to determine the time, and the... But 100 miles away, would there be a deviation at all in the time a minute or two

well that yeah but so to some accuracy you right you you get it wrong to some accuracy right but they did pretty damn well they came up with the circumference the earth was darn close to the circumference of the earth and so uh it's amazing that they use these techniques so they were just so confused and so curious about it all they just tried to figure out what there's got to be a way To figure this out well, and they didn't and they weren't They weren't forced with the dogma that the earth is flat right as you I've told today You were dealing with some people who are still forced with that dogma. It's very strange. How do you feel about that in? 2017 it's amazing, but you know nothing surprised not only that gravity's not real and dinosaurs

I know and you know the people real and dinosaurs aren't real. And you know, the people who say gravity aren't real, I have a great solution. What? It's a great solution. Jump off a building? Walk out the window on the 13th floor and test your ideas. And the great thing is do it before you reproduce. But it's a magnetism thing, they believe.

It's electromagnetism or something like that that sucks people down to the ground. Yeah, that's what they can think. Fascinating. So carry a magnet and look at it as what happens as you're falling to the ground. Yeah, that's what they can think. Fascinating. So carry a magnet and look at it as what happens as you're falling to the Earth. Well, what's even more hilarious is that they, well, we talked about this before the podcast started, the Japanese weather satellite that takes an image, a full image of the Earth.

What is the name of that satellite again, Jamie? It takes a full image of the Earth from 22,000 miles away. People keep saying in this flat Earth theory thing that there's no images of the earth in full, that they're all composites. That's not true. It's not true. There are images of the earth that are taken every 10 minutes by this one satellite and

they're high resolution. You can access them online anytime you want. But people see those and they want to think they're fake, but yet they believe there's an ice wall around Antarctica that you cross over and you fall to the abyss. Where's this photo of the ice wall? Where is it? Or have they never, well... How does someone fly from Japan to the United States?

They don't believe that people can fly around the world. I've done it. I've done the, and that they're all lying. Here's another one. Have they ever thought of time zones? Why are there time zones if the earth is flat why are there time zones the only reason they're time zones they should go from New York to LA

and see you know what the time is different they probably think it's a human invention but you know the sun is still shining in LA when it's gone down in New York and they can call their friends and check and if the earth was flat that wouldn't be the case.

It's only the case because the earth is curved. I mean, so those simple things should convince people. But people are willing to throw out evidence if they have a belief that's really firm. And what I said before is we have to realize the easiest person to fool is yourself. So if you're not willing to question your beliefs, especially those that you hold Particularly cherished beliefs in if you're not willing to question those you're not gonna you're not gonna ever grow Yeah well That's a good way to put it particularly cherish because I think a lot of people do cherish these ideas things like the earth being

Flat because it gives them some sort of information leg up on everybody I know something that people don't know or makes them feel better about themselves They may hate gays because it makes them feel better about not being gay. Or maybe they're gay and they're trying to hide it. Yeah, exactly. You always worry about that. And so I think we all, that's what I mean about believing 10 impossible things for breakfast. I don't want to make fun of people because we all do think of things to make us feel better about ourselves.

It's part of being human. The psychological pitfalls. Yeah, and so we should be aware of those. And I have them and you have them. And I don't pretend I don't. do think of things to make us feel better about ourselves it's part of being human the psychological pitfalls yeah yeah and so we should be aware of those and i have them and you have them and i don't pretend i don't what i do try and do is question them yeah but we can all do that and i don't i don't i understand why people are believe certain things it's not and you can be you know what again richard dawkins tells me about a an astrophysicist he knows who, during the day, studies objects in the sky and looks at galaxies or stars and measures that they're 12 billion years old or whatever. But yet he goes home at night and is convinced that the Earth is 6,000 years old. So somehow he can do both.

He knows a guy like that Oh, yeah, and people can and we're all capable of Believing in two mutually contradictory things at the same time. It's just the way we're built And so how does this guy measure the because of these planets somehow it doesn't affect his fundamental beliefs and it's amazing It's true because we can all believe things that are wrong. And so it doesn't mean they're stupid It doesn't mean because this guy's apparently a fairly accomplished astrophysicist. It's a psychological pitfall. But we all have it.

It's a trap. So many people, you know, when I talk about this, I don't want to seem pompous in the sense of saying, oh, I'm better, or scientists are better. Science is better

because science helps us overcome those pitfalls. Why do those pitfalls exist, though? Because obviously, I would argue that they have an evolutionary purpose. That somehow, if they didn't have an evolutionary purpose, then they wouldn't have been selected for, right? Right. There does seem to be some weird inclination or some desire to expose secrets, to find secrets and to know them.

Yeah, it's nice. But on the other hand, that's great. Let's exploit that. Right. Discovering secrets is discovering mysteries. Right. Discovering mysteries is what motivates us to do science. So let's put it in positive light.

We all want to solve puzzles. We all want to understand something, and maybe we're the first one to understand it. We all want to access information maybe and make us feel special for doing it. That's the reason I do science, right? It's not to save the world. It's because I really want to know, understand, and it's nice to be the first person to maybe understand stuff. It's gratifying for your ego. And we are driven, you know, by ego, and let's not pretend otherwise.

Right, but I think you're talking about measurable things and elements and things that you could sort of expose and explain but what these people seem to be really obsessed with is People lying about stuff and covering up secrets about like the earth being flat or chemtrails. Yeah, they like to believe there's a conspiracy Yeah, and conspiracies are very very attractive Yeah, because it because and I you know. Because, and I'm not a psychologist, so what I say here is just a speculation. But the world doesn't care what you believe and it doesn't treat you fairly. Right? Right.

And that's just a fact. The world doesn't treat me fairly, doesn't treat you fairly. It doesn't give a damn about my well-being. Okay. So, hey, I'm being treated unfairly. Isn't it better for me to think that someone is actively being unfair to me than to assume it's just the way it is? Because then I can blame it.

And so I tend to think conspiracy theorists tend to say, you know, the things I don't like, there's a real reason for it. It's not an accident. It's not just haphazard. It's not an accident. It's not just haphazard. It's not anything. And, you know, I've lost my job because there's got to be a reason. There's got to be a villain. There's got to be someone making it happen. Just like the reason we burned

witches, right? Because there were storms or there wasn't, you know, there wasn't crops that year. And a lot of people say, it's an interesting historical theory, which I think is seems quite plausible to me, that when Newton discovered the laws of gravity, the universal law of gravity, it contributed to the ending of the burning of witches. Why?

I thought that that was a myth, the burning of witches. I thought they drowned them mostly. Well, they hung a lot of them, too. They drowned them. I don't care whether it's burning. They killed them. Right, I understand. Okay, they blamed crops.

They blamed bad things. And then when Newton discovered that even the planets are affected by the same laws that an apple is, there's a universal law. It meant that physical effects had physical causes. And when bad things happen, there's a physical reason. There's not someone you can blame. And witches

or whatever. And so there's a lot of arguments that suggest that that kind of development in physics led to the end of blaming people for those for bad crops or or for bad things happening but i think that's the kind of thing when we we want to find someone to blame rather than just saying the universe doesn't give a shit about me and anybody interested in this is a really fascinating subject but but the whole Salem witch trial thing, there's a lot of really convincing evidence that seems to point towards ergot

poisoning, that there was a late freeze and that this particular type of fungus grew on some of their wheat that makes ergot, which is very LSD-like properties and they think these people thought they were being bewitched because they're being contaminated.

It's a great idea. It's fascinating. Again, I don't know the evidence for it, but it's an interesting idea. It is fascinating. But let's understand. I think behind that is we've all had... I mean, I think what we're seeing are extremes of characteristics that we all have. I think many of us assign blame when we shouldn't.

When I lose my keys, sometimes I say to my wife, where did you put the keys, right? And then I learned very quickly that I shouldn't have said that. And so I think it's just a characteristic of being human. And accepting it as a characteristic of being human doesn't diminish us. But what's really great is we can understand that and try and work and try and figure out ways to avoid those pitfalls. So a lot of these ways of thinking, these patterns of thinking, these are sort of hold-offs from the ancient days. Things that helped us to survive, those pathways still exist. Are now counterproductive.

And I ran a meeting at my Origins Project at ASU about the origins of xenophobia. And, you know, us versus them. And it turns out there's really useful evolutionary purposes for us versus them. Tribal purposes. Tribal invaders. And not just that. Actually, it goes back to biochemistry. You know, immune systems is us versus them.

Right. Just being able to recognize foreign bodies and cells. So it goes back to single cell organisms. Wow. But then the question is, is it now got a, is it now... Run its course and become counterproductive. Run its course and become counterproductive. Exactly.

And then we have to look at those things and ask what there is. And if we explore those things, then there's a better chance that we can deal with them and ask what's useful and what isn't. But if we refuse to acknowledge that those things exist and that they may be the purpose of our religion or our beliefs or whatever, then we can't possibly overcome them. I'm going to change gears a little bit here. Are you concerned at all about AI? Yeah, yes. We just had a workshop again at My Origins Project, which you can watch it online, the public event anyway. Where can someone see it?

It's at www.origins.asu.edu. We run these amazing events. And what's neat to me, by the way, is we get 3,000 people attending them, paying to attend. People really want to hear science if it's done right and interestingly. That's awesome. I'm so pleased and privileged that people find things that interesting and come over and over again. So we ran this event called The Future of AI, Who's in Control? Because associated with it, we had a scientific workshop on what are the possible disruptive influences of AI.

Now, AI is going to change the world. The future is not going to be like the past. What it to, the future is not going to be like the past. What it means to be human is not going to be like it was the past. Get over it. Now, the question is, some of those things which we think are horrible may not be so bad. For example, the ancient Greeks thought the introduction of writing would be horrible because oral storytelling would be destroyed. But writing wasn't such a bad thing.

It actually made the world kind of maybe a more interesting place. You know, maybe AI will take over certain functions that humans have, teaching or doctoring or whatever, and maybe it won't be so bad. Okay, maybe it seems terrifying for us, but maybe it won't be so bad. On the other hand, though, you can imagine awful consequences, ones that are really bad. So we looked at these disruptive possible consequences, and the point is, it can have both. What's really important is, unless you think about it, Pasteur said, fortune favors the prepared mind, ultimately. So yes, AI is both terrifying and exciting. The future is terrifying and exciting.

For example, I'm really excited by the possibility that AI might become better physicists than us. And I'd like to know how intelligent computers, especially intelligent quantum computers, understand quantum mechanics. They may understand it better than we do, and I might learn from them. So maybe they'll be the dominant physicists in the future,

the dominant academics, and we can learn from them. We can learn from intelligent artificial systems. That wouldn't be so bad. Maybe it seems like it'd be bad, but what's wrong with that? It's really rose-colored glasses, though. That may be, but on the other hand, it could be that intelligent AI decides that there's no need. For example, here's something that one of the people who was at our workshop,

Jan Talen, who founded Skype, was one of the coordinators of our workshop. And he says, well, you know, oxygen is really bad for oxidation of electronic systems. So if AI could control technology, they might want to systematically reduce the oxygen content of the atmosphere. That wouldn't be so good for humanity. So you can imagine the other extreme where basically intelligent AI systems control most of the technology in the world and maneuver things so humans become extinct. So you can imagine one realm or the other, but unless you think about the ways that you can try and ensure that the future is as good as it can be, you've got to at least confront those possibilities.

You don't put your head in the sand and you don't go, oh my God, the world is ending. You say, look, there are changes that are going to happen. For example, AI will displace millions of people from their work. There's no doubt. If not billions. Billions. Let's say billions.

Now, what's that going to do? Well, there are two possibilities, and one of them was imagined by John Maynard Keynes when he thought about what industrialization would do. He said, you know, the effect of it is that, yeah, machines are going to do a lot of the work that people are going to do, but the great thing is that will free people from the work. They'll be able to go have coffee in coffee shops, go read books, see plays. The quality of their life will improve.

But, of course, that didn't happen because, you know, the increased resources that were, the increased money and all of that that was generated by industrialization wasn't uniformly distributed. At some point, when we are billions of people out of work, we're going to have to decide to say, you know what? Those machines have produced a higher net potential quality of life for everyone. Maybe we have to spread the wealth. So some sort of universal basic income.

Yeah, and I think, frankly, we have a choice. Either we, as machines, begin to do just that, we have a choice to move in that direction, it seems to me, or we have a choice to move in a direction of incredible socioeconomic problems and tumult that's going to create huge, huge societal problems. And I'm worried that in our society, for example, that doesn't even want to provide health care to everyone, where some people say, why should I pay for you when you're sick?

Even though we live in a society that's wealthy enough to do just that, that we'll never get to a point where we say, you know what? These machines have generated incredible wealth. Let's allow all the people who've been displaced to benefit from that wealth. I suspect writes very dark books. And when I first met him, I said, how can you be so cheerful? And he said, you know, I'm a pessimist, but that's no reason to be gloomy. And that's become my mantra ever since then. That's a great statement.

Yeah, I love it. Now, what I'm worried about with AI is that we're looking at it as if it's an invention. It's a human invention, which it most certainly is. But it's also a life form. What I'm worried about is that it decides, well, eventually, if you extrapolate. Yeah. But okay, so, big deal. Well, that it decides to make a better version of itself than it continues to do that. And we're going to be completely obsolete within a short amount of time.

Great. Really? Well, I mean, no. So that could be good or bad. So this is your- It's going to suck. No, but this is your illusion You're significant. Well, no, I'm not it's not it just no, maybe a live long enough to die of old age

Oh, but maybe eaten by robots. So there are lots of things that are that don't have any real purpose But what would the robots you know, if you want to go robots would it be in? It's why would they feel it's necessary? To destroy us? Because we're polluting the environment? We might screw up the world? Well, no. When we're not governing things, we might not be.

Right. You know, we might want to save... They might want to save us like we do the turtles and... Chimps. Or, you know, in various places, they don't want the lights to happen because the turtles don't, you know, mate if the lights are on the beach. We don't do such a good job about that.

We don't. But they'll be better than us, right? Right, but we might be an evil hyena-like species to them. If we are, then why should we be around? That's a good question, but I mean, I'm worried about that. Well, no, but maybe. It won't give us a chance to get better. But maybe you could view them as your offspring.

And then you... Boy, that's optimistic. Well, then you say, look, am I offspring? And in fact, actually, I do think ultimately if machines can program themselves and ultimately become better, then it will be difficult for biology to keep up. And our future as humans could easily be what you would call the Borg in Star Trek. Could easily say the only sensible way is to merge. And you know what? It's really interesting. So then the dominant life form, it'll be really interesting.

So we tend to think of why are carbon-based individuals the dominant life form in the universe? It could be if we're looking out in the universe and looking at the dominant life form, they're silicon-based. They're not carbon-based. And it'd really be interesting because in this case, it would be intelligent design. You can imagine a bunch of intelligent computers having a podcast in the far future saying you know i think we were designed by these yeah by these monkeys yeah wow and they would be right yeah that's what's really fascinating

is the idea that we are some sort of uh not just a creator but that we are the predecessors of some greater species. And who knows? Who knows what the future's going to be? But to be afraid of the future is... Well, it's inevitable, right? Ultimately, what can happen will happen. We just have to accept that. And we have to try and prepare for it

as best as possible to try and make sure it works out as well as possible. I begin this book, The Greatest Story Ever Told So Far, with a quote from Virgil from the Aeneid saying, I think these are the tears of things and they're, I should, you know, I don't know if you have a copy of the book around. No, it's at home, unfortunately.

Yeah, I was going to bring mine in, but I was sure you'd have it with you. Sorry. Anyway, and the stuff of our mortality cusses us to the heart. And it's a Latin phrase that people remember. That's famous. But the next phrase in the 9-8, which I talk about at the very last page or two of the book, is the phrase, release your fear. And I think that's the important thing.

The stuff of our mortality does cut us to the heart. But release your fear. Use it to make our brief moment in the sun more precious. But it's fascinating to me that we're so connected to this particular form that we find ourselves in now and that we we're so attached to it. And that even though we know that we are a finite life

form as individuals. Some people don't Yeah, go on. What I'm saying, you know, irrationally. But we know that we're a finite life form. We would like to think that we stay in this state for as long as, you know, history allows. And we would like to, but you know that we're a finite life form we would like to think that we stay in this state for as long as you know history allows. But of course we're just temporary. Even as humans, even as hominids

Homo sapiens have only been around for a speck of time. A couple hundred thousand years and who would expect our future to be the same? Well yeah of course it can't be. And what if what if I mean what if the things that are wonderful about our culture are preserved by our descendants, but our descendants aren't carbon-based?

Okay. So what's wrong with that? Why do you care if your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren look like you? Right. I mean, of course we all do because we want some immortality. Right. Okay, so the robots are made to look like you. I mean, I don't care, you know.

They all have Joe Rogan faces on them in front of them. Did you see Ex Machina? Yeah, yeah. Did you know Alex? Yeah, I've talked to Alex Garland, who's the director. There was a hesitation there. There was a little nod. Well, I mean, you know, of course, whenever I see science fiction, I try to suspend disbelief.

I think the idea, in fact, I showed a clip from Ex Machina in our event, because I think there are many possible negative consequences of artificial intelligence. One of them is malevolence, but the other is unintended negative consequences. And I thought Ex Machina was a wonderful example of unintended negative consequences and I thought Max Malkina was a wonderful example of unintended negative consequences of artificial intelligence I don't think that lovely young woman was designed to be evil

but it was an unintended consequence when she saw an opportunity for herself and the other one I showed of course is from 2001 A Space Odyssey the great Hal where Hal says sorry Dave I can't do that and I think it's wonderful 2001, A Space Odyssey, the great Hal. Where Hal says, sorry, Dave, I can't do that. And I think

it's wonderful and thoughtful, and it was thought-provoking. And as I say, I've come to know Alex Garland who wrote it and directed it since then, and he's a very thoughtful and interesting guy. One of my favorite all-time movies. I love that movie. Yeah, it's a really interesting movie. I agree. I always try and analyze it afterwards,

and sometimes as a scientist, I try not to get in the way of liking science fiction because, of course, they all involve suspending disbelief and certain things. And the difference between good science fiction and bad science fiction is not how scientifically accurate it is. It's how good a story it is.

Because if it's a good story, you can suspend disbelief easily. Someone was asking me the other day on a science fiction podcast, you know, what's the worst example of this? And the example that comes to mind is I remember a New York Times reporter, after the physics of Star Trek came out, said, can I go with you to a science fiction movie and watch you and talk to you about it? And so we went to see Starship Troopers.

This is the stupidest movie of all time. It's a great movie. How dare you? No, because, you know, these ants poop out things at supersonic speeds that go across the galaxy. I mean, you know, that's amazing, but it's stupid. Well, it's a very campy movie, right? Yeah, I know.

But the problem is, because he was asking me to look at the reality of it, I couldn't even suspend disbelief if I wanted to. But it's things like that. For example, when something happens that suddenly takes you out of the story, you suddenly go, oh, shit. Here's another one, another movie I hate called Ghost. Maybe you liked it with the famous movie. Demi Moore?

Demi Moore and what's his face? Patrick Swayze? Yeah, right. And here's the idea. So this guy's a ghost, right? And he wants to show his long lost love. He's around. It's beautiful.

It's wonderful. So he tries to lift a penny, but of course it goes through his hands, right? He tries to hug her, but his hands go right through her. But you notice each time he stands on the floor or sits on the couch, he stands on the floor and sits on the couch. So his butt or his feet have some incredible ability to be stopped by matter, but nothing else does. That's a good point. I mean, I saw that. The matter, but nothing else does. That's a good point.

I mean, I saw that. The rest of the movie went downhill. That's a very good point. I didn't even think about it until right now. I didn't want to ruin it for you, but I just did. Well, I saw it when I was like 10. Yeah. I'm older now.

That's an older movie. When is that movie? I probably wasn't 10. I was probably 20 or something. Yeah, well, I'm older. It's a stupid movie. It is. It is.

But for that, what I'm saying is the minute I saw that, it was hard for me to enjoy the rest of the movie. I get it. Plus the heaven and hell bit, which also I found stupid. So sometimes, sometimes, sometimes something like that, when you're any, and it doesn't have to be science. Right. You can be watching a drama and you say, why the hell did they do that?

I mean, it's just out of character. A cut the shit moment. Yeah, yeah. A moment, right? Yeah, and then it's hard for you to enjoy the rest of the movie. Yeah. I find that all the time. I have a real issue with that. Yeah. Um, when you think about artificial intelligence, do you consider like, one of the things that freaks me out is that what we consider life, when we, we think about instincts and needs and desires, those won't necessarily be programmed at all into any artificial life.

Well, one of the questions that arises, and this is a huge point of discussion among AI researchers, because I've been to a bunch of meetings in preparation for our meeting, is whether, and I find the statement almost vacuous, but I'm amazed that they use it all the time, to program machines with human values. Right. Why? Should we be programming our machines? the time, to program machines with human values. Right. Why?

Should we be programming our machines? And my problem is, what are human values? Right. And they said, one of the, it was a very smart guy, and I won't say who, said at this meeting, well, they just have to watch us. And I said, what do you mean? They watch Donald Trump and they know what human values are? I mean, come on.

You know, there are, I'm not sure there are universal human values. And so, how do we program them in? But nevertheless, the question is, do we want to align their programming in terms of what we think will be beneficial to us? Right. Because after all, we're programming them. So do we impart saint-like values? Who knows? I mean, I find that a very interesting question and a very difficult one to resolve i my own feeling is if you're up to me and i am not it's not an area of active research for me

you produce the smartest machines you can just like you have kids i have kids do we want them to believe everything we believe no we want to give them we want them to become the most capable human beings they can be so that they can go out and do the best stuff. Right. So why is it different for a computer? I'd want to make the most capable, intelligent, resourceful machine I ever could, because then I at least, all the evidence suggests to me that that machine will make the best decisions. Right, but if the machine doesn't have an ability to breed sexually, and if it doesn't have ego, and if it doesn't necessarily have creativity because it doesn't need to be praised for its ego i don't think we i think i don't think creativity comes from needing to be

praised for ego i think creativity is one of the great intrinsic aspects of human beings that makes being a human being worth being human being well i think i i agree with you but i think if you're going to connect that sort of mindset to a computer or to artificial intelligence don't you think it would have some need to create? Like, what is our need to create? Like, we like to express ourselves to other people. If you were alone on an island, do you think you would create?

Yeah, sure. Here's an example. By yourself forever? You think you would paint and make things? I'd like to think I would because I kind of, because that's what I find gratifying. But I think one of the things people find gratifying is that other people are enjoying it. It's a sense of community.

No, I don't do science because other people enjoy it. I do science because I enjoy it. So you think you would do science if you were the last person on earth? You would be alone with a legal pad? What I do, the work I do is, I mean, I don't want to make any pretense. I do it because it's fun for me. Right. And I think most people do it.

They may claim, actually, I shouldn't say. There are people, probably better than me, who do what they do because they're constantly trying to shouldn't say there are people probably better than me who do what they do because they're constantly trying to save humanity in one way or another i like to think what i do has a net positive effect and i try to take time out of my science to try and counter things that i think are wrong with the world because i have a because because of my background and also because i have a soapbox i'm lucky enough to people listen to me for one reason or another so i try to take that responsibility seriously. But on the whole, I do what I do because I enjoy doing it.

I think most of us do. And we only do it, we're only good at it if we're good at it because we enjoy it. Right. And look at, look, here's an example. So the best, one of the best machine learning machines in existence just beat the best Go player in the world, right? Right. How did it do it?

It constantly taught itself to be better at Go. Okay? That's creativity, if you want. It's trying to be better at playing the game. Right, but didn't it just calculate every single move that's ever been done by another player? No, it can't do that. What it can do is try to teach itself strategies that work.

Which is creativity. And it does teach itself strategies that work. Which is creativity. And it does teach itself strategies that work, new strategies, by looking at old strategies that didn't work. That's creativity in some sense. Yeah, in a way. I mean, who knows how to define creativity in all senses? But you can imagine a sufficiently intelligent computer would be creative because in order to do physics and science, you need to be creative.

In fact, I just did an event with Alan Alda in New York City. Alan Alda from MASH? Yeah, who's a great guy, an intelligent man, and very interested in science and science communication. We've done a few events together. One with my Origins Project, which you can see online. So he was interviewing me. We had a dialogue, but he was interviewing me about the new book and in the context of that and science communication. And he said something wonderful,

both there and earlier. He said, because it's so counterintuitive to modern culture's perception, he said, art requires rigor. Science requires creativity. And I thought, wow,

because that's the opposite of what most people think. But in fact, science, art requires rigor. You've got to just get just the right colors and work really hard to get the right patterns. Whether that art is music or, you know, by art, I'm talking very broadly. Whereas science makes progress because we're creative. It's also rigorous.

But people somehow have this artsy-fartsy notion that, oh, artists are creative and scientists are nerds. You know, they're just rigorous. Science is just rigorous garbage. It's not. It's creative, just like art. And art is rigorous. And the scientists who say, oh, these artists, these musicians, they're not as good as we are, they're equally bad. Because art, doing anything well requires rigor. Discipline, effort, and rigor. And I think that beautiful dichotomy, that juxtaposition of art and rigor and science and creativity is something wonderful that Alan said, and we should realize it's a characteristic.

Science does involve creativity and rigor, but so does all the areas of human activity that make the story of humans so wonderful. That's why it's the greatest story ever told so far. Many, many aspects of human life require creativity. Many endeavors. And rigor. Whether you're a better kickboxer. There's a lot of creativity in fighting.

Yeah, and rigor. You have to learn rules. You have to discipline your muscles over and over again. Any sports person. And maybe there's even creativity in football. But, you know, there's rigor and creativity in anything that humans push to the limits. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. The question would be, what would the motivation of artificial intelligence be?

If it's not, if it doesn't have, we're essentially riding on the motivations of our ancient genetics. Oh, sure. We want to have sex, for example. Yes, exactly. And it'd be interesting to see. Who knows? Wouldn't it be interesting to find out? Right.

What would their motivation be to be creative? Because we've developed in them problem-solving capabilities. And because they're self-aware. And they want to ask questions because they're self-aware. They may want to improve their understanding of the world, partly for technology. They may want to make the world better for themselves. All sorts of reasons. But we'll see.

To some extent, we'll input it in programming. But to some extent, we'll see. And to some people, that's terrifying that we won't know the motivations. Of course, it's terrifying. I'm not as terrified about it. I guess I'm concerned that we've got to make sure we understand what we're doing in each step so we don't produce massive negative results that could have been avoided. But I'm not as concerned that the future will be different than the past.

I hope it is. When you see some of the emerging technologies like CRISPR, some of these genetic engineering technologies where they're starting to use non-viable human fetuses and run some tests on them, are you concerned at all about that? Are you concerned about... I shouldn't even use the term concern because obviously you have that mindset. No, no. No, no.

I'm concerned. Of course I'm... Of let things happen. No. No. It's not just let things happen. Watch what's going to happen. Try and anticipate the results.

Understand them in detail. Anticipate what the results are and avoid negative ones to the extent you can. That's what life is all about. But accept the fact that things are going to change. But accept the fact that things are going to change. And that's not such,

that's, aren't we happy that the world is different than it was during medieval times? Sure. I mean, except for, you know, Mike Pence and other people. The rest of us are happy or, you know, I can pick a lot of radio commentators. But most of us are happy that the world has gotten more open, more interesting. And so that's part of the human drama, is that it's going to go places and we don't know where it's going to go.

And that's okay, but we should all work as much as we can to try and make sure, to the extent that we can, that the direction it heads is a good one, is beneficial, more interesting, more exciting, more possibilities, more fun for everybody. And maybe even more sustainable, because it seems reasonable that it should be sustainable if we think we care about

not just our children but our grandchildren and their grandchildren. And so it's self-interest in some sense to be interested in conservation and sustainability instead of immediate profit.

Of course, I might say if I amass enough wealth then my children will be fine forever and who gives a damn about the rest of the people's children? But we can decide that maybe it's in the best interest of everyone if human society is sustainable, because there'll be less likelihood for extreme war, extreme violence, blah, blah, blah. I would argue that we behave well in large part because of reason. And my point is, and I've had this,

we had a session in my Origins Project, a whole meeting on the origins of morality. And I've had this debate with a number of colleagues who point out, I think it was Hume who said, you can't get ought from is. Okay? You can't get ought from is. Just by rationality, you can't decide how to behave.

Maybe, maybe. But here's the point. Without is, you can never get to ought. Without knowing the consequences of your actions, which is what science is all about, you can't decide what's good and bad. And so science and reason is an essential part of any progress, because we can't possibly decide what economic policies to enact or what social policies or what technological policies if we don't know the consequences of actions.

That's why, for example, it was so stupid for the Republicans to design this health care policy and promote it before anyone had analyzed, say, the economic impact of it. I mean, they could have still decided to do it. It's not as if, but at least that data would have been useful for making a final decision. It's that simple. But when I get, getting back to that CRISPR thing, if that becomes available and if it advances to the point where it's available to people that are alive today, would, would you, would you give it a shot? Would you change anything about yourself? Would you become Thor?

I mean, if it really gets to that point, we can worry about a lot of things. I'm not as anywhere near as worried about that as I am hacking, right? Because we can hack computers, and if you can hack DNA, as a lot of kids want to do. In fact, I was told years ago, I'm chairman of the board of something called the Bulldeny of Atomic Scientists, the board of sponsors that sets the doomsday clock every year. And so we have to think about existential threats to mankind. I remember about seven or eight years ago, we had a professor from MIT who said his computer science students were most interested in hacking DNA,

much more interested than hacking, because it's just a code. Right. And so if you can manipulate arbitrarily in a very precise way DNA, then of course there are many good things that can come. And maybe you can make yourself stronger, bigger, whatever you want. Maybe we're not you, maybe your children, whatever. And maybe you can overcome genetic diseases, which of course would be great. But you can also, with great power comes great responsibility.

And with that, you can also imagine hacking, right? And creating new viruses or whatever you want. And so, yeah, any new technology is terrifying. Does that mean we shouldn't create new technologies? I mean, cars are terrifying. Cars kill. Look how many people cars kill. Now maybe we'll have self-driving cars. Maybe fewer people will die. Some people are afraid of self-driving cars because they do present moral problems and if the car is designed to minimize the number of people it kills and it can do that by killing you if you're faced with running into five school children or the car turning and hitting a wall what do you want your car program to do right and it's these are they're fascinating questions we will have to address but technology can so technology can be used in many ways,

and it's terrifying, but it's trite to use this old expression. But I do think of it at times, which is a little thing I gave my stepdaughter once. It said, ships are safe in the harbor, but that's not what ships are meant to do. I mean, you can bury your head in the sand, you can never go outside the house for fear of being run over by

a car or being embarrassed or whatever or you can choose to live a life, it's your choice but to me living the life is more interesting that's why in the book I point out you can choose how to look at the world

you can choose to say you're the center of the universe, and if that makes you feel better, fine, and the universe was created for you. Or you can choose to let your beliefs conform to the evidence of reality and assume the universe exists and evolved independent of your existence. And in that case, you're bound to be surprised. Isn't it better to have a life full of surprise than a life that doesn't have any? No, it's a wonderful philosophy. What I'm thinking is I'm wondering about these technological advancements when it comes to the ability to manipulate the human body.

And when they get to the point where we don't have the same issues that we have today with diseases and with injuries or even with biological inferiorities. Everyone looks like LeBron James. Yeah, okay. You could imagine that's the case. I suspect people will want different things. Sure. But okay, that'll be a very different world. But look at it this way.

You're a pretty buff guy, okay? You manipulated your body, right? Yes. Okay, what's wrong with that? No, nothing, but I'm still 5'8". Okay, but... LeBron James is 7 feet tall and he manipulated his body. It's a very different deal.

If someone gives me a 7-foot-tall pill, I might take it. Yeah, but you manipulate your body given the technology of the time. Right, but if that technology changes and everyone can be 7 feet tall. But is it worse because you know enough physiology now or whatever, exercise physiology, that you can manipulate your body more efficiently now than you could before. And people can run faster miles or jump higher because we've been sports forever. And so that's okay.

You know, that's fine. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on the future when there are these physiological imbalances. I try to anticipate the possibilities and to the extent I can discuss what they are so that we as a society can address them more cogently. I do not, however, generally make predictions about anything less than two trillion years in the future. That's a great quote. What's going to happen two trillion years from now?

Is the universe expanding to the point of cooling off and everything dies? There's two reasons for that statement. One is, it's pretty simple. When you start thinking about the long terms, the universe is probably going to of cooling off and everything dies? There's two reasons for that statement. One is it's pretty simple. When you start thinking about the long term, the universe is probably going to expand forever, all the galaxies. And if it doesn't, the sun's burning out anyway. And the point is if it doesn't do that, no one's going to know I was wrong. That's a good point. That's a very good point.

Yeah. It's a safe bet. Yeah. So that's why I do, you know, that's my general. I read a quote once about supermassive black holes that has messed with my brain ever since I read it. Okay. And the quote was that inside every galaxy is a supermassive black hole that's one half of one percent of the mass of the galaxy. And that it's very possible that inside that supermassive black hole is a whole nother universe.

Well, up to that point. What does that mean? Up to that point, everything's out of line. Everything's out of line, okay. Okay, it is true that it's amazing that most galaxies that we can measure have large black holes in the center, which leads to an interesting question

we don't have the answer to. And one of the reasons we're building the James Webb Space Telescope... The James what? James Webb Space Telescope, the one that's going to replace the Hubble Space Telescope. And is that going to be in space?

Yeah, yeah, it's going to be at a much further orbit. It's going to be launched next year Telescope. Is that going to be in space? Yeah, yeah. It's going to be at a much further orbit. It's going to be launched next year, and it's a successor to James Webb. It's going to be 100 times the collection area. It's going to look at different wavelengths of light. It's going to push what Hubble has been able to do to look back to the earliest galaxies that ever formed.

First light, as we call them, when stars first turned on. The first stars that formed in the universe. It's going to be fascinating. But there's a chicken and egg question. If most galaxies have supermassive black holes in them, which came first? And did the black holes form and that was necessary for the galaxies to

coalesce around them? Or did the galaxies exist and then the black holes built up hierarchically by swallowing things and getting bigger and bigger and bigger? It's a question we don't know the answer to. When we build that thing, we might have the answer to it. It'll be an interesting question that we resolve. It is amazing that, as far as we can tell, these supermassive black holes exist,

even though we don't know they're black holes, by the way. We know they kind of look like black holes and quack like black holes and walk like black holes. But what I mean is we can tell there are mass concentrations that are immense, a billion solar masses, in a region so small that our theories tell us they should be a black hole. But we don't know if the consequences of generality tell us that they are black holes.

But the simplest assumption is that they are, that nothing escapes from them, that they formed classically like black holes. And they're fascinating, and we're learning about black holes, by the way, or putative black holes in ways we never thought we could, because we now have a new window in the universe. Gravitational waves. This LIGO detector just detected gravitational waves from colliding black holes that coalesce, and just discovered that the predictions of general relativity are validated.

It's a whole... We're like Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens and saw the moons of general relativity are validated. We're like Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens and saw the moons of Jupiter. We've just opened a new window on the universe and it'll be the new astronomy of the 21st and 22nd centuries and we will learn things we had no knowledge about

because that new window will reveal to us the dynamics of black holes in ways we never thought possible. So it's an amazing time to be alive. And I tend to think that's also a time invariant statement. But anyway, so everything, so the black, but what happens inside black holes is a question that's much different. And the answer is, we don't know.

We don't know. We know classically, if general relativity tells us what's happening, we know that this things will collapse to an infinitely dense singularity. But, you know, most of us physicists think infinite is a pretty bad word. That in physical reality, things don't get infinitely dense. That the laws of quantum mechanics are going to change things. And when things get sufficiently dense so that quantum mechanics has to be applied to gravity. And the only time that really happens, operationally, or either the beginning of our universe,

when our entire observable universe was in potentially an infinitely dense singularity, or at the center of black holes, that's the only places where that matters, when quantum mechanics must be applied to gravity, our current physical theories break down. So we don't know what happens in the ultimate state of black holes we don't you know one possibility is indeed they do our portal to another universe because what's really interesting is when what you see from the inside of a black

hole and the outside are very different if you're inside of a black hole the space can look like it's expanding whereas outside the black hole can look like the black hole is contracting. Why is that? Because general relativity tells you that your perceptions of what space is doing around you, in some sense, depends upon the gravitational configuration in which you live. In general relativity, you can be moving and standing still at the same time. We're doing it right now. I'm not moving much with respect to you. I had a little bit of coffee, so I'm shaking a little bit. But relative to radio conversations that's happening in a studio

at the other end of the visible universe, we're moving away at the speed of light. And those individuals having that conversation are also at rest in their local surroundings. But they're moving away from us at the speed of light. How is that possible? Because locally, are also at rest in their local surroundings. But they're moving away from us at the speed of light. How is that possible? Because locally, space is at rest. But globally, space is expanding.

So general relativity says that what you consider to be happening to space around you depends upon your local environment. And so you can locally be at rest, but globally be part of an expanding universe. Similarly, inside of a black hole globally be part of an expanding universe. Similarly, inside of a black hole, the direction of time reverses, it turns out, because space and time are tied together. So what you perceive inside of a black hole to be happening to the time evolution of the system you're in would be very different than what's seen from outside to be happening at the surface of the black hole. I would be very different than what's seen from outside to be happening

at the surface of the black hole. I mean, black holes are fascinating, and they're laboratories that allow us to focus on the physics we can't yet fully understand. How long have we known about them? Well, the idea of a black hole was first thought about, people wondered what was the ultimate state of gravitational collapse. And people had argued that maybe the ultimate state of gravitational collapse was these things that we now call black holes. There was a big debate about it, Oppenheimer and Snyder in the 1940s and 50s.

The person who first named black holes was John Wheeler. It amuses me. He came up with the term black hole in 1965 or something like that to describe the ultimate state of collapsing matter. People felt it was impossible, that physically forces would stop things from collapsing to the kind of densities that black holes would form at. But based on the work of Chandrasekhar and others, it was discovered that if you have a massive object that's massive enough,

nuclear forces and all other forces cannot fight against gravitational collapse. And eventually, things will collapse inside of what we call the event horizon. It's the ultimate state collapse, but it was hugely debated in the 30s, 40s, 50s. By the 1960s, it was accepted. And interestingly enough, Wheeler was one who first thought it couldn't happen. Later on, came up with the name Black Holes and I think that's one of the reasons that people are so fascinated by black holes.

Turns out in Russian the term for black hole was frozen star. And you don't see movies made in Russia about frozen stars. You see a lot of movies about black holes.

It's a great name. Yeah. And you know why it's a frozen star? Let me blow your mind a little bit. Okay. When objects are falling

into... So one of the things you need to know is the rate at which our clocks tick depends upon the gravitational field we're in. So if I'm way above the Earth's surface, my clock is actually ticking at a different rate than your clock. This sounds so crazy, but we need it every day. Because you know what?

Did you use GPS at all today? Okay. Wouldn't have worked if it wasn't for that. Because the clocks and the GPS satellites are ticking at a different rate than the clocks on earth because of general relativity. Because they're in a different, they're higher up with respect to the earth. So they had to calculate? We have to know, use that effect to correct. If it wasn't for that case, your GPS would go out of alignment in less than one minute. We use it every single day. So explain that, please. So the GPS,

the GPS satellite, global positioning satellites that are in orbit, they take into account the fact that they are higher above the Earth. That their clocks are ticking more slowly than ours. How do we know that? Because how do they know where we are? By triangulation. they basically look at the time it takes they have atomic clocks very accurate clocks the time it takes for a signal from your

watch or your phone to get up to the satellite and back and that other satellite in back allows you to determine your position but if the clock there is ticking at a different rate then you get a wrong answer for the time it takes for it to go on the... the number you get from that satellite when it reports to your watch. Is it slower or faster? Well, due to... there are two effects. Due to its motion... due to its motion... well, how can I say this?

It's basically slower, but due to its motion, it's ticking at a slower rate. Due to its height in the gravitational field, it turns out that it's faster. So the two effects counter each other, general relativity and special relativity. In this case, general relativity wins, I think. It's something like they're ticking more slowly. I calculated it once. I wrote a New York Times piece on this, and I forget the number, but it's something like

of the order of 38 microseconds per day, they're ticking at a slower rate. 38 millionths of a second every day, different. And that may not sound important to you, but if you calculate how far light

travels in 38 millionths of a second, it's pretty far. And so, therefore, if you keep getting wrong by that number, your determination of your position is going to keep getting wrong by that number. And I worked out, and this should allow me to work backwards if I had a pad and paper. I see a pad, but I'm not going to do it right now because I don't care. But I remembered you'd be out by something like a kilometer in two minutes. Wow. Isn't that amazing?

It is amazing. So we use these abstract, esoteric principles and they govern our lives. So general relativity really matters for our technology. But it tells us, but what's really interesting, so as objects fall into a black hole because they're getting in stronger and stronger gravitational fields,

from the outside, we see them moving more and more slowly. And eventually, we see them freeze at the surface. We will never see, from the outside, it will look like it will take an infinite amount of time for an object to fall through the event horizon of a black hole. Even though in its own frame, it falls through no problem. For us, it will watch it slowly, slowly, slowly because its clock is literally ticking at a different rate and it will take an

infinite amount of time for us, for any object to fall through the event horizon of the black hole if we're watching from the outside. That's why the Russians called them frozen stars. Isn't that weird? It's crazy. Yeah it is, but it's true. Now where did the concept come from that inside every black hole is perhaps hundreds of billions of galaxies each with a black hole in front of it?

Oh, well, I never heard that concept. What I have heard is that at the singularity, the singularity may be a portal to another universe. Right. And moreover, that inside the black hole, you could imagine that you're observing a space that appears to be expanding instead of contracting. And is it possible that those inside that black hole, that universe, would not have the same laws of physics that we experience? Well, once you go through the singularity, who knows? Because the laws of physics break down. But one thing I can tell you for sure is there aren't millions of billions of galaxies

inside that black hole. And you know why? Why? Because gravity allows us to measure what the total mass of the black hole is. Okay. In that sense of black holes... Well, if it's a total mass of the black hole is. Okay. In that sense, a black hole is... But if it's a portal? Well, if it's a portal, that's a different universe.

Right. That's what I'm saying. But after... Then it's no longer inside the black hole. Right. Okay. I see what you're saying. But it's wonderful that in that sense, black holes are just like any other stars.

You know, you can orbit around them. Not everything falls into a black hole because if you're far enough away, you can just do an orbit. Right. Like a planet around the sun. The sun is attracting us, but the Earth doesn't fall into it, at least not in a normal amount of time. Do you anticipate that that's something that we might try to do in the future,

is send a satellite into the black hole? First, we'd have to find a black hole. Well, the one in the center of our galaxy, perhaps? Well, you know how long it takes to get to the center of the galaxy? Long enough. The center of our galaxy is 40,000 light years away. So it's a long experiment. Yeah, that's unfortunate.

I'm not clear to me the National Science Foundation under Trump or anyone else is going to fund that. Now what about having... I'd be interested if we could send a lot of Congress to explore what it's like in the center of the black hole. That would be a solution? Yeah, maybe. Suit them all up? Yeah, suit them all up. Go boldly go where no man or woman has gone before.

What about black holes that are not attached to galaxies? Well, we don't see them. We don't. I mean, right now we have... I don't believe anyone's... Because here's how you... How do you see a black hole? You have to see the stars circling around it.

Exactly. Right. It's the only the stars circling around it. Exactly. Right. It's the only way you can see that it's there. So are those just theoretical? The stars that aren't, the black holes rather that aren't attached to galaxies?

Well, I mean, and not only are they theoretical, I think very few people argue there are many such things because we tend to think that stars conglomerate around regions where there's dominant mass, right?

They collapse. And so while it's true that the galaxies are just the tip of a cosmic iceberg, most of the mass of galaxies isn't stars or black holes. It's this stuff called dark matter. What is that? It's stuff you can't see. Neil deGrasse Tyson tried to explain it to me, and that didn't get in there either. Well, look, it's really quite simple.

When we weigh galaxies, which we can do by seeing how fast the stars move around them, we find out that they weigh a lot more than can be counted by counting all the stars. So the dominant mass doesn't shine. We call that dark matter. Not too surprising. But what we have discovered, and this is the surprising part, is we can estimate how much normal matter there is. And by normal matter, I mean the stuff made of protons and neutrons, the same as you and me. And when we add up how much dark matter we see

in the universe, there's a heck of a lot more of that than can be accounted for by the total number of protons and neutrons in the universe. And that means that we think the dark matter is made of some new type of elementary particle, something that was created in the early history of the universe that's different than normal matter. That's not too surprising either, because in the early universe there was lots of energy around, and if there are new elementary particles that are stable, it's not too surprising that there are lots of them around.

And if they don't interact with light, we wouldn't see them. In fact, not only is that reasonable, but we cannot understand how galaxies would form if it weren't for dark matter. We can do the calculations and show that if the dark matter weren't made of stuff that's different than protons and neutrons, there would not have been enough time in the history of the universe for galaxies to form.

Therefore, that's really strong evidence that that stuff must be there and it must not be made of protons and neutrons because we're proof, you and I, that galaxies formed. It's so fascinating that there's this element that's a huge part of the universe itself that we're not really exactly sure what it is. Yeah. Isn't that great? It's amazing. It's amazing. There are mysteries. What unfortunately people get told is it makes it seem like, you know, science was done and it's all done. It was done by dead white men 200 years ago.

That's not, the mysteries continue. That's why it's the greatest story ever told so far. That's why young kids should be interested in science because life is full of mysteries and we've learned so much about the universe. But it gets more mysterious and more exciting. And every time we open a new window on the universe, we're surprised. That's why we got to keep looking out and not looking in. Tell me about hypernovas.

Hypernovas. I watched a science documentary that freaked me out about how when they first started measuring gamma ray bursts out into the universe, they thought there was wars going on between alien races. Well, the point is that, you know, there are these things called gamma ray bursts, and what they are, gamma rays are

extremely energetic forms of light, if you want to think about it, okay? And they're, among other things, they're emitted in nuclear weapons explosions, okay? And you know how they were discovered? It's really neat. It's one of the few examples of defense money well spent, in my opinion.

But maybe not the few, but now you'll get lots of 8 mils. But anyway, so there were these satellites that were designed to go up, that were Earth monitoring, to look for gamma rays. Why? Because we were looking for nuclear weapons explosions to see if the Soviets or some other country were having nuclear weapons explosions. What year was this run? Oh, these satellites were put up in the 60s and 70s.

So this is around the time they did that Operation Starfish Prime where they detonated a nuke into the atmosphere or the magnetosphere? Probably. I don't know. I honestly don't know the answer to that question. But the point is they were used as monitoring systems to look for nuclear weapons explosions. And then these things which were looking downward discovered these short bursts of gamma rays they were used as monitoring systems to look for nuclear weapons explosions. And then these things which were looking downward discovered these short bursts of gamma rays,

which would be a potential signature of nuclear weapons explosions, but they discovered they weren't coming from Earth. And then they discovered they were coming from everywhere in the cosmos. And that's how they were discovered. These devices were monitoring the Earth, looking for nuclear weapons explosions, and then saw them out in space. How many of them were there? Well, they're everywhere. There are millions of them. And they happen.

They're one second, two second, one minute long bursts that are incredibly energetic, emitting more energy than the sun may emit in its lifetime. In its lifetime. And they're happening all the time. They're happening all the time. You know why? Because the great thing about the universe is

it's big and it's old. And therefore, rare're happening all the time. They're happening all the time. You know why? Because the great thing about the universe is it's big and it's old. And therefore, rare events happen all the time. Let me give you an example. Stars explode. And it's good for us that stars explode. I've written about it in this book. Because every atom in your body and every atom in my body was made inside stars that eventually explode. How do we know that?

Because in the Big Bang, the only elements that were created were hydrogen, helium, and a little bit of lithium. Okay, but the importance, well, for some people lithium's important, but the rest of us, the rest of us, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the stuff that makes us human

was only created in the fiery furnaces and the cores of stars. And how could it get into your and my body? Because there were stars that were kind enough to explode. So as I once said, and some people put on t-shirts now, so forget Jesus, the stars died so we could be born, okay? But here's the deal.

Stars explode about once every hundred years per galaxy. So in our galaxy, once every hundred years the stars explode. There have been about 200 million stars explode in the 14 billion years, or 12 billion years since our galaxy's been around. And that's produced the raw materials that 4.5 billion

years ago coalesced to form our sun and the planets and you and I. So all the atoms in your body have gone through stars and been through the most intense explosion that we know of in nature, a supernova. And every atom in your body has experienced it, maybe more than once. Because to get to the amount of carbon, nitrogen

and oxygen that's in our bodies, it had to be recycled many times. So the atoms in your left hand may have been inside a different star than your right hand. You're really stardust. We're all stardust. We're really connected to the cosmos in really interesting and important ways. We literally were created by stars.

That's a great thing, but that's not the point I wanted to make. The point I wanted to make was stars explode once per 100 years per galaxy. We use supernovae as a way to probe the universe. How can we do that if we're looking at galaxies and one star explodes every 100 years in a galaxy? How can we use them as probes? Well, as I say, there's one way. It's to assign a graduate student to each galaxy.

You know, a PhD period can be about 100 years. And if they die, students are cheap, so you get a new one. Or we use them in this fact that the universe is big and old. If you take your hands up tonight and weren't in, you know, Los Angeles where you could see the stars,

and held a dime-sized, made a dime-sized hole, and looked up at a dime-sized dark region of the universe where you didn't see any stars, if you had a telescope that is as big as the telescope say we have in Chile, you'd see 100,000 galaxies. 100,000 galaxies in that small region. Then if one star

explodes every 100 years per galaxy, if you work out how many stars will I see explode tonight, you'll find out you'll see two or three stars explode. Just in that dime-sized hole? Yeah, because the universe is big and old, and rare events happen all the time. And that's what makes the universe so exciting, because now we can use supernovae to study the universe, because astronomers write proposals and say, tonight I'm going to use the Hubble

Space Telescope to look at this region, and I'm going to see three stars explode. Wow. Isn't that amazing see three stars explode. Wow. Isn't that amazing? That is amazing. Yeah. And isn't it a shame that more people don't realize that? Because that's as amazing as anything. I mean, that's the kind of thing that makes like,

oh, wow, that's neat. And as I say, it's neat to see a great movie too. But they're all together. Science is fun and neat and interesting. And you don't have to be a scientist movie too but that they're all together science is fun and neat and interesting and you don't have to be a scientist to find it amazing yeah that is about as amazing as it gets i think we don't we have a real issue i think with cities where light pollution prevents people from seeing how amazing the stars are in fact there's a lot of astronomers who are who are doing in fact active work to try and reduce light pollution in cities near telescopes.

And there's other, I mean, the Arecibo radio telescope is an amazing, if you've never been down to Puerto Rico, it's beautiful. It was actually, you would have seen it in two James Bond movies because they made it into the, like, the layer of, you know, the pictures of it in the layer of some crazy evil scientist. And I've been there a few times, and it's amazing because it's this thousand meter wide net of

wires in a natural volcanic canopy. It's really beautiful. And there's jungle growing underneath it. I've walked underneath it. And the Earth's C-Prototoscope is amazing because it's so big, it allows us to measure lots of neat things

in the universe. In fact, you could measure a light bulb on Pluto if there was a light bulb. We're looking at the picture of it now. Wow, look at that thing. It's amazing. And you can't even get the sense of the size of it necessarily from that. And that's all wires. It's all wires. It's not solid.

It's wires. Because it's only measuring radio waves. And if the wavelength is large compared to the spacing between the wires, you don't need something solid. Okay. So they were worried. And this is a real example. They're looking for, among other things, a frequency of radiation which is ubiquitous in the universe that is emitted by hydrogen. It was the first sort of thing that people used to do radio astronomy.

Hydrogen emits a, has a characteristic frequency of emission of radio waves due to what's called a hyperfine splitting in hydrogen. And so people said, you know what, that would be a wonderful frequency for aliens to communicate. If they really wanted to show, if they're smart enough to know

how the universe works, that's a universal frequency that's everywhere, because hydrogen is the dominant kind of matter, and it always emits radiation at that frequency. Okay? It's 1040 megahertz, I think, is the frequency, okay? Although, you know, again, I could be wrong, but

something like that. But they're worried, because there was nearby, there was an evangelist who had a huge radio station and wanted to broadcast to the continent of the United States his evangelical message.

And he was going to basically broadcast at a frequency that would mean that Arecibo couldn't work anymore. Speaking of light pollution, we talk about light pollution, but that was radio pollution. And in this case, it was pollution in many ways

because everything he said was polluting. And finally, they managed to be able to fix that. But there would have been one of the most amazing windows and in this case it was pollution in many ways because everything he said was polluting but but and Finally that they managed to be able to fix that but there would have been one of the most amazing windows on the universe That would have been Blocked out by radio light just like from an evangelist. Yeah. Yeah, that's very ironic. It isn't it isn't it? It's very ironic. It's I think it's very symbolic of many things Wow That is fascinating. Moment of silence because it's so amazing. Yeah, well, it's confusing.

Well, yeah, but that's okay. Being confused is that... I told you, being long or confused is the best part. No, and I get it. I get it. Now, when you talk about the vastness of space and you talk about space being 14 billion or whatever it is years old. It's 13.8 billion years old,

plus or minus a little bit. What's the going theory about what was going on before that? Well, I wrote a book about it, first of all, called The Universe from Nothing. The point is, the simple answer is we don't know. Right. Because at the instant of the Big Bang,

the whole universe was contained in a region where you'd have to understand gravity as a quantum mechanical force to really understand what was happening. And we don't have a quantum theory of gravity. So it's okay to say

we don't know. But we can say what plausibly was the case. And one possibility, and the possibility that looks most plausible that I talked about, is our universe spontaneously

came into being from nothing by quantum fluctuations. A space and time that did not exist, so our space and our time didn't exist, and there was no matter in the universe, and it suddenly popped into existence. And one of the neat things is if you add up the total energy of all the stuff in our universe, it adds up to zero as far as we can tell. What? Zero.

What does that mean? How is that? Because gravity allows things to have positive energy as well as negative energy. You add it all up and our universe looks like it has total energy zero. But I know you're shaking your head, but that's the neat thing is... I'm trying to rattle something loose. If you were going to create a universe from nothing, what would you make the total energy of the universe? But why does it have to be from nothing? Once you realize the total energy of the universe can be zero, then the possibility that it comes from nothing becomes plausible.

Because if it doesn't, you may need a deity to create everything. But it turns out you can create 100 billion galaxies, each containing 100 billion stars, without violating energy conservation. Okay? And that, isn't that, it's the ultimate free lunch, as Alan Guth would say. And it's amazing that that's possible. Now, can we prove that that happened? No.

But everything we can point to makes it plausible. In fact, you can ask the following question. What would a universe look like today that was created, that arose spontaneously from nothing 13.8 billion years ago, just by known laws of physics, or at least plausible laws of physics, what would it look like today if that was the requirement? And the answer is it would look

just like the universe in which we live in. Now, does that prove that that's what happened? No, but it makes it plausible. And it makes it plausible without supernatural shenanigans. And any time you can get rid of God, it's a good thing. But isn't something out of nothing

supernatural shenanigans? No, because it happens all the time. Right. You know, this is an example I've been talking about a few times today to people. The lights in this studio, okay, the lights above us, our head. So what happened? So electrons change energy levels in atoms and they emit photons. Where were the photons before they were emitted? They weren't in the atoms. Where were they? They didn't exist. They were spontaneously created. They were turned on by the light switch? No. So the light switch is God?

No. They were spontaneously created because there's no cause for any of them. Each atom spontaneously decays into a different level because quantum mechanics says that these things can happen spontaneously. And when it does, a photon is created from nothing. So here's what I was getting at. Yeah? What is the difference between this infinitely dense small point that the universe came out

of and the center of a black hole, the event horizon of a black hole? Well, no, the event horizon isn't the center. It's the outside of a black hole. Well, the infinite point. The answer is there is no difference. No difference. No, there are singularities where the laws of physics as we know them break down. Is it possible that inside of each one of those black holes is the birth of a universe?

Maybe. Is that how we came out of that? No, I think it's more likely that quantum mechanics just burped us out. Burped us? We're a cosmic burp. Much like, you know, I mean, I think it's great. I don't know if you saw in my jacket, which I don't know where I put it, but it was here somewhere. Probably outside. I had this flying spaghetti monster because I love this flying spaghetti monster Because because he boiled so that we could be alive today, but it's it's it's it's you know

It's just it's like pissing people off who me But so this infinitely dense point of 13.8 billion years ago, whatever it was, this something out of nothing point. What are your thoughts about before that? Well, here's the thing that you're going to hate. Okay. One possibility, which is quite plausible. If our space suddenly popped out of nothing, Einstein tells us that space and time are together. We live in a four-dimensional universe.

So space began at that instant, so did time. So there was no before. The question isn't a good question. Time didn't exist until our universe came into existence. So to ask the question, what was before, is not a good question. So time didn't exist before 13.8 billion years ago. If our universe is all there is And that we happen to think by the way is not likely

But if it is Then it doesn't make sense to ask the question What was before Because time didn't exist It sounds like a cop out and it kind of is But it may also be true And if there's no before Then all of our notions of causality go out the window

Because we all depend upon before and after To decide causes and effects But if there was no before Then we have to change our notions of causality go out the window because we all depend upon before and after to decide causes and effects. But if there was no before, then we have to change our notions of a cause and effect. And that's awful, but hey, that's what we call learning. What about the ideas that the universe is in a constant state of contraction and expansion? No, it isn't. Nah, nah.

Well, I mean, some people think that. No, it's not been abandoned. Some physicists still argue that there's a cycle because it looks nice. And they are, but I think most people, I mean, there's some people who are arguing for that. Do you think they're just trying to tie up something neat? Well, I think they're trying to tie up

their ignorance in something that isn't any more plausible than the picture that it expands forever. And as far as we can tell, the most likely possibility is that our universe will expand forever. But, to make you a little bit happier, it's quite possible, the best pictures that we have of the early universe is that we actually, our universe isn't unique, isn't alone. That there are many universes.

We call it a multiverse. And that at any instant in time, in kind of a cosmic super time, there's always a universe being born. So, that multiverse might be infinite and eternal. Where are they? Outside of our universe. How's that even possible? Of course it's possible. I understand. I'm not questioning it. I just would like you to define it. First of all, the simplest possibility is that

they're outside the region we can see. Right? For example, the edges of our visible universe, space is expanding faster away from us than light. Because, you know, we taught you in school nothing can travel faster than light. You may remember that from school. We lied.

Well, no, you have to parse it more carefully, like a lawyer. Nothing can travel through space faster than light. But space can do whatever the hell it wants. So, locally, as I told you, the radio host is at rest. They're not moving. And the other end of the galaxy, the other end of the visible universe, and we're at rest. But the space between us is expanding. So that galaxy, like a surfer, is being carried away from us faster than light.

Relative to the water, the surfer isn't moving. Right? But relative to the shore, the surfer is. Right? Right. Okay. So this galaxy is not moving relative to its local surroundings,

but it's moving away from us faster than light. And like a surfer in an undertow, they can swim really fast in the water, but if the water's moving away from the shore, they'll never make it back to the shore. Right? And so that galaxy, the light from that galaxy, is traveling through space at the speed of light. But if the

space in between us and the galaxy is moving faster than light, then the poor light can never make it to us. We call that a horizon. Wow. So the space is traveling too far for the light to reach us. Too fast. Too fast. So the light can't catch up with the expansion of space, and it never gets to us. And that galaxy disappears from our causal horizon, we call it. so this light can't catch up with the expansion of space, and it never gets to us.

And that galaxy disappears from our causal horizon, we call it. We'll never be able to see it. We'll never be able to interact with it. We'll never be okay. And it could be that there are different regions so far away from us where space is expanding faster than light, which have a very different history than our own. So there could be, space could be infinite. Just our simple space that we know of and love could be infinite in extent, and different

regions of that space had different histories. And some of those regions, everything we can see, we know emerged from a single point. Okay? We can tell that. We can tell that by measuring the Big Bang expansion of everything we see and working backwards. And the universe, our visible universe, was once smaller and smaller and smaller.

If we go back in time, we can actually follow the laws of physics back to the earliest moments of the Big Bang until those laws break down and we can make predictions about what the universe should look like. All those predictions agree exactly with the observations we make, which tell us that that picture works. But another region, if you wish, could have come from a different Big Bang. But is that another universe, or is it a part of the universe that we can't see?

Here's how we've changed. And this is semantics, but non-trivial semantics. Namely, when I was a kid, universe meant everything. Everything, right. But we say that's a pretty stupid definition. A better definition is an operational one. Right. But we say that's a pretty stupid definition.

A better definition is an operational one. Universe means that region of space with which at one time we could have communicated, or one time in the future, even if the future is infinite, we might communicate with. Because that describes the region of space where cause and effect works. Some measurable distance. Yes. And so we think of a universe as that region throughout which everything could affect everything else, ultimately, in an infinitely long time. And in that picture, universes can be restricted in size. And then other regions which could never have affected us and which will never affect us in the future, we call other universes.

Ah, I see. And now, there are many different versions of a multiverse, but that's the simplest version. And this picture we call Inflation, which, you know, I talk, I just did two little clips associated with the new book. One was for a publisher and one was for Big Think. One is The Universe in Under Two Minutes. So you can look up online, look for Lawrence Think. One is The Universe in Under Two Minutes.

So you can look up online, look for Lawrence Krauss Explains the Universe in Under Two Minutes, where I talk about this cosmic expansion and how it might mean there's a multiverse. But the other is, I explain the universe in terms of this beer bottle that I talked about to you earlier. So you can, that's a video, you can watch that. But this theory of inflation, which actually says our universe, the qualities that we see of our universe can best be explained of some early time in the history of the universe, when it was a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second old. It had a huge expansion suddenly and increased in size by 30 orders of magnitude in size in a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. magnitude and size in a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. Which is, by the way, particle physics suggests

is highly plausible. And then it would produce a universe that looks more or less like we look like. And it's right now the only explanation of how that would cause the universe to look like what it looks like. But the neat thing about inflation

is it's eternal. So inflation, that puffing up, ended in our universe, and then boom, a hot big bang followed it. So the universe puffed up by a huge amount, then all of that energy, which was stored in empty space, got released, like the beer bottle, and we got a hot big bang, and the rest is history. But that's locally.

But somewhere else, between us and there, space is still expanding exponentially. And faster and faster and faster. And only maybe somewhere else today. Boom! Like an ice crystal forming. Boom! That region of space is suddenly left inflation. And maybe a gazillion years in the future, there'll be

another region of space that's expanding away from us so much faster than light, so we'll never know about it. Where suddenly, that region leaves inflation, and boom, another hot big bang happens. And it turns out in each of those hot big bangs, after the inflation ends, depending upon how it ends, the laws of physics could be

different in that universe. So we tend to think it's quite likely that there are many, many separate regions of space, and in fact think it's quite likely that there are many, many separate regions of space. And in fact, it's eternal. So such regions are forming eternally for all time. And there are hot big bangs happening in many regions. And the properties of each of those regions, whether they're conducive to forming galaxies and stars and planets and people, may be different.

So we could say, logically, in that picture, that the reason the universe looks like the way it does is because we're here to measure it. Oh, my God. We should leave it at that. Okay. We should close with that. That is the mind blower of mind blowers. Good, good, okay.

Wow. I'm glad I wore you out and not the other way around. That was amazing. Thank you so much. That's fun. Fascinating. That was two and a half hours man just flew by

good thanks wow thank you for you and me it might have flown by I don't know how the list listen man that was a mind blower okay thanks

the greatest story ever told so far it's available now you can get it in audiobooks it's on you can get it on iTunes in an audiobook form as well thank you very much

really really appreciate it it's been great to finally get to talk to you great to talk to you, Joe. Great to talk to you too. Really appreciate this. Thank you. Woo! Okay, so you're moving.